The Demonic Attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz

The Demonic Attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz

“Centeredness is a quality of individualization, in so far as the indivisible thing is the centered thing…the center is a point, and a point cannot be divided. A centered being can develop another being out of itself, or it can be deprived of some parts which belong to the whole: but the center as such cannot be divided—it can only be destroyed.” --(Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology Vol. III., pdf., p.32).

  

In 1989 Sister Dianna Ortiz was a member in the Catholic monastic order for women know as the Ursulie Order that dates back to 1435 A.D. in Brescia, Italy to teach girls how to care for the sick and poor.  Sister Ortiz was in Guatemala teaching Mayan school children how to read and write. On November 2, 1989 Sister Ortiz was at a religious retreat in Antigua. At this time Guatemala had been in numerous long American financed civil wars since the late 1950s during which death squads became common. Sister Ortiz had gone into the garden of Posada de Belen to pray and disappeared at about 8 a.m. Her friends and relatives immediately reporter her missing. That morning Ortiz had been blindfolded and kidnapped by Guatemalan police officers and taken to a clandestine prison at a police academy facility named “Antigua Escuela Politecnica” in Guatemala City. The police threatened to kill her colleagues at the convent if she refused to go with them.

Sister Ortiz was tortured by her captors at this police academy. It is important to understand that this was not random moronic cruelty unleashed unthinkingly on a human being, but rather, this attack is a systematic procedure based on empirical science—especially cognitive science, and psychology—to destroy the self-identity of the targeted person with repeated experiences of devastating dehumanization and fear. A tremendous amount of thought, long-term effort, and treasure was expended to formulate a universally efficient method to permanently destroy the self-identity of a person for control.

When the police arrived at the academy, she was told that no one knew where she was and no one would care. She was then physically beaten. The purpose of this first beating is to instill complete isolation, hopelessness, and despair. This message is repeatedly verbally stated as psychological reinforcement before and after each torture session technique.

Each phase of the torture process is more severe resulting in complete objectification and dehumanization, which is the tortures’ goal. Sister Ortiz was interrogated for the purposes of inflicting more pain and teach what psychologists call learned helplessness; to extract false confessions for arresting new persons for victimization; and to physically exhaust the interrogated person for the other phases of torture and dehumanization. Her captors told Sister Ortiz that she would be asked questions, and if they liked her answers, she could smoke a cigarette as a reward. The rules were only stated to demonstrate that there are no rules and nothing she could say would influence her brutal treatment thereby destroying any hope of rescue. After every question Sister Ortiz was asked, she was burned with a lit cigarette regardless of the answer. She received at least 111 second-degree burns on her back in addition to other burns on her body according to physicians. 

In the third phase of torture Ortiz was lowered into a pit that contained the partly rat eaten dead bodies of entire families, including children, some persons with decapitated, and some still alive. Ortiz promised to tell the world of their suffering. This torture was designed to terrify both Ortiz and the other captives to destroy any sense of hope that a greater community could save them by showing that the community itself is held captive by the torturers.

In the fourth phase of dehumanization is gang rape by three men. It is important to remember she is suffering severe burns on her back making it ineffective and painful to resist a sexual assault when pinned down to the floor, or other surfaces. The person is raped multiple times to reinforce hopelessness and despair. After one of the policemen raped Sister Ortiz he said, “Your God is dead.” Spirituality is another multi-dimensional target that the torturer seeks to destroy. To destroy the person’s moral sense of right and wrong is another goal of these physical attacks. Later, Sister Ortiz had an abortion as a result of the sexual assaults.

In the fifth phase of the dehumanization process the policemen’s hand is covering Sister Ortiz’s hand holding a knife and is forced to dehumanize another person. The torturer knows that human beings are essentially empathetic. This stage is videotaped to instill guilt and shame in the person to be used as blackmail later if necessary.

At this point in the torture process, an American named Alejandro showed up at the site in a panic and stopped the torture. Sister Ortiz’s friends and family had triggered a media alert that the North American nun was missing which most likely saved her life. There was a sixth phase of torture, which we will never know, but there was definitely a seventh phase that Sister Ortiz also experienced later.

