Harvard Divinity School

Tillich and Heidegger: A Structural Relationship

Author(s): Thomas F. O'Meara
Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Apr., 1968), pp. 249-261
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School
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HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 6I (1968), 249-261

TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER:

A STRUCTURAL RELATIONSHIP
THOMAS F. O'MEARA, O.P.

AQUINAS INSTITUTE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

FACULTIESIN IOWA
ASSOCIATIONOF THEOLOGICAL

THE evaluation of Tillich's theological system in America and

Great Britain (incipient in Germany but almost nonexistent in
France) inevitably takes a stand on two questions. It asks
whether Tillich is a theologian or a philosopher, and it asks
whether he is an existentialist, an idealist, or, perhaps, both. The
second question has almost as many opinionsas answers. Is Tillich
solely or basically a product of the German nineteenth century?
Is he an existentialist despite his system, or an idealist despite his
demand for existential theology? Or is Tillich merely an existen-
tialist in his general terminology, while the horizon and form
of his thought (because of ontology and system) is of the nine-
teenth century?
The following study attempts to analyze the relationship of
Tillich's systematic theology - his theology as a whole and, in
particular,his theology of God (the initial areas of the Systematic
Theology) - to the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger.
An evaluation of the structural relationship of Heidegger's on-
tology to areas of Tillich's systematic theology should help answer
the questions mentioned above. It may also illustrate another
facet of the increasing influence of Heidegger on contemporary
theology.

I
Tillich writes that he had the nineteenth century for his teacher
during his university years from 1904 to 1907.1 "The spirit of the
nineteenth century still prevailed, and we hoped that the great
synthesis between Christianity and humanism could be achieved
'PAUL TILLICH,Ultimate Concern (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 37.
250 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
with the tools of German classical philosophy."2 Although he
could not unlearnall he had imbibedduringthese formativeyears,
Tillich saw that the World War had brought an end to this entire
intellectual world.3 "I find more 'theonomous philosophy' in
Schelling than in any of the other idealists. But to be sure, not
even Schelling was able to bring about a unity of theology and
philosophy. The World War in my own experiencewas the catas-
trophe of idealistic thinking in general. Even Schelling'sphiloso-
phy was drawn into this catastrophe."4 Still, Schelling's second
period had been "a prelude to the things to come," 5 "the philoso-
phically decisive break with Hegel and the beginning of that
movement which today is called existentialism."" Although
works by others on his own thought made Tillich more conscious
of the importance of Schelling for him, the decisive confirmation
of Tillich's opinionon Schellinghad come to him as he encountered
the "Philosophy of Life" and the philosophy and art of existen-
tialism.7 If Schelling could only be correctly understood in light
of the currentswhich with Kierkegaardand Husserl would spark
the various forms of existentialism, still he was different from ex-
istentialism. Tillich's early writings, his dissertations for the doc-
torate in philosophy and the licentiate in theology (both on Schel-
ling),8 an interesting program for a Religionsphilosophie9 were
original yet distinctively related to Schelling. All were written
before Tillich's decisive years at Marburg. To study Schelling's
influence on Tillich (a fortiori, other influences of the nineteenth
2
TILLICH, Autobiographical Reflections, The Theology of Paul Tillich, C. W.
Kegley, R. W. Brettal, eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), I1.
'TILLICH, The Interpretation of History (New York: Scribner's, 1936), 60.
4 Ibid., 35.
5 Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., ii.
SIbid., 14.
7 TILLICH, Vorwort, Friihe Hauptwerke, Gesammelte Werke (Stuttgart: Evange-
lisches Verlagswerk, 1959), I, 9; see Existential Philosophy: Its Historical Meaning,
Theology of Culture (New York: Galaxy, 1964), 77-79.
'
TILLICH'S thesis for the doctorate in philosophy was: Die religionsgeschicht-
liche Konstruktion in Schellings positiver Philosophie, ihre Voraussetzungen und
Prinzipien (Breslau: Fleischmann, 1910); for the licentiate in theology: Mystik
und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung (Giitersloh:
Bertelsmann, i912); the licentiate thesis is reprinted in Friihe Hauptwerke, ed. cit.,
II-io8.
9TILLICH, Religionsphilosophie, Lehrbuch der Philosophie, M. Dessoir, ed.
(Berlin: Ullstein, 1925), II, 765-835, reprinted in Friihe Hauptwerke, ed. cit.,
295-366.
 TILLICHAND HEIDEGGER 251
century) in these works is quite a different matter from under-
standing the influence of the Germanphilosopheron Tillich's ma-
ture works. The form and influence of "existentialism," the
varied new intellectual encounters from Marburg to New York
after 1925 cannot be underestimatedif the valid meaning of Til-
lich's vocabulary and thought is to be met. Often the same ideas
appear in the later works as in the early studies on Schelling, but
in the later works there are overtones of German existentialism,
or of Greek and scholastic philosophy. Tillich acknowledges that
his systematic apologetic theology is intentionally existential and
that existentialism, while not the only philosophy, is a natural
ally of Christianity. Existentialism has analysed the predicament
of man and his world, and thereby has helped to rediscover the
classical Christian interpretation of human existence.10 If it is
clear that Tillich saw himself as a theologian for whom revelation
was in dialogue with man as analysed by existentialism, and that
Schelling for Tillich was a propaedeutic thinker, still it is not
clear how or how deeply the far from unified movement called
existentialism formed his thought.
Tillich in an autobiographicalessay describes the entrance of
Heidegger and existentialism.
In Marburg,in 1925, I beganworkon my SystematicTheology,the
firstvolumeof whichappearedin I951. At the sametimethat Heideg-
ger was in Marburgas professorof philosophy,influencingsome of
the best students,existentialismin its twentieth-century
formcrossed
my path. It tookyearsbeforeI becamefully awareof the impactof
this encounteron my own thinking. I resisted,I tried to learn, I
acceptedthe new way of thinkingmorethan the answerit gave."
Two things here are important: first, it was through Heidegger
(with whom during these years surrounding the appearance of
Sein und Zeit Tillich was in personal contact) that Tillich en-
countered existentialism; secondly, Tillich accepted more the
structure, the method, the Denkform of this philosophy than its
content. Although Tillich speaks of "Existential philosophy,"
it is clear from his works that he appreciates the differences in
oTILLIcH, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, I957), II, 19-28;
cited as ST II.
'
Autobiographical Reflections, art. cit., 14.
252 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

