Copyright

by

John Jerome Fournelle

2013
 The Thesis committee for Bethel Seminary

Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

Being and Doing: A Soteriological Integration

of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez

APPROVED BY

SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: ________________________________________

Kyle Andrew Roberts

Being and Doing: A Soteriological Integration

of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez

by

John Jerome Fournelle, B.S.

Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of the Seminary

of Bethel University, Saint Paul

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Masters of Arts in Christian Thought

Bethel Seminary, Saint Paul

May, 2013
 i

Dedication

To Matthew Fischer and Laine Gebhardt,

Voices Crying in the Wilderness

 ii

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the countless friends who have long suffered with me in conversation

around this thesis, including Matthew Fischer and Laine Gebhardt. I especially want to thank

Alex Blondeau who first introduced me to the works of Paul Tillich. Alex has been an excellent

conversation partner and friend throughout this enterprise, and I was honored to present this

thesis with his paper on Tillich at the 2013 Upper Midwest Regional Meeting of the American

Academy of Religion. I also want to thank Courtney Wilder, who facilitated the session where I

presented this work, and who gave insightful and critical feedback that helped in strengthening

my argument. However, above all other persons, I want to thank my supervisor, professor, boss,

colleague, and friend Kyle Roberts who oversaw not only this thesis, but my whole theological

career at Bethel Seminary. This thesis could not have been accomplished without his

supervision, his insight, his expertise, and his inspiration.

 iii

Abstract

This project is a work of integrating the themes of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in a constructive

soteriology. This will be done by correlating Paul Tillich’s existentialist theology with Gustavo

Gutiérrez’s liberation theology. Intersections between the two theologians are found in their

phenomenological methods as well as their emphasis on historical salvation and its dependence

on revelation. These intersections will lead to the thesis that the concept of “the courage to be as

solidarity and protest” is the key to integrating Tillich’s and Gutiérrez’s soteriologies, as well as

the themes of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in a constructive soteriology.

 iv

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
On Soteriology ............................................................................................................................ 1
The Location of the Study: Christianity...................................................................................... 1
On Being ..................................................................................................................................... 2
On Doing ..................................................................................................................................... 5
The Integration of Being and Doing as a Model of a Creative Soteriology ............................... 9
Chapter I – Correlating the Methods........................................................................................ 12
Tillich’s Method........................................................................................................................ 12
Gutiérrez’s Method ................................................................................................................... 15
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 19
Chapter II – The Locus of Salvation ......................................................................................... 21
Gutiérrez’s Understanding of Salvation.................................................................................... 21
Creational Understandings of Salvation .............................................................................. 21
Eschatological Understandings of Salvation ........................................................................ 23
The Historical and the Spiritual: An Eschatological Misinterpretation .............................. 26
Tillich’s Understanding of Salvation ........................................................................................ 27
Revelation and Salvation ...................................................................................................... 27
The Objective Dimension of Salvation: The New Being in Jesus as the Christ as the Power
of Salvation ........................................................................................................................... 29
The Subjective Dimension of Salvation: The Spiritual Community and the Experience of the
New Being ............................................................................................................................. 33
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 37
Chapter III – The Courage to Be as Solidarity and Protest ................................................... 37
The Courage to Be .................................................................................................................... 38
Solidarity and Protest ................................................................................................................ 41
Being and Doing: The Courage to Be as Solidarity and Protest ............................................... 43
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 46
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................. 48
 v

List of Abbreviations

ST – Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (3 volumes). Page citation includes volume and page
number. For example, a “1:100” citation means that the citation can be found on page 100 in the
first volume.

CT – Paul Tillich, History of Christian Thought (2 volumes). Page citation includes volume and
page number. For example, a “2:30” citation means that the citation can be found on page 30 in
the second volume.

CB – Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be.

TOL – Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation.

Note on Style

While I use gender neutral pronouns through my writing, I have not amended Tillich’s quotes to

make them gender inclusive. I chose to do this to preserve the historical style of Tillich’s writing

as well as to exercise simplicity in quotation.

 Introduction

On Soteriology

Soteriology is the study of the concept of salvation in all of its multiform expressions. It

is the reflection on the hopes and dreams of people who long for a saving action, the alleviation

of suffering, and the reconciliation of wrongdoing. To be saved from death, evil, sin, from our

enemies and from ourselves; these are but a few of the contexts from which salvation is cried. It

is important, when defining something as broad and elusive as salvation, to describe one’s

feelings when one contemplates the gravity of salvation.

It is the sharp inhale of pain, held within the lungs, that leads to the soothing exhale of

relief from the release of burdens. It is the realignment of the body, the reordering of that which

was broken, misaligned, or out of place. It is the cleansing tear, as well as the hand that wipes it

away. It is the source of life; it is the power of life, and the proliferation of life. It is that which

gives movement back to the motionless, energy to the spent, life to the dead things. It is that

which pushes forward, that which unites alongside, and that which preserves by stepping back.

These are the experiences that constitute, albeit non-extensively, the being and doing of

salvation.

The Location of the Study: Christianity

It must be first noted that this study of soteriology is being done from the location of

Christian theology. A Christian soteriology is one that is concerned with salvation from death,

evil, and sin. Christian soteriology includes reflection on the significance of Jesus the Christ’s

life, death, and resurrection (atonement) for the accomplishment and attainment of salvation, as

well as the life and faith of the Christian in light of salvation. When it comes to the atonement, it

is typical for Christian soteriologies to emphasize one feature over the others. It may be the case
 2

that Jesus’s life is emphasized, where salvation is best identified in following the example of

Jesus’ ministry as a path towards salvific healing and reconciliation. However, it may be the case

that Jesus’ death is emphasized, where salvation is seen in the forgiveness of sins through a

sacrificial death in place of sinful humanity. Finally, it may be the case that Jesus’ resurrection is

emphasized, where salvation is seen as not only the triumph over death, but in the transformative

power of bringing about new creation.

While it is easy to suggest that an integrated approach to the atonement (seeing Jesus’

life, death, and resurrection as important for a soteriology, and certainly neither emphasis would

do so to the explicit exclusion of the other), it is more difficult to apply the significance of the

atonement to soteriology after the event of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. By this I

mean that the application of soteriology after the Christ-event (what Tillich refers to as the

“subjective elements” of salvation) is always up for debate. What do the life, death, and

resurrection of Jesus Christ mean and do for life now? Thus, we run into great problems of the

significance of soteriology for the lived experience of humanity. In other words, what is the

significance of soteriology in the here and now as opposed to the not-yet?

On Being

What is being? Superficially speaking, being is. Being is the is, as well as the was, but

also the will be. Being is that which gives something its –ness or its –ity,; it gives character to the

characteristics, category to its categorical, identity to its identification. Perhaps in a more formal

manner, let us consider Étienne Gilson’s survey of being. 1 First, being is understood as a noun as

either the “substance, nature, and essence” of anything that exists (an “existent”) or “being

1
Gilson is an existentialist Thomist and scholar of medieval theology. His survey of metaphysics in Being and Some
Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2nd edition, 1952) helps frame the discussion in a
different way than the present study.
 3

itself,” which Gilson understands as the “property common to all that which can rightly be said

to be.”2 This “ontological difference” is precisely what Heidegger argued had been forgotten by

the history of Western thought. And yet, the distinctive mode or entity of human beings is what

Heidegger called Dasein, “there-being,” the openness of a being to its own Being, Being-itself.3

One of the most significant moves in understanding Being-itself is in its theologization.

Whereas Sartre is skeptical of one’s relation or connection to Being-itself,4 existential

theologians take Heidegger’s relational understanding of Dasein and Being-itself and theologize

it. Tillich does this through integrating Protestant theology with existentialism. At the beginning

of the second part of his Systematic Theology, “Being and God,” Tillich asserts that “the basic

theological question is the question of God. God is the answer implied in being.” 5 This statement

reflects his method of correlation, where philosophical questions (such as the nature of being) are

answered theologically (such as ‘God’ as an answer to ‘being’).6

Tillich’s argument for this goes as follows: One considers the question of being through

experiencing the “shock of nonbeing.”7 One’s being that is limited by nonbeing is understood as

one’s finitude; “nonbeing appears as the ‘not yet’ of being and as the ‘no more of being.’ It

confronts that which is with a definite end (finis).”8 Thus, this shock of nonbeing, this awareness

of finitude, is characterized in the “ontological quality” of anxiety. 9 For most of Christian

theology, the answer or solution to anxiety of one’s finitude is in the assertion of the existence of

2
Gilson, 2-3.
3
Heidegger, Being and Time, H. 27. As Heidegger writes, “Dasein means: care of the Being of beings as such that is
ecstatically disclosed in care, not only of human Being…Dasein is itself by virtue of its essential relation to Being in
general” (H. 31).
4
Cf. Sartre, Being and Nothingness.
5
Tillich, ST 1:162.
6
We will address the method of correlation in more detail further on in the study.
7
Tillich, ST 1:186.
8
Ibid., 1:189.
9
Ibid., 1:191.
 4

God, usually through complex arguments from ontology or cosmological (re: Aquinas,

Whitehead, etc.).10 However, it is here that Tillich states one of his most controversial

statements: “God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to

argue that God exists is to deny him.”11 Tillich follows this with a statement perhaps less known

than the previous but just as controversial: “The arguments for the existence of God neither are

arguments nor are they proof of the existence of god. They are expressions of the questions of

God which is implied in human finitude. This question is their truth; every answer they give is

untrue.”12 Thus, for Tillich, “‘God’ is the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude; he is

the name for that which concerns man ultimately.” 13

What does this mean for a discussion on ‘being?’ God does not exist because God is not a

being. Rather, God is Being-itself.14 This is so because humanity is ultimately concerned with its

own being, or, Being-itself. Tillich thus points to Being-itself as God. In yet another

controversial, but prophetic statement, Tillich writes: “[…] God is being-itself or the absolute.