While the American was driving Ortiz to another location he tried to blackmail her into keeping silent, but she escaped from his vehicle while stuck in traffic. The American may have been afraid that he himself would be killed as a witness to the abduction and fled, or was hidden by government officials. 

Sister Ortiz was able to get back to the US and reported her capture and torture. Of course the then former head of the CIA and U.S. President, G. H. W Bush through his administration and the Guatemalan government at first denied the event even occurred. The Guatemala defense minister at the time, Gen. Hector Gramajo and CIA operative publicly said the U.S embassy believed her injuries was the result of a “lesbian love tryst.” Then-ambassador Thomas F. Stroock reported to Washington D.C. he did not believe Ortiz’s account that an American was involved. The embassy’s Human Rights Officer, Lewis Amselem, was the source of the lesbian love tryst rumor. Reverend Joseph Nangle of the Assis Community reported he heard Amselem give a vulgar rant in his presence with others about Ortiz and all the religious volunteers working with the indigenous groups. Amselem was attempting to intimidate the volunteers from cooperating with any investigation. U.S. Ambassador, Thomas F. Stroock and his employee, Amselem, worked hard to hinder any investigation of this crime.

In 2007 Sister Dianna Ortiz went to New Zealand to share her story - here is part one.

And there is the seventh phase of torture which all the other phases of work cumulate for re-victimizing the tortured person: discredit the tortured person’s testimony by exploiting all the post-traumatic psychological injuries such as memory loss, aphasia, confusion, depression, loss of concentration, hopelessness, loneliness, guilt, and despair. This new shift of torturers do not have to get blood on their hands, but only derive sadistic pleasure in publicly expressing doubt of the tortured person’s experience and pain.

Journalist Cokie Roberts contributed to the smear campaign by interviewing Ortiz and implying the entire event never happened. Cokie Roberts worked hard to keep the American/Contra Inquisition of Guatemala and Latin America a secret from the American people. It was later discovered that Cokie Roberts’ brother, Tom Boggs, and his law firm Patton Boggs was paid by the Guatemalan government to improve the country’s media image while internationally known as a human rights abuser. The lobbying firm of Patton, Boggs, & Blow received a $220,000 payment from the Guatemalan government in 1991. Those who reported facts of the mass murders in Guatemala were immediately killed such Bishop Gerardi in 1998. Bishop Gerardi was murdered the day after he published a report that 200,000 Guatemalans were tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army. Because of Cokie Roberts' role as a propagandist, the American media heaped journalistic awards upon her to mask her immoral character and inhuman actions.

The god that the Guatemalan rapist police officer proclaimed dead is not the God of New Testament Christian monotheism, but rather the rotting corpse of American Christendom lying beside the rotting murdered corpse of American Democracy while the entire world is choking from the putrid stench. The Nation abandoned the God of History--of Time--to fully embrace the pagan occult spirits of Space in which greed is the dynamic engine for accumulating power for its own absolute domain.

Sister Ortiz is recovering.

…to continue “Tillich on the Demonic,” with “The Struggle of the Olympic gods of Space with The God of Infinite Time.”

“This leads to the ultimate point in the struggle between time and space. Prophetic monotheism is the monotheism of justice…God is one God because justice is one.”—Tillich, Theology of Culture, p. 37.

Paul Tillich on The Demonic (δαίμων)

Paul Tillich on The Demonic (δαίμων)

“11. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13. He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”--Mark 5:1-20 (NIV): Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man

“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.”
--1 Corinthians 10:21

  

People in the Ancient world believed in spirits and demons. The meaning of “demon,” δαίμων, (daimon) has changed  through the centuries when the concept did not originally have a negative connotation, but instead meant “a divine power," or “spirit.” The German word “Geist” means “spirit,” or “mind.” Plato wrote that it was a daimon that gave Socrates divine inspiration. It was commonly believed in Palestine that if the name of a demon could be known, one would have some power over the demon. Demons, or spirits were thought to live in unclean isolated places like tombs, caves, or away from water since water could destroy a demon. These spirits were active during the day and a danger to night travelers. Male demons were called “shedim.” Female demons “lilin," were thought to be especially dangerous to children, which is why children had guardian angels in Hebraic ontology (Matthew 18:10). In biblical times people believed that demons where the spirits of evil persons who had died and are still active in the world to carry out their evil plans. Genesis 6: 1-8, tells the story of deviant angels that seduced human women and whose children are demons. All diseases whether known or unknown, mental illness or somatic illness were attributed to demon possession. In the Gospel of Mark and Luke the manuscripts recorded the name of the town of Jesus encountering the possessed man as “Gerasenes” (Mark 5:1 and Luke 8:26) (AKJV); however, Matthew’s account (Matthew 8:28)(AKJV) has “Gergesenes” as the town’s name. It was most likely the town of Gadara which is only six miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee where the disciples likely landed. This spot on the shoreline had a large grazing area for animals and was near an ancient cemetery. The Alexandrian scholar Origen thought the town was Gergesa of which he personally knew about, but no one can be certain of the historical place. The discrepancy is most likely due to manuscript errors by persons not familiar with the geographical region. [1]

