Tillich’s Creative Destiny
”Providence is a permanent activity of God. He never is a spectator; he always directs everything toward its fulfillment. Yet God’s directing creativity always creates through the spontaneity and structural wholeness of all creatures . . . It works through the conditions of individual, social, and universal existence, through finitude, non-being and anxiety, through the interdependence of all finite things, through their resistance against the divine activity and through the destructive consequences of this resistance. All existential conditions are included in God’s directing creativity. They are not increased or decreased in power, nor are they cancelled. Providence is not interference, it is creation. It uses all factors, both those given by freedom and those given by destiny, in creatively directing everything toward its fulfillment."
- Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 1
2 comments:
"Yet God’s directing creativity always creates through the spontaneity and structural wholeness of all creatures"
I love this line. The idea of wholeness is a needed word for many of us evangelicals. I would suggest that we do not even know what that structural wholeness is as we are so often wrapped up in our modern dichotomies of body vs spirit, emotion vs. rationality and our arts, worship, theology is all the worse for it.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I very much like this same idea. I also like the idea that in wholeness he includes, "through their resistance against the divine activity and through the destructive consequences of this resistance." Tillich here comes across as very inclusive without denying consequences. Here we have the God who tears down the towers of Babel and the towers are consequently ruined. But where sin abounds grace abounds all the more. This God becomes the God of diverse nations increasing the spectrum of his expression and love as every knee bows and tounge confesses. The whole incorporated. A bold line of thought.
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