However, after this has been said, nothing else can be said about God as God which is not

symbolic.”15

And yet, one more thing must be said about ‘being,’ and that is that being can also be

understood as a verb in the sense of ‘to be,’ or “the very act whereby any given reality actually

10
This is why we included Gilson’s survey of being at the beginning while differentiating from him. The direction
of this study will diverge from certain Thomistic arguments, even if it benefits from them as in incorporating Gilson.
11
Tillich, ST 1:205.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., 1:211.
14
Ibid., 1:237
15
Ibid., 1:239
 5

is, or exists.”16 Gilson understands the relationship between the noun of being and the verb of

being to be an ir-reciprocal relationship, where:

'Being' is conceivable, 'to be' is not. We cannot possibly conceive an 'is' except as
belonging to some thing that is, or exists. But the reverse is not true. Being is
quite conceivable apart from actual existence; so much so that the very first and
the most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which
divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible.17
Perhaps we can understand a relationship of the noun of being as the reality of being, but the

verb of ‘to be’ as both the reality and the possibility of being. It is the reality of the very act of

existence, but it is also the possibility or being. For Gilson, “a 'possible' is a being which has not

yet received, or which has already lost, its own to be.”18 ‘To be’ as the possible implies both the

“existence” of that which is possible, but also the possible being becoming real. A major

presupposition for this paper is to correlate ‘becoming’ with salvation, a move Tillich seldom

discusses in his Systematic Theology.19 Because of this, I will argue for a more pronounced

synthesis of being and becoming in salvation, of integrating the noun of being/salvation to the

verb of becoming/salvation. But to do that, we need something more that “being.” We need

“doing.”

On Doing

Doing is the question of ethics, of ‘what should we do.’ However, the question is not

simply ‘what we should do,’ as in, ‘whether we should move or not move,’ but rather the

16
Gilson, 3
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
The most significant area where Tillich discusses “becoming” is in his first volume of Systematic Theology: “[…]
it is impossible to speak of being without also speaking of becoming. Becoming is just as genuine in the structure of
being as is that which remains unchanged in the process of becoming. And, vice versa, becoming would be
impossible if nothing were preserved in it as the measure of change. A process philosophy [italics mine] which
sacrifices in it as the persisting identity of that which is in process sacrifices the process itself, its continuity, the
relation of what is conditioned to its conditions, the inner aim (telos) which makes a process a whole” (1:181). In
fact, the only other places where Tillich discusses “becoming” is in relation to process philosophies and theologies
(3:25, 26, 50, 404-406). Thus, it seems his hesitancy to use a category such as “becoming” is because of its
implications with “process.”
 6

question is on ‘what is the right, good, healthy, true, honest, and correct thing to do.’ And yet,

the decision to do, to act, implies an ethical decision in and of itself. There are times to remain

still and there are times to move, there are times to do and times to not do. A myriad of pre-

decisions necessitate a decision to do or not to do, and these are subject to a person’s moral

decision making. However, doing or not doing is also a politic, in that it is a contemplation and

decision to act in correspondence within a community of persons that are in some way affected

by the decision made by the decider. The act of doing is necessitated by both our own reasoning

as to what is right or wrong to do (ethic) as well as how it is to affect others (politic).

Among the classical ethics positions, there are deontological, consequentialist, and the

virtue approaches. Deontological ethics focuses on the moral rights and duties of an individual.

For the deontologist, one must do what one considers to be right regardless of the consequences.

Kant’s categorical imperatives are an example of a deontological ethic, which dictate an ethical

response regardless of the consequence (treat humans as ends, not as ends in themselves).

Consequentialist ethics focuses on the duty to a justifiable end as an ethic. In focusing on the

consequences of an action as being the driving force of the ethic, a consequentialist pays

attention to understanding the relationship of cause and effect, wherein acting morally means

acting so in a way to bring about a justifiable end. Finally, virtue ethics, contrary to the other

perspectives, does not ask the question ‘what should I do’ but rather “what kind of person should

I be?” In this, virtue ethics focuses on the development of character rather than the demonstration

of ‘right’ action (deontologically or consequentially) as a starting point in ethics. From this

perspective, virtue ethics focuses primarily on being rather than doing, wherein the virtue

represented in a person will shape the virtuous action the person will choose.
 7

Because of virtue ethics’ concern for the character of a person as defining one’s actions,

we see attention to one’s being, action, and decision making. And yet, a great problem with

virtue ethics is what we could address as the question of an ontology of virtue, that is, the locus

of virtue as well as the constitution of virtue. Where does our idea of virtue come from? For

Aristotle, virtue is known through the golden mean between the vices of excess and the vices of

deficiency. And yet, this begs the question further of whence the vices as well as the virtues. An

ontology of virtue would have to give such great attention to developing a theory of virtue that it

would risk not practicing the virtues; it would be so engrossed in its own theorizing that it would

not apply itself in the real world. At some point, reflection must cede to itself and action must

manifest itself.

To expand on the problem of virtue, let us use poverty as a case study in virtue ethics,

using the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian father of liberation theology. For Gutiérrez,

there are two stereotypical (and misunderstood) understandings of ‘poverty.’ First, there is the

understanding of material poverty, or, “the lack of economic goods necessary for a human life

worthy of the name. In this sense poverty is considered something degrading and is rejected by

the conscience of contemporary persons.”20 However, Gutiérrez observes that Christians often

give material poverty “a positive value, considering it almost a human and religious ideal.” 21 It

seems to be that poverty is thus made a virtue. Gutiérrez makes the connection that Christianity

tends to sees poverty-as-virtue as an example of “austerity and indifference to the things of this

world and a precondition for a life in conformity with the Gospel.” 22 Gutiérrez connects this

stance towards the second understanding of poverty, that of spiritual poverty. This understanding

20
Gutiérrez, TOL, 163.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
 8

of spiritual poverty “allows for the case of the rich person who is spiritually poor as well as for

the poor person who is rich at heart.”23 The problem with this, Gutiérrez recognizes, is that in

claiming to be based on the Beatitude of Matthew concerning ‘the poor in spirit,’

this approach in the long run leads to comforting and tranquilizing conclusions
[…] to dead ends and to affirmations that the interior attitude must necessarily be
incarnated in a testimony of material poverty.24
Thus, poverty is recognized as “part of the condition—seen with a certain fatalism—of

marginalized peoples, ‘the poor,’ who are an object of our mercy.” 25 In combining these

understandings of poverty, we see dangers in “virtue-izing” the poor themselves. The greatest

danger is the propagation of a virtue of poverty that is a direct result of the marginalization of

people. The poor are poor not just because of decisions they have made, but because of

institutional, national, and global factors that place people into situations of poverty—and even

worse—keep them there. How then could anyone attempt to draw virtue out of marginalization?

It’s because of this that Gutiérrez argues that we must not.

For Gutiérrez, material poverty as portrayed in the Bible “is a scandalous condition

inimical to human dignity and therefore contrary to the will of God.” 26 Just as well, the Bible

portrays the poor as “the ‘client of Yahweh, poverty is ‘the ability to welcome God, an openness

to God, a willingness to be used by God, a humility before God.’” 27As a means of resolving the

tension between the two understandings, one could argue for the virtue of justice to be exercised,

but that just illustrates the problem all the more: a virtue is not virtuous on its own, but only in its

exercise. Thus, a virtue like justice can only make sense and can only work if the principles of

being and doing are integrated. In the same way, a process like reconciliation can only make

23
Ibid., 164.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid., 163
26
Ibid., 165.
27
Ibid., 169. Gutiérrez cites Albert Gelin, The Poor of Yahweh, 26.
 9

sense and work if being and doing are integrated. And finally, and most crucial, a doctrine like

soteriology can only make sense and work if being and doing are integrated.

The Integration of Being and Doing as a Model of a Creative Soteriology

And so, in this study, I will present an integrated, holistic, creative soteriology that pays

attention to the dynamic of being and doing through the synthesis of the soteriologies of Paul

Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez. Tillich’s soteriology attends to the dynamic of being through his

existentialist theology, and Gutiérrez’s soteriology attends to the dynamic of doing through his

liberation theology, and yet there will be moments where the theologies will cross over their own

categories. Integrating an existentialist theology with a liberation theology seems at first to be a

daunting exercise for several reasons. Perhaps the greatest ‘daunter’ is the cultural dynamic,

where existentialist theology has been and remains to be a predominantly white-Eurocentric-

male enterprise and liberation a non-white endeavor. Even though liberation theology is in

countless ways indebted to Marxist theory, the situation of the theologian within Latin America

is what distinguishes it. And yet, in Tillich, we have allusions to socialist thought, especially in

his earlier material (i.e. The Religious Situation (1925), The Socialist Decision (1933). Even so,

this study will focus more on the later Tillich and his Systematic Theology, where there are still

many opportunities for integration with Gutiérrez.

As a path towards integrating the two theologians, I will look at two areas as a means of

solidifying the case for their integration. First, I will examine the methods of each theologian.

Both Tillich and Gutiérrez situate their theology within existence, meaning their concerns are

more phenomenological than essentialist. Tillich frames his theology within the method of

correlation, correlating “the contents of the Christian faith through existential questions and
 10

theological answers […].”28 Gutiérrez, however, frames his theology as “a critical reflection on

Christian praxis in light of the word of God.”29 Thus, for Gutiérrez, the method of correlation is

not existential questions with theological answers, but situational and praxis-oriented questions

with theological answers. In line with their method being localized within existence, the second

correlation I make between Tillich and Gutiérrez is in the locus of their soteriology within

historical revelation. For both theologians, history is the arena in which salvation plays out.

While taking seriously eschatological concerns in a soteriological framework, both argue that the

work of salvation is primarily a past/present activity, and not primarily a future work, even if

both have an eschatological picture of salvation.

These considerations lead to my conclusion, where I argue the synthesis of being and

doing within Tillich and Gutiérrez is to be found in the integrative concept of “the courage to be

as solidarity and protest.” This concept illustrates the reality of salvation-in-existence as a

participatory measure with lasting, eschatological consequences. In Tillich, the “courage to be”

is affirming one’s being in spite of the threat of non-being. Earlier in the introduction, I discussed

Tillich’s doctrine of God as Being-itself. For Tillich, it is the courage to be that opens oneself up

to God as Being-itself. Also, in the introduction, I discussed Gutiérrez’s discussion of poverty.

