Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 07:1 (Winter 1964)
Article: Tillich, The Trinity And Honest To God.
Author: R. Allen Killen

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BETS 7:1 (Winter 1964) p. 22

Tillich, The Trinity And Honest To God.

R. Allen Killen

“Indeed, though we shall not of course be able to do it, I can at least understand what those mean who urge that we should do well to give up using the word ‘God’ for a generation, so impregnated has it become with a way of thinking we may have to discard if the Gospel is to signify anything.”1

John A. T. Robinson, bishop of Woolwich, is speaking of what he calls the supranaturalistic view of God, which follows the Bible literally as it “speaks of a God ‘up there’ and pictures a three decker universe of ‘the heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth.’”2 Continuing in the same strain he writes: “This picture of a god ‘out there’ coming to earth like some visitor from outer space underlies every popular presentation of the Christian drama of salvation, whether from the pulpit or the presses.”3

Robinson proposes that in place of the God “out there” or “up there” we accept the concept of God presented by Paul Tillich, namely “the god above God”4 which is Being-Itself, or the Power of Being, and which is present in everything while yet being absent.

Paul Tillich too wonders if the very name ‘God’ may not have to be abandoned in order to make room for and understand a new concept for God. He writes: “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern . . . Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself.”5

The existential theology of our day which has among its proponents Rudolf Bultmann, the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Robinson, finds its most able theologian in Paul Tillich. His ontological theology offers their best presentation of a new modern existential concept of God. Tillich has the prestige of originating this new God. Robinson, however, it would appear from the phenomenal success of his book Honest To God, will have the fame for putting it into everyday language and popularizing it among the theologians, the clergy and the laity.

I. What does Tillich teach about God?

a) Paul Tillich insists that God can only be spoken of in a symbolic manner. If this is not done w...

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