Paul Tillich’s View of God as “The Ground of Being”

Paul Tillich has been one of the pivotal figures in my spiritual and intellectual life.  He introduced me to meaningful concepts like God as “the Ground of Being,” and “The Wholly Other,” and the notion I’d like to kick arounds today, “God as the unifying Ground”.  In the lengthy quotation provided below, gleaned from a Paul Tillich Facebook page, Tillich’s teachings present sin as estrangement from God, as a separation from God as “the Unifying Ground of Being.”  The unified state that he describes is what I often describe as “the unity of all things” before “the fall” occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam ate of “the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.”  When Adam took that bite of the apple from that famous seductress Eve (wink, wink) mankind fell from this unified state into the bifurcated world of object separateness where good and evil, male and female, us and them, subject and object, et al were separate.  It is the hunger to return to this state of Grace that has driven mankind since, producing religion, art, and the whole of culture, including…alas and alack…consumerism, addiction, and the arms race!  This hunger, until it is satisfied by the “Unconditional Positive Regard” (see psychologist Carl Rogers) that Christians know as the Grace of God, humankind is fated to fill it up with “stuff” which will only fade away.  The Christian tradition teaches that Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, can fill that emptiness and alleviate that hunger though I aver not in the way that historic Christianity of the past few centuries has taught us.  For the past few centuries has witnessed the objectification of mankind via the philosophy of Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”) and the poison of capitalism which turned us into “things” and crusted over our hearts with that cursed tendency to “thingify” everything we touch, including God.

The story of mankind is the narrative of our quest to know God and find again that unifying ground.  And, with that point, I’m going to bid adieu with the warning, “Ponder seriously over that word “God” I just used for “the word is not the ‘thing.’” And though organized religion has much to offer on this search, what it offers is usually so institutionalized that it is so completely devoid of spirituality value in addressing the existential plight that threatens civilization.

For Augustine as for Tillich, the loss of the unifying ground of life results in a disunity, a separation from one another of the interrelated facets and aspects of life. Thus (to use slightly different language) God is the principle of unity and harmony, and separation from God is the cause of disunity, disharmony, and a final consequent loss of being (reality) and meaning (value). As did Augustine, Tillich applies this fundamental principle of interpretation both to individual and to social or historical existence. He sees Enlightenment culture as beginning with a powerful assertion of the *autonomy* of reason against *heteronomy*, the absolute and yet uncreative authority of the now alien and external religious powers of the receding medieval world. This was, however, an autonomy with *theonomous* elements: it assumed the ultimate identity of reason and nature, of the rational, the good, and the beautiful, and so of objective and subjective, of reality and value, of cognition, morals, and art. As a consequence, in the Enlightenment the ‘rational’ stood not only for that which is true (the result of the rational cognitive processes of science) but also for that which is just (the result of rational and radical politics) and that which is beautiful (the harmonious and the orderly). In that theonomous unity (that is, through the exercise of ontological reason) the power and meaning of modern culture were nurtured.”

Langdon Gilkey, *Gilkey on Tillich*, 1990, p. 63

The Myth of the Wounded Healer.

One of the delights in blogging is that I discover kindred spirits from various parts of the world.  One recent discovery was a blog entitled “Nickle Boy Graphics” in which another man with a fundamentalist-Christian past brings to the table a gentler approach to biblical faith.  He is a talented graphic artist and uses this skill and knowledge of the Christian tradition to kindly and gently chide those Christians who take themselves too seriously.  Here is a link to one of his posts which I found very provocative:  https://nickelboygraphics.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/its-not-about-giving-up-teddy-bears/

One point this gentleman makes here is that we need to always remember that beneath the surface of someone who is careening in life, appearing to be on the verge of crashing and burning, there is a soul in great pain.  It is so easy to offer, from our font of “great wisdom” a banal kindness and reassurance which, though innocently intended perhaps, fails to include simple recognition of this person’s presence in the world, which I like to describe as “Presence.”  Before we unleash our “fixing” machinery on this person…a tendency we professional care-givers always has ready to unleash on the world…we need to pause and offer simple recognition and acceptance.  We need to lay aside our diagnostic knife and merely recognize, “You and I are here together brother/sister.  We are in this together and I accept you ‘as is’.”  It is easier and simpler to wield diagnostic jargon such as “nuts” or perhaps a sanitized “mentally ill,” or “sinner” or “evil” or “alcoholic” or “drug addict.”  Each of these labels might be quite valid but beneath the label that we so readily foist on the person there is a “Person” who needs to be spiritually/emotionally embraced, as in “accepted.”  And this is not unrelated to the “acceptance” that Christians purport to find in Jesus but closer scrutiny of the scripture reveals that Jesus always has in mind acceptance “as is” without the requirements many Christians demand.  When an individual is offered this “as is” acceptance, described by psychologist Carl Rogers as “unconditional positive regard”, often that individual can find the Grace to begin to address the pain that until that point he had been unable to embrace.

The ability to offer this “unconditional positive regard” comes only with having been through the experience of brokenness oneself and having found someone who proffered this kindness.  It is the ego’s refusal to experience “brokenness” that keeps many professional care-givers from becoming the mythical “wounded-healer” who can facilitate the soul-work where healing is realized.  (Carl Jung is the one who first coined the term “wounded-healer,” perhaps drawing upon Greek mythology.)