THE DYNAMICS OF FAITH AND DOUBT ACCORDING TO PAUL TILLICH

1. Introduction
What faith is and what faith is not are two title chapters and fundamental questions of Paul Tillich in his marvellous book Dynamics of Faith. For Tillich, these are unquestionable as such questions are necessary to be asked and defined in order to have a clear understanding and certain knowledge about faith. The aim of describing this notion, says Tillich, is that people might able to relate the meanings between the two, as they are closely connected with each other. He, therefore, explores profoundly the concepts and meanings of faith in two different aspects while maintaining the connections: faith as ultimate concern and as a centered act.

More significantly how does Tillich brilliantly analyze the relationship between faith and doubt in his theological reflections? He strongly believes that doubt or wrestling is a part of genuine faith. The questions should be raised: is doubt incompatible with faith? Whether those who doubt would not be people of faith? Or whether the wrestling with doubt could be the expression of active and creative faith? Tillich, undoubtedly, emphasizes that “in making an act of faith necessarily involves doubt because it involves our whole person in an existential choice”.

The present essay, therefore, will attempt to examine the concept of dynamics of faith according to Paul Tillich. How does Tillich develop his concept of dynamics of faith and has it become a fundamental element of his theological reflection? In addition, this essay also tries to show the interaction between faith and doubt in which Tillich strongly convinces that ‘doubt’ is an essential part of genuine faith. Those who have faith should necessarily enter the world of doubt, as it is an intrinsic aspect of having a strong faith in God. Doubt finally is an expression of faith - faith in search of understanding- will be highlighted in the conclusion of this essay.

2. The Concept of the Dynamics of Faith According to Paul Tillich
2.1. Faith as Ultimate Concern
For Tillich “faith is the state of being ultimately concern: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern”. This definition seems ambiguous, and needs further explanation. If faith is ultimate concern, with what is it ultimately concerned? To be concerned, we must be concerned with something. What, then, Tillich means by faith is the state of being ultimate concerned?

In order to answer this question accurately, it is important and necessary to examine what Tillich means by ultimate concern. It is certainly significant to comprehend though, “the ultimate concern cannot be explained easily because this notion is absolutely fundamental to his theology”, just as God itself is always mystery and will be always a mystery to humankind. Nevertheless, Tillich describes it in a broader sense and in various ways. For Tillich, ultimate concern employs expressions such as “unconditional seriousness, unconditional concern, infinite concern, the state of being grasped by the power of being itself, and the dimension of the depth”.

Drawing an analogy is one way in which Tillich extends a further explanation for this special theme. He convincingly points out that man is concerned about many things just as every living being. He distinguishes that man have spiritual concerns such as cognitive, aesthetic, moral, social and political which are not concerned by the other living beings. Some of those concerns, he continues, are vital even to some extend are extremely vital, and it can be claimed ultimacy for a human life.

A wonderful justification for the meaning of ultimate concern is given in a sermon entitled ‘our ultimate concerned’, when he talked about the account of Martha and Mary. Tillich describes them as symbols of two different kinds of concerns. Martha is concerned about many things, but all of them are finite, preliminary, and transitory. Mary is concerned one thing, which is infinite, ultimate, and lasting. The concerns of Martha require attention and passion. But they do not demand the infinite attention and passion. But if our concern is that Mary, thus, “everything seems the same and yet everything is changed for we are grasped by the one thing needed, by the infinite” , says Tillich.

A proportional explanation finally, is taken from the Old Testament in his book Dynamics of Faith, in which he believes that the term ‘ultimate concern’ is derived. Tillich remarks that ultimate concern is the abstract formulation of the great commandment: ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your might’ (Deut 6:5). Tillich acknowledges that this concern is “full of commands which make the nature of this surrender concrete, and it is full of promises and threats in relation to it”. Through this profound example Tillich also tries to emphasize the universal character of Yahweh. Yahweh as ultimate concern is not only for the nation but also he is ultimate concern for every pious Jew.