At the end of his Theology of Liberation, Gutiérrez argues for solidarity with the poor as well as

a prophetic protest against poverty itself and the forces that marginalize the poor. I will

synthesize this with Tillich’s courage to be, where the experience of salvation is the affirmation

of one’s being in spite of the threat of marginalization as non-being. In a similar sense, the

exercise of true, authentic, spiritual poverty is a kenotic embrace of true being in the face of non-

28
Tillich, ST 1:60.
29
Gutiérrez, TOL, xxix
 11

being. In and through this we will have a synthesis of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez, a

synthesis of existential and liberation theologies, and ultimately, a synthesis of being and doing.
 12

Chapter I – Correlating the Methods

Tillich’s Method

One of the most significant motifs in Tillich’s thought is his method of correlation, which

is the explanation of “the contents of the Christian faith through existential questions and

theological answers […].”30 The method begins with “an analysis of the human situation out of

which the existential questions arise, and it demonstrates that the symbols used in Christian

theology are the answers to these questions.” 31 Let us parse out this definition. By existential

questions we mean the basic questions of human existence and its significance. These questions

are “as old as man’s thinking about himself.”32 Tillich expands on the gravity of these questions:

Whenever man has looked at his world, he has found himself in it as a part of it.
But he also has realized that he is a stranger in the world of objects, unable to
penetrate it beyond a certain level of scientific analysis. And then he has become
aware of the fact that he himself is the door to the deeper levels of reality, that in
his own existence he has the only possible approach to existence itself.33
Existential reflection is found not only in philosophy, but in “poetry, drama, the novel,

therapeutic psychology, and sociology.” 34 The theologian is tasked with the endeavor to

“organize[s] these materials in relation to the answer given by the Christian message. In the light

of this message he may make an analysis of existence which is more penetrating that of most

philosophers. Nevertheless, it remains a philosophical analysis.” 35

But theology is warranted to make this correlation with philosophy because of its

differences as well as its similarities. After all, a correlation would have to pay attention to the

dialectic of similarity and difference in order to make sense of the symbolism of the correlation.

30
Tillich, ST 1:60.
31
Ibid., 1:62.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 1:63.
35
Ibid.
 13

The differences are simply from the distinctions between the two disciplines, whereas the

similarities are the points of convergence in their methodological concern. For Tillich,

“philosophy deals with the structure of being in itself; theology deals with the meaning of being

for us.”36

One difference in each discipline lies in their “cognitive attitude,” where according to

Tillich, philosophy attempts to maintain a “detached objectivity toward being and its structures,”

while theology “is not detached from [its] object but is involved in it […] the basic attitude of

[theology] is a commitment to the content [it] expounds.”37 For Tillich, theology is a study of the

object of our ultimate concern, wherein an ultimate concern is that which determines one’s being

or nonbeing.38 These are, for Tillich, the “two formal criteria of every theology.” Thus, the

distinction between theology as a discipline and the theologies of the religions must be made. In

any theology, the theos of ‘theology’ is any ultimate concern that symbolically becomes

‘G/god’.39

Yet, interestingly, Tillich makes the move to assert that Christianity is “the theology”40

that “all religions and cultures move toward the Christian answer.” 41 This is the case, according

to Tillich, “in so far as it is based on the tension between the absolutely concrete and the
36
Ibid., 1:22. At first glance, this statement seems like a stereotypical neo-orthodox/dialectical theology move to
emphasize the importance of theology over the other ‘sciences.’ However, as we will see in the next chapter,
Tillich’s doctrine of revelation is distinct from the neo-orthodox reformers (Barth, Niebuhr, etc.) in that it
emphasizes the imminent God over the transcendent God. A statement like the one cited may be an example of
Tillich navigating the boundaries between philosopher and theologian, even if historically he is more a theologian.
See his autobiography, On the Boundary: An Autobiographical Sketch, for more on his reflection on his place as a
theologian. Thus, I would argue that Tillich’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology
does not mean that philosophy is not concerned with the significance of being, but the language of theological
reflection reflects the characteristic of meaning in a distinct way that philosophy cannot.
37
Ibid., 1:22-23.
38
Ibid., 1:12-14.
39
Tillich uses two examples to illustrate this: the case of the nation-state as being an ultimate concern for
nationalism and the principle of success as an ultimate concern for American capitalism throughout Dynamics of
Faith.
40
Ibid., 1:16, emphasis his.
41
Ibid.
 14

absolutely universal.”42 Christianity holds within its own discourse the key to the very discipline

of theology because of its own doctrine of the incarnation, a doctrine that explicates the very idea

of the tension of the absolutely concrete and the absolutely universal in Jesus as the Christ. 43 So

Tillich writes:

But it is necessary to accept the vision of early Christianity that if Jesus is called
the Christ he must represent everything particular and must be the point of
identity between the absolutely concrete and the absolutely universal. In so far as
he is absolutely concrete, the relation to him can be a completely existential
concern. In so far as he is absolutely universal, the relation to him includes
potentially all possible relations and can, therefore, be unconditional and infinite.
(…) We can be only in that which is absolutely concrete and absolutely universal
at the same time.44
In light of this, Tillich also argues that the sources for philosophy and theology are different. For

philosophy, the source is in the faculty of common reason, or logos, where for theology the

source is the Logos, or, the “logos manifesting itself in a particular historical event,” that event in

Christian theology being the event of Jesus as the Christ.45 A third distinction is in their content,

where, for Tillich, philosophy deals with “the categories of being in relation to the material

which is structured by them.”46 Theology, on the other hand, “relates the same categories and

42
Ibid.
43
This designation is crucial to Tillich’s Christology, and thus requires some parsing. By “Jesus,” Tillich refers to
the man Jesus of Nazareth. By “Christ,” Tillich refers to the title. Tillich makes this distinction because he wants to
stress two facets of the Christ event equal: first is the fact of Jesus of Nazareth and second is the reception of him as
the Christ (ST 2:97). “Jesus is the ‘anointed one’ in that he received the office of the Christ or became the Christ. For
Tillich, the reception of the Christian event is as important as its ontological givenness” (Newport, 116, his
emphasis. Tillich, ST 2:97-99). Christianity rests on the foundation of the reception of Jesus of Nazareth as the
Christ.
44
Tillich, ST 1:17.
45
Ibid., 1:23-24.
46
Ibid., 1:24. Tillich provides multiple examples including “the epistemological subject and the relation of person
and community,” as well as defining “nature and history in their mutual limits and tr[ying] to penetrate into ontology
and logic of being and nonbeing.”
 15

concepts to the quest for a ‘new being.’”47 This, Tillich asserts, constitutes “a soteriological

character.”48

The method of correlation is a means of linking the existential concerns of humanity—

reflections characterized by their philosophical, psychological, and sociological (among others)

situatedness—with answers given by theological narratives. For Christianity, the answers it gives

best address the questions asked by persons because the answers best address the implicit

attention to the existential dilemma of the tension between absolute concreteness and absolute

universality. Theology speaks to the ultimate need of humanity, which is one’s being, especially

in the midst of the threat of non-being. The questions of one’s being (and the threat of non-being)

are theologically answered in the doctrine of God as Being-Itself. While this concern is

important for humanity, one consideration that must be addressed is this: “is this still the ultimate

need of humanity, especially within the context of suffering?” “How does God as Being-Itself

address the problem of suffering, if it does at all? Here we find a great critique from Gutiérrez as

well as an opportunity for integration.

Gutiérrez’s Method

In Gutiérrez, we also find a sort of method of correlation. However, it is not philosophy

asking the questions to which theology answers; no, the correlative activity is much more

‘critical.’ For Gutiérrez, a theology of liberation is “a critical reflection on Christian praxis in

47
Ibid.
48
Ibid. Tillich expounds: “[The theologian] discusses causality in relation to a prima causa, the ground of a whole
series of causes and effects; he deals with time in relation to eternity, which space in relation to man’s existential
homelessness. He speaks of the self-estrangement of the subject, about the spiritual center of personal life, and about
community as a possible embodiment of the ‘New Being.’ He relates the structures of life to the creative ground of
like and the structures of spirit to the divine Spirit. He speaks of the participation of nature in the ‘history of
salvation,’ about the victory of being over nonbeing.”
 16

light of the word of God.” 49 As we did with Tillich, we will parse this very important statement.

First, the question must be asked as to who is reflecting on Christian praxis in light of the word

of God? In a theology of liberation, it is the poor and marginalized, and in Gutiérrez’s theology

of liberation, it is specifically the poor and marginalized of Latin America. These people are

those “Christian communities, religious groups, and peoples, who are becoming increasingly

conscious that the oppression and neglect from which they suffer are incompatible with their

faith in Jesus Christ (or, speaking more generally, with their religious faith). 50

It is a reflection made by those who have been forgotten, those who have been ignored,

cast out, silenced, and abused by society and the church.51 It is their self-awareness of their

dehumanization that leads them to assert their own humanity and become authors in their own

theological narrative. The “irruption of the poor” forces all to recognize the “new presence of

those who in fact used to be ‘absent’ from our society and from the church,” meaning those “of

little or no importance, and without the opportunity to give expression themselves to their

sufferings, their comraderies, their plans, their hopes.”52 But now, in a theology of liberation, the

perspective of the poor is coming to be the norm of theologizing, where, as Gutiérrez writes:

being poor today is also increasingly coming to mean being involved in the
struggle for justice and peace, defending one’s life and freedom, seeking a more
democratic participation in the decisions made by society, organizing ‘to live their
faith in an integral way’ (Puebla, 1137), and being committed to the liberation of
every human being.53
It is through of the recognition of the poor, the formerly absent, that we come to realize another

cornerstone of liberation theology: the preferential option for the poor. Gutiérrez is quick to

acknowledge the tension of affirming “the universality of God’s love and God’s predilection for

49
Gutiérrez, TOL, xxix.
50
Ibid., xix
51
Ibid., xx
52
Ibid., xx
53
Ibid., xxi-xxii
 17

those on the lowest rung of the ladder of history,” and to affirm that any “exclusive emphasis

must be rejected.”54

The method of correlation for liberation theology, then, is the dialectic of social praxis

asking the questions of existence to theology (or more like demanding an answer from theology).

The answers given serve two “apologetic” purposes. First, the answers are to provide apology (in

the sense of confession of wrong-doing) for the church’s participatory propagation of the

suffering of the marginalized, but also its very existence as a result of such a misappropriation of

the gospel message.55 Second, the answers are to provide a new apologetic for the church’s

rediscovered purpose of solidarity with the poor and marginalized. If the first step is to

acknowledge and repent of the old theology that enabled suffering, the second step is the

advocacy and proliferation of a new theology that liberates suffering. In this case, the preferential

option of the poor signifies God’s predilection for those suffering under unjust authorities.

Theology’s answer to the plight of the poor and marginalized is liberation as salvation. This,

then, becomes the norm of a liberation theology.