existentialists, and that this means for him a German philosophy

present today in Heidegger and Jaspers. "Existential philosophy
thus seems a specifically German creation . . . counting among
its leaders such men as Heidegger and Jaspers." 12 In The In-
terpretation of History Tillich gives us more details on Mar-
burg and Heidegger.

By the appearance of the so-called "Existential Philosophy" in Ger-

many, I was led to a new understanding of the relation between
philosophy and theology. The lectures of M. Heidegger given at
Marburg, the impression which some Marburg students and some of
my colleagues experienced; then his writing, Sein und Zeit (Being
and Time), also his interpretation of Kant, were of greater signifi-
cance to followersand opponents of this philosophy than anything else
since the appearanceof Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen (Logical
Studies).13

Tillich was prepared to accept this philosophy because of Schel-

ling, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of life.
These three elements, comprised and submerged into a sort of
Augustinian-coloredmysticism, producedthat which fascinatedpeople
in Heidegger's philosophy .... By its very explanation of human
existence it establishes a doctrine of man, though unintentionally,
which is both the doctrine of human freedom and human finiteness;
and which is so closely related with the Christian interpretation of
human existence that one is forced to speak of a "theonomousphil-
osophy," in spite of Heidegger's emphatic atheism . . . . the phil-
osophy of existence asks the question in a new and radical manner,
the answer to which is given in theology for faith.14

Tillich's correct understanding of Heidegger is shown not only

by his placing him in a certain limited category of existential
thought, but by his designation of him as an ontologist, a point of

12TILLICH, Existential Philosophy ..., art. cit., 77. "The third and con-
temporary form of Existential philosophy has resulted from a combination of this
Philosophy of Life with Husserl's shift of emphasis from existent objects to the
mind that makes them its objects, and with the rediscovery of Kierkegaard and
of the early developments of Marx. Heidegger, Jaspers, and the Existential inter-
pretation of history found in German Religious Socialism are the main representa-
tives of the third period of this philosophy of experienced Existence." Ibid., 79.
1 TrrLICH, The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 39-40.
1"Ibid.
 TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 253
rediscovery of ontology in this century. "Heideggerclaims to de-
scribe the structure of Being itself." '~ There are relatively few
references to Heidegger in the entire Systematic Theology, even
fewer in other works. Heidegger's relationship to Tillich is a
structural one, and as such important. It enters into the very
structure of theology as Tillich conceives and develops it; it
offers the structural foundation for the first example of that
theology in action: Tillich's theology of Ultimate Concern (his
phenomenologicaland hence introductoryterm for God) as Being-
Itself.