Tillich believed that his best-written works were those on the demonic, ‘Rechtfertigung und Zweifel’, (Faith and Justification), and his most popular book, The Courage to Be, (1952, pdf.). In Tillich’s semiotics the person and symbol participates in the Unconditional; however, the symbol itself is conditional. Mythological language is a symbolic language that allows the expression of the Unconditional that “designate the boundary line at which the symbolic and non-symbolic coincide” (Systematic Theology, Vol. II, pdf., p. 9). The Unconditional is the total, the infinite, “meaning itself” and  “the constitution of the sphere of meaning.”(“Tillich on God,” by Martin Leiner, in “The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich,” ed. by Russell Re Manning, pdf., p. 49). Tillich believed that symbols give consciousness the ability to experience other levels of reality by transcending—only a spatial metaphor is meant here--the ordinary rules of language to say the inexpressible. “The limit of my language is the limit of my world,” as Wittgenstein wrote. This other fuller dimension of reality is not another world above this world, but this world experienced with a greater depth of meaning.

There are multiple forms of the demonic in the realization of life. One demonic force, and the most important in Tillich’s theology, is that of ideological objectification that transforms people into objects, and things—that is the essence of dehumanization. There are “demonic structures,” or “structures of evil” that can determine our consciousness and decision-making. Tillich calls the demonic the “pseudo-Unconditional”(Ibid., p. 53). Demonization is essentially the exaltation of anything finite to the Unconditional, and identifies any symbol of the holy, for example, “with the holy itself”(Ibid., p. 104). In the New Testament demonic powers are the conflicts of power in history, and the “structure of destruction in personal and communal life”(Ibid., p. 53). Human power has periodic demonic upsurges that threaten all life on earth by affirming “a finite as infinite in the name of the holy.” Fanatical religious fundamentalism is the natural union of the religious with the demonic that threatens human life with “promises of supernatural rewards” (Ibid., p. 174). Religion, culture, and politics can all become demonic when put in place of the Unconditional. These demonic-destructive forces can even appear in the Church itself with sacramental activities, “in all holy objects, holy books, holy doctrines, holy rites”(Theology of Culture, Paul Tillich, pdf., p. 69). Tillich argued that the Church is to be the vigilant guardian that reveals these structures of self-sustaining dynamically generating creative evil in society in order to weaken its power.

The Demonic Possession of Roy Cohn

Unclean spirit come out! What is your name? “My name is Roy Cohn.” In the name of Jesus the Christ leave us so the American people can live! –A prayer.

Roy Marcus Cohn (1927-1986) was born into a Jewish family in New York City. Roy Cohn’s father, Judge Albert C. Cohn (1885-1959), was involved in Democratic politics and the father’s great-uncle was the founder of the Lionel Corporation toy train manufacturer. Roy Cohn was born into great wealth from both his parents and raised in an environment of opulence with unlimited educational resources at birth. Cohn was to become a new member of a mostly invisible American judicial oligarchy. At only fifteen years old Cohn was fixing traffic tickets for his teachers and illegally selling post office stations. Cohn was also a rabid anti-Semite.  Incredibly, Cohn was able to graduate from the Columbia Law School at the age of 20, and had to wait a year to pass the bar exam. This rabid fanatical anti-Communist believed that there was no right or wrong. With all the educational resources Cohn was born into he could not get beyond nihilism. With access to experienced lawyers in his father’s social oligarchic circles and Ivy league academic legal training, Cohn was able to damage and destroy untold numbers of American lives for many decades, and we are still feeling the effects of his actions to this very day. 

