OWNING ONE'S FAITH AND BELIEF

CHAPTER 2

Dissertation by Dr. Bill Spencer

Web Presence sponsored by Joan Spencer & Associates

AN EXPOSITION OF TILLICH'S UNDERSTANDING OF HETERONOMY, AUTONOMY AND THEONOMY

Paul Tillich was first and foremost a theologian of culture. His understanding of theonomy was central to this cultural focus within his theology. Tillich's understanding of theonomy in terms of its practical expression within cultural life, appears to have developed and therefore changed throughout his life. Tillich never lost hope that out of the struggles that have marked the twentieth century, a new theonomy might arise. He acknowledged that Western society was predominantly autonomous. Autonomy and heteronomy, as Tillich understood the terms, "are both rooted in "theonomy," and each goes astray when their unity is broken-as in the autonomy of secular bourgeois culture, and in the heteronomy of totalitarianism's."

From a cultural perspective, cultural autonomy was for Tillich, theonomy that had lost its depth. Having experienced the heteronomy of Nazism, Tillich was fearful that emerging new forms of collectivism would overwhelm the religious socialist forces that he sought to champion, as had happened in Germany in the 1930's.

Tillich's emphasis, led him to concentrate on the cultural significance of heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy. As a consequence individual heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy occupy a small space in his writings when viewed alongside his treatment of these concepts from a cultural perspective. Indeed, an understanding of the cultural significance of these terms is necessary before one can extract their relevance for the individual. This chapter will seek to survey what Tillich understood by his use of heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy in the hope of laying a theological foundation from which to examine the implications for ministry that arise from the writer's experience in his present and previous parish. As the experience was parish-based, Tillich's insights that relate to the cultural and to the individual levels will both be useful. As the experience has implications for mission strategy, Tillich, would seem to offer valuable insights in relation to the wider culture.

The ecclesiastical domination of culture in Western Europe prior to the Renaissance, was a thing of concern to Tillich. He acknowledged the natural association of religion and culture, and was anxious to differentiate a theocracy from his conception of theonomy. He claimed that religious substance has the power to shatter autonomy, and so, from a cultural perspective, was concerned that this would not be interpreted as setting the scene for a new theocracy, but rather autonomy was making way for a new theonomy.

"The religious substance shatters the autonomous form of the state: that is the profoundest meaning of idealistic "anarchism", not to make way for a new theocracy but in favour of a theonomy built up from communities themselves and their spiritual substance."

He also said;

"The goal of theocratic movements is the sovereignty of the unconditioned form, of the right and the just. But as soon as this goal is reached, the danger threatens that sacred import will be lost. Formalism and emptiness always threaten. Form frees itself from sacramental constraint and from its fullness of import. It becomes profane or secular. Theocracy passes over into autonomy. Autonomy is able to elaborate pure forms with rational perfection in every sphere, but, by itself, it cannot bring about the fulfilment of forms in any sphere. It lives on the import of the past and the more it produces abstract forms, the more it becomes separated from life. A complete autonomy would mean the complete destruction of life.

Juxtaposed, the above two statements appear to be slightly incongruous. It seems reasonable to assume that in the first statement Tillich is antagonistic towards theocracies, however in the second there appears to be a greater openness, if not an endorsement of a theocracy. Out of context it is not clear whether Tillich is suggesting in the second statement that theocratic movements bring about a theonomy. Tillich appears to use "theocracy" in two different senses, consequently it is important to understand in what sense he means by "theocracy" within the context of his writing. The first of the two statements immediately above uses "theocracy" in the usual sense of government by God or his representatives. However, in the second instance, although not included in the quotation, the reader has been warned that, "By this concept (theocracy) we do not mean the external appearance of a priestly or religious dominion but, rather, the will to conquer the sacred reality of the demonic in the name of sacred unconditioned form." There is a gap of four years (1919-1923) between the making the above statements, Tillich was part of the Religious Socialist Movement, a movement, Tillich informs us, that held a strong belief, that Western Europe was soon to experience a Kairos,-a time, distinct from chronos, (ordinary time), a time of fulfilment-in which a theonomous culture would emerge. His enthusiasm for Christian Socialism led him to claim that as a reform movement, Christian Socialism was a theocratic movement" like Jewish prophetism, Mohammedanism, monastic reform, Calvinism and the socioethical sects."

Norman Young acknowledges the difficulty in knowing where to begin with Tillich's system, because each part is interdependent on each other part, so that one is unable to understand fully the implications of Tillich's thought on any one subject without some knowledge of the rest of his system. This is particularly so with regard to his understanding of the concepts of heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy. However, as Young advises, Tillich's system will bring one full circle so that wherever one begins eventually the full implications will become apparent.

