I would like to offer a brief and partial reflection on the following quote from the theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich,

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt

In order to approach this let us begin with the rather benign claim that things exist. More than this, some of these things are conscious, i.e. there are some beings in the universe that sense the universe. And then there are self-conscious things. These are beings that are aware of their consciousness. Perhaps a way to understand the difference between mere consciousness and self-consciousness is through the phenomenon of ‘blind sight’. In blind sight a person who thinks they are blind can actually see. While the individual in question believes that she is blind, when asked to make guesses about her environment, she will be able to describe it with a degree of accuracy well above what could be considered chance. Here the individual can see while not actually perceiving themselves as seeing. In short, ‘sight’ is taking place without there being any awareness of it.

With the awareness of our existence comes the awareness of our own potential non-existence. In other words, self-conscious beings are aware, to different degrees, of their own potential fall into nonbeing. Tillich writes about how this awareness is manifest in different types of anxiety. Anxieties that, in their most acute state, are felt as despair.

He writes that anxiety is distinct from the phenomenon of fear. For while fear is always directed toward an object (enemies, spiders, enclosed spaces etc.) anxiety has no object (it arises in response to the foreboding shadow of nothingness itself).

Tillich writes of three anxieties (that are simply different ways in which nonbeing makes its absence felt). There is the anxiety of fate which, at its most extreme, is encountered in a despair that we face death. Then there is the anxiety of emptiness (where we experience our various projects as unfulfilling) that can degenerate into the despair of total meaninglessness. And finally there is the anxiety of guilt (where we feel that we fall short of our own being). An anxiety that, at its most all encompassing, is felt in the despair of condemnation.

In response to these sometimes crushing anxieties there are a host of religious answers, i.e. answers that attempt to address the questions cast up by our awareness of nonbeing. These answers come in many forms, and yet even if they were intellectually persuasive (which, Tillich would argue, they are not) they would never fully banish these deep anxieties. We can of course repress them, but then they make themselves felt in different ways (in bursts of aggression, self-loathing, over-eating, phobias, substance abuse etc. etc.)

In response to this Tillich questions the idea that the way of Christ provides religious answers to our existential questions. Rather he attempts to show that Christ invites us to participate in a way of being that enables us to live beneath the shadow of these questions. Joyously embracing life while fully acknowledging their presence. Living in such a way that they are deprived of their weight and sting. In doing this he points to the possibility of a God arising from the ashes of the death of the religious God. A God that can be described as the source of our ability to live fully in the midst of our existential doubts.

This possibility of fully living in the midst of these anxieties will be something I explore in my forthcoming book, The Uprising of Christ.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.