In regard to this very fundamental understanding of ultimate concern, faith for Tillich, therefore, is something which comes upon a person where there are no limitations can be placed upon its seriousness. This understanding is derived from the original meaning of the verb angeht in German which means coming upon one, but it has been mistranslated into the English as ‘concern’.

This definition of faith seems to give much more emphasis on the divine aspect of it than human aspect. This understanding will be the uniqueness of Tillich’s point of view in his whole conception of theology, where he perceives human (or man in his own word) in the frame of being finite, conditioned while God is infinite or being unconditioned. The fullness of humanity is always in the sense of participating of God.

Furthermore, Tillich argues that a concern becomes ultimate only when “it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim, it promises total fulfillment, even if all the other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name”. Ultimate concern is unconditional, total and infinite. Any concern less than this is preliminary concern, for it is conditional and finite. It is independent of any conditions of character, desire and circumstance. “The total concern is infinite; no moment of relaxation and rest is possible in the face of religious concern which is ultimate, unconditional, total and infinite”. Eventually, he acclaims that the promise of ultimate fulfilment should be accepted in the act of faith.

It seems that what Tillich means by the concept of faith as ultimate concern refers to fides qua creditur (the act of faith) and fides que creditur (the content of the faith). The act of faith refers directly to the finite, conditioned, limited realities. In order words, this refers to the subject, includes those who act the faith. On the other hand, the content of faith refers to the final destiny of faith, in which the subjects hope for; the aim of people comes to faith. This conclusion perhaps is compatible with the modern understanding of acting faith in Christians’ principle which contains of both aspects action and content of faith itself.

2.2. Faith as a Centered Act
Faith as ultimate concern is an act of total personality says Tillich. He emphasizes that faith always involves the entire personality. Faith is the freedom to choose to believe in something. Faith, Tillich holds, is the most centre act of the human mind and it includes all elements in the human body. The dynamics of faith must account for the dynamics of personality, he explains. These dynamics, according to Tillich, have been described in various ways.

Tillich argues that faith is not the act of a special faculty, but it involves the whole personality and thus it is integrating factor which gives unity and direction to man’s other concerns. Faith as a centered act of total personality includes the conscious and unconscious, the ego and superego, the cognitive, the emotional, and the voluntary functions. Tillich, however, reminds that faith is not simply the sum total of these elements, it transcends each of them, however. It is important to notice though faith says Tillich, is not an emotion. This to say that faith can never be born of feeling; rather “faith is a function of the whole person, not some part of man, be it intellect, will or emotion”.

Raymond Smith acknowledges that Tillich’s definition of faith as “a centered act of the personal self’ has its harmony with the Catholic teaching, even tough the faithful misses the points made by Tillich”. The Catholics define faith according to the standard catechism: a virtue by which we believe the truths which God has revealed. This definition seems that “faith defined merely some function of the mind assenting to the truths revealed by God and proposed as such by the church”. The definition of faith in the Catholic Church has been changed, of course.

The most important point that has been highlighted from this definition, I contend, is that the involvement of human aspect in the act of faith which has seemingly been ‘ignored’ in the above definition. The participation of human aspect in the act of faith is very important because at the end, he/she will be the one who develops and maintains the faith. At this point, we can see the authenticity of Tillich’s definition about faith. Faith is not just a ‘gift’ or ‘grace’ that given by ‘ultimate concern’ or God but it is also about the totality of human responds to it.

3. The Crisis of Faith and Doubt in Tillich’s Life
3.1. The Crisis of Faith
The concepts of the dynamics of faith have been described in the preceding part of this essay. What I am trying to stress here though, is that to explain the crisis of faith and doubt in his life. The interaction between faith and doubt of Tillich, then, based fundamentally upon his own experience of doubt and his struggle in his life of what he called “human predicament”. And more significantly that he reflects on the significance of the experience of doubt as an important part of the “concept” of faith. Accordingly, this part, then, will focus more on the crisis of faith and doubt in his life, in which he shows clearly also his concept and interaction between the two. It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to identify Paul Tillich as the theologian of faith and doubt. This conclusion is taken as he was convinced of doubt is an essential element in faith.

