If you know me as a theologian, you knew this post would be coming
"What is this New Being? Paul answers first by saying what it is not. It is neither circumcision, nor uncircumcision, he says. For Paul and for the readers of his letters, this meant something very definite. It meant hat neither to be a Jew or a pagan is ultimately important; that only one thing counts, namely, the union with him in whom the New Reality is present. Circumcision or uncircumcision, what does that mean for us? It can mean at the same time something very definite, but at the same time very universal. It means that no religion as such produces the New Being. Circumcision is a religious rite, observed by the Jews; sacrifices are a religious rite, observed by the pagans; baptism is a religious rite, observed by the Christians. All these rites do not matter - only a New Creation. And since these rite stand, in the words of Paul, for the whole religion to which they belong, we can say: No religion matters - only a new state of things...
[paragraph line inserted for clarity, because this paragraph is 3 pages long. Come on, Paulus! Could you have at least tried to be a little less German when writing to Americans?]
Let us think about this striking assertion of Paul. What it says first is that Christianity is more than a religion; it is the message of a New Creation. Christianity as a religion is not important - it is like circumcision or uncircumcision: no more, and no less!... Christianity in the present world encounters several forms of circumcision and uncircumcision... [it] can stand for everything called religion [or[ secular, but making half religious claims. There are many great religions beside Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the remnants of classical Judaism... There are secular movements: Fascism and Communism, Secular Humanism, and Ethical Idealism... they also claim ultimate truth and demand complete devotion. How shall Christianity face them? Shall Christianity tell them: Come to us, we are a better religion, our kind of circumcision or uncircumcision is higher than yours? Shall we praise Christianity, our way of life, the religious as well as the secular? Shall we make of the Christian message a success story, and tell them, like advertisers: try it with us, and you will see how important Christianity is for everybody? Some missionaries and ministers and some Christian laymen use these methods. They show a total misunderstanding of Christianity.
[another added line]
The apostle, who was a missionary and a minister and a layman all at once says something different. He says : No particular religion maters, neither ours nor yours. Bit I want to tell you that something has happened that matters, something that judges you and me, your religion and my religion. A New Creation has occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate in it.... don't compare you religion and our religion, your rites and our rites, your prophets and our prophets, your priests and our priests, the pious among you and the pious among us. All of this is of no avail! And above all don't think that we are trying to convert you to English or American Christianity, to the religion of the Western World. We do not want to convert you to us, not even to the best of us. This would be of no avail. We want only to show you something that we have seen and to tell you something we have heard: That in the midst of the old creation there is a New Creation, and that this New Creation is manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
... [if] the Church which is the assembly of God has an ultimate significance, this is its significance: That here the reunion of [human] to [human] is pronounced and confessed and realized, even if in fragments and weaknesses and distortions. The Church is the place where the reunion of [person] and [person] is an actual event [through reunion to God], though the Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. But, although betrayed and expelled, the New Creation saves and preserves that by which it is betrayed and expelled: churches, [humankind], and history.
Paul Tillich, "The New Being" in The New Being (Charles Scribner's Sons; New York, 1955) 16-18, 23-24
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Most of you who read this know that I always enjoy reading Paul Tillich. Tillich's writings kept me in seminary at a point when I nearly considered dropping out, kept me reading theology when I thought I was done with it, and helped keep Karl Barth (and more importantly, crazed Barthians) at arm's length while I was a student at Princeton. Thanks be to God. I don't always agree with Tillich, but almost without fail reading him does one of two things to me: either I'm drawn into a deeper fidelity to the Gospel in all of its radical defiance, independence, and desire to become incarnate and communicate grace among people who need it; or I'm given a really interesting perspective that I don't agree with, but am probably wiser for having approached with an open mind. In this case - Tillich's sermon "The New Being" does both. That makes it a very important reading for me.
One of the central components of Tillich's theology is his abiding love for and vehement criticism of the human cultural experience - both in its religious and secular forms. This sermon provides a great example of this tension. Tillich observes that religious and secular expressions of culture typically try to make destructive demands that don't just separate people, but often incentivize us to ignore, dehumanize, and harm one another. Folks make one another into enemies very quickly, and make every effort to justify it through their use of myth* - by "divine word" or by "how things really are." In this, the difference between religious and secular seem unimportant. Both result in hatred, exclusion, and death.
