(9 of 10)
Tillich lives with his wife in a cluttered, 3½-room apartment on Chauncy Street in Cambridge (his son René Stephen, 24, is a Harvard student, his daughter Erdmuthe Christiane Farris, 33, a Manhattan housewife). At 72, Tillich has all his old intellectual vigor, though he may doze off for moments during a conversation, and he goes through a regular, 10-minute "yawning period" every day at 6 p.m. An occasional stimulant at that time: cognac, which is kept in his office filing cabinet under "H" (for Hennessy). Tillich is likely to be on the road lecturing three or four days a week, but he loves nothing better than a serious bull session, and will do his best to join any group of students who invite him. He sits with them, his big hands playing constantly with the large square paper clip that he refers to as "my fetish." The talk does not necessarily stay on theology; Paul Tillich believes that religion is "the substance of culture and culture is the form of religion." He has long been concerned with the insights of psychiatry; Psychoanalyst Rollo May, leading U.S. exponent of "existential analysis" (TIME, Dec. 29), studied under Tillich at Union Seminary, and continues to keep in close touch with him. He is also keenly interested in modern art, and has written and lectured extensively on how art manifests "ultimate reality."
On the Fence? What does Theologian Tillich have to offer to the millions of Protestants who believe themselves secure in their faith and their churches? He offers at least three things: 1) an impressively designed theological system that tends to order and clarify Protestant ideas, even for those who do not accept Tillich's interpretation; 2) a kind of shock treatment for the complacent, who are apt to be driven, by Tillich's unorthodoxies, to re-examine the basis of their own faith; 3) a passionate, contagious concern for the human condition and for faith as an essential element of that condition.
What can Protestantism do in the present crisis of modern man who "no longer possesses a world view in the sense of a body of assured convictions about God, the world, and himself"? Protestantism, says Dr. Tillich, cannot offer such a world view: "it must fight from above this level to bring everything under judgment and promise." This cannot be done, he says, simply by asserting theological truth, or by going back to the Reformation's theme of justification by faith alone. It can only be done by, in effect, driving man to the painful extremity of accepting the ultimate threat confronting his existence, and yet to affirm life in the face of this very threat. "The one thing needed—this is the first and in some sense the last answer I can give—is to be concerned ultimately, unconditionally, infinitely . . . If, in the power and passion of such an ultimate concern, we look at our finite concerns, everything seems the same and yet everything is changed . . . The anxiety is gone! It still exists and tries to return. But its power is broken."