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed in 1938 to seek out Americans suspected of subversive activities and disloyalty, which included anyone who could be labeled socialists, communists, leftists, and liberals. Senator Joseph McCarthy and Cohn were not on the HUAC, but instead McCarthy chaired another committee called the Government Operations Committee and yet another subcommittee called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the U.S. Senate. As always, these shell committees are designed partly as bureaucratic insulation of one committee from another in case of scandal. From these various committee investigations more than 300 artists throughout America were blacklisted such as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Yip Harburg who wrote song lyrics and parts of the movie script for “The Wizard of Oz.” Yip Harburg, possibility the greatest artist America ever had--who wrote, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon,”-- was blacklisted by the American judicial oligarchic system. Cohn was involved in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in which he committed numerous violations of judicial procedures which should not of led to their execution in 1953. From this public espionage trial the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, recommended Cohn as McCarthy’s chief counsel.

McCarthy, with Cohn as his chief counsel, began a series of sham investigations of the Army in 1953 that quickly led to their downfall. Evidently, McCarthy’s anti-Communist preaching became instead meddling in military affairs. The Army countered with an investigation of its own called the Army–McCarthy hearings which were about Cohn ordering Army officials to give preferential treatment to his gay lover, and oligarchic heir to the Schine hotel fortune, David Schine. This was a touchy issue. McCarthy was rumored to be gay. J. Edger Hoover was definitely gay and whose lover was his Associate Director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson. Political blackmail was their currency and power, but they were also protected. Both McCarthy and Cohn were disgraced by the hearings, but Cohn re-emerged to damage and destroy even more lives in the decades to follow.

The nihilist Roy Cohn would **** a corpse. In 1975 Cohn walked into the New York hospital room of the dying multi-millionaire Lewis Rosestiel who was comatose, put a pen into Rosestiel’s hand, and lifted a will to fake a signature making himself and Cathy Frank the beneficiaries. The stories are endless.

Many years later Cohn and his aide Roger Stone were key agents in swaying the 1980 Presidential election to a Reagan victory partly by Stone dropping off a suitcase full of money for liberal candidate John B. Anderson so to split Reagan’s political opposition in New York. Election manipulation was only one of Cohn’s activities. He was heavily involved in New York's Mafia scene and had numerous brushes with the law including professional misconduct, perjury, and witness tampering. And as if that was not bad enough, Cohn befriended the well-known New York mafia figure (at least well-known by law enforcement) Donald Trump who eagerly studied with religious passion Cohn’s criminal mind, illegal scams, intimidation tactics, defense strategies, and media management techniques.

There are two--but not mutually exclusive--ways to interpret the events surrounding Cohn’s life: the intentionalist view, and the structuralist view. The intentionalist view would interpret Cohn’s action as personal, psychological, and biographical. The focus would be on the subject’s character and psychology and this is certainly an important factor. On the other hand, this period of history could be viewed from a structuralist view that includes the political system, judicial system, social class, religious orthodoxy, and cultural norms of the time. The intentionalist point of view located on some hypothetical spectrum would tend to be “non-political” as it centers on the biographical factors behind these historical events. The structuralist view would be political since its focus is analyzing the socio-economic environment of the time. No single person could of possibly caused the wake of destruction that followed from Roy Cohn.

Maybe there can be a third theological interpretation of these events centered on the Geist of the age, or “Spirit” which can also mean the “Mind” of the age.

[1] See William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. I, Westminster Press Philadelphia, The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, First ed, 1956, p. 326). William Barclay describes demon mythology and gives a demythologized interpretation of Matthew’s account of Jesus and the possessed man. I am using Mark’s account because it is more detailed, but Barclay’s biblical commentary is more detailed in Matthew’s account.

…to continue Tillich on the Demonic with “The Demonic Attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz.”

Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience

Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience

“6.3611 We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer).”--Wittgenstein

Chronological time, or Chronos, (the Ancient Greek word, Χρόνος,) is linear time, or objectively measured clock time of science contrasted with the other Greek word for time, kairos, (καιρός ) meaning right, proper, exact, critical time, or lived time. Chronos is quantitative mathematical time, but Kairos is qualitative time. Personal psychological lived time, or temporal existentiality, is just as valid as abstract scientifically measured time. Tillich finds the same distinction in Heideggerian phenomenology as Existential time and objective time:

“Most radical is Heidegger’s distinction between “Existential” and objective Time…In his analysis of Kant he indicates that for himself Time is defined by “selfaffection,”[Sic] grasping oneself or one’s Personal Existence. Temporality is Existentiality. In distinction from this qualitative Time, objective Time is the Time of the flight from our own Personal Existence, into the universal “one,” the “everyone,” the average human Existence, in which quantitative measurement is necessary and justified. But this universal Time is not eigentlich, or proper; it is Time objectified, and it must be interpreted in the light of Existential Time, Time as immediately experienced, and not vice versa” (Paul Tillich Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1, ed. Gunther Wenz, 1989, pdf, p. 368).

For Kant, Time is essentially mathematical, linear, and spatial. A clock is a spatial metaphor (meaning to transfer) for time. The hands of the clock create a spatial pattern transferred from lived Time, but clock time is absolutely different than immediately experienced existential lived time. We can make the clock more accurate, change the spatial metaphor from non-digital to digital patterns, but existential temporality can never be reconstructed with observation and analysis of objectively measured time. Existence cannot be derived from essence. This argument is not based on the tautology of “my inner experience is my inner experience,” but that all knowledge assumes an ontological subject/object polarity.

The Ontology of Cognition

Tillich writes, “The unity of participation and separation in the cognitive situation will always remain a fundamental problem of philosophy”(PW., p. 338). This epistemological problem emerges from the “ontology of cognition”(p. 382). When we ask any question about existence the subject-object structure of reality is already presupposed a priori. Asking the question of Being, or the meaning of Life is “not mere subjective emotions with no ontological significance; they are half-symbolic, half-realistic indication of the structure of Reality itself”(PW., p. 365). Tillich critically reviews in his writings how various philosophers struggled with this assumption and the limits of human cognition. Tillich reminds us Schelling argued that the Principle of Identity in Thought is “valid only in the realm of essences, not of existence.” When Thought (Essence) and Being (Existence) are separated –not aligned, unsynchronized, not attuned--there is no correspondence to Truth. Truth is the state of thought being in agreement with, or attached to existence. The separation of subject and object logically implies the dialectical possibility of their polar unity. So knowledge as a possibility paradoxically depends on separation and detachment so that “There is no knowledge wither there is no separation”(PW., p. 383). Kant founded his metaphysics on the ontological separation between subject and object that characterize finite human reason. Heidegger believed that the Hegelian critique of Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich) was a denial of finite human knowledge. Tillich agrees with the Neo-Kantian critics of mystic ontology that any claim of a priori knowledge of Being is hubristic irrationalism, but “an ontology which restricts itself to the structure of finitude is possible.” Tillich believed--just as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Husserl believed--that the objective impersonal worldview of naturalistic science is swallowing the creative source of life like a “monstrous mechanism” (PW., p. 366).

Tillich’s philosophical historical survey continues focusing on the fundamental ontological division between essence (Idea) and existence (Nature). This ontological division of cognition is the foundation of existentialist philosophy and the key to a critique of all Hegelian holistic idealist systems that make truth impersonal. Existentialism is the philosophy of personal participatory experience from which all interest and decisions originate—there must be “interest” for actual negation and synthesis (Marx). Hegelianism lost the participatory subject in an impersonal objective dialectical process of a progressive teleological history (Kierkegaard). When Hegelianism claims that “A” is negated into a synthesis with “not-A,” “A” is simply being labeled as negated. This is because thinking (essence) is being taken as the same as existence, which is a common error of pure Idealism. Labeling here is just ideology so there is really no negation of “A.” Marx’s insight is the Idea will fail if personal participatory interest, passion, and decision-making is not involved.  Tillich applies this same criticism of confusing thought with existence to “every rational theory of progressive evolution, idealistic as well as naturalistic, including the later so-called “scientific Marxism.”(PW., p. 359). Marx famously said that philosophers have only interpreted existence as essences, but the point is to change existence. From these Schellingian, Hegelian, Marxist, Heideggerian critiques Tillich develops a systematic ethical and political theology of culture grounded in personal participatory temporal existential subjectivity, or Kairos experience. (Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 1970, pdf.).