II

As an apologetic rather than kerygmatic theology, answering

the contemporarysituation, Tillich's theology must speak to man
in both existential (from the ontological analysis of human exist-
ence related to Being) and existentiell (what affects man person-
ally in his concrete life) terms. Theology, as much as it might use
ontology, is not philosophy reflecting on God; it is the explana-
tion for its hearers of the symbols through which revelation, fully
initiated by God but contained in many media, comes to man.'6
Ontology may ask the questions, but it cannot answer them. Phil-
osophy has an important role because the questions which revel-
ation answers are existential-ontological, concerned with man's
existence and Being, and these questions will through correlation
bring in the answers.7 The method for bringing revelation to
man's situation, for joining human question and divine answer
is Tillich's well-known correlation. Tillich calls correlation the

1STILLICH, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University Press, 1951), I, 20o8(cited

as ST I); ST II, ii. A year after the appearance of Sein und Zeit Tillich made
the remark: "Heidegger's ontology, the greatness of which depends on the fact that
it undertakes to create a rational myth of being, indicates how correct this con-
ception of metaphysics is." Das religiSse Symbol, Bliitter fiir deutsche Philosophie
I (1928), 277-91; a translation appears in Journal of Liberal Religion 2 (1950),
'3-33.
16ST I, 8ff., 22ff., 2Io; see TILLICH, Theology and Religious Symbolism,
Religious Symbols, F. E. Johnson, ed. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1955), io8.
1 TILLIcH says the ontological question may not determine the answer, revela-

tion; the question is precontained in the answer; ST II, 14-18. "Faith includes
the ontological question whether the question is asked explicitly or not." Biblical
Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (Chicago: University Press, 1955), 59.
254 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
"method and structure" of theology,s8 and he relates it to Hei-
degger.
In using the methodof correlation,systematictheologyproceedsin
the followingway: it makesan analysisof the humansituationout
of whichthe existentialquestionsarise,and it demonstratesthat the
symbolsusedin the Christianmessageare the answersto these ques-
tions. The analysisof the humansituationis done in termswhich
today are called "existential."Such analysesare much older than
existentialism . ... (Man) has become aware of the fact that he
himselfis the door to the deeperlevels of reality, that in his own
existencehe has the only possibleapproachto existenceitself .
the immediateexperienceof one's own existingrevealssomethingof
the natureof existencegenerally.Whoeverhas penetratedinto the
natureof his own finitudecan find the traces of finitudein every-
thingthat exists. Andhe can ask the questionimpliedin his finitude
as the questionimpliedin finitudeuniversally.'9
Tillich adds in a note that an example of this is Heidegger: "Hei-
degger's notion of 'Dasein' (being there) as the form of human
existence and the entrance to ontology."20
Tillich's correlatedanalysis of man centers in terms of finitude,
anxiety, meaninglessness, care born of the threat of ontological
nonexistence and personal meaninglessness. Tillich shows his
accurate understanding of Heidegger when he relates his own
use of the existential analysis of Dasein in these terms to a deeper
ontological background. Meaninglessness,anxiety are not basic-
ally psychological terms for Tillich and Heidegger but human
forms of ontological finitude.21 Tillich, referringagain to Heideg-
ger, affirmsthat the fundamentalinterpretationof humanexistence
is finitude entering through non-being. "Both the basic ontologi-
cal structure and the ontological elements imply finitude.
Finitude is experienced on the human level; non-being is experi-
enced as the threat to being. . . . Finitude in awareness is anx-
18sSTI, 66, 59.
1oST I, 62.
2 Ibid. How Tillich is related to and employs phenomenology is another
question. Tillich offers a phenomenology of God, but his method and epistemologi-
cal views do not seem to allow a quick identification of Tillich's phenomenology
with that of Husserl.
'"Anxiety about meaninglessness is the characteristically human form of on-
tological anxiety . ... the threat against the finite structure of being." ST I, 210.
 TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 255