Thus, for Gutiérrez, a new understanding of salvation is in dire need as a response to the

social ills present in Latin America. Because of the “conviction of the radical incompatibility of

54
Ibid., xxvi. The assertion of God’s universal love means just that: all are loved by God. Even in light of the
preferential option for the poor, God’s love includes the rich. The preferential option for the poor, however, means
several things. In the Medellín document “Poverty and the Church,” the Latin American bishops asserted “the
Lord’s distinct commandment to ‘evangelize the poor’ ought to bring us to a distribution of resources and apostolic
personnel that effectively gives preference to the poorest and most need sectors and to those segregated for any
cause whatsoever, animating and accelerating the initiatives and studies that or already being made with that goal in
mind” (9). Gutiérrez comments that “the very word ‘preference’ denies all exclusiveness and seeks rather to call
attention to those who are the first—though not the only ones—with whom we should be in solidarity” (TOL, xxv-
vi).
55
Gutiérrez quotes J.B. Metz in his challenge to the church: “Today it is more the person of faith who lives within
the Church than he who lives outside it to whom the faith must be justified” (Risposti dei theology, 68). This is
fitting, in that, the church is presented with the case to justify its existence in the midst of (and even the propagation
of) great social ills. For the church to justify its existence in the midst of such great evils, a simple apology is
insufficient. It requires a radical re-appropriation of the gospel message that since was lost in its misappropriation of
the faith for the sake of Western abuses through colonization and development.
 18

evangelical demands with an unjust and alienating society,” Christians must “participate in the

liberation of oppressed peoples and exploited social classes.”56 The evangelical demand is no

longer development (desarrollo) but liberation; it is not the heteronomous demand of personal

salvation vis-à-vis submission to authority, but rather, it is the salvific “passage from […] slavery

to freedom” through Christ.57 This leads Gutiérrez to declare that “one of the great deficiencies

of contemporary theology is the absence of a profound and lucid reflection on the theme of

salvation.”58

A reason for the lack of a “profound and lucid reflection” is the emphasis of the

“quantitative” aspects of salvation over the “qualitative” elements. The quantitative element

includes the issues of how many people are saved, the very “possibility” of being saved, and how

the church participates in the “process.”59 Gutiérrez argues that these questions have, in essence,

become an irrelevant point. The “evolution of the [quantitative] question” has ended in light the

“universality of the salvific will of God, clearly enunciated by Paul in his letter to Timothy.” 60

Rather, the question that remains is the salvific expression in real earthly life as the “communion

of human beings with God and among themselves.” 61 This intensive, qualitative soteriology is

56
Gutiérrez, TOL, 81.
57
Ibid., 23.
58
Ibid., 83.
59
Ibid., 83-4
60
Ibid., 84. This is a strong claim to make, but Gutiérrez legitimizes it by acknowledging the “great difficulty” in
which it was accepted (85). Still, a significant hurdle to overcome when relating liberation soteriology with others is
this question of the extent of salvation. While, in our correlation of Tillich and Gutiérrez this will not pose to be a
significant problem, it does pose a significant problem with more conservative, evangelical, and/or Calvinistic
soteriologies. Among these soteriologies, while the question of God’s universal salvific will may be agreed upon,
the actuality of this will being exercised is still a question to be addressed. While God’s will may be universal
salvation, the constraints of sin may still prove to be a thwarting issue in the accomplishment of universal salvation.
We see this problem in satisfaction/penal substitution atonement theories, where God may desire all to be saved, but
due to the demands of divine retributive justice in the face of sin and ultimate disobedience, salvation may only be
realized in the acceptance of and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ through his atoning sacrifice.
61
Ibid., 85. Gutiérrez identifies this as the transition from the quantitative “extensive” question to the qualitative
“intensive” question (84).
 19

one that sees the salvific process as the “transformation and fulfillment of the present life.” 62

This dynamic of salvation must be understood in two categories that Gutiérrez describes: the

historical and the Christological. The historical dynamic pays attention to the unity of the history

of salvation (creational and eschatological combined),63 and the Christological dynamic looks at

the very person and principle of Christ as the dynamic of intensive salvation.

Conclusion

Thus, what is most similar about the methods of Tillich and Gutiérrez is that the

questions that are asked by both are existential questions: they are concerned with the state of

existence of the questioners and their lived experiences. While the difference is in the manner of

existential questions, the location of the questions is within existence. One understanding that

could be helpful in navigating the differences would be to illustrate them as dialectical

differences of inward and outward theologies. In Tillich’s existential theology, as best

demonstrated in his Systematic Theology, we can see an emphasis on the intersections of

psychology and theology, and so the methodological emphases are more “inward” or “internal.”

In Gutiérrez’s liberation theology, as best demonstrated in his A Theology of Liberation, we can

see an emphasis on the intersections of sociology and theology, and so the methodological

emphases are more “outward” or “external.

And yet, this could only serve as an analogy because, after all, this project seeks to find

the correlations, places of intersection, and integration between Tillich and Gutiérrez. Thus, we

cannot say Tillich is exclusively, primarily, or even at the least predominantly internal whereas

Gutiérrez is external. No, this would be a disservice to the creativity of each theologian’s system.

62
Ibid., 85
63
Which will be discussed in the following chapter.
 20

Yet, if the analogy is helpful for differentiation, we can use it, but only in anticipation of their

integration and especially not in their mutual exclusion. The intersections between Tillich and

Gutiérrez are all the more highlighted in the next chapter. For both Tillich and Gutiérrez,

salvation is ultimately located within history, and the revelation of God is itself salvation; the

focus of a supernatural eschatological salvation is deemphasized over the historical

eschatological salvation.
 21

Chapter II – The Locus of Salvation

Gutiérrez’s Understanding of Salvation

In a move against (stereo)typical Christian theologies that drive a separation between the

histories of the secular and the sacred, Gutiérrez proclaims that there is one history, “one human

destiny, irreversibly assumed by Christ, the Lord of history.” 64 In this move, Gutiérrez is

justifying his claim that salvation is ultimately this-worldly and not other-worldly. Existence is

history, and history is existence; both are categorically indivisible.

Creational Understandings of Salvation

“Creation appears as the first salvific act,” and creation reappears throughout all history

and thereon as salvific acts of self-creation and re-creation (fulfillment).65 History begins through

creation, and history is the arena in which God’s “salvific adventure[s]” plays out. 66 To

appreciate this assertion is part of the reinterpretation of salvation along the lines Gutiérrez has

already set out. If salvation is understood as the entrance into communion with God through the

forgiveness of sins and justification of the sinner, then salvation cannot be understood as creation

but only as redemption. However, for Gutiérrez, since history is one, creation must be

understood as salvation, for salvation is the “communion of human beings with God and among

themselves.”67 If God is present within history, the salvation must be present as well. At any

juncture where God and humanity meet each other and themselves, thus there salvation is as

well.

64
Gutiérrez, TOL, 86. “The history of salvation is the very heart of human history.”
65
Ibid., 87.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid., 86.
 22

If salvation is present always within history, what then of sin? What then of the

metanarratival stage of the fall within God’s salvific history? Consider Gutiérrez’s comment on

sin:

Therefore, sin is not only an impediment to salvation in the afterlife. Insofar as it

constitutes a break with God, sin is a historical reality, it is a breach of the
communion of persons with each other, it is a turning in of individuals on
themselves which manifests itself in a multifaceted withdrawal from others. And
because sin is a personal and social intrahistorical reality, a part of the daily
events of human life, it is also, and above all, an obstacle to life’s reaching the
fullness we call salvation.68
Thus, sin/fall is not a new stage within the metanarratival salvific history; it is a reality that exists

within and in-spite-of history as salvation.69 And yet, in every instance of sin, of separation from

God, there is always an instance of liberation to be realized. Gutiérrez uses the illustration of the

Egyptian exodus as an example of creation and liberation within a history plagued by evil and

sin. It is through liberation that the creation of a new people, a new order is realized. 70 It is “a

historical-salvific fact which structures the faith of Israel.”71

Just as the exodus and constitution of Israel was an act of salvific creation, so too is the

work of Christ. While the work of Christ is considered to be a “re-creation and presented in a

context of creation,” it is also presented as a “part of this movement” and its fulfillment. 72 It is a

new creation, a re-creation, but also it is the event in which “creation acquires its full

68
Ibid., 85.
69
The similarities between Tillich’s and Gutiérrez’s hamartiology are fascinating, even if both approach it separately
from their own contexts. Both seem to view the fall symbolically, but both describe the symbol differently. For
Tillich, the fall is “a religious expression” of humanity’s fall from essence to existence (ST 2:29). Thus, Tillich’s
understanding of the fall takes on a much more psychological emphasis, whereas Gutiérrez’s takes on a more
sociological (re: “because sin is a personal and social intrahistorical reality.”) emphasis. This is again another
opportunity to view Tillich as more “internal” and Gutiérrez as more “external,” but to do that would only serve as
an analogy and not be definitive.
70
Gutiérrez, TOL, 88.
71
Ibid., 89
72
Ibid., 90.
 23

meaning.”73 What is to be said here is that through the work of Christ creation reaches its

fulfillment through this ultimate salvific act. Gutiérrez writes:

In Christ and through the Spirit, persons are becoming one in the very heart of
history, as they confront and struggle against all that divides and opposes them.
But the true agents of this quest for unity are those who are oppressed
(economically, politically, culturally) and struggle to become free. Salvation—
totally and freely given by God, the communion of human beings with God and
among themselves—is the inner force and the fullness of this movement of human
self-generation initiated by the work of creation.74
Eschatological Understandings of Salvation

Besides the creational aspects of history playing into salvation, there are the

eschatological. The historical-eschatological dimension to salvation is exemplified in the

principle of the “Promise.” In Gutiérrez, we can draw out two ideas relating to the theme of

“promise”: the idea of the Promise, and the idea of promises. The Promise can be understood as

“the efficacious revelation of God’s love and self-communication” to humanity. 75 It is the

salvation-presence throughout all history, but it is manifested paradoxically as the guarantee of

that-which-has-not-happened-but-will-happen by virtue of God’s presence there. The

paradoxical and yet mutual interdependency of the historical and the eschatological is held in

tension as a salvation principle, but the eschatological serves the historical-in-general by

directing “all history towards the future (…) human history is in truth nothing but the history of

the slow, uncertain, and surprising fulfillment of the Promise.”76

The promises, therefore, are those events of the utterance and the fulfillment of the

Promise within history, such as the promise to Abraham, the installation of the Old and New

73
Ibid.
74
Ibid., 91.
75
Ibid.
76
Ibid., 91-2.
 24

covenants, and the resurrection of Jesus.77 The Promise revealed within the promises, and

ultimately in the resurrection of the Christ, “is already fulfilled in historical events, but not yet

completely; it incessantly projects itself into the future, creating a permanent historical

mobility.”78 Thus, we can understand salvific work as continuing towards completion in light of

its not-yet-ness and in spite of its already-ness.