The Kairos Circle

 “Awareness of a Kairos is a matter of vision…. It is not a matter of detached observation but of involved experience.”—Tillich, “Systematic Theology, Vol. III, p. 370.

Tillich develops Kairos into an existential theology of participation that is more of an “attitude of consciousness,” than a political party, or a popular cultural fashion. The word Kairos is used in the New Testament as meaning, “fulfillment of time,” or “God’s timing” referring to the churches experiencing the “self-transcending dynamics of history.” Kairos is the opportune time, the right time, or the harvest time of crops. Kairos is the occasion of an existential decision made in a concrete historical situation based on an analysis, and anticipation of something old passing and the new emerging, but calculation does not produce the Kairos-experience. Scientific-technical foresight of unknown forces working along with human decisions makes predicting the world historical process impossible.

In the Greek sense of the word, Kairos means “any practical purpose which a good occasion of some action is given”(Ibid., p. 369). Kairos is used in the New Testament when Jesus speaks of the “signs of the times,” or when Jesus said the time for his death had not come yet; John the Baptist and Jesus used it to announce the fulfillment of time for the Kingdom of God; or when the prophetic Spirit arises in the Pauline era. Paul uses it in speaking of Christ, the “great Kairos,” that can enter history at any time and is selected as the “center of history” which can be re-experienced again, and again (meaningful repetition of time, not mathematical linear time). But not every Kairos is of the same historical importance. Relative “kairoi” (plural meaning “the times”) describes when the Church reforms itself against a distorted age, or refuses to reform against heresy. 

The Kairos experience can describe a world-historical paradigm shift in an era of tyranny and domination that suffers from paradigm entropy by failing to provide a meaningful worldview resulting in collapse that makes way for a new paradigm, a new society—and a New Being-- to emerge in history. There is difficulty distinguishing a Kairos from a relative kairoi.  Kairoi can be demonically distorted and tragically wrong.

The term Kairos was used after WWI in central Europe to describe religious socialism, but it was also used “…by the nationalist movement, which, through the voice of nazism, attacked the great Kairos and everything for which it stands. The latter use was a demonically distorted experience of a Kairos and led to self-destruction. The Spirit nazism claimed was the spirit of the false prophets, prophets who spoke for an idolatrous nationalism and racialism. Against them the Cross of the Christ was and is the absolute criterion” (Ibid., p. 371).

Kairos is a normative concept, not just a description. The Kairos is the moment the archer decides to release his arrow aimed at a target.  Tillich tells us that no date foretold by Kairos has ever been correct. No situation foretold by Kairos ever came into being, but history has been changed. History does not progress in a steady predicable rhythm, but undergoes violence change, extreme creativity, extremely dormant periods, oppression, possibilities, cruelty, liberation, and expectation.

In 1919 Paul Tillich formed the “Kairos Circle” with Eduard Heimann, Carl Mennicke, Arnold Wolfers and others to ask the church to be open to socialism and social democracy, and a synthesis of Christianity with socialism. Tillich published the “Journal for Religious Socialism” between 1920-1927 for the group and later from 1930 published the “New Journal for Socialism.” Tillich declared that theology and ethics must “step forward in opposition to the capitalist and militarist order of society in which we find ourselves, and whose final consequences became obvious in the World War.” Tillich’s ultimate goal is for persons to “experience the divine in everything human, the eternal in everything temporal”(“Paul Tillich as a Systemic Theologian,” by Oswald Bayer in “The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, Ed. by Russell Re Manning, Cambridge University Press, 2009, Pdf., p.19).