iety." 22 Heidegger writes: "Existence as a kind of being of

Being is in itself finitude, and as such only possible on the basis
of an understanding of Being . .."23 Human existence, for
Heidegger, is finite in the very roots of its Being, and as a mani-
festation of Being. Heidegger's analysis of human existence in
Sein und Zeit takes as its point of departureexplicitly and implic-
itly finitude. In an essay, "Existential Philosophy: Its Historical
Meaning," Tillich describes the "most important" attempts in
Heidegger's interpretation of Kant and in Sein und Zeit to ana-
lyze finitudeas central in a philosophy of Dasein, and to draw out
finitude's relations to time, estrangement,guilt, and through guilt
(for Tillich, at least) to the Fall.24 Tillich has given indication
in his presentation of theology as such that basic lines of its
correlated structure in the first section, "Being and God," have
been built on Heidegger.
Heidegger's notion of Dasein was not only the form of human
existence but the entrance to ontology, going beyond an analysis
of human existence, returningto the study of Being in its manifold
22
ST I, 189, 190, 191; TILLICH writes: "Anxiety is independent of any special
object which might produce it; it is dependent only on the threat of non-being -
which is identical with finitude. In this sense it has been said rightly that the ob-
ject of anxiety is 'nothingness' - and nothingness is not an 'object.' " ST I, 191.
HEIDEGGER had prepared this analysis: "Angst is always Angst about . . but
not before this or that . ... Angst reveals nothingness." Was ist Metaphysik?
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1960), 32. All translations of HEIDEGGER are by the
author.
'
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1951), 206; in HEIDEGGER'S interpretation human finitude is the
point of Kant's thought; ibid., 196, I98ff. HEIDEGGERsays that Dasein is also in
its existence ec-static (Was ist Metaphysik, ed. cit., I5), and in this dynamic and
transcendent. But this is neither a divinization of being nor an implication of
God's entrance. It is simply a further description of the open relationship of
Dasein to Being, unique among existents. KARL RAHNER,S.J., develops this,
among other insights of HEIDEGGER, in his fundamental theological analysis of man
as open to God, man as Geist in freedom and knowing; Hirer des Wortes (Munich:
K6sel, 1963), 2 ed. RAHNER is another example of a theologian employing basic
approaches of Heidegger; he studied philosophy in Freiburg from 1934 to 1936.
24 TILLIcH, Existential Philosophy . . . , art. cit., Io2f.; TILLICH cites Sein und
Zeit (Ttibingen: Niemeyer, 1963), 284 (all of the following citations are from the
tenth edition), that guilt does not follow from an act but presupposes a state of
guilt. One should be slow to identify Heidegger's analysis of man's de facto
situation with a union of a theological Fall with ontological existence; on this
subject see J. M. HOLLENBACK, Sein und Gewissen (Baden-Baden: Grimm, 1954);
P. ENGELHARDT, O.P., Eine Begegnung zwischen Martin Heidegger und thomisti-
scher Philosophie?, Freiburger Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und Theologie 3 (1956),
187-96.
256 REVIEW
HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
appearances in beings. That this was Heidegger's method and
purpose was clear (but, later, not always perceived) in the intro-
ductory pages of Sein und Zeit. He writes:
The question of the meaning of Being must be asked. If it is a funda-
mental question, or indeed the fundamentalquestion, it must be made
transparent, and in an appropriate way . . . . In the question which
we are going to work out, what is asked about is Being - that which
determines beings as beings, and on the basis of which beings are
understood however we may discuss them in detail. But Being of
beings "is" not itself a being.25
Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make a
being - the inquireritself - transparentto its own Being. The very
asking of this question is a being's mode of Being; and as such it gets
its essential character from what is being inquired about in it--
namely, Being. This being we denote by the term "Dasein." If we
are to formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must
first give a provisional but proper explication of a being (Dasein)
with regards to its Being . . . If to interpret the meaning of Being
becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary being to be interro-
gated; it is also that being which already comportsitself, in its Being,
towards that which we are asking about in our question.26
The analysis of Dasein was only the initial stage of philosophy's
task. Heidegger writes thirty-five years after Sein und Zeit:
One need only observe the simple fact that in Being and Time the
problem is set up outside the sphere of subjectivism- that the en-
tire anthropological problematic is kept at a distance, that the
normative issue is emphatically and solely the experience of There-
being (Dasein) with a constant eye to the Being-question . . . 27
Dasein, the unique being where the event of Being takes place,
will reveal of its own intrinsic accord what and how it is (as finite,
transcendent to Being, existent, ontologically comprehending)
through a phenomenological analysis. This exegesis, the inter-
pretation, the hermeneuticof human existence sets us on the path
towards understanding something of the mystery of Being.28
25 HEIDEGGER, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 5, 6.
2 Ibid., 7, 14.
27 to WILLIAM RICHARDSON, S.J., Heidegger: Through
HEIDEGGER, "Vorwort,"
Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), xviii.
28HEIDEGGER, Sein und Zeit, ed. cit., 34-40. "The broad lines of Heidegger's
 TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 257
Tillich accepts such an analysis as the right starting point for
an ontology to be correlated in theology to revelation. He also
accepts the support for this method in the nature of human exist-
ence as the place where Being "takes place." Dasein is where
Sein reveals itself, and so it is possible and necessary for man to
ask ultimate questions, questions of being and non-being, ques-
tions which point to further, distant inaccessible answers.

