The Eternal Now by Paul Tillich
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The Eternal Now by Paul Tillich Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1963. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. PDF by ANGEL ([email protected]) Preface However the Christian message is expressed, whether in abstract theological language, or in concrete language in preaching, it must be relevant for our time if it uses the language of our time. Chapter 1: Loneliness and Solitude Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone. Solitude expesses the glory of being alone. The innermost nature of solitude is the presence of the eternal upon the crowded roads of the temporal. Chapter Two: Forgetting and Being Forgotten The simple word "forget" plunges us into the deepest riddles of life and death, of time and eternity. There are three kinds of forgetting: 1. The burden of the past liberated by the present. 2. The pain of our past guilt forgotten by repentance. 3. The distress of our being forgotten repressed by our forgetting. Chapter 3: The Riddle of Inequality The riddle of inequality cannot be solved on the level of our separation from each other. It is eternally solved through the divine participation in the life of all of us and every being. The certainty of divine participation gives us the courage to endure the riddle of inequality, although our finite minds cannot solve it. Chapter 4: The Good That I Will, I Do Not Paul speaks more often of Sin – Sin spelled with a capital "S," Sin as a power that controls world and mind, persons and nations. Sin is more than the trespassing of a list of rules. All sins are manifestations of Sin, of the power of estrangement and inner conflict. Sin dwells in us, it controls us, and makes us do what we don’t want to do. Chapter 5: Heal the Sick; Cast Out the Demons The first task of a minister is to make men aware of their predicament. Both physical and mental, individual and social, illness is a consequence of the estrangement of man’s spirit from the divine Spirit, and that no sickness can be healed or any demon cast out without the reunion of the human spirit with the divine Spirit. Chapter 6: Man and Earth There is a dread that permeates the whole being of our times, especially amid the younger generation. It is the sense of living under a continuous threat, the imminent danger of a universal and total catastrophe. Only the Eternal can give us the certainty that the earth, and, with it, mankind, has not existed in vain, even should history come to an end tomorrow. Chapter 7: Spiritual Presence The work of the Spiritual Presence in a man reaches its height when it liberates him from the yoke of the commandments to the freedom of the Spirit. Life is great and holy, deep and abundant, ecstatic and sober, limited and distorted by time, fulfilled by eternity. Chapter 8: The Divine Name Either in denying or in affirming when we say "God," we are in sublime embarrassment. There are three forms of this embarrassment: The embarrassment of tact, of doubt and of awe. Chapter 9: God’s Pursuit of Man If someone is arrested by God and made aware of the ambiguous character of his religious life, religion is not taken away from him. Since he has reached freedom from religion, he also has reached freedom for religion. He is blessed in it and he is blessed outside of it. He has been opened to the ultimate dimension of being. Chapter 10: Salvation It is our estrangement and guilt which are the impediments which keep us from reaching eternal life here and now. Chapter 11: The Eternal Now The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have our future also because we anticipate it in ‘the present; and that we have our past also, because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are ours. Chapter 12: Do Not Be Conformed Not conformity, but transformation -- The conformism that threatened Jesus most effectively and brought him to death was the religious conformism of his time. And the situation was and is not different in the church. Dare to be not conformed to this eon, but transform it courageously first in yourselves, then in your world -- in the spirit and the power of love. Chapter 13: Be Strong One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. Strength without love leads to separation, to judgment, to control of the weak. Love reunites what is separated; it accepts what is judged; it participates in what is weak, as God participates in our weakness and gives us strength by His participation. Chapter 14: In Thinking Be Mature The decisive step to maturity is risking the break away from spiritual infancy with its protective traditions and guiding authorities. Without a "no" to authority, there is no maturity. This "no" need not be rebellious, arrogant, or destructive. As long as it is so, it indicates immaturity by this very attitude. Chapter 15: On Wisdom Wisdom is not a matter of intellectual power; rationality is not wisdom. It is wisdom to see wisdom in the mystery and the conflicts of life. It is insight into the meaning of one’s life, into its conflicts and dangers, into its creative and destructive powers, and into the ground out of which it comes and to which it must return. He who has encountered the mystery of life has reached the source of wisdom. Chapter 16: In Everything Give Thanks Thanksgiving consecrates everything created by God. It transfers something that belongs to the secular world into the sphere of the holy. Preface Most of these sermons were delivered in university and college chapels, as were those in the preceding volumes, The Shaking of the Foundations and The New Being. The present collection dates from 1955 to 1963. The title "The Eternal Now," taken from a sermon in the second section of the book, indicates that the presence of the Eternal in the midst of the temporal is a decisive emphasis in most of the sermons. I could have chosen "The Spiritual Presence" as the general title, but the many unfavorable connotations with which the word "Spiritual" is burdened excluded this possibility. Only for a particular sermon in which every sentence interpreted the meaning of "Spiritual," could the word be used. It is my hope that this collection, like its predecessors, will show that the Christian message -- be it expressed in abstract theology or concrete preaching -- is relevant for our time if it uses the language of our time. My thanks go to Mrs. Elisabeth Wood, who did the hard and necessary work of stylistic correction, as she has for the earlier volumes. I dedicate this book to the memory of a man whose friendship has enriched and deepened the largest part of my adult life, and with whom I experienced moments in which the Spiritual Presence was manifest. Paul Tillich Chicago Chapter 1: Loneliness and Solitude And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. Matthew 14:23 I "He was there, alone." So are we. Man is alone because he is man! In some way every creature is alone. In majestic isolation every star travels through the darkness of endless space. Each tree grows according to its own law, fulfilling its unique possibilities. Animals live, fight and die for themselves alone, confined to the limitations of their bodies. Certainly, they also appear as male and female, in families and in flocks. Some of them are gregarious. But all of them are alone! Being alive means being in a body -- a body separated from all other bodies. And being separated means being alone. This is true of every creature, and it is more true of man than of any other creature. He is not only alone; he also knows that he is alone. Aware of what he is, he asks the question of his aloneness. He asks why he is alone, and how he can triumph over his being alone. For this aloneness he cannot endure. Neither can he escape it. It is his destiny to be alone and to be aware of it. Not even God can take this destiny away from him. In the story of paradise we read -- "Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone." And He created the woman from the body of Adam. Here an old myth is used to show that originally there was no bodily separation between man and woman; in the beginning they were one. Now they long to be one again. But although they recognize each other as flesh of their own flesh, each remains alone. They look at each other, and despite their longing for each other, they see their strangeness. In the story, God Himself makes them aware of this fact when He speaks to each of them separately, when He makes each one responsible for his own guilt, when He listens to their excuses and mutual accusations, when He pronounces a separate curse over each, and leaves them to experience shame in the face of their nakedness. They are each alone. The creation of the woman has not overcome the situation which God describes as not good for man. He remains alone.