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Paul Tillich In Catholic Thought
Edited by Thomas A. O'Meara and Celestin D. Weisser
323 pp. Dubuque, The Priory Press, 1964. $5.95.

This volume will be welcomed as a useful addition to the growing body of Tillich scholarship as well as eloquent testimony to the willingness and capacity of Catholic theologians to read and criticize the works of a Protestant colleague with sympathetic insight and charity-as well as candor.

It is of course not surprising that Paul Tillich has received serious attention from such eminent Catholic thinkers as Gustave Weigel, George Tavard, and other contributors to this anthology. For American Catholics, influenced perhaps more than others by Thomistic theology, find in Tillich a Protestant whose interests closely parallel their own. Fundamental among these common interests is the analogia entis upon which Aquinas based his knowledge of God, and upon which Tillich bases the possibility of revelation through the medium of the symbol. From this basic coincidence other similarities develop. His interest in symbols has led Tillich to an appreciation of sacramentalism, the "Catholic substance" -which he believes Protestantism must regain. Again, the analogia entis implies for Tillich that all beings can symbolize being-itself, and this has committed him to a view of general revelation that actually goes beyond the theory of Aquinas. But in spite of these and other similarities, Tillich remains a Protestant theologian. Particularly antithetical to Roman doctrine in his consistent rejection of supernaturalism and the possibility of any "objective" knowledge of God. Moreover, his whole Systematic Theology is written in the name of "The Protestant Principle," which denies to any finite power (be it Roman Church or Reformed dogma) the right to impose upon man a heteronomous authority. The essays here assembled all reflect an awareness of this ambivalence in Tillich's relation to Catholic thought. And so it is not surprising that on just the issues of symbolism, revelation, supernaturalism, and authority we find in these articles a mixture of enthusiastic agreement as well as vigorous criticism.

Among the many excellent essays in this book several demand special mention. The opening chapter by Gustave Weigel (to whose memory the volume is fittingly dedicated) and the first selection from the writings of George Tavard (Chapter IV) stand as two of the finest short introductions to Tillich's thought that this writer has found. Kenelm Foster has contributed an intriguing article in which he argues that Aquinas' double use of the copula "is" overcomes Tillich's prohibition of the statement: God exists. Whether or not his case actually meets Tillich's objections,

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it does demonstrate a modern Catholic application of the scholastic argument-which falls so strangely on Protestant ears tuned to theological discourse formed in the matrix of post-Kantian thought. Of the five essays on the problem of symbolism, the most important is that by George McLean (Chapter VIII). McLean shows that Aquinas' concept of the analogia entis involves many more distinctions and is basically contradictory to Tillich's use of the same term. For Thomas reality itself and as such was analogous and contained the power to represent the divine. For Tillich it is not reality as such, but the use made of it that determines the power of the symbol. McLean's comparison will be useful in discouraging any simplistic identification of Tillich and Thomas and must surely become a basic source for all future discussion of Tillich's use of the analogia entis. One of the more valuable parts of this book is the "Afterword" supplied by Tillich himself in which he restates some of his positions on the above points in direct response to his Catholic commentators.

Setting aside those questions arising from the explicit Catholic orientation of these essays, there remain several matters that require attention. Erich Przywara's contention that Tillich's concept of kairos is that "around which his whole thought moves" (p. 197) indicates a knowledge of Tillich's early writings, but does not take seriously the structure of his systematic work which develops this concept in its conclusion only. A more usual bibliographical astigmatism is revealed by Edward O'Connor whose amazing charge that Tillich is indifferent to governmental authoritarianism (p. 35) displays an almost total ignorance of Tillich's first fifteen years of writing and teaching. The editor, Thomas O'Meara, contributes the concluding article in which he judges Tillich's ecumenism against his view of the Virgin Mary. Quite apart from the dubiousness of such an undertaking, we must ask whether Father O'Meara has not employed an inadmissible methodology in attempting to extrapolate from the various parts of Tillich's system statements concerning Mary. ("Mary stands or falls as Christ does. And Christ, it would seem, falls" p. 278.) It should be clear that for Tillich the whole question of Marology is completely absorbed in the problem of symbolism and has little to do with the interests of Father O'Meara.

But these are little more than occasional lapses inevitable in an anthology of this sort, and do not prejudice the value of the articles themselves or the high level of scholarship of the whole collection. We are accustomed in this country to discussions with our Catholic brethren on matters of practical and liturgical concern. Perhaps the greatest value of this book is its disclosure and encouragement of a Catholic-Protestant dialogue on the previously forbidden ground of conceptuality. It invites

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and challenges us to take the Catholic theological tradition as seriously, and study it as well, as they have ours.

Alexander J. McKelway
Davidson College
Davidson, North Carolina