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Political Expectation
By Paul Tillich
edited by James Luther Adams.
187 pp New York, Harper & R. Row, 1971. $5 95

The initial reaction to this Tillich book is likely to be, "Why these essays now-forty years late?" and, "Did Tillich really have that much to say about political issues?" Hence I state at once: He did have important things to say, and there are several reasons why the book constitutes a valuable contribution. Consider the following:

First, as James Luther Adams points out in his splendid introduction these eight essays forcefully reveal the genesis of many of Tillich's basic concepts. The dual nature of existentialism and its method of calling men back to immediately experienced reality, kairos, the demonic vis-à-vis the theonomous, the relation between religion and culture, the inseparable interaction of power, justice, and love-these and other views are stated here with a clarity and a specificity of illustration often missing in his later and expanded writings. One surprising exception to this is the second essay, "Protestantism as a Critical and Creative Principle," which is disappointing, partly as compared with his later writing, but especially because, though strong on the "critical," it is weak in exploring the "creative" function of that principle.

Second, this book is of value not only because it traces the development of a genius over half a century, but equally because it documents-for political scientists, philosophers, historians-the conflicts among secular and religious socialists, Nazis, the communists, and the Social Democrats. In the course of this discussion, Tillich makes observations concerning Heidegger, Barth, and Bultmann, all of whom, he says, failed utterly to see that and how authentic religion must operate as a cultural force. "Barth," he writes,"... has the merit of being truly no Barthian." "Sartre … [is] … basically antihumanistic, even though [he] has written a book, Existentialism Is a Humanism, in which he seeks, albeit weakly, to vindicate himself" (p. 137).

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Third, this book's value is further enhanced by the remarkable way in which it goes beyond that which is of merely historical concern and which discloses Tillich's developing theology and wrestles with perennial issues. Because it is being asked with increasing frequency and urgency, "What is a community?" Tillich's answer commands attention. It is a group in which a comprehensive principle of meaning is recognized as legitimate, that is, meaning which is shared. Such a community, which expresses "a unity of power and love, is the socio-ethical ideal of religious socialism" (p. 53). Closely related to this is his definition of the state as "the power of a community that realizes itself in the position of justice," and power and justice, he holds, are defined by means of each other (p. 99). Pacifism, like anarchism, is rejected by Tillich, as by religious socialism because it negates justice, whereas justice can assert itself as justice only by employing restraint (Zwang) of arbitrary will, and " . . . the elimination of restraint would give power to arbitrary will" (p. 83).

Space allows me to applaud only one more gem: Tillich's four-lecture study, the "Political Meaning of Utopia." Here Tillich's power of analysis, his erudition in handling historical material, and above all his rare ability to bring psychological and theological insights jointly to bear on basic human problems are at their best. The concept of utopia, he holds, is dependent upon "a distinction between what man essentially should and could be and what he existentially-that is, actually-is" (p. 141). Studying utopias, as existing in the past or as anticipated in the future, as produced by revolution or by man's steady progress, as embodied in secular or in religious philosophies, Tillich assesses with rare discrimination what he calls the negative and positive meaning of utopia. With fine dialectic he rejects both those who would counsel us to forget utopia as a fantastic dream and those who unrealistically look for a utopian existence. The solution to the problem of utopia, he holds, is in man's reciprocal participation in two orders, the horizontal, which is the order of finitude with its possibilities and impossibilities, and the vertical, which secular and religious thought express symbolically as the ideal society or the "Kingdom of God" and the like. Such a utopia is at once historical and trans-spatio-temporal.

Political Expectation invites little criticism. Granted, it is uneven in comprehensibility. At this stage Tillich, true German scholar, tended to pose profound questions in somewhat obscure terms. The editor might have indicated what occasioned the essay on "Basic Principles of Religious Socialism," and, as Eduard Heimann did so brilliantly in his analysis, "Tillich's Doctrine of Religious Socialism" in The Theology of Paul Tillich, explained the failure of religious socialism. Editor Adams surely

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should have insisted that the chapters be numbered in the table of contents and chapter headings. These points are trivial compared with the enduring merit of these essays.

Charles W. Kegley
California State College
Bakersfield, California