[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]established the new congregations. There was certainly not much tolerance in that period.
Today we can watch what is happening in Israel. And there again I would say that the limits
of tolerance are clearly risible. Even intolerance toward liberal Jews is a problem. And there
are marriage problems, and many others, controlled and decided exclusively by the rabbis.
Student: Was there not a recent case where a person who claimed to be Jewish became a
Catholic priest, and wanted to go to Israel to live? He claimed his right, and the Israel
Supreme Court, I think, is deciding now whether he may be allowed to enter or not. He
claimed that his parents were Jewish and that therefore he was Jewish himself. And the court
is trying to make up its mind as to whether Jewish citizenship is a matter of race or creed or
what.1
Student: The Jewish people have been persecuted off and on for two thousand years, and as
soon as they get their own home in Palestine they encounter about 600,000 Arabs who
threaten them there. Now, although the Jews claim universal rights for all people who exist in
the state of Israel, I would hesitate to say that we can learn ideas of tolerance from these
people. I think that in relation to the Arabs, and in other ways, they have the same problems
that we do as far as tolerance is concerned.
Dr. Tillich: Yes, I believe so too.
Student: So far as Judaism s ability to teach something to Christian groups is concerned, we
have Judaism as a unique cultural community, or the Jews as the chosen people. I don t think
that Christianity with its concept of the universality of the Christian message would want to
become as solidified into a small group, because then its message or influence would not be
able to attain its farthest reach.
At a higher level, I would say that the biblical idea of a unique ethical community, a spiritual
community of mankind, is admirable. I think we can gain from this idea, but I don t think that
at the lower levels Christianity would want to become an exclusive community.
Universalism in Christianity and Judaism
Dr. Tillich: Now, you see, here are two problems, and the first is very clear. I refer again to
some words of Jesus, and the whole struggle of Paul against the narrow minded Jewish
Christians. In this connection, the term ecclesia is a very interesting word. It is the Greek
word for church, and it is derived from "calling out" ek, out, plus kalein, to call. And it was
used in the Greek city-states where the free citizens were called out from their houses by a
crier, by somebody who went around and called them to the assembly of free citizens, which
was the highest and ultimate authority in the city-states. And this word ecclesia, or assembly
of free citizens, was transformed by early Christian writers into a term for church. Church
thus means ecclesia. Paul wrote to the ecclesia in this and that city, which means that he
wrote to the assembly of those who were called out. But in Pauline Christianity they were
called out of all nations, and that is the difference: individuals out of all nations and not
merely one nation. It is very interesting what power these Greek words of the classical
tradition have transmitted to the Christian church.
Another word is eleutheroi, "the free ones." Now in the Greek city-state there would be a few
thousand free people in a city like Athens, and the others were not free. The same concept of
the eleutheroi, or the free ones, was used by Christian writers to designate those liberated
from demonic powers. Freed from the powers of evil, the demonic powers, they now formed
the free ones in the assembly. But this is no longer the assembly of the city or of the nation. It
is the assembly of God. Here is an example of Christian universalism as opposed to Jewish
tribalism at this time.
Now to distinguish the second problem from the first: What about those who did not come to
the ecclesia? In early Christianity they were considered not as simply lost but as not yet
liberated. Of course, as Paul writes in Romans 1,2 God did not let himself go unnoticed by the
pagans, but they distorted his message. They had fallen under demonic power and had to be
liberated, though they were not without God. The idea of the godlessness of people, in the
sense of being left alone by God, did not exist at that time.
So let us remember these two early Christian ideas. First, there is the breaking through of the
Jewish sacramental identity of blood, soil, and nation. Then, when the soil is taken away,
what remains is simply the identity of religion, which is a kind of sacramental unity. Thus in
Christianity the sacramental unity includes all those who are "elected" out of the nations and
belong to the ecclesia.
Now our problem today, which has necessitated this discussion, is Christianity s relationship
to other religions. But Christianity did not have to encounter any religion before the
appearance of Islam. The other religions were not really other religions. Greek religion had
long ago been criticized and undercut completely by the Greek philosophers themselves, and
by the tragedians, who fought against the old gods. And there was nothing else. The other
living religions, the Gnostic groups, were combinations and sectarian movements in which
Christian and Jewish elements and others were fluxed. True, they had to be combated as
Hellenistic mixtures, but not as really different religions. Mithraism could be included among
these.
So there was no problem of tolerance as such. The problem then was simply to conquer the
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