“The Bible presents eschatology as the driving forces of salvific history radically oriented

toward the future.”79 Not only so, but the prophetic stance of eschatology means that salvation is

as dynamic as God’s interaction within history. The prophetic stance, that which was embodied

in the prophets of Israel and Judah, is that the newness of salvation tied in with the futility of the

oldness of previous salvation events. 80 Gutiérrez’s main conversation partner on this is Von Rad,

whose understanding of the prophets’ eschatologizing Israel’s understanding of history leads to

the prophets’ “orientation toward the future and, on the other hand, their concern with the

present.”81 Yet Gutiérrez is quick to clarify that this does not eliminate “an action of Yahweh at

the end of history,” but that the “prophetic message proclaims and is realized in a proximate

historical event; at the same time, it is projected beyond this event.” 82 Thus, while Gutiérrez

understands that a culminating salvific event at the end of history is not removed from the

soteriological considerations, the foci and loci of salvation is primarily in the present, but always

77
The resurrection itself is specifically unique, in that humanity lives in the tension of the “not yet completed, not
yet concluded,” where even the resurrected Christ “is still future to himself.” (Ibid., 92)
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid., 93.
80
Von Rad argues that “the message of the prophets has to be termed eschatological whenever it regards the old
historical bases of salvation as null and void (…) we ought to go on and limit the term. It should not be applied to
cases where Israel gave a general expression to her faith in the future, or … in the future of one of her sacred
institutions (…) the prophetic teaching is only eschatological when the prophets expelled Israel from the safety of
the old saving actions and suddenly shifted the basis of salvation to a future action of God.” (Von Rad, Old
Testament Theology, 2:118; in Gutiérrez, TOL 93-4). By “salvation events,” I refer to instances of the Promise
manifesting itself in the promises.
81
Gutiérrez, TOL, 93, his emphasis.
82
Ibid., 94
 25

with a prophetic orientation towards the future. An orientation towards the future within the

present implies an “opening to the future,” where the promise of progress, the “attraction of

‘what is to come,’ is the guiding force of all history. 83 This is so because of the ultimate promise

of God implied in the name revealed to Moses and the people of Israel: “I will be who I will

be.”84

God’s giving of God’s name is a significant reflection on salvific principle of the

self-communication of God, which is the Promise. The Promise, as most clearly

manifested in the name of God, is an utterance in history that points to an eschatological

reality; it “reveal[s] humanity to itself and widen[s] the perspective of its historical

commitment here and now.”85 The Promise of God to will-be does not mean that God

will refrain from being Godself, or refrain from salvific revelation until a culminating

eschatological fulfillment (even if the revelation and salvation-process will only be fully

realized eschatologically). Rather, it the Promise of will-being in light of the

eschatological will-being; it is the Promise of God’s action and presence in history (and

humanity’s participation with God in history) in light of the eschatological action and

presence of God.

83
Ibid., 95, emphasis his.
84
Gutiérrez’s understanding of the significance of the Tetragrammaton is most significant in our study: “It would be
better perhaps to use an expression which emphasizes the characteristic of permanence: ‘I am he who is being.’ But
the use of similar expressions (thirty-one times throughout the Bible) and the context of the Covenant in which the
above passage is found [Exodus 3:14], lead us rather to stress the active sense of the terminology employed. ‘To be’
in Hebrew means ‘to become,’ ‘to be present,’ ‘to occupy a place.’ ‘I am’ would mean ‘I am with you, I am here
ready to act’ (‘when I put forth my power against the Egyptians and bring the Israelites out from them, then Egypt
will now that I am the Lord’ [Exod. 7:5]) . ‘I am the Lord, I will release you . . . . I will rescue you . . . . I will give it
to you for your possession’ (Exod. 6:6-9; cf. also 3:10, 17; 8:18) [Ibid.]
85
Gutiérrez, TOL, 95.
 26

The Historical and the Spiritual: An Eschatological Misinterpretation

More must be said about this dialectic between eschatological present and eschatological

future considerations of salvation, which can be explained correlatively in the dialectic of the

historical and the spiritual understandings of salvation. A “spiritual” salvation—or perhaps it is

better to describe it as a “spiritualized” salvation—is one that moves beyond liberation in the

physical-historical sense (an “earthly” salvation) and towards a ‘higher’ mystical-spiritual sense

(a “heavenly” salvation). Gutiérrez raises the question if this is indeed “a true dilemma: either

spiritual redemption or temporal [historical] redemption,” before situating the cause of the

dilemma with the “Western dualistic thought (matter-spirit), [which is] foreign to the Biblical

mentality.”86

For Gutiérrez, the discussion must be turned away from the dualism of matter-spirit and

to an understanding of the “partial fulfillments through liberating historical events.” 87 The

dilemma is not in the difference of promises in essence but in existence, not in purpose but in

progress. For Gutiérrez, salvation has an ultimate fulfillment—and history is the progress of that

fulfillment—and so if there were to be a “hidden” sense of salvation, it is not in the divide

between matter and spirit, but rather in the unknowning of the fullness of salvation within

history. This makes all the more sense of how we can only understand salvation in and through

history; “it is only in the temporal, earthly, historical event that we can open up to the future of

complete fulfillment.”88

Gutiérrez makes clear the difference in the future fulfillment and the path towards such

fulfillment: “the prophets announce a kingdom of peace. But peace presupposes the

86
Ibid., 96.
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid.
 27

establishment of justice.”89 Thus, while full salvation is an eschatological fulfillment, fulfilling

salvation is a historical fulfillment.90 Paradoxically, we participate historically in the salvation

that is only fully realized eschatologically. However, the salvation we participate in historically

is process of liberation. Another way of saying this is this: we participate in liberation as an

anticipatory means towards ultimate/final/full liberation; we participate in salvation as an

anticipatory means towards ultimate/final/full salvation.

And yet, what ultimately matters for Gutiérrez is the historical participation on salvation,

which is the historical participation in liberation. The establishment of justice (historical salvific

participation), in anticipation of a kingdom of peace (eschatological salvific fulfillment) is this:

It presupposes the defense of the rights of the poor, punishment of the oppressors,
a life free from the fear of being enslaved by others, the liberation of the
oppressed. Peace, justice, love, and freedom are not private realities; they are not
only internal attitudes. They are social realities, implying a historical liberation. A
poorly understood spiritualization has often made us forget the human
consequences of the eschatological promises and the power to transform unjust
social structures which they imply. The elimination of misery and exploitation is a
sign of the coming of the Kingdom. (…) The struggle for a just world in which
there is no oppression, servitude, or alienated work will signify the coming of the
Kingdom.91
Tillich’s Understanding of Salvation

Revelation and Salvation

For Tillich, revelation and salvation cannot be separated. The possibility of their

separation is very real, but the separation of revelation from salvation leads to the most common

problems of both categories in theological thought: a solely-intellectual revelation and a solely-

futuristic salvation. If revelation is separated from salvation, revelation is simply divine

information that is communicated or transmitted or understood “partly through intellectual

89
Ibid., 97
90
To anticipate our integration with Tillich, we could say that essential salvation is an eschatological fulfillment,
whereas existential salvation is humanity’s participation within the salvation process.
91
Gutiérrez, TOL, 97.
 28

operations, partly through a subjection of the will to authorities.”92 Even worse, if revelation is

simply a deposit of divine information, then the receiving side is simply a passive depository.

This brings up an interesting issue, for it alludes to his understanding of autonomy and

heteronomy.93 The passive depository is subject to the authoritarian transmission of divine

information as “property,” as “ready-made commodities which they must accept.”94 There is no

salvific transformation on behalf of the receiver of the revelation if revelation is given, subjected

upon, or demanded upon. For Tillich, the unity of salvation with revelation means that there is a

“creative and transforming participation of every believer in the correlation of revelation” with

reason.95

On the other hand, if salvation is separated from revelation, salvation is simply “the

ultimate fulfillment of the individual beyond time and history.” 96 In other words, salvation is

only a future operation, and the revelation that “occurs in history cannot be identified with it;”

they are separated and not integrated.97 Salvation, like revelation, occurs within history, and

92
Tillich, ST 1:145. For Tillich, a revelation without salvation is constitutes an untransformed life, one that
contradicts the salvific experiences reported by the “biblical reports concerning revelatory situations.” Tillich uses
the examples of Moses, Isaiah, Peter, and Paul as examples of salvific actions or experiences that accompany the
revelation of God.
93
Autonomy, for Tillich, is self-law as the law “inside as our true being” (Paul Tillich, A Complete History of
Christian Thought, ed. Carl E. Braaten, 2 vols [New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1968], 2:25), or, that
persons follow “the natural law of God implanted in our own being” (CT 2:26-27). Heteronomy, on the other hand,
is the law that goes “against the will of our own created goodness” (2:26), involving “willfulness and arbitrariness”
(ibid.). However, theonomy, as Tillich describes it, is autonomy that “is aware of its divine ground” (2:27), and that
“implies our own personal experience of the presence of the divine Spirit within us, witnessing to the Bible or to the
church” (2:26).
94
Tillich, ST 1:145.
95
Ibid. In Tillich’s method of correlation, reason is correlated with revelation, or, the ultimate questions of reason
are answered in full by a doctrine of revelation. Later on, Tillich will expand this concept of revelation as “the
ecstatic manifestation of the Ground of Being in events, persons, and things. Such manifestations have shaking,
transforming, and healing power” (ST 2:167).
96
Tillich, ST 1:145.
97
Ibid., 1:145-6.
 29

should be considered as “healing.”98 Salvation as healing (of the sick, demon possessed, sin,

death) is an act accomplished within a and any historical time and place.

