The Protestant Era by Paul Tillich I. Religion and History
Chapter 2: Historical and Nonhistorical Interpretations of History
I. THE NONHISTORICAL TYPE OF INTERPRETING HISTORY
The nonhistorical type of interpreting history is represented in four doctrines of world-historical significance: in the Chinese Tao doctrine, in the Indian Brahma doctrine, in the Greek nature doctrine, in the late-European life-doctrine.
A
The Tao is the eternal law of the world which is both the norm and the power of human life.
The emperor as the Son of Heaven is supposed to mediate between the cosmic Tao and the human historical life, which are united in his empire. The Tao is eternal, the law of all motions, itself beyond motion and therefore beyond history. As far as history is dealt with, the past is glorified. The ancient emperors and the classical writers are the patterns for all the future in politics and culture. The ancestors determine life more than those who are living. The past is predominant over the future. The present is a consequence of the past, but not at all an
anticipation of the future. In Chinese literature there are fine records of the past but no expectations of the future.
B
In India the Brahman experience and speculation deprive all things in time and space, gods as well as men and animals, of their ultimate reality and meaning. They have reality—but from the point of view of Maya; they are not simply the products of imagination, but they become
transparent for the ascetics who have discovered the principle of Brahma-Atman in themselves
and in their world. Consequently, no event in time can have ultimate significance. Even the incarnations of the gods, the appearance of Bodhisattvas, are repeated again and again and will be repeated in the future. We have very few historical records in Indian literature. If there is historical expectation, as, for example, in Vishnuism, it expresses itself in the doctrine of world cycles: the breath of Brahma alternately produces and swallows the world. Between these
cosmic tides the world develops in four ages, or Yugas, from the best to the worst in continuous deterioration. We are living in the beginning of the fourth period, the Kali Yuga, which leads inescapably either to a miraculous return of the first age (where the whole process starts again) or immediately to the burning of the world and after it to the repetition of the same process.
Time (Kala, often identified with the evil principle, "Kali") is a power of deterioration, not of improvement and salvation. Salvation means being saved from time and history, from the wheel of repetition; but it is not salvation through time and history. India is the least history-conscious of all the great cultures.
C
In Greek philosophy, "nature" is a rational category, designating everything as far as it exists by growth (Φ ν σ ε ι ) or by essential necessity, not artificially (θ ε σ ε ι ) or by arbitrary thinking and acting. Nature is the structural necessity in which empirical reality participates. But
empirical reality participates within the limitations of its material nature; by the latter it is prevented from realizing fully its essential nature. The mark of perfection in nature is the
circular motion of a thing, in which it returns to itself. "Being" as such has the form of a sphere, equally perfect in all parts, not needing higher perfection, immovable and eternal, without genesis and decay. Temporal things, conversely, show contradictory, irregular motions without a circular connection of end and beginning and therefore with genesis and decay, self-
destruction and death. History cannot claim any point of perfection because it is not a circular motion. The great Greek historiography shows the genesis, acme, and decay of cities and
nations. It is, of course, more interested in the present than are the Chinese analysts. It wants to shape the present according to the experiences of the past, as, for instance, Aristotle’s Politics shows. But there is no expectation of a more perfect future.
Aristotle describes Greece as the country of the "center" between north and south, east and west.
He knows a center of space, but he does not know a center of time. "Time is nearer to decay than to genesis," he says, quoting a Pythagorean. Time for him is endless, repeating itself
infinitely, while space is limited, full of plastic power, formed, defying infinity. In Stoicism the doctrines of the four world ages, the burning and the rebirth of the world, reappear. The present age is the worst, as it is assumed to be in India. But, instead of quietly surrendering to the
inescapable fate of self-destruction, Stoicism (especially Roman Stoicism) tries to transform individuals and society by moral and political activities. In the Rome of Augustus, even
prophetic hopes for the return of the golden age through the emperor became effective. A trend toward a historical interpretation of history spread over the ancient world—for a short time only. The political disappointment and the lack of any transcendent hope re-established the
tragic and nonhistorical feeling. This becomes obvious in the last creation of original Greek thought, Neo-Platonism, in which the horizontal line is entirely negated by the vertical one, and society is entirely devaluated for the sake of the individual soul. The emanation of the different degrees of reality from the ultimate One to mere matter and the return of the soul through the different spheres from matter to the ultimate One stabilize a vertical direction of thinking and acting which has nothing to do with the horizontal line and the directed time of history.
Mystical supra-naturalism at the end of Greek philosophy is no less unhistorical than classical naturalism at the beginning of Greek philosophy.
D
Modern European naturalism since the Renaissance is different from Greek naturalism in so far as it has overcome, under Christian influence, that dualistic and tragic element in Greek
thinking which drives the human soul beyond the world and history to seek for salvation from the tragic circle, in the immovable "One." Modern naturalism is monistic and describes the world as a unity and totality, either in mathematical terms, as Spinoza and Leibniz do, or in organic terms, as Bruno and Shaftesbury do, or in dynamic terms, as Nietzsche and Bergson do, or in sociological terms, as Spengler does. For all these people the future signifies the evolution of all possibilities as implied in the present stage of the world. There may be infinite varieties, there may be self-destruction or circular motion or infinite repetition; but in no case is the directed line of history decisive. Billions of years of physical time frustrate any possible meaning for the utterly small sum of historical years. In the mathematical type, time has been made a dimension of space. He who knows the mathematical world formula in principle knows all the future. In the organic and dynamic types of modern naturalism, time is considered a deteriorizing force. In the organic and historical process, life becomes more complex, more self- conscious, more intellectualized. It loses its vital power and is driven toward self-destruction. In Spengler’s prophecy of the decline of the West the great cultures are posited like trees beside each other. They arise, grow, decay, and die like trees, each for itself. There is no universal history, crossing the life-and-death curve of each culture, overcoming the spatial "Beside" by a temporal "Toward." On this basis even the tragic outlook of Greece tries to return. In
nationalism the gods of space revolt against the Lord of time. Nation, soil, blood, and race defy the idea of a world-historical development and a world-historical aim. This recent development shows that a nonhistorical interpretation of history, even if arising in Christian countries, must return to paganism in the long run, for Christianity is essentially historical, while paganism is essentially nonhistorical.
E
The main characteristics of the nonhistorical type of interpreting history, in all forms we have dealt with, are as follows:
1. Nature (or supernature) is the highest category of interpreting reality.
2. Space is predominant against time; time is considered to be circular or repeating itself infinitely.
3. The temporal world has a lesser reality and no ultimate value.
4. The true being and the ultimate good are eternal, immovable, above becoming, genesis, and decay.
5. Salvation is the salvation of individuals from time and history, not the salvation of a community through time and history.
6. History is interpreted as a process of deterioration, leading to the inescapable self-destruction of a world era.
7. The religious correlate to the nonhistorical interpretation of history is either polytheism (the deification of special spaces) or pantheism (the deification of a transcendent "One," negating space as well as time).