Book Review
Paulus – Reminiscences of a Friendship. Rollo May. New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1973. 113 pages.
Biographies
are akin to portraits painted by artists which differ in style following the
perspective of the artist. Paulus: The Reminiscences of a friendship,
represents an attempt by Rollo May, a distinguished psychoanalyst, to tell
the story of Paul Tillich, undoubtedly one of the most outstanding
theologians of the Twentieth Century. It would not be surprising then that
the tone and technique of this brief biography of Tillich follows the
perspective and instruments of the author’s own specialty.
Unlike
Pauck (1976 ) who gives a more elaborate and vivid account of Tillich’s
life ranging from his early school days, university study, training for the
ministry, his appointment as professor at Marburg, Dresden and Frankfurt
etc., May’s account is rather episodic, a reminiscence of a friendship as
the subtitle indicates . In eight short chapters, the book tries to cover
Tillich’s life from his early boyhood days in a small village in Eastern
Germany to his death in 1965.
Chapter one
begins with the author’s first meeting with Tillich in a corridor of one of
the buildings of New York’s Union Theological Seminary. In a phantomlike
encounter with the author, Tillich is described as a bewildered man with a
remarkable personality (1). The chapter goes on to recount Tillich’s early
life in a “small rustic walled town in Eastern Germany where his father had
been the Lutheran minister” (7). It concludes with Tillich’s emigration to
New York in 1933 following his dismissal from his university professorship
by the Nazis.
Chapter two
examines Tillich’s thought. Tillich is depicted as a man of
ecstatic/transcendent reason, whose logic is grounded on the belief that
“everything that exists is related in profound dimensions to everything
else” (14). As a philosopher, Tillich’s style places him in line with the
ancient Greek philosopher—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Phillias; but the content of
his philosophy is similar to the archaic Greek philosophers such as
Heraclitus, Empedocles and Parmenides. While his encyclical way of thinking
is connected to the ‘circle’ culture of ancient Greece. Thus in Tillich’s
thinking everything comes back, from the depths of the abyss as well as the
heights of ecstasy, to fit everything else” (15)
As an
existentialist for whom truth is not unconnected to the human condition, the
everyday questions of life and existence can only find meaning in theology,
hence Tillich’s method of correlation (81). His encyclopedic mind and his
comprehensive grasp of history spanning from the ancient Greek period
through the Middle Ages to the period of the Renaissance is remarkable
(16-17). Tillich’s personal presence is taken up in chapter three. As an
educator/ lecturer, Tillich was a charismatic and charming personality who
endeavored to make sense out of what otherwise would seem a silly comment
from an audience. Taking his audience for a “creative communion” he sought
and respected their views. His poor grasp of English was neither a stumbling
block to him nor the students who flocked to attend his lectures. At the
level of personal relationships Tillich would attend completely to the
other, value their opinion and unearthed previously unknown potentials in
them. In a word, Tillich had an intense presence resulting from his ability
to unsympathetically accept the negative aspects of none being and from his
great learning.
Entitled
“The Death of his Mother”, chapter four paradoxically dwells more on
Tillich’s relationship with his mother as an infant. Tillich is depicted as
one whose Oedipus complex, and complex relationship with his mother had a
strong influence on his sexual life “ He planned as a small boy to marry
this woman he adored, and while it is common for children to want to marry
their parent of opposite sex, Paulus maintained the assumption deeper and
longer than most” (38). Thus the death of Tillich’s mother was more than a
great bereavement; it was a profound abandonment and a betrayal.
Chapter
five analyses Tillich’s attractiveness to women and vice versa. Depicted as
a lovable man with a combination of spiritual and sensuous charms, women
were attracted to Tillich. While sexual libido was a possible dimension of
Tillich’s relationship with women, the driving force behind such
relationships was not sex, rather it was Eros or Esteem. Like a creeping
plant, Eros and Agape love grow and extend to others (52)
Chapter six
looks at Tillich’s life as a “boundary personality”. By choice and by fate,
Tillich lived “on the boundaries”. By choice, he lived on the boundary
between thought and experience, theology and philosophy, the intellectual
and the proletariat, heteronomy and autonomy. While by fate he lived on the
political boundary as an émigré.
Chapter
seven appraises Tillich’s concept of God. For Tillich, God does not exist;
he is being itself beyond essence and existence. If he is existence, he
cannot be essence. God is not a being beside other beings and is neither
above nor below. To this end, Tillich is portrayed as a radical thinker who
like Spinoza would be seen as one who upsets the inherited beliefs of
conventional people (88). The chapter also highlights a critique by
Alexander McKelway, a Barthian who argues that Tillich’s revelation of God
in Christ is rather inconsistent. But the author uncritically makes a case
for Tillich on grounds that Tillich’s theology is more ‘inclusivist’
Chapter
eight logically concludes with Tillich’s death and the circumstances that
surrounded it. For Tillich, life and death are two sides of the same coin.
They are so interrelated that death is inevitable. Death is the ultimate
symbol of finiteness, of which weakness and illness are lesser symbol”
(100). An acceptance of this fact leads to greater joy in life. The chapter
concludes with a long winding address of the author on the occasion of
Tillich’s 1966 memorial service in New York.
The
strength of the book is at the same time its weakness namely; its
psychoanalytic approach. On the one hand, the approach shows how a
psychoanalyst sees, remembers and presents a friend to the reading public.
On the other hand, in an attempt to idealize a friend, the overall picture
of the friend loses clarity of outline. While psychoanalyses serve the
purpose of interpretation, it also drowns the concrete person in an ocean of
ideas and types resulting in a kind of contradiction.” When he was small,
one may assume he had much sexual energy, as he did at every later stage of
his life”. “He was genuinely devoted to the sensual in life by contrast with
the sexual. He left the woman very much attached to him; consequently there
were over the country a growing number of them who carried a torch for
Tillich. Most of them kept it faithfully lit, like solveig in peer Gynt, and
prized it in their secret hearts. A few resented the ‘unfinished business’
and would have preferred carrying love through to some culmination” (51).
The book
would leave the reader wondering whether it is a biography of Tillich or an
autobiography of May. The impression is that of a self-centered friend who
perhaps for conscience sake tries to pay tribute to the great Guru by
contradictorily denying the guru’s importance to his career. “I said I had
often wondered how I would have turned out if I had never met Paulus. And I
found myself saying that I thought I would have turned out about the same”
(23)
In an
effort to express the essence of Tillich’s thought, the author from time to
time takes the reader into a world of sketchy neo-platonic ideas leaving the
reader rather confused. When compared with From Time to Time (1973),
Hannah Tillich’s recollection of her life with Tillich, her husband one
realizes that both authors from their own perspective express a sense of
deep love and loyalty to the one whom they remember. However, Hannah is more
elaborate. From a sense of wounded pride she concretely recounts the life of
Tillich from the depths of human relationship. While May’s work which
borrows from Hannah’s work, from time to time gets into theoretical
abstraction thereby losing the close touch of life. Could this be accounted
for in the difference between a wife who is an artist and a friend who is
psychoanalyst?
As one of
the early biographies of Paul Tillich, the book is important for its
psychoanalytic approach to the subject aside which many may wonder why the
book was written. But certainly the world cannot be poorer, nor book shelves
overloaded by a book in which one dear friend reminisces about another!
Divine Aguh
Boston University
Fall 2010
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