What then ultimately unites revelation and salvation? For Tillich, it is the event of Jesus

as the Christ, the final revelation and (we could argue) final salvation.99 In this event, in line with

Tillich’s dialectic of the ambiguous and unambiguous life,100 revelation and salvation are

complete and unfragmentary in “respect to the revealing and saving event” itself, but are

fragmentary in “respect to the persons who receive revelatory truth and saving power.” 101 In

other words, the event of revelation and salvation in itself is unfragmentary and unambiguous,

but the experience of revelation and salvation is itself fragmentary and ambiguous. This is

because of the conditions of existence that experientially interfere with the in-breaking of

revelation and salvation. It is this existential reality that we turn to now in the discussion of the

objective and subjective elements of salvation.

The Objective Dimension of Salvation: The New Being in Jesus as the Christ as the Power of
Salvation
The meaning of salvation, as Tillich describes it, can be seen in the “symbols of

subjection to existence and of victory over existence” of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. 102

The experience and the embrace of the New Being is the experience and embrace of salvation in

and through Jesus as the Christ, in whom the New Being manifests itself. At this point, we can

98
Ibid., 1:146.
99
Concerning the meaning of “final,” Tillich argues that it “means more than last. Christianity often has affirmed,
and certainly should affirm, that there is continuous revelation in the history of the church. In this sense the final
revelation in the history of the church. In this sense, the final revelation is not the last. Only if last means the last
genuine revelation can final revelation be interpreted as the last revelation. There can be no revelation in the history
of the church whose point of reference is not Jesus as the Christ” (ST:1:132). Along with revelation we can argue
that final salvation, or, the last genuine act of salvation is found in the event known as Jesus as the Christ. Salvation
reaches its ultimate expression in Jesus as the Christ, and this expression is absolutely inseparable with the
revelation of Jesus as the Christ.
100
We will discuss this dialectic more in the discussion on the subjective elements of salvation.
101
Tillich, ST 1:146.
102
Ibid., 2:165.
 30

only briefly describe what the New Being is. The New Being, in the language of Tillich, is the

overcoming of “self-estrangement of our existence…a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of

creativity, meaning, and hope.”103 Thus, Tillich can assert that the norm of theology is the New

Being in Jesus as the Christ “as our ultimate concern.”104 In my own language, I say that the New

Being is salvation. It is the new state of affairs, the new constitution of humanity, the veritable

new being that overcomes the old state, constitution, and being of sin.

The need of the New Being as salvation is characterized in the quest for the New Being

as salvation, a voyage Tillich charts out as a series of failures of trying to locate the New Being

within pursuits of self-salvation,105 or in other words, to attempt salvation through one’s own

efforts rather than as a gift of God through God’s grace.106 This means that no action on

humanity’s part will ever bring new being, leading Tillich to assert that “[n]ew being precedes

new acting.”107 This quest for the New Being is universal, Tillich argues, because “the human

predicament and its ambiguous conquest are universal,” but it is Christianity that distinguishes

itself by identifying the New Being as coming in Jesus as the Christ.108 For Tillich, the person

and work of Christ are united in the understanding of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ in the

understanding that “the being of the Christ is his work and that his work is his being, namely, the

New Being which is his being.”109 Thus, any salvific work of the Christ is fundamentally a work

103
Ibid., 1:49. Tillich goes on to admit that the concept of the New Being is one “whose presuppositions and
implications can be explained only through the whole system.” This makes the task of explaining the concept of the
New Being difficult in this project.
104
Tillich, ST 1:50.
105
Tillich includes these religious failures as legalistic, ascetic, mystical, sacramental, doctrinal, and emotional ways
to self-salvation. See ST 2:80-86.
106
Tillich describes this through a reiteration of the doctrine of the bondage of the will. Using one piece of his
dialectic of human existence as the balance between freedom and destiny, the bondage of the will is the destiny of
humanity as existents keeps humanity in bondage to overcoming its existential estrangement. See ST 2:78-80.
107
Tillich, ST 2:79.
108
Ibid., 2:86-88.
109
Ibid., 2:168
 31

of and out of his (B/b)eing, which is the “power of healing and salvation.”110 It is a work that

humanity must participate in in order to experience the reality of the Christ’s work and being.

This element of participation, which is dependent on so much in Tillich’s system, is a

major understanding in his theory of the atonement, from which the objective features of

salvation (classically understood as regeneration, justification, and sanctification) are realized.

Against the classic substitutionary theories of atonement, Tillich identifies six principles which

are required to develop (or even replace) a doctrine of the atonement. The first three principles

deal more with the understanding of Theology Proper within a theory of atonement, and thus

deal more-so with preserving the position of God within the atonement process. 111 It is the last

three principles (4, 5, and 6) that deal specifically with the Christological element of

participation in atonement that then infer the anthropological element of participation in

salvation.

The fourth principle states clearly that atonement must be understood as God’s

“participation in existential estrangement and its destructive consequences.” 112 In this, God takes

upon suffering in order to overcome it, to transverse the gap implied in existential estrangement.

The fifth principle demonstrates the fourth, in that God’s participation in existential

estrangement is made manifest “in the Cross of the Christ.”113 It is this principle that illustrates

the power of symbol for Tillich. The Cross of the Christ is a “manifestation by being

110
Ibid.
111
Ibid., 2:173-4. First, the process of atonement must be “created by God and God alone,” meaning that it is the
Christ mediates the reconciliation between God and humanity. Second, Tillich asserts that there must be “no
conflicts in God between his reconciling love and his retributive justice.” Against substitutionary atonement, this
may seem, at first glance, a strange caveat in Tillich, where it would seem that he would be going against an idea of
retributive justice within the atonement. However, Tillich understands this justice as God allowing “the self-
destructive consequences of existential estrangement go their way.” Third, and finally, “divine removal of guilt and
punishment” does not overlook “the reality and depth of existential estrangement,” meaning that forgiveness does
not ignore the difference between the God-humanity relationship and the humanity-humanity relationship.
112
Tillich, ST 2:174.
113
Ibid., 2:175.
 32

actualization,” the “criterion of all other manifestations of God’s participation in the suffering of

the world,” wherein the witness to the Cross sees “God’s atoning act in it and through it.”114

Finally, the sixth principle is that “through participation in the New Being (…) [humanity] also

participate in the manifestation of the atoning act of God.” 115 God participates in the suffering of

humanity through suffering existential estrangement in and through the Cross of the Christ, and

thus humanity participates in this, accepted in this, and transformed in this act of salvation

through the New Being.

Salvation, then, is participating in, accepting, and being transformed by the New Being in

Jesus as the Christ. Classically speaking, participating in the New Being is understood vis-à-vis

the classical doctrine of regeneration, but we are still talking about the objective dimension of

salvation, meaning the significance of the actual events themselves and not humanity’s

experience of it. Participation (regeneration) is the understanding of the relationship of the New

Being “to those who are grasped by it,” who become “in Christ.”116 Those who are grasped by

the New Being are those who enter into the “new state of things, the new eon, which the Christ

brought.”117 This new reality is “fragmentary and ambiguous” in its “subjective consequences,”

but the evidence of participation is the opposite of estrangement, or as Tillich describes, “faith

instead of unbelief, surrender instead of hubris, love instead concupiscence.”118

Salvation as acceptance is classically understood as justification, which is understood as

“the eternal act of God by which he accepts as not estranged those who are indeed estranged

from him by guilt and the act by which he takes them into unity with him which is manifest in

114
Ibid., His emphasis.
115
Ibid., 2:176.
116
Ibid., 2:177. His emphasis.
117
Ibid.
118
Ibid.
 33

the New Being in Christ.”119 In fact, this doctrine is most existential in that it is an event that

places much emphasis on the participant themselves. In light of God acceptance of the estranged

in spite of their estrangement, the participant then accepts that they are accepted. 120 Here again is

a slight blur between the objective event and the subjective reception, but such is the problem of

soteriology: both are indelibly interconnected.

Finally, salvation as transformation is classically understood as “sanctification.” Tillich

distinguishes this from participation and acceptance in that the latter two are one event, wherein

transformation (sanctification) is “the process in which the power of the New Being transforms

personality and community, inside and outside the church.”121 Unfortunately, Tillich leaves the

description of this very brief because the fulfilling work of these events of participation

(regeneration), acceptance (justification), and transformation (sanctification) find their meaning

in their subjective reception and appropriation.

The Subjective Dimension of Salvation: The Spiritual Community and the Experience of the New
Being
The subjective dimension of salvation, or, the experience and embrace of the objective

event of salvation in the Cross of the Christ, is explained in detail in Tillich’s third volume of

Systematic Theology, in the fourth part, “Life and the Spirit.” Here, Tillich synthesizes his

pneumatology and his ecclesiology in his doctrine of the Spiritual Community. The Spiritual

Community is the church, and at the same time it is not the “church,” meaning that the Spiritual

Community is more than the gathering of Christians or the institution of the church. 122 It is the

manifestation of the unambiguous yet fragmentary life, the manifestation of a new creation

119
Ibid., 2:178.
120
Ibid., 2:179.
121
Ibid., 2:180.
122
Tillich states: “The Spiritual Community is determined by the appearance of Jesus as the Christ, but it is not
identical with the Christian churches” (ST 3:152).
 34

created by the “Spiritual Presence.” Another way of saying this is to say that if the New Being is

in Jesus as the Christ, those who are “in Christ” are also manifestations of the New Being, and

this manifestation of those who are “in Christ” are the Spiritual Community. 123 Thus, “the

Spiritual Community is the community of the New Being.” 124 It is in the Spiritual Community

that the individual experiences the New Being, or, in other words, it is where the individual

experiences the subjective dimension of salvation. He or she experiences the New Being as a

new creation (vis-à-vis the classical doctrine of regeneration), as a paradox (vis-à-vis the

classical doctrine of justification), and as a process (vis-à-vis the classical doctrine of

sanctification).