During the outbreak of the First World War Paul Tillich studied an academic post in Theology at the University of Berlin. In 1914, he volunteered as a military chaplain for four years. After finishing his service as a chaplain, he lectured at the university in Berlin and earned a low-paid. During the war years and of the collapse of German society in which they ended had sharpened his sense of the inadequacy of the religious, he joined the socialist movement and a group of intellectuals known as the “kairos circle”. His participation in those activities had encouraged him to elaborate his ideas and concepts into a ‘theology of culture”.

He became an outstanding and well known professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in 1929 where he courageously criticized the Nazi movement. As a result, in 1933, his book The Socialist Decision was banned and dismissed from public appearance by Hitler who became a chancellor of Germany at that time.

Tillich, then, left his homeland and moved to the United States with his family where he created a new page of life. Most of his lifetime in USA taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York. His theological work, through the various lectures in Germany, thus, was developed comprehensively in USA where a famous three-volume systematic Theology was one of the outcomes of his intellectual journey. “These central features of Tillich’s Theology are derived from his own experience of what he called the “dynamics of faith and doubt”. To apprehend fully Tillich’s concept of dynamics faith and doubt, therefore, should follow his own experience from the crisis of doubt to the theology of ultimate concern.

3.2. The Crisis of Doubt
The term ‘doubt’ is derived from the Latin word dubitare, from which the words ‘duo’ and ‘double’ come. The meaning of doubt is a movement, back and forth between two points. This movement is always dynamic and it’s never to be equated with a static position. This is simply to say a doubting situation “either in believing the truth of a proposition or in failing to do so”. Tillich’s crisis of doubt then falls into this understanding.

Tillich’s autobiographical essays undoubtedly tell us that his doubt was inherently part of his personal wrestling and family crisis. His doubt then compounded by the problem raised in the historical-critical study of the Bible before the World War I occurred. On this particular issue, he refers to Kahler’s principle of justification which he presumes that, it had implied to the situation of modern people and influenced his understanding particularly being “between faith and doubt”. Kahler taught us, he holds that, he who doubts any statement of the Bible and creed can nevertheless be accepted by God can combine the certainty of acceptance with the actuality of even radical doubt”.

The wrestling with doubt in Tillich’s life had seemingly been part of his journey. Tillich eloquently expressed once his opinion in responding to such the question rose in the occasional meeting whether a person could be a member of such a group if they were “in doubt”. Tillich states clearly his view:
The individual person doubts or he does not doubt, and his doubt might even be radical, but he takes very seriously the problem of his doubt and his faith, and struggles with the problem of the loss of faith in him, then he is a member of our fraternity.

The experience during the First World War brought him to be an existential pessimism. The essential cause of this cynicism was his own historical experience of suffering and tragedy where he experienced directly a graphic devastation of human life and the failure of Christianity to answer human’s suffering. This reality was such a fountain book for him from which he was raising so many questions and was searching for the answers. The Christianity, in which he hoped for, seemingly provided no answer to grapple the issue out. He wrote and commented on the First World War incident “the experience of those four years revealed to me and to my entire generation an abyss in human existence which could not be ignored”.

The climax of Tillich’s doubt is that when it arrived at the religious sphere. The question of the existence and the presence of God were indispensible in his life. In the letter to Maria Klein he expressed clearly his sense of loss of God, “I have long since come to the paradox of faith without God, by thinking through the idea of justification faith to its logical conclusion”. This is a fundamental part of his theology ‘the dynamism faith and doubt” or the paradox of faith without God because it was the implication of his sense of the loss of God.