Tillich actually refers to his cultural analyses as a theonomous analysis of culture. He does this on the basis that, "a theonomous culture expresses in its creations an ultimate concern and a transcending meaning not as something strange but as its own spiritual ground. Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion" Religion here appears to take an "a priori" position with regard to culture. His analysis is informed by his interpretation of the "fall" which he views as estrangement from humankind's essential being. Human existence necessitates a descent from an "ideal" concept of being, for without that descent the three antimonies of the dynamic and form, individualisation and participation, freedom and destiny that characterise the finite existence of humankind could not be. In similar vein, and in contradistinction to Hegel, Tillich appears to conceive of a cultural estrangement from an original historical and creative theonomous unity or synthesis which inexorably unravels into a self-destructive disunity, "through the ambiguous thesis of autonomy to the nemesis and destruction of heteronomous antitheses." Langdon Gilkey says of this aspect of Tillich's theology that,

"His religious and theological analysis of culture is based not only on the religious apprehension of the immanent holy and the sacred ground (creation), but on the particular symbol or myth of the fall, an expression of our estrangement from that sacred ground. Without such a dialectical (positive and negative) analysis based on the symbols (creation and fall) of a particular religious tradition-a theology of culture as opposed to a philo- sophical analysis of religion-Tillich (after World War I) believed that the true situation of culture and of reason within it could not be understood."

Individuals, on the other hand, having experienced the "fall" must follow the Hegelian synthesis, moving from the thesis of heteronomy, via the antithesis of autonomy, to the final synthesis in theonomy. However, there remains the question with regard to the content of each state of being, both from a cultural and an individualistic perspective. In what way if any, does the terminology of heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy correlate with respect to culture and individuality? Before an answer can be given, some appreciation of the import of this terminology must be explored

One is obliged to begin with Tillich's understanding of theonomy and theonomous culture. A quotation from Tillich with regard to the three terms might be helpful.

"The words "autonomy", "heteronomy", and "theonomy" answer the question of the nomos or the law of life in three different ways: Autonomy asserts that man as the bearer of universal reason is the source and measure of culture and religion-that he is his own law. Heteronomy asserts that man, being unable to act according to universal reason, must be subjected to law, strange and superior to him. Theonomy asserts that the superior law is, at the same time, the innermost law of man himself, rooted in the divine ground which is man's own ground: the law of life transcends man, although it is, at the same time, his own. Applying these concepts to the relation between religion and culture, we called an autonomous culture the attempt to create the forms of personal and social life without any reference to something ultimate and unconditional, following only the demands of theoretical and practical rationality. A heteronomous culture, on the other hand, subjects the forms and laws of thinking and acting to authoritative criteria of an ecclesiastical religion, or a political quasi-religion, even at the price of destroying the structures of rationality. A theonomous culture expresses in its creations an ultimate concern and a transcending meaning not as something strange but as its own spiritual ground".

Even the above definition is not sufficient in itself, for it in turn needs interpreting. One might easily claim the first part of the above quotation, in dealing with the concepts, might well mean that theonomy's superior law is merely the same as the superior law of heteronomy, but as theonomy this law can claim a transcendent and unconditional obligation, whereas as heteronomy its requirement arises from conditional and finite institutions. If such were the case, then theonomy's superior law would be greater in oppressive effect than that of heteronomy. This, however, is not the meaning Tillich attributes to theonomy. That this is so is already apparent in the quotation itself. From a theonomous viewpoint, humankind has intrinsic to its nature a rational law of life which the individual person can claim as his or her own, yet acknowledge its transcendent reality which is rooted in the divine ground, which at the same time is her or his own ground. The difficulty arises with regard to heteronomy's superior law. Is it the same law as theonomy's superior law? If so, then how is it that in heteronomy it is strange to the person's being, yet in theonomy it is not? Is Tillich speaking in a subjective or objective sense? If Tillich is speaking subjectively then theonomy is merely the expression of a cowardly and irrational submission of the individual's will to that of the divine. If he is speaking objectively, then how is the superior law strange at one time and not at another? Unless, of course, objectively the superior laws are different! In this event, the superior law is superior only in so far as it is presented as superior to humankind's innate rationality by institutional power. That this conclusion may be wrong has support from Tillich's insistence that heteronomy is founded on the same divine ground as theonomy. Tillich prefers to interpret heteros as "strange" rather than "different". Both meanings are possible. His emphasis on "strange" however suggests that he views the laws as being alien to the nature of mankind, and arise from some object external to the individual person.