The experience of new creation/regeneration is best described as experiencing the “event

in which the divine Spirit takes hold of a personal life through the creation of faith.” 125 It is the

entrance into a “new reality which can make them into new beings.” 126 For Tillich, when one

asks the question of “What can I do in order to experience the New Being?,” the very acted of

the positing of the question exemplifies the presence and grasp of the Spiritual Presence.127

Those who are “ultimately concerned about [their] state of estrangement and about the

possibility of reunion with the ground and aim of [their] being” are already in the process of

regeneration, of participation in the New Being. 128

The paradox/justification experienced in salvation is classically formulated as simul

justus, simul peccator; God declares just that which is unjust. What is experienced here, Tillich

argues, is that the person turns their “eyes (…) away from the bad and the good in himself to the

123
Cf. ST 3:149-50.
124
Ibid., 3:155.
125
Ibid., 3:222.
126
Ibid..
127
Ibid., 3:223.
128
Ibid.
 35

infinite divine goodness, which is beyond good and bad and which gives itself without

conditions and ambiguities.”129 And yet, Tillich makes an interesting connection with

justification, and that is in the issue of “radical doubt,” or, the “existential doubt concerning the

meaning of life itself; it may include not only the rejection of everything religious in the narrow

sense of the word but also the ultimate concern which constitutes religion in the larger sense.” 130

To the person who has radical doubt, the issue of being accepted by God has no meaning since

the “term ‘God’ and the problem of being accepted or rejected by God has no meaning for

him.”131 However, Tillich argues that even if God has ‘disappeared’ to the person with radical

doubt,

the only thing left (in which God reappears without being recognized) is the
ultimate honesty of doubt and the unconditional seriousness of the despair about
meaning […] in the seriousness of their existential despair, God is present to
them. To accept this paradoxical acceptance is the courage of their faith.”132
Thus, justification and acceptance takes on a whole new religious connotation in Tillich. The

radical doubter is accepted in spite of their ‘unacceptable doubt’ in that there is actually no

condition where a person would actually be accepted or rejected through the New Being in Jesus

as the Christ. Just in the same way as, classically, one would need to be ‘justified’ before God in

spite of their sins, one is ‘accepted’ before God in spite of their doubt. And all the more, because

of this paradox, their doubt is a place that actually brings them closer to God even if they do not

realize it. Thus, justification as acceptance, subjectively, becomes a more anthropocentric issue

of salvation than a theocentric issue.

Finally, the experience of sanctification as process is characterized in four ways. First, as

increasing awareness, the process of salvation as sanctification means that persons “become
129
Ibid., 3:226.
130
Ibid., 3:227
131
Ibid.
132
Ibid., 3:228.
 36

increasingly aware of [their] actual situation and of the forces around [them] and [their]

humanity but also becomes aware of the answers to the questions implied in this situation.” 133 In

this, there is a cultivation of wisdom concerning the ambiguities in life and “to the power of

affirming life and its vital dynamics in spite of its ambiguities.”134 Second, as increasing

freedom, sanctification-as-process means liberation from “particular compulsions which are

impediments to growth in Spiritual freedom.”135 Spiritual freedom means freedom from the law,

which according to Tillich is the symbol of one’s essential being confronting oneself in their

state of estrangement.136 The law, then, is almost a haunting spectre that reminds one of who

they are truly meant to be but are unable to become on their own—thus the need for the New

Being in Jesus as the Christ.

Third, as increasing relatedness, soteriological process is “the awareness of the other one

and the freedom to relate to [the other one] by overcoming self-seclusion within oneself and

within the other one.”137 This means that part of sanctification means the turning of the self

towards the attention of the other, but also creating “a mature self-relatedness in which self-

acceptance conquers both self-elevation and self-contempt in a process of reunion with

oneself.”138 Thus, salvation is reconciliation between the self and the other, and well as between

the self and itself.139 Fourth and finally, salvation is increasing transcendence, or, “a continuous

transcendence of oneself in the direction of the ultimate.”140 Tillich refers to this as the

devotional life of the Christian. In sum, these four principles of sanctification as process imply

133
Ibid., 3:231.
134
Ibid.
135
Ibid., 3:232.
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid., 3:233.
138
Ibid., 234-5.
139
Ibid., 235.
140
Ibid.
 37

the following: The Christian life never reaches the state of perfection—it always remains an up-

and-down course—but in spite of its mutable character it contains a movement toward maturity,

however fragmentary the mature state may be. 141

Conclusion

We have seen that salvation for both Gutiérrez and Tillich is primarily historical-

eschatological as opposed to futuristic-eschatological, as well as deeply dependent and related to

revelation. With Gutiérrez we get a better understanding of the overall trajectory of salvation,

whereas with Tillich we get a more detailed picture of salvation. However, what connects the

two theologians most clearly in terms of soteriology is their understanding of the personal

participation in salvation. While each frames this differently, the differences are not mutually

exclusive, but rather, they are mutually inclusive. We can look at a Tillich’s soteriology as

existential liberation as well as looking at a Gutiérrez’s soteriology as liberationist existentialism,

but only if we unite the element of participation in salvation between the two. How do we do

this? In the final chapter I will link the existential liberation and liberationist existentialism

through the understanding of the courage to be as solidarity and protest.

Chapter III – The Courage to Be as Solidarity and Protest

At the beginning of the study, I argued that an integrated, holistic, creative soteriology

will pay attention to the dynamic of being and doing. Throughout this study I have illustrated

that dynamic in the theologies of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez. Now I am ready to proceed

in explicit integration of the two theologians in relation to the principles of being and doing. This

is done in the exercise of the concept of the courage-to-be as solidarity and protest. In this, not

141
Ibid., 237.
 38

only do I argue that Tillich’s courage-to-be is a soteriological concept, and that Gutiérrez’s

understanding of solidarity and protest is a soteriological concept, but that together they form a

soteriological concept that integrates being and doing. I will first explicate the concepts of the

courage-to-be and solidarity-and-protest, identifying their soteriological import, before making

the case for their integration.

The Courage to Be

For Tillich, the act and value of courage is an ethical concept, but courage as ultimate

self-affirmation is an ontological concept. Thus, the “courage to be is the ethical act in which

man affirms his own being in spite of those elements which conflict with his essential

affirmation.”142 Tillich explores the concept of courage throughout philosophy, including Plato,

Aquinas, Spinoza, and Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s inclusion is important in that—for the early

twentieth century—one of the highest human virtues was “the Nietzschean virtue of the strong

man, courage.”143 However, in a post-Nietzschean world, the ‘strong man’ is unmasked as a man

of anxiety and dread. But paradoxically, for Tillich, humanity experiences “absolute faith”

through anxiety and despair, and this gives humanity the ‘courage to be.’144 The concepts of

anxiety and dread were first developed by Heidegger and the existential psychoanalysts, but it is

in Tillich, Heidegger’s contemporary whilst at Marburg in 1924, that Tillich develops them as

concepts with hope.145

142
Tillich, CB 3.
143
William Earle, James M. Edie, and John Daniel Wild, Christianity and Existentialism, Essays. (Evanston, Ill:
Northwestern University Press, 1963), 140.
144
Ibid.
145
Ibid., 141. Earle remarks on the differences between Heidegger and Tillich: “The difference between Heidegger
and Tillich is that, whereas Heidegger calmly accepts the nothingness which is in man as definitive of the human
condition, Tillich considers it as a threat. Whereas Heidegger is resigned, Tillich is impatient.”
 39

For Tillich, this anxiety constitutes three features: the anxiety of fate and death, the

anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, and the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. 146 For

Tillich, it is the second type of anxiety that is the “deepest level of anxiety,” and it is this kind

that can “only be answered by an absolute faith.147 For Tillich, absolute faith is “the act of the

individual self in taking the anxiety of nonbeing upon itself by affirming itself with as part of an

embracing whole or in its individual selfhood.” 148 In this experience of coming to peace with

one’s anxiety of the threat of non-being and in its acceptance, we actually come closer to our

being-itself, and especially to “Being-itself.”

The courage to be brings us to a place of acceptance, and this is in the context of a

divine-human encounter within the courage to be: a mystical encounter with the ground

of being. In the face of the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, the courage to be brings us

to accept forgiveness and healing, or, to accept one “as being accepted.” 149 In the anxiety

of fate and death, the courage to be brings us to accept God’s providence “as the religious

symbol of the courage of confidence” which “says ‘in spite of’ even to death.”150 Finally,

in the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, the courage to be is the affirming one’s

being in spite of the threat of non-being. Tillich writes: “the power of this self-affirmation

146
Tillich, CB 40-45.
147
Earle, 141. The anxiety of fate and death, Earle argues, can be “resolved in a kind of stoic moralism” and the
anxiety of guilt and condemnation “by traditional Christianity,” it is the anxiety of emptiness and meaningless that
can only be answered in absolute faith. Earle goes on to summarize Tillich: “…is not faith in any traditional sense
(faith as belief) but a power of self-affirmation through which man is enabled (the power is not wholly his own) to
assume his responsibility for be-ing. The various levels of anxiety are not removed in faith they remain and continue
to be experienced, but the man of faith is free to live “in spite of” the threat of non-being.”
148
Tillich, CB 155.
149
Ibid., 165-66.
150
Ibid., 168.
 40

is the power of being which is effective in every act of courage. Faith is the experience of

this power.”151

In conclusion, Tillich argues that our courage to be opens us up to Being-itself, which is

God:

The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposed a relation to the

ground of being which we have called ‘absolute faith.’ It is without a special
content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the “God
above God.’ Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical
doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God. 152
For Tillich, the God of theism must be transcended in order for “the anxiety of doubt and

meaninglessness (to) be taken into the courage to be.”153 Tillich argues that “the courage to be is

rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.” 154 The

courage to be is not the encounter of God as being, but as Being-itself. Thus, in spite of anxiety

and despair, in absolute faith which accepts our being in the midst of the threat of non-being, we

come to the source of being, identity, and security in God.

From this exposition on the concept of the courage to be, we can clearly see its

correlation with Tillich’s own soteriology. It is a salvific experience that depends on God’s

revelation as well as God’s action within history. All the more, it is deeply connected to the

aspects of salvation, especially the subjective. The courage to be is an act of regeneration and

new creation in that it is an experience of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. In the experience

of the courage to be, one comes to the realization of their ultimate concern as being in Being-

151
Ibid., 172.
152
Ibid., 182. “Theism” here means “the unspecified affirmation of God.” It is an affirmation of God apart from the
encounter of the God above God, the ground of being. It can also mean a description of the “divine-human
encounter,” or what Tillich describes as, the “nonmystical side of biblical religion and historical Christianity,” for it
personalizes absolute faith. Finally, the third meaning of theism is in how it attempts to prove the existence of God.
Tillich sees the first theism as “irrelevant,” the second theism as “one-sided,” and the third as “wrong” and “bad
theology.” In all of this, Tillich argues, theism makes God to be a being, not being-itself.
153
Ibid., 186
154
Ibid., 190
 41

itself, and in this there is reunion with the Ground of Being. The courage to be is also an act of

justification and acceptance in that a person is not only accepted in spite of their radical doubt,

but they are accepted through their radical doubt. It is through the courage to be, to hold onto

Being-itself in the face of meaningless, that “God reappears without being recognized.” 155 In an

utmost paradoxical fashion, the doubt of the believer justifies the believer and brings them closer

to God.