Every being participatesin the structureof being,but man aloneis

immediately aware of this structure .... Man occupies a pre-
eminentposition in ontology,not as an outstandingobject among
other objects,but as that being who asks the ontologicalquestion
and in whoseself-awareness the ontologicalanswercan be found. ..
"Philosophers of life" and "existentialists"
have remindedus in our
time of this truthon whichontologydepends. Characteristic in this
respectis Heidegger'smethodin Sein und Zeit. He calls "Dasein"
("beingthere") the place wherethe structureof being is manifest.
But "Dasein"is givento manwithinhimself. Manis able to answer
the ontologicalquestionhimselfbecausehe experiencesdirectlyand
immediatelythe structureof beingand its elements.29
In the first volume of the Systematic Theology, Tillich's method
is to lead through this understandingof man as the place where
Being enters and where finitude calls forth varied forms in man's
life and world to the ontological categories of being.30 "Ontology
is possible because there are concepts which are less universal
problematic are now clear (after the first part, the Introduction) . ... Funda-
mental ontology, itself only a preliminary analysis to expose the horizon necessary
for the analysis of the sense of Being itself, will prepare to interrogate the Being
that is comprehended by first interrogating the comprehending itself. The prelude
to the question of Being is the question of There-being (Dasein)." RICHARDSON,
op. cit., 40o.
"ST I, I68f.; TILICH always emphasizes that man is not more easily acces-
sible as an object of knowledge than other objects or more certain of his inner
thoughts than external realities, but that man is where awareness encounters Being.
?TmILIc's "metaphysical shock" - the possibility of non-being in light of
the fact of being - gives rise to the question of ultimates in theology, the question
of Being-Itself. Tillich says the question has been expressed in the form: "Why is
there something; why not nothing?" ST I, 163f. HEIDEGGER states the basic
question of metaphysics as: "Why is there beings, and why not, much more nothing?
That is the question." Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: Niemeyer,
1958), i. TILICH objects to this form with its final emphasis on nothing; the
ultimate question must begin and stay with being. In HEIDEGGER'S Nachwort to
the above work there is a transference of Nichts to Sein, and the work ends with
a puzzling over the mystery - that there are beings. Ibid., 46f.
258 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
than being but more universal than any ontic concept, that is,
more universal than any concept designatinga realm of being." 31