The above quotation ends with the statement that a theonomous culture expresses in its creations an ultimate concern and a transcending meaning, not as something strange, but its own spiritual ground. Again it could be claimed that in heteronomy the individual does not perceive the heteronomous law as being his or her spiritual ground. However, if the "heteronomous culture..subjects the forms and laws of thinking and acting to authoritative criteria", and if this can be done even at the price of destroying the structures of rationality, and if rationality is intrinsic to human beings, then the substance of these laws and forms must be something other than mankind's own spiritual ground. It appears that this must remain an ambiguity in Tillich himself. The following quotation suggests that Tillich is aware of this ambiguity, and places it as an ambiguity in reason itself, an ambiguity that gives reason a tragic dimension in the sense of the original Greek understanding of tragedy.

" Historically, autonomous reason has liberated and maintained itself in a never ending fight with heteronomy. Heteronomy imposes a strange (heteros) law (nomos) on one or all of the functions of reason. It issues commands from "outside" on how reason should grasp and shape reality. But this "outside" is not merely outside. It represents, at the same time, an element in reason itself, namely, the depth of reason. This makes the fight between autonomy and heteronomy dangerous and tragic. It is, finally, a conflict in reason itself."

However, in spite of this disclaimer, Tillich nonetheless appears on balance to favour heteronomous laws and forms as arising from external finite sources whose rationality is strange to humankind's spiritual ground, which at the same time is each individual's own. Following the quotation from his essay, "Religion and Secular Culture", Tillich states that against ecclesiastical heteronomy it is always possible to show that the religious culture is derived from the surrounding general culture. In the event of that culture being imposed on dissenters or a foreign culture, it is possible to show that it is not ultimate, it is provisional and conditioned and cannot claim religious ultimacy. In this instance, theonomous thinking sides with autonomous criticism. The ground of theonomous thinking and heteronomous reasoning must also in this instance not be the same. Finally, Tillich did not regard theonomy as reason imposed by a higher authority.

Theonomy does not mean the acceptance of a divine law imposed on reason by a highest authority; it means autonomous reason united with its own depth... and actualised in obedience to its structural laws and in the power of its inexhaustible ground

 

Culture and theonomy are so closely tied together by Tillich that it is impossible to derive from his writings an adequate concept of theonomy without understanding what culture was to Tillich. If one is looking for precision, then it can be said that Tillich understood culture to be the creation of ontological reason. But what then for Tillich was ontological reason? Tillich distinguished ontological reason from that part of ontological reason that he called technical or controlling reason. Technical reasoning is the predominant form of reasoning in a scientific age. Technical reason manipulates and controls. When one uses technical reason, one assumes the initiative over the object of attention. One does not participate in the object. It is at this point that ontological reasoning is seen to be in contrast to technical or controlling reason. Reason in the technical sense determines the means while accepting the ends from "somewhere else....". However, reason in the sense of logos determines the ends and only in the second place the means. Detached from the "ends", technical reasoning can bring about irrational ends. The participation can also be in the universal logos of being, but on the other hand ontological reasoning can succumb to the destructive structures of existence. It can turn upward into being or downward into non-being.

The circular tendency in Tillich's system becomes apparent as ontological reasoning is further explored, as it leads us back to theonomy. Ontological reason has a dimension of depth. Its depth is not reason, but rather is the expression of something that precedes reason, something that is manifest through it. This depth of reason is the quality of pointing to truth itself, to the infinite power of being, to the ultimately real. Aesthetically, it points to beauty itself, on the legal plain to justice itself. It is the polarity of structure and depth within reason which produces a conflict between autonomous and heteronomous reason under the conditions of existence. Out of this conflict arises the quest for theonomy.

Culture then, is the product of essential reason. It is intimately related to ontological thinking, a thinking which Tillich has described as ;

"Man .. immediately aware of something unconditional which is the prius of the separation and interaction of subject and object, theoretically as well as practically."

As such it has an unconditioned depth or import and embodies an unconditioned meaning. Culture is the product of the culture producing power of ontological reasoning. It is the product of reason, and has its own autonomous integrity. Gilkey says of culture's integrity;

"Culture sets its own canons, procedures, and norms; it produces autonomously its own creative works, and it judges or assesses them by its own autonomous criteria. The divine is the ground, not the controller, of human culture-producing power. The meaning, quality, and value of culture's works are immanent within them, not extrinsic to them. This is one important meaning of Tillich's category of theonomy as descriptive of a creative culture."

Further, Langdon Gilkey has expressed Tillich's understanding of culture, rather succinctly and comprehensively when he writes.