Tillich began to question the paradox of justification of faith. This concept was explained in the article published in 1924 called Rechtfertigung und zweifel-faith and justification. He convincingly argues that the paradox of justification has its connection with the problem of doubt, particularly in the light of the Lutheran interpretation of law and gospel. The doubter in this sense according to Tillich is someone who has been gripped by the law or demand of the truth. “When this law ‘takes hold’ of a person, with its ‘ruthless demand’, that person may experience radical doubt. The point that Tillich wants to highlight here is that the doubter who experiences a crisis not because of damnation by God, but it is rather an experiences of the abyss of meaninglessness.

There are a number of implications from Tillich’s argument about justification and doubt. The first is the nature of faith itself. The “faith, by which the doubter is justified, for Tillich, is quite different from the faith that has been “lost”, that is, the belief they can no longer accept”. The difference is that the doubter’s faith is their acceptance of the demand of truth, says Tillich. Tillich’s concept about being conditioned by the “unconditional” in a state of ultimate concern is based primarily on this understanding. The other implication of the above concept according to Tillich is that even in the radical doubt condition we are “related” to God. “Tillich’s theology of ultimate concern depends fundamentally upon his conviction that even in doubt or despair we are not “separated” from God”.

4. The Dynamics Faith and Doubt; an integrative idea
As explained above, faith according to Tillich is as an act of human personality. However, this is a finite act in which the infinite participates beyond the limitations a finite act; humanity. The present part of this essay will focus on the relation between faith and doubt. As Tillich remarks that doubt is included in every act of faith. The dynamics concept of faith above, therefore, assists us to explain the interaction between faith and doubt.

There are, at least, three key points of Tillich’s positive account of the nature of faith and its relation to doubt can be summarized. Firstly, faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. Secondly, doubt is a structural element in all faith and finally, doubt is overcome through an act of courage. The following part of this essay will explain them in details.

First of all, faith is the state being ultimately concerned. Tillich employs the word ‘dynamics’ derived from the ancient Greek means ‘strength, power’. This is certainly important to note because this is the purpose of Tillich’s imposing these dynamics within faith. Indeed, these dynamics of faith give strength and/or power. Tillich highlights two aspects of faith as being ultimately concerned: subjective and objective aspects. These aspects are centered in the experience of the believer.

What Tillich means by the objective aspect of this state is that the “reality or object toward which all acts or faith is directed”. According to Tillich, this object is the proper object of all faith. This object certainly is God. To some extend, Tillich acknowledges, people might experience God in many different ways. In other words, there is a possibility that people might believe that there is no God.

On the other hand, “the subjective aspect of being ultimately concerned refers to whatever people believe to be the primary focus, purpose, and source of their existence” . Tillich recognizes that this is what functions for them as God. Tillich extends this notion by saying that this aspect of faith could be in their work or possessions, it might be family or even church.

Furthermore, Tillich says that faith as ultimate concern requires the courage to make a personal commitment. A self-commitment becomes very important because there is a risk involved in faith is related to the presence of uncertainty, explains Tillich. Faith may become static or non-dynamic when the risk of uncertainty is excluded by a law. Faith is not a belief that something has a certain degree of probability. Faith is not a type of theoretical knowledge that is based on probability. In other words, faith is not a belief based on incomplete evidence. Tillich remarks that many historical conflicts have resulted from the misunderstanding of faith as a type of knowledge supported by religious authority.

Tillich acclaims that ‘ultimate reality’ can only be described by the use of symbol. Tillich take an example the word of “God” is a symbol for ultimate reality. In regard to this, the questions of does God exist or whether God exist is futile or meaningless, says Tillich. Whether we are concerned with the nature of ultimate reality is considered as an important question according to Tillich.

The second point of the outcome of Tillich’s nature of theology is that doubt is structural element in all faith. Doubt is essential, says Tillich, and it must be accepted as an element in faith. How do people come to doubt or become doubt is not the concern of Tillich’s theological reflection. Rather he mentions about the certainty of doubt “as an element which was always and will be always present in the act of faith”.