Finally, the courage to be is an act of process and sanctification in the four ways

described previously. It is an act of increasing awareness in that the courage to be affirms “life

and its vital dynamics in spite of its ambiguities.”156 The courage to be is an act of increasing

freedom in that it leads to “growth in Spiritual freedom.”157 It is an act of increasing relatedness

in that the courage to be is an act that reunites and reintegrates the self with the other, with itself,

but also with the Other, which is also the courage to be as increasing transcendence. Thus, the

courage to be is a definitive and ongoing soteriological event and experience.

Solidarity and Protest

For Gutiérrez, the acts of solidarity and protest are a result of synthesis of material

poverty as a scandalous condition and spiritual poverty as openness to God. Gutiérrez continues

to argue that material poverty must be outright rejected as degrading to the person and not—as

some would argue—a virtue. Spiritual poverty as openness to God “defines the total posture of

human existence before God, persons, and things,” to be able to receive.158 The synthesis

155
ST, 3:228.
156
Ibid., 3:231.
157
Ibid., 3:232.
158
Gutiérrez, TOL, 171.
 42

between these two concepts lies in the understanding of “Christian poverty in Christ.”159

Gutiérrez cites Lumen gentium as an example of this understanding:

Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and under oppression,
so the Church is called to follow the same path in communicating to others the
fruits of salvation. Christ Jesus, thought He was by nature God . . . emptied
himself, taking the nature of a slave (Phil. 2:6), and being rich, he became poor (2
Cor. 8:9) for our sakes. Thus, although the Church needs human resources to
carry out her mission, she is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim
humility and self-sacrifice, even by her own example.160
Christian poverty as solidarity is “an act of love and liberation.”161 At the same time, it is taking

on poverty “as it is—an evil—to protest against it and to struggle to abolish it.”162 But Gutiérrez

also expands his definition of the poor. For Gutiérrez, the poor “is the oppressed one, the one

marginated from society, the member of the proletariat struggling for the most basic rights; the

exploited and plundered social class, the country struggling for its liberation.” 163 The poor, then,

is anyone suffering under oppression, and thus is in a state of sheer openness to God for

salvation.

Christian poverty as solidarity and protest is soteriological in that it “the openness of

humankind and history to the future promise by God.”164 It is both the event and the experience

of salvation breaking into history in light of the future promise of God made known by God’s

Promise. In every instance of sin, of oppression, of marginalization, there is always an instance

of liberation to be realized. God’s preferential option for the poor illustrates this all the more,

because if God is in the midst of the suffering of the poor, then the God of liberation is there all

the more, for God is one and the same: the God of suffering and the God of liberation. It is the

159
Ibid., 172. Emphasis his.
160
Paul VI, Lumen gentium, November 21, 1964, sec. 8; in Gutiérrez, TOL, 172.
161
Gutiérrez, TOL, 172.
162
Ibid.
163
Ibid., 173.
164
Ibid. Emphasis mine.
 43

same God who acts in history as well as who draws all towards the future culmination of God’s

salvific act. The establishment of justice in anticipation of a kingdom of peace is solidarity and

protest in the here and now; it is salvation within history.

Being and Doing: The Courage to Be as Solidarity and Protest

In synthesizing these two concepts, we emerge with soteriological concept of the courage

to be as solidarity and protest. I will now illustrate how the concept looks and works as a

soteriological model. The courage to be is a key soteriological piece in this synthesis, for it

comprises the subjective aspects of regeneration, justification, and sanctification. However, what

links the courage to be with solidarity and protest is what I understand to be the defiance of

nonbeing in the courage to be. The forces of nonbeing represented in the anxieties of death and

finitude, of emptiness and meaningless, and in guilt and condemnation, are stood against in

courage, accepting the reality of their strength, but also asserting the strength of one’s own being.

In this sense, one stands for one’s being alongside Being-itself and against non-being. Even if a

person of radical doubt no longer ‘sees’ or ‘hears’ the theistic God of their own theological

understanding, the God above God, Being-itself, the Ground of Being, stands with the person in

thwarting the powers of nonbeing.

In a twisted, demonic sense, these powers of nonbeing become the ‘powers that be.’ The

powers that be are often described as demonic institutions that oppress and marginalize

humanity. Whether nation states, economic systems or corporations, or even religious

institutions, these are the very forces that destroy the dignity and inherent self-worth of humanity

through enslavement and marginalization. To reclaim personal dignity, self-worth, and even the

very being of humanity, one must take up the courage to be. Thus, whereas in Tillich the courage

to be is an existential affront to anxiety and dread, in this synthesis with liberation theology the
 44

courage to be is a very real affront to the very real forces that seek to dis-integrate and destroy

humanity. Whereas in Tillich the courage to be is a personal, individualist stance, the

liberationist courage to be is a social, collectivist stance. And yet, every individual under

oppression must themselves take up the courage to be; no one else can demonstrate the courage

to be for him or her. In this sense, the courage to be remains an individual effort, but if a whole

group, class, society, or even nation were to take up the courage to be, then it becomes a

collectivist force for the preservation, assertion, and proliferation of life and being to its fullest.

Each human must reclaim their humanity that was destroyed by the oppressor through the

courage to be, and in this take up the protest against poverty in all of its forms

But the courage to be is not just protest of poverty, but it is also solidarity with the poor.

In line with Gutiérrez’s concept of spiritual poverty as openness to God, the courage to be is

exactly that. In spite of the powers that be—the powers of nonbeing—that seek to separate

humanity from God, it is the courage to be that opens oneself up to God in spite of the perception

of God’s absence. This openness is a suffering openness; it is an opening-up of the already

vulnerable self to all that remains in the midst of oppression: Being-itself. To be in solidarity

with the poor means to open oneself up to the reception of the poor as the other, as well as the

risk of being subject to oppression itself. In opening up to the poor, there is the risk of becoming

poor, for it is in the vulnerability of the poor that oppression makes it move. However, it is also

in the vulnerability of the poor that God comes to make Godself known, and where the courage

to be rests, resides, but ultimately arises to assert itself.

All the more so, through solidarity with the poor, the courage to be as expressed

collectively opens itself up to receive the ultimate other: the forces of nonbeing itself. Through

this selfless, vulnerable, loving, kenotic openness can the powers of nonbeing be confronted,
 45

disarmed, and defeated. The courage to be then invites the individual and community to live life

to the fullest in the Spiritual Community of God, where true spiritual awareness, freedom,

relatedness, and transcendence are realized. What is all the more true is that the courage to be is

to be realized within history, not just in a consummate judgment and justification of humanity.

The Promise of God’s presence with humanity is to be realized now in and through the courage

to be. Through the courage to be can the establishment of justice in anticipation of the kingdom

of peace be realized.

In conclusion, through the courage to be as solidarity and protest, we have a soteriology

that integrates being and doing. In the courage to be we have the fullness of being, and in the act

of solidarity and protest we have the fullness of doing, of virtuous living. As a soteriology, the

courage to be as solidarity and protest means that salvation is to be realized now in anticipation

of salvation’s consummation. Humanity can participate in the eschatological kingdom of peace

in advancing the fullness of being and doing as a result of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ.

The call to the poor, as well as those in solidarity to the poor, is this: Arise!
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Conclusion

One irony to this work is that this study was an explication of what a soteriology that

integrates being and doing looks like, what it is. The question that remains is: what does it do?

After all, what good is any theology if it does not do?! There are several benefits that an

integration of being and doing in soteriology will accomplish for the future of theology.

First, what is important for the future of theology is to not only recognize other

contextual theologies, but to understand them and integrate them with our own experience. As a

white American male of European descent, I am at home in a theology like Paul Tillich’s.

However, the voice of Latin American theology as exemplified in Gustavo Gutiérrez is a

prophetic challenge to me, as well as an opportunity to integrate it within my own theology. I am

not a European theologian, but I am indebted to European theology. At the same time, I am not a

Latin American theologian, but I am indebted to Latin American theology. I cannot become a

European theologian any more than I can become a Latin American theologian, but I can allow

the theologies to speak into and shape my own theology.

Second, and more explicitly, I think this work helps to address the problem of dis-

integrated theologies that either emphasize being over doing or vice-versa. I think of the classic

liberal/fundamentalist debate in American Christianity, and how the divorce comes down to a

form of this issue. Where fundamentalist Christianity seeks to preserve the being of theology

through fundamentals of faith, liberal Christianity seeks to preserve to doing of theology through

social action. In light of this study, I think it is a false dichotomy. While I admit that I framed the

integration using what some fundamentalists would term “heterodoxical” theologians, I am

convinced that both Tillich and Gutiérrez speak to the current situation and can provide a means

forward through the integration of being and doing in soteriology.

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Finally, and most important, in line with the integration of being and doing, I argue that

this work will help invigorate theology to come out of its ivory tower as well as give good

integrative theology to the work below. Thus, this work gives a solid theological basis for not

only social action, but for solidarity with the poor, but through a unique theological lens

(existentialism). For me, this was a very personal work as an existentialist theologian with strong

liberationist passions, but with difficulty exercising them. For many theologians out there who

are not of the liberationist persuasion, this work can help view the gospel call to justice,

reconciliation, and solidarity with the poor from a more familiar perspective. Thus, I issue the

same call to theologians as I did to the poor and those in solidarity with the poor: Arise!
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Works Cited

Conference of Latin American Bishops. “Poverty and the Church.” Medellín, Colombia.
September 6, 1968.

Earle, William, James M. Edie, and John Daniel Wild. Christianity and Existentialism, Essays.
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1963.

Gelin, Albert. The Poor of Yahweh. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 1964.

Gilson, Etienne. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1952.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis Books, 1973.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper, 1962.

Newport, John P., and Bob E. Patterson. Paul Tillich. Waco, Tex: Word Books, 1984.

Paul VI, Lumen gentium, November 21, 1964.

Rad, Gerhard von. Old Testament Theology. New York: Harper, 1962.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1956.

Tillich, Paul, and Carl E. Braaten. A History of Christian Thought. New York: Harper & Row,
1968.

Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper, 1958.

Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary; An Autobiographical Sketch. New York: Scribner, 1966.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952.