"For Tillich, culture essentially is separated neither from the rational nor from the religious. It is both humanistic and religiously based. A theonomous culture is created and penetrated by human reason and also by the infinite divine ground of reason. Thus, while culture is a rational and human creation, it is also an aspect of the work of Providence, an effect of revelation in its most general sense, and a constituent element in the Kingdom or the final and perfected form of divine creation. "

Theonomy, as mentioned earlier, is intimately related to culture. Tillich understands theonomy as arising out of ontological thinking, which is the culture creating reasoning of humankind.

He describes theonomy as the state of culture under the impact of the Spiritual Presence. The Spiritual Presence is the presence of the Spirit of God as Divine Life within the "creaturely" life. Tillich understands the word presence to have an archaic connotation indicating the place where a sovereign is. Capitalising indicates divine presence in creaturely life and is seen as a symbol expressing unambiguous life, in contrast to the ambiguities of life. Among these ambiguities is the cleavage of object and subject. Such a cleavage might be the psychological and unconscious desire to return to the mother's womb in times of acute stress or trauma. This is an expression of the will to dissolve one's subjectivity into something that is beyond subjectivity, something not objective. Tillich explains that if this were not so, then the subject would be reinstated. The Spiritual Presence motivates one toward the overcoming of such ambiguities by creating theonomous forms in the different domains of the cultural self-creation of life. Similarly, one could speak of the subject of love never able to penetrate fully into the object of love, and so love remains unfulfilled, or the poverty among riches in language, such as in universality preventing as well as enabling communication. In theonomy, Tillich says, language is fragmentarily liberated from the bondage of to the subject-object scheme.

"It reaches moments in which it becomes a bearer of the Spirit expressing the union of him who speaks with that of which he speaks in an act of linguistic self-transcendence. The word which bears the Spirit does not grip an object opposite to the speaking subject, but it witnesses to the sublimity of life beyond subject and object and, religious knowledge is knowledge of something particular in the light of the eternal and of the eternal in the light of something particular. In this kind of knowledge the ambiguities of subjectivity as well as objectivity are overcome."

Tillich says that the impact of the Spiritual presence is also seen in the method of theonomous cognition. By this he means that in the subject-object separation, the subject tries to grasp the object by observation and conclusion, however the object always remains strange to the subject which is never certain of success. However, to the extent in which the subject-object structure is overcome, observation is replaced by participation, and conclusion is replaced by insight. This insight is a state of being elevated to what Tillich called a transcendent unity. This Spirit-determined cognition is "revelation" just as Spirit-determined language is "Word of God." He continues by speaking of theonomous knowledge as Spirit-determined Wisdom. Theonomy however, never contradicts autonomously created knowledge.

The basic ambiguity of subject and object has to do with the conflicts that arise because of the unlimited possibilities of technical progress, and the limits of a human being's ability to adapt to the results of his or her own productivity. Tillich comments;

"The ambiguity of subject and object also expresses itself in the production of means for ends which themselves become means without an ultimate end and in the technical transformation of parts of nature into things which are only things, i.e., technical objects." .

He claims that the only answer in relation to these ambiguities is that of theonomy. Such an answer would be;

1. to produce objects which can be imbued with subjective qualities.

2. by determining all means to an ultimate end, and

3. by so doing, limiting humankind's unlimited freedom to go beyond the given.

For the Spirit no thing is merely a thing, therefore, under the influence of the Spiritual Presence, the split between subject and objectivity can be overcome, and even technical processes can become theonomous. Gearing a whole economy toward the production of a "gadget" and repressing the question of an ultimate end of all production of technical goods is evil, even though the gadget itself is not evil. After an excursion into the nuclear debate and its implications with regard to the splitting of subject and object, Tillich turns to explore the split between subject and object in the self. As this will form part of the discussion on the implications of theonomy, autonomy and heteronomy with regard to the individual person, later in this chapter and the subsequent chapter, attention will now be turned to further cultural implications concerning theonomy.

Under the influence of theonomy, the demonic exclusiveness which is part of the object-subject split in the communal realm, is overcome within the churches by the churches being transformed into a holy community with universal inclusiveness, in so far as the churches represent the Spiritual Community. Arising from the inclusiveness of the churches is the question regarding justice, and implied inequality. Tillich maintains that an equality that is essentially unequal is as unjust as inequality of what is essentially equal. Tillich explains that;

"Under the impact of the Spiritual Presence (which is the same as saying, determined by faith and love), the ultimate equality of everyone who is called to the Spiritual Community is united with the preliminary inequality that is rooted in the self-actualisation of the individual as individual."

He concludes that the theonomous solution of the ambiguities of equality produces a genuine theonomy. He also asserts that democracy is a fragmented actualisation of theonomy brought about by the Spiritual Presence, through or even in opposition to the churches, or outside the overtly religious life. Tillich is open to the possibility of theonomous legislation, which is the work of the spiritual presence effective through the prophetic self-criticism of those responsible for the legislation. The Spiritual Presence removes injustices of the law by fighting against the ideologies which justify them, sometimes directly through the Spiritual Community, sometimes by the creation of prophetic movements within the secular realm.

With regard to ethics, Tillich states that there is a theonomous element in all ethics, however hidden, however secularised, however distorted. His description of theonomous ethics is as follows;

"Theonomous ethics in the full sense of the phrase...is ethics... under the impact of the Spiritual Presence, the religious substance-the experience of an ultimate concern-is consciously expressed through the process of free arguing and not through an attempt to determine it. Intentional theonomy is heteronomy and must be rejected by ethical research. Actual theonomy is autonomous ethics under the Spiritual Presence."

All non-theonomous ethics, are, according to Tillich, unavoidably ethics of the law, and the law makes for the increase in estrangement. Law cannot conquer estrangement, but instead produces hatred of itself as law. Tillich maintains that where there is New Being, there is grace, and vice versa, and that autonomous or heteronomous morality is without ultimate moral motivating power. Only love or the Spiritual presence can motivate. This is because love or Spiritual Presence gives what it demands.

Tillich was anxious to stress that theonomy was not the negation of autonomy, as such it did not attempt to suppress autonomy or its freedom of creativity. Heteronomy, on the other hand undermines creative freedom and the humanity of mankind and it imposes an alien law, religious or secular, on the mind of the person. Honesty and truth and dignity are destroyed by heteronomy and its symbol is the "terror" exercised by absolute churches or absolute states. Theonomy does not stand against autonomy as does heteronomy. Both autonomy and heteronomy are rooted in theonomy, and both go astray when their unity is broken. Genuine heteronomy claims to speak in the name of the ground of being, and therefore in an unconditional and ultimate way. Theonomy on the other hand does not mean the acceptance of divine law imposed on reason by a highest authority. Theonomy is autonomous reason united with its own depth.

In trying to characterise theonomy, Tillich recognised that theonomy possessed three qualities. The first quality of a theonomous culture is in its communication of the experience of holiness which he understands to be the expression of something ultimate in being and meaning in all of culture's creations. The second quality is the affirmation of the autonomous forms of the creative process. Theonomy is absent where, in the name of the holy, a valid demand for justice is rejected, or a valid act of personal self-determination is prevented by a sacred tradition, or a new style of artistic creation is suppressed in the name of assumedly eternal forms of expressiveness. In these cases theonomy is distorted into heteronomy. This is because the element of autonomy is removed. Autonomy is here interpreted as the freedom which characterises the human spirit and it is closely allied to the divine Spirit which is seen to be repressed. When this happens autonomy may break through and suppress heteronomy and also theonomy. The third quality, or characteristic of theonomy is its permanent struggle against an independent heteronomy and an independent autonomy. These are seen as elements within theonomy, because, as Langdon Gilkey noted, theonomy is posterior to both.

Tillich believes that within autonomy there is a question implied. It is the question concerning a religious substance and ultimate meaning of life and culture. He says that religion and culture, in an ideal theonomy cannot exist merely side by side. To do so would mean there would need to be a coordination of the Unconditioned and the conditioned. However, in this event the Unconditioned becomes conditioned and the conditioned becomes Unconditioned. He claims that all culture is actualised religion and religion is actualised culture. Obviously, one cannot separate one from the other. In so far as a church or a spiritual community (which need not be the same) realises this unity of form and import, the more it is characterised as theonomous. However, a simple identification of religion and culture can never be asserted because religion has a dual relation to culture. It contains within itself a No and a Yes to culture. Religion is also truer the more it cancels itself out as religion against culture. Similarly, it is truer the closer it stands to theonomy. In theonomy, the ultimate and most universal expressions of autonomous cultural consciousness are expressed as religious symbols. In a theonomous culture, the autonomous cultural forms radiate the fullness of the import of the Unconditional. The positive and negative valuation of the churches and confessions are enumerated by Tillich as follows;

The churches have a positive valuation;

"inasmuch as they are the focal points of the religious spirit; negative, inasmuch as in their forms they are just as much culture as the secular culture that confronts them; positive, inasmuch as it is an impossibility and an error of the critically rational attitude to suppose that symbols can be made; negative, inasmuch as no symbol may make a claim to absoluteness. The churches with their cultic and mythical symbols are absolute neither toward each other nor toward the forms of secular culture"

This page was last updated on the 16th September 2009