Peter Gabriel in Athens, Greece 

"Lay Your Hands On Me"

Sat in the corner of the Garden Grill, with plastic flowers

on the window sill

No more miracles, loaves and fishes, been so busy with the

washing of the dishes

Reaction level's much too high - I can do without the stimuli

I'm living way beyond my ways and means, living in the

zone of the in betweens

I can see the flashes on the frozen ocean, static charge of

the cold emotion

Watched on by the distant eyes - watched on by the silent

hidden spies

But still the warmth flows through me

And I sense you know me well

No luck, no golden chances

No mitigating circumstances now

It's only common sense

There are no accidents around here

I am willing - lay your hands on me

I am ready - lay your hands on me

I believe - lay your hands on me, over me

Working in gardens, thornless roses, fat men play with their

garden hoses

Poolside laughter has a cynical bite, sausage speared by the

cocktail satellite

I walk away from from light and sound, down stairways

leading underground

But still the warmth flows through me

And I sense you know me well

It's only common sense

There are no accidents around here

I am willing - lay your hands on me

I am ready - lay your hands on me

I believe - lay your hands on me, over me

over me

Tillich and Wittgenstein on Private Experience

Tillich and Wittgenstein on Private Experience

“You surely know what ‘It is 5 o’clock here” means; so you also know what ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ means… It means simply that it is just the same there as it is here when it is 5 o’clock.”—The explanation by means of identity does not work here…(PI §350).” –Wittgenstein

“…the whole system of reason finally leads to some point at which reason does not deny itself, does not abdicate, but transcends itself within itself. “  —Tillich, “Philosophical Background of my Theology (1960)” in “Paul Tillich: Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1,” ed. Gunther Wenz, 1989, pdf., p. 414.

At the risk of sounding annoyingly repetitious, I just want to note that the ancient Greek word for “a knowing and knowledge” is γνῶσις (gnosis) derived from γιγνώσκω (gignosko) that means, “to learn to know, to perceive, mark, and learn.” However, Tillich explains that later in Greek history gnosis took on the meaning of a total person centered participatory knowledge, or cognitive commitment. In the New Testament gnosis took on three meanings: mystical union, sexual intercourse, and a kind of knowledge that is not ἐπιστήμη (episteme as in “epistemology”) meaning “scientific knowledge.” Later in the Greek period, gnosis was united with epistemological analysis (Ibid., p. 388, referred to “PW” here on).

I believe Dr. Verveake’s lecture Ep. 30 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory is a profound postmark so far where he concluded, “There can not be a scientific theory of relevance because how science works.” What else cannot be theorized by science? Tillich is focusing on this same problem of philosophy by making this distinction between Gnostic and Epistemic knowledge. Amazingly, Tillich’s epistemology, metaphysics, politics, and ethics are derived from his non-theistic theology:

“Only if, through a kind of methodological imperialism, we make controlling knowledge the pattern of all knowledge, do existential knowledge and cognitive commitment become meaningless concepts. But it is not only in religion that one had to resist such imperialism” (PW, p. 201).

In lecture Ep. 31 Embodied-Embedded RR as Dynamical-Developmental GI Dr. Vervaeke proposes a “plausibly argument to integrate cognitive science and human spirituality to address the meaning crisis” (56 minutes). In Ep. 32 -RR in the Brain, Insight, and Consciousness the concepts of Caring and Heidegger’s participatory knowledge (51 min.). And Ep. 33 -The Spirituality of RR: Wonder/Awe/Mystery/Sacredness deals directly with religion, or “Religio.” Just these four lectures cover an encyclopedic amount of philosophical literature much like Hegel’s method of researching a concept through the entire history of Western philosophy. I must say these lectures on spirituality, cognitive science, and philosophy has greatly enhanced my understanding and appreciation for religion in general and Christian theology in particular.

Wittgenstein on Gnosis/Episteme in the “Beetle Box”

Wittgenstein is known for his famous quote at the end of his treatise on language, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,(1921), “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” This statement is Wittgenstein’s entire summary of Kantian Transcendental Idealism. This is not a nihilistic statement that denies the existence and meaning of anything that is not an object of positivistic science, but rather an observation about the limits of language that is constructed for and functions in a world composed of objects whether they are empirical objects or logical objects. The Hindu Advaita Vedantins (Advaita literally means “not-two”) understood this limitation of language:

”Human language has its source in phenomenal experience; hence, it is limited in its application to states of being that are beyond that experience; logic is grounded in the mind as it relations to the phenomenal order; hence, it is unable to affirm, without at the same time denying, what extends beyond that order, “All determination is negation,” to apply a predicate to something is to impose a limitation upon it; for, logically, something is being excluded from the subject…The Real is thus unthinkable: thought can be brought to it only through negations of what is thinkable”(Advaita Vedanta, Eliot Deutsch,1969, p.11).