Tillich distinguishes three different kinds of doubt: methodological, sceptical, and existential, in which he, eventually, identifies the doubt that he means in this context. Methodological doubt is employed in the scientific investigation. The presence of the methodological doubt aims to question the facts, conclusions and theories. While sceptical doubt is the attitude towards all human beliefs and knowledge. The doubt which is implicit a faith is neither methodological doubt which is mode of scientific inquiry nor sceptical doubt which is cloak for concealed faith, says Tillich. Rather he calls it an existential doubt which is the doubt of him who is ultimately concerned about a concrete content.

What does existential doubt mean according Tillich? There are at least, two elements that can be drawn from his existential doubt. First of all, we might doubt because we are not so sure whether we perceive our ultimate concern is ultimate. In this sense, our doubt makes sense, I contend, because we need to comprehend precisely first something that we perceive in order that it makes sense for us and it is worthwhile for our life as well. This is to say that the existential doubt appears in this sense as we are uncertain about the object of our ultimate concern. We are dilemma in sense that we could not justify of what faith means in something ultimate, which ‘disappear’ in reality.

The second point can be concluded from it is that; even we are quite sure the object of the ultimate concern as mentioned above, we might still question whether the symbols and concepts through which we apprehend that reality are appropriate to its nature. Our apprehension about the reality is perhaps inadequate. Therefore, we might come to conclude the importance of Tillich’s approach here is that, as he says, doubt does not signify a loss of faith. If existential doubt does appear clearly, we should not regard that doubt as a sign of the ‘denial’ of faith but as ‘an element’ which always and will always be present in the act of faith. He adds that, serious doubt should be seen as a confirmation of faith, which is, as an indication of the seriousness of that person’s concern for the ultimate”.

In his essay “Rechtfertigung und Zweifel’ he expresses beautifully the condition of doubter or sceptic as follows:
The doubter has lost God, truth, and the meaning of life, but he can not rest in this loss, for he encounters the demand to find what he has lost. He is gripped by the relentless power of truth, and, since he can not fulfil the law of truth, he falls into despair. He doubts about his salvation, expect that in his case loss abyss of meaningless. Radical doubt is not problem of flight from God. It is the struggle in for participation in the unconditioned meaning of life.

What Tillich means, then, by doubt is the element in the structure of faith is kind of encouragement or support to people to see the essential element of doubt in faith and in doing so affirms their faith. Tillich calls this process as an act of courage. This point, then, brings us to the last point of Tillich’s positive account of nature of theology.

Finally, Tillich argues that doubt is overcome through an act of courage. The main question should be raised in this point, perhaps, is whether doubt in the act faith is possible to be overcome through an act of courage? Tillich answers this question in his book The courage to Be. This book points out that “faith can take the form of courage in the face of radical despair”. Courage, for Tillich, is an ontological concept, ‘the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing’. The courage expresses participation in the power of being and meaning. It takes all doubt, risk and anxiety into itself and overcome without removing them. Faith, therefore for Tillich, is the basis of courage, and the courage is the manifestation of faith.



5. A conclusion: Constructive Aspect of Doubt is searching of Understanding
It seems that the wholeness of this essay has been investigating, first and fore most, the concept of dynamics of faith according to Paul Tillich. It has been highlighted that faith as ultimate concern involves of both the act of faith and the content of faith. At this point, however, the involvement of ‘infinite’ is much more emphasized than man ‘man’ because it is a finite being, full of limitations. While in the second aspect of his notion is that the totality of human involvement in the act of faith has been highlighted as a very important point.

Secondly, the significance of doubt as an element in the life of faith has been essential point in Tillich’s theology of faith. It seems necessarily to say, then, doubt can be seen as a positive and constructive aspect of faith. In this sense, we come to conclude that the presence or appearance of doubt in human’s life should be seen as an expression of faith. This reminds us of the idea of Anselm of Canterbury about Faith seeking understanding. Faith, indeed, needs to be understood in order to have a genuine faith. Doubt, therefore, is raised as an expression of faith-in search of understanding, in search of a more appropriate form of belief. Doubt, then, is a form of faith searching for understanding.



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