A LIMIT TO HOPE

"It is understandable," declared Protestant Theologian Paul Tillich, "that a conference like this meets widespread skepticism, perhaps by some in the conference itself." He challenged both the encyclical and the possibility of realizing its dream of world order.

Tillich pointed out that the ideas behind Pacem in Terris, being strictly Western and Judaeo-Christian, are alien to religious traditions that do not consider the dignity of man as an ultimate value, and should not be forced onto the rest of the world willy-nilly. As for the sweeping condemnation of war, Pacem in Terris, said Tillich, did not consider the problem of resistance to violations of human dignity. "There are situations," he warned, "in which nothing short of war can defend or establish the dignity of the person."

Effective authority, Tillich said, needs power, and the conflict of authority with authority leads, inevitably, to the use of force. "But when is coercion a just expression of power, when an unjust one?" Old criteria--the medieval concept of the just war, for example--no longer serve in an age of possible atomic conflagration, and the many laws that apply to men can only obliquely serve as guides to the proper conduct of nations.

These problems led Tillich to conclude that there is a definite limit to hope for peace on earth as prescribed by Pope John. Men must "distinguish between genuine hope and Utopian expectations." Genuine hope is found in such factors as the atomic threat that has imposed on mankind a common destiny, the conquest of space that makes neighbors of distant nations, international cooperation in science and medicine.

Out of this limited cooperation may emerge what Tillich called "communal eros"--the love of men for other nations. But, he said, "there is no hope for a final stage of history in which peace and justice rule. History is not fulfilled at its empirical end; but history is fulfilled in the great moment in which something new is created, in which the Kingdom of God breaks into history conquering destructive structures of existence. This means that we cannot hope for a final stage of justice and peace within history; but we can hope for partial victories over the forces of evil in a particular moment of time."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.