The Christian truth, as Tillich understands it, forces us to sidestep our myths*. Not to dismantle them, or destroy them, or ignore them, but to understand that there is something greater at stake and something that can be immanent among them, something that can reframe them, transform them, and transform us: there is a New Thing Happening All Together. There is a New Being - a new way of life, a new life of freedom, and it was given and made known in the fullness of the Christ and rooted in the very Ground of Being itself. This freedom breaks our divides, and turns us into disciples of the way, the truth and the life embodied, emboldened, and created by Jesus. Not the Jesus whom we use as a shibboleth to restrain some and cast away others - in the Jesus who lived as God lives, and who calls us to live in such a way - and indeed continues to call us through the Holy Spirit to reject sin and death.
It's not really about us, or our culture, or our myths*. There is no help to be found in any of those things. Our help is found in a God who frees us, who justifies us by grace through faith. Faith isn't necessarily cultural assent as much as it is an abiding trust and enrapt attention - or as Tillich describes it elsewhere "as being grasped by the holy." Having been grasped, we become witnesses - wherever we are, whoever we are. The New Being is at work outside of our cultures and our institutions - in the margins, among the lost and the rejected who are found and accepted - not by human hands but divine will. We see this makes God's work a little decentralized for Tillich - not necessarily kept within how we want to see things, but rather where God elects to work. The Church becomes immanent wherever the grasping Holy Spirit goes - it rests among the Church no matter its tradition. It abides, and drives us into true life - a life the world longs for, but cannot itself provide.
For as much as I love much of this, it's also where I criticize Tillich a bit (and where I actually turn Tillich over and against himself - because later in life Tillich develops a dialectical tension between 'Protestant principle' and 'Catholic substance' - more on that another time). What Tillich doesn't account for in this sermon (and is underdeveloped in this part of his career) is sacramentology. Tillich seems quite critical of religious rites and minimizes them as human acts which are meant to contain the work of God. He writes as though God is absent from them. But baptism isn't an independent ritual, magic spell, or divine fire insurance - it is the enactment of God's call to the Church to be known through Water and Word. God is actually involved in the process - present in the Word, present in the Assembly, present in the Water. We may say the same for Holy Communion. God creates the Church consistently through sacramental proclamation - and the promises made at baptism constitute our identity as Christians. These acts do not seek to "contain" God as Tillich fears, but properly proclaimed reveal God as a God who loves, judges, and saves. The sacraments are cross-cultural acts of grace, and life-long promises by God to the people, a grounding for faith and a place for people to hold. Understanding Christ as one who was baptized and who asks us to baptize others in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to share the Holy Meal makes these things a little more nuanced than what Tillich suggests - participation in the New Being seems to have these things involved. When we tell people to be free of their sin, to be forgiven - we want them to be free wherever we go, and to know they are free and to share that incarnate freedom.
This kind of "openness" in theology, and Tillich's ambivalence towards Western Christianity in its destructive element s have been very influential to the discipline of theology itself, but also very welcoming to marginalized voices in academia. Tillich's work and life story, drew a lot of attention, and inspired other voices in the Church who experienced rejection and abandonment by institutions. The accessibility of his work for those who shared similar experiences of a sort, gave them a kind of academic "credibility" amid institutions otherwise prone to rejecting them over race, gender, etc. Which is bullshit - churches should've been listening to them from the get-go and not been creepy gatekeepers of the discipline. They shouldn't have needed an old white guy to justify themselves (Jesus, an executed young brown man did that well enough). Still, Tillich still provided an accessible theological outlet and entry point for many theologians who would have otherwise been relegated to the margins (and still are far too often - and keep me accountable to this as a guy who writes most often about dead European theologians).
Read Tillich (and especially his sermon collection "The New Being," and his second volume of Systematic Theology which "The New Being" seeks to illuminate) if you love culture, but you also think a lot of it is full of shit. Read Tillich if you love your religion, but also think that its institutions seem to make (and even double down on) some colossal and unjustifiable errors in judgment. Tillich himself had his issues (more on that some other time), but Tillich's theology rejects and challenges so much bullshit in the world. Tillich's theology (and his theological method) provides some of the clearest and most potent renunciations of white supremacy, fascism, racism, misogyny, and more ever written by a straight white man. And he both bodily suffered and spiritually thrived for it. Tillich's work uniquely equips people to look at the horrors of the world and find Christ among those who are suffering, and being killed. So read him some more.
*The term "myth" in this context is in a technical sense - it shouldn't be understood in the common sense of a fanciful, fictional, old story about supernatural beings - but more in the sense of "this is a story which helps us understand ourselves." The factuality and the historicity are less relevant than the impact it has on us. Consider the statement "George Washington was the father of our country." It's a very mythic statement, not so much concerned with "historicity," "factuality," or literal accuracy - but instead potentially reveals something about the values and sense of community held by the one who speaks the myth.
