In at least one way, Paul Tillich and Jurgen Moltmann’s doctrines of God are fairly similar. Both affirm God’s transcendence, and both subscribe to a sort of panentheism. The similarities, however, seem to end there. Their understandings of the mechanics of this panentheism and of God’s relationship to the world that exists inside him are vastly different.
Paul Tillich affirms a panentheism in which God is the Ground of Being. He cannot be said to be “a being,” because anything that can be said to be “a being” is finite. In fact, to assign any attributes or characteristics to God is to limit his infinitude. According to Tillich, the only thing that can be said about God without using symbolic language is that he is Being itself—everything in the universe is contingent to him. We cannot even say that God exists, because “existence” is a term used to describe a phenomenon that happens only within and as a part of God. For Tillich, God is not personal, because to have a personal God takes away from transcendence. We experience God symbolically as personal, however, because only a personal God can get through to us in our loneliness. Tillich’s panentheism is distinct from pantheism in that God is not merely the sum of the parts of the universe; he transcends it. Moreover, pantheism tends to deny the experience of the holy, which Tillich does not do. Tillich’s panentheism, however, is also distinct from Trinitarian orthodoxy. His is an adoptionist Christology, in which Jesus was a man whom God chose to be the Christ. Jesus was united with the Ground of Being and in so doing became the first incidence of the New Being to which all humanity is called.
Moltmann’s panentheism is considerably different than Tillich’s. Although I think Moltmann would technically agree with Tillich’s statement that God is the Ground of Being, he prefers tospeaks of God in more personal, redemptive terms. For Moltmann, God “created” space and time within himself in order to make room for the universe. He withdrew from this space, and it became the Godforsaken place. Thus while the universe remains contingent upon God (meaning that its existence depends upon him), it is not as ontologically identical with him as in Tillich’s thought. Tillich cannot conceive of any soul being damned, because all are part of God and would have no being apart from him. In Moltmann’s thought, the universe is separate from God, and he is in the process of bringing it back into unity with himself. Though God withdrew from the space that our universe occupies, he immediately re-entered it and began to work in history. Though God is ontologically transcendent, he chooses to be imminent. He chooses to allow temporal, finite events to affect him. He chooses to suffer. Where Tillich would likely agree with Aquinas that God only appears to suffer, love, or have any emotion at all, Moltmann declares that God actually feels emotion. He is its creator, but all the same he chooses to subject himself to it. This likely would not be possible for Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being. The difference between the two in this regard is best demonstrated by a comparison of their Christologies: Tillich denies any real incarnation of God in order, presumably, to maintain his transcendence. Moltmann, however, believes that Jesus Christ was actually God. He chose to enter history and to become fully subject to finite human experience, complete with suffering and death. In this Moltmann is probably closer to Trinitarian orthodoxy than is Tillich. Moltmann, however, is not fully orthodox; he has at times taught that the Trinity began at the Cross and that God has not always been ontologically Triune. (In his later writings he seems to align himself a little more fully with orthodoxy.) In any case, Moltmann perceives himself as Trinitarian, and spends a great deal of time and energy arguing in favor of the Trinity’s significance. Since love is relational, he says, the godhead must consist of relational partners—a fellowship of equals—whose relationship is defined by perichoresis (mutual interpenetration). We, too, will become relational partners with the persons of the godhead when at the end of history (or the beginning of it, since for Moltmann the future ontologically precedes the present) God becomes fully present in the world. Unlike Tillich, Moltmann does not distinguish between the transcendent God and the immanent God. For him, the Trinity is immanence. That is its nature and its purpose. The ultimate end of human history is when God becomes completely immanent in the world
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