III

Heidegger's entire Denkweg is a "return" to the question of

Sein. This attempt to go through man's unique existence to the
ground of metaphysics is a fundamental ontology.32 We can still
speak of Heidegger's ontology as a forward motion from Dasein
through existential analysis to beings, from their ontological dif-
ference from Being to Being's reality in beings. Heidegger's "step
backwards" (Riickgang) is a return out of systems to a basic
questioned area not yet answered, or incompletely or falsely an-
swered. It is not a return to an earlier position in the history of
philosophy, but a going deeper to the ultimate ground of thought,
Being. Being is manifold, mysterious in the many ways it comes
to be around us. Through Dasein, and through other beings, in
the horizon of truth and language, historicity and time, the ques-
tion of Being is a question not only about but by the depth and
variety of the Being of beings.33
Tillich's analysis of Dasein is the question revelation answers,
the form in which theology explains revelation. The analysis of
Dasein and the further movement through ontological questions
leads to God as Being-Itself.34 Being-Itself is beyond the limita-
tions of a being, an existent; it is not within the structure of be-
ing, but imperviousto the threats to the meaning and being found
in created participated beings.3"
Tillich, rightly, does not imply that his Being-Itself is the same
as Heidegger's Sein, although there were times when he at least
reflected upon this. In 1936, as we have seen, Tillich wrote that

