TV Theology

The thorny theology of Harvard's Professor Paul Tillich is not what most U.S.

TV producers would pick as likely program material. But on New Year's Day, on NBCTV, Theologian Tillich found himself competing against Amos 'n' Andy and two westerns, and doing a good job of cutting his thoughts into handy bite-size for laymen. Looking like a nearsighted lion and speaking with a square-edged German accent, 69-year-old Lutheran Tillich began talking about religion and art.

A "truly Protestant picture of today," said Professor Tillich, is Picasso's famed Guernica, inspired by the Spanish Civil War.* Why? "Because there you see the world in pieces, and that's the one side which Protestantism always . . . must emphasize. It's not the whole of Protestantism, but . . . what is nearest to our present mind is just this side."

The "Protestant way" of approaching religion, he feels, is to make a clear distinction between the symbol and the inexpressible thing it stands for. "In some church traditions the religious symbols and the doctrinal form in which they are given, in instruction of children and in preaching and everywhere, are supposed to be the immovable, divine revelation which simply has to be taken as it is. This, of course, is mostly expressed in the Roman Catholic Church, where we have statements which are called 'by faith' . . ."

Christianity itself has made it clear, he feels, "that the human situation is the situation of estrangement of man from himself--from what he should be and essentially is. Therefore, the answer only could be: how can this estrangement be overcome? And the way in which it can be overcome is, as I would say, the appearance of a ... 'new being' . . . the state of a courageous affirmation of our life in spite of all the shortcomings . . . I believe that this 'new being' is most visible in the picture of Jesus as the Christ in the New Testament."

*On April 26, 1937, the undefended Basque city of Guernica was systematically bombed and machine-gunned by German planes fighting with General Francisco Franco's Rebels.

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