However, this object-based language also has difficulty communicating experience in the sensible world. Wittgenstein believed the problem is the use of language that fundamentally misunderstands the phenomena that it attempts to explain, or to convey the meaning of some experiences. Later in life he understood philosophy as solely an attempt to clear up the misunderstandings that improper language use creates. Many thinkers disagree that the only role of philosophy is to correct the misuse of language, or that all philosophical problems are only the result of using unclear language. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein was able to go a long way in resolving many philosophical puzzles and identifying hidden mistakes in the use of language. In his later philosophical work, Philosophical Investigations, (referred to hereafter as PI) published posthumously in 1953, he wrote:

“We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena…Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language” (Philosophical Investigations, published 1953, paragraph §90).

Our topics of spirituality, and mystic experience are exactly the kind of problems Wittgenstein had in mind. He does not discuss mysticism directly in the Philosophical Investigations, as he did in the earlier work, Tractatus; however, he does discuss philosophical problems that have the same problem of language as mysticism—that is subjective phenomena that only the person experiencing it could know, like the sensation of pain for example. Fortunately, there is one particular quote in the PI that summarizes his view and exposes the misunderstanding that language creates when applied to our subjective inner private worlds:

“If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word “pain” means—must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize that one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! –Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. —Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. —But suppose the word “beetle” had a use in these people’s language? —If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing is the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. —No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and designation’ the object drop out of the consideration as irrelevant” (Philosophical Investigations §293).

In this quote Wittgenstein is using the phenomenon of pain sensation as an example of a private object, but later he also uses color-impressions, feelings of fear, or headaches as other examples of sensations in a world of private objects. He attempts to examine how language is used in describing this private inner world, “Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand?” (PI §256).

One problem is we are each trapped in our own world of inner experiences and we really cannot know the objects in the private world of others—that is, we cannot look into the other persons box, or inner world of private objects. Color-sensations are another case of not being able to know if the next person is experiencing the same color sensation, as you might be experiencing, “The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another” (PI §272).

Our ordinary language ignores this problem of private inner experience because it really cannot deal with it as a functioning language: there cannot be a private language so we simply out of habit assume that the color-sensation I experience is the same color-sensation that others experience, “Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself “How blue the sky is!”—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else” (PI §275).

This is where language use creates a misunderstanding. We cannot assume that the “beetle” in my container is the same as the other person’s yet our ordinary language is built on that assumption, “I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am” (PI §303).

We apply the concept of identity to our inner experiences and then generalize that sensation to other persons when we speak of it, or even deny it as an experience. The identity language rule cannot be assumed to work in the world of private objects: “But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have of often had.” –That get us no further. It is as if I were to say; “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o’clock here” means; so you also know what ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same there as it is here when it is 5 o’clock.”—The explanation by means of identity does not work here…(PI §350).

Wittgenstein formulated the theory of language-games. The word “game” means rule based linguistic activity--not game meant as in the cynical sophistic use of language as some try to interpret it--which misses the point. Naming objects--where a child is taught to match a word with an object--is a language game in this sense. Wittgenstein defined language-games as the following: “…And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of much of the use of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, a “language-game”” (PI  §7).

When Wittgenstein wrote, “The thing is the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty,” he is pointing out that the language-game being used in his beetle example is based on a language of material objects that creates misunderstanding when used to described private objects such as pain, color-sensation, or feelings in our inner private world. These sensations are not objects. When we tried to create a new language not based on the material-object language game to speak of our inner subjective world, we would be creating an impossible language—a private language. He does not mean that a coded language cannot be created, since the code is based on some shared language game. Wittgenstein defined a private language as the following: “But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences—his feelings, moods, and the rest—for his private use?—Well, can’t we do so in our ordinary language?—But that is not what I mean. The individual words in this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking, to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language” (PI  §243). Such a private language based on only what the originator could experience would in principle be unintelligible to others and even to the originator themselves. How would the originator know if they misused a word? Language, for Wittgenstein, is a public tool designed to interpret the private life with this inherent fault for objectification and reductionism.

Wittgenstein is not denying that we experience pain, or see colors, or have inner experiences