Tillich Asks That Protestantism Give Basis for 'Social Criticism'

The function of modern Protestantism is to give men the ultimate basis for criticism of the society which surrounds him, Paul J. Tillich, University Professor, asserted last night.

Speaking to the Social Relations Graduate Colloquium on "Conformism, Protestantism, and the Current Religious Resurgence," Tillich declared that ambiguity in the resurgence was reflected by the "use" of religion "as a tool rather than as a means of understanding."

A myth of security has supplemented the myth of success, according to the University Professor, and the religious resurgence must resist the "lure of security" if it is to provide the ability to ask the "radical question of meaning."

"Anxiety about the human situation" has produced the religious resurgence since the war, Tillich asserted. Contemporary man is experiencing a shocked awakening to the discovery that principles concerning "meaning of being" have disintegrated.

He attributed the awakening to the abolition of the supernatural sphere in the consciousness of modern man, to the individual's loss of identity in modern society, and to the belief in perfectibility in all realms of life.

The "dimension of depth" has been lost, as the vertical dimensions of death and eternal life have been removed from human consciousness. In conquering the finite, industrial society has imprisoned modern man in a "prison of finitude," Tillich declared.

The removal of the lower dimension--of death, guilt, emptiness, loneliness--is in the long run impossible, he argued. Existentialism was cited as an attempt to break through the "walls of finitude," and Tillich praised the "honesty" and "courage" of the movement.

In the political and social realms, man was reduced to a "working power," and rediscovered as the self in "anxiety, guilt, and despair," Tillich said. One outgrowth of this rediscovery was expressionist art, which "showed the world in its demonic character."

Following Tillich's remarks, Robert N. Bellah '48, lecturer on Social Relations and on World Religions, agreed that the past century has seen a modern major cultural crisis, citing as evidence a basic questioning of values with overtones of nihilism.