381ST
I, 164.
HEIDEGGER, Was ist die Metaphysik, ed. cit., 21.
'
MAX MUtLLER, Existenz-Philosophie im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart
(Heidelberg: Kerle, 1964), 94ff.
14 ST I, 235-37.
`
Ibid., 235-38. This seems to be the meaning of Being-Itself as explained by
the Ground of Being and the Power of Being --that Being-Itself is not open to
the multiple threat endangering finite beings. In the German version of ST I
(which is more than a translation), the term Ground of Being is translated Grund
des Seins and not Grund aller Seienden. TILLCH sees Being as within the created
structure.
 TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 259
"
Heidegger's thought contains an "emphatic atheism." Twelve
years later Heidegger explicitly rejected the interpretation that
the absence of God in his thought should be construed as atheism
or nihilism, or that Being was God. "But Being - what is Be-
ing? . . . Being is not God, nor a ground for the world. Being
is broader than any individual being and is, at the same time,
closer to man than all other beings whether they are rocks, ani-
mals, works of art, machines, angels or God."37
Tillich protests against the "supranaturalism"which makes
God a being like all others. Tillich's search for the "God above
the God of theism" is a basic principle for understanding his
theology. "The God of theism is God limited by man's finite con-
ceptions."38 When Heidegger does touch on God, which is sel-
dom,39the sparse remarks are often accompanied by a similar
protest against the God of the past which could be as easily and
as thoroughly discussed in the academic fields of philosophy and
theology as any other being. The above quotation from the Hu-
manismusbriefhas overtones of this, and the following interprets
it:
. . Causasui. This is the proportionately propernamefor Godin
philosophy.To this God man can neitherpray nor sacrifice....
Consequentlythe god-less thought, which gives up the God of
philosophy,Godas Causasui, is perhapscloserto the god-likeGod.40
Since Sein is not God, and ontology's study of Sein and Dasein
is only at its beginnings, there is no reason for philosophy to take
up now the task of theology - if this is its task at all. "The on-
tological interpretation of Dasein as being-in-the-world doesn't
36TLuLIcn,The Interpretation of History, ed. cit., 40.
37HEIDEGGER, tber den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1947), 76.
On the mistaken interpretation of HEIDEGGER'S Sein as God in the past decades see
MAX MU1LLER,Op. cit., 65ff.
38TILLICH, Ultimate Concern, ed. cit., 51; TnILLCHwrites that many forms of
theology bring "God's existence down to the level of a stone or a star, and . .
make atheism not only possible, but almost unavoidable." The Two Types of
Philosophy of Religion, Theology of Culture, ed. cit., I8.
* "He who has that of the Christian faith or
experienced theology--whether
that of philosophy--from the point of view of its origin and development pre-
fers today in the area of thinking about God to keep quiet." HEIDEGGER,Die onto-
theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik, in Identitdit und Differenz (Pfullingen:
Neske, I957), 51.
'Ibid., 7of.; see Nietzsche's Wort 'Gott ist tot', Holzwege (Frankfurt: Kloster-
mann, 1950), 235-39.
260 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
decide positively or negatively about a possible Sein towards
God." 41
To move to a further point, Heidegger and Tillich both link the
mysterious Being to the holy. Tillich writes that like being and
non-being the holy is related to ultimate concern.42 Heidegger's
rare indication of how thought might go beyond Being to God in-
troduces the sphere of the holy, a distance between the real and
transcendent God, and the world of beings. "First of all, from
the truth of Being is the nature of the holy able to be thought;
and first of all, from the nature of the holy can we think out the
nature of God- and in the light of the nature of God what the
word 'God' should designate can be thought."43 But, "while
the holy appears, God remains distant." 44
Tillich's debt to Heidegger lies not here where Tillich's Being-
Itself can be analyzed in dialogue with Aquinas, not in this area
where Heidegger says so little, and where Sein and Being-Itself
are reached through different (but not necessarily contradictory)
thought-ways. A similar method brought them both from an
analysis of human existence to these conclusions. Moreover,
for both of them the movementwas a movementof forms, a move-
ment through the correlation of forms. If Aquinas calls God an
unlimited subsistent and active fullness of all possible and actual
aspects of being, this is because for him every being is a dependent
effect of this independent being.45 Tillich and Heidegger do not
involve themselves with the post-Kantian problem of transcend-
ental causality. Their thought here is Platonic, one form im-
plying or leading through insight or phenomenological analysis
to another irrespective of causal foundation.46
41HEIDEGGER, Vom Wesen des Grundes (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1929), 39.
42ST I, 216; see 215-17, 14.
'
HEIDEGGER, tfber den Humanismus, ed. cit., 36f.
44HEIDEGGER,Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten, Erliuterungen zu Hiblderlins
Dichtung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), 27.
4 "Given the existence of a creature as the effect of God, it is necessary that
there be God the creator . . . . the way of effect to cause is found indifferently
in every caused being." In I Sent., d. 3, a. i, ad io.
6TILLICHaccepts the Kantian critique of causality as necessarily finite; ST I,
208-10, 237f. He favors the Augustinian-Neo-Platonic approach to God over that
of Aquinas in The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion, art. cit. TILLICH
writes, "I believe that the Platonic (Augustinian-Franciscan) tradition is more
fundamental for the understanding of our knowledge of God." Appreciation and
Reply, in Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought (Chicago: The Priory Press, 1964), 307.
 TILLICH AND HEIDEGGER 261
This structural resemblance between Heidegger and Tillich's
theological system, though modest in concrete resemblance, is
important. It helps answer the questions as to how Tillich can
be called an existentialist, and how an existentialist can have
strong similarities to ontology and system. Beyond the general
existential terminology there is a basic influence on Tillich from
Heidegger's general analytic. On the other hand, by seeing the
form ontology takes, the respective limits of ontology and revela-
tion in Tillich can be made clearer. An ontological framework
does not necessarily imply that a theology is, ultimately, ontology.
Tillich's use of Heidegger is different from Bultmann's. It does
not limit itself to existential analysis of man and to an anthro-
pocentric theological picture, but employs fundamental ontology
in its widest scope, combiningthe existential and Dasein-centered
with ontology. The identification of Heidegger's thought with
Bultmann's use of it is a likely cause of certain incomplete eval-
uations of Heidegger current outside Germany. Tillich was inter-
ested in the Heidegger of the first pages of Sein und Zeit; he
neglected neither the existential analysis (which Bultmann chose
to apply to the New Testament message) nor the ontology of Be-
ing (which later works presented in place of the unpublishedsec-
tions of Sein und Zeit). Heinrich Ott, Karl Barth's successor
at the University of Basel, has called attention (in a perspective
different from Tillich's) to "a fullness (in Heidegger) of impor-
tant perspectives for theology." 47 Because of Ott's theology, the
important work of Robinson and Cobb,48and the increasing in-
fluence of contemporaryGermantheology, Protestant and Catho-
lic theology in the future is likely to find itself more than casually
interested in the Denkweg of Heidegger - but, as Heidegger him-
self sees it, as a beginning rather than as an end.

Hence the accuracy of J. HEYWOOD THOMAS'description of Tillich in brief as in

the Augustinian tradition yet owing much to Schelling and Heidegger; Paul Tillich:
An Appraisal (London: SCM, 1964), 174.
7 HEINRICH OTT,
Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudolf Bult-
manns (Tiibingen: Mohr, I955), 202; this insight was developed, in dialogue with
Barth, in Denken und Sein. Der Weg Martin Heideggers und der Weg der
Theologie (Ziirich: EVZ-Verlag, 1959).
* The Later Heidegger and Theology, JAMES M. ROBINSON, JOHN B. COBB,
eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).