I happen to find in Tillich some thoughts that are dreary, puzzling, harsh, disquieting and disheartening—and seem to belong to an alien religion—he writes that ‘whenever the Divine appears, It is a radical attack on everything that is good in man’–rather nasty ideas—and he goes on: ‘the Divine does not complete the human; It revolts against the human’—it appears more as if the Divine is rejecting the human in the first place, not vice versa—and so this is a very nihilistic Gospel, as if signed by Bataille—which really raises the issue whether Tillich and I belong to the same religion, or have received the same Baptism—such was his attempt to outweigh the anthropomorphism of the liberals; I happen to enjoy the German liberals, people like Troeltsch and Harnack, and so I naturally feel disinclined to approve these nasty attacks. So I guess I’ll rather have Heidegger& Bultmann, without daddy Tillich …. I seem to remember about the digitus paternae dexterae—‘the finger of God is God’s spirit through whom we are sanctified, so that living by faith we may do good works through love’ (S. Augustine).
I generally agree with a certain degree of sensed anthropomorphism.
Tillich wrote the nonsense quoted above in ‘The Shaking …’—which is really an exciting and lovely book—and in the next paragr. he goes on with an unrelated thought, a non sequitur, about God’s kind effacement and gentleness, as if Luther’s word about God made small meant a radical attack on everything that is good in man …–what was it that made him say such things–otherwise, we see godly condescension already on Tabor, and on Horeb, before Christ. And perhaps T. meant divine accommodation, but the change is in the people, not in God, Who’s beyond change; it is the human who gets large enough to resemble God.
As with the Sistine’s ceiling, one must side with Joshua Reynolds—and against Pope Hadrian and Ruskin.