Tilich's "ground of all being"

[theosis]

The theologian Paul Tilich considered God "beyond existence." The following quote summarizes his view:

With amazing courage Tillich boldly says that the God of the multitudes does not exist, and further, that to believe in His existence is to believe in an idol and ultimately to embrace superstition. God cannot be an entity among entities, even the highest. He is being-in-itself. In this sense Tillich's God is like the God of Spinoza and the God of Hegel. Both Spinoza and Hegel were denounced for their atheism by the theologians of the past because their God was not a Being or an Entity. Tillich, however, is one of the foremost theologians of our time.

What do you think of this view?

 

[Me Myself]

I can only wonder if he understands himself or just pretends he does.

 

[xkatz]

I can only wonder if he understands himself or just pretends he does.

I agree with this sentiment somewhat.

My main problem with transtheism is that it seems to contradict itself. To say that something does not quantitively exist because the thing is existence ITSELF seems illogical IMO. As Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum"; existence is the the essence of existing, so to say something IS existence means it MUST exists because in order for things to exist, they must have the quality of existence. That's why you, I, and everything else is where it is as opposed to absolute nothingness.

(I hope my explanation makes sense )

 

[StarryNightshade]

This is actually my perception of God. It works for me and I think that is all that really matters.

 

[Shiranui117]

In Orthodox Christianity, we have the idea that God is beyond existence as well--but not in the sense as described in the OP. Thomas Hopko, in his catechetical series The Orthodox Faith, puts it this way:

According to the Scriptures and the experience of the saints of both the old and new testaments, Yahweh is absolutely holy. This means literally that He is absolutely different and unlike anything or anyone else that exists (Holy literally means totally separated, different, other).

According to the Biblical-Orthodox tradition, even to say that “God exists” must be qualified by the affirmation that He is so unique and so perfect that His existence cannot be compared to any other. In this sense God is “above existence” or “above being.” Thus, there would be great reluctance according to Orthodox doctrine to say that God “is” as everything else “is” or that God is simply the “supreme being” in the same chain of “being” as everything else that is.

Fr. Thomas then goes on to say this about the way in which we can speak of God, utilizing both apophatic (negative, describing what/who God is not) and cataphatic (positive, describing What/Who God is) language:

In this same sense the Orthodox doctrine holds that God’s unity or oneness is also not merely equivalent to the mathematical or philosophical concept of “one”; nor is his life, goodness, wisdom, and all powers and virtues ascribed to Him merely equivalent to any idea, even the greatest idea, which man can have about such reality.

However, having warned about an overly-clear or overly-positivistic concept or idea of God, the Orthodox Church—on the basis of the living experience of God in the saints—still makes the following affirmations: God may certainly be said to exist perfectly and absolutely as the one who is perfect and absolute life, goodness, truth, love, wisdom, knowledge, unity, purity, joy, simplicity; the perfection and superperfection of everything that man knows as holy, true, and good. It is this very God who is confessed formally in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as “...God, ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same.”

So, yes, God is beyond all existence--this is not to say that He doesn't exist, but that His "existence" is on a whole other level from our own.

 

[SageTree]

Some more.....

John Shelby Spong refers to a theistic God as

"a personal being with expanded supernatural, human, and parental qualities, which has shaped every religious idea of the Western world."

Many of them owe much of their theology to the work of Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich, including the phrase "the ground of all being".

Another quotation from Tillich is,

"God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him."

This Tillich quotation summarizes his conception of God. He does not think of God as a being which exists in time and space, because that constrains God, and makes God finite. But all beings are finite, and if God is the Creator of all beings, God cannot logically be finite since a finite being cannot be the sustainer of an infinite variety of finite things. Thus God is considered beyond being, above finitude and limitation, the power or essence of being itself.

To me, this seems like an extreme, one-sided, apophatic view w/out any catophatic balance.

And I'm un-aware of Tillich's predilection to add positive assertions, I've not read much of him.


More so than standard Western fare, I think Eastern Orthodoxy expresses this sentiment above, but then adds balance to it.

Perhaps I'm reading that wrong, Shiranui, but in part at least,I see more similarity that difference, especially compared to the traditional theistic God, riddled with form and limitations.... or simply.... less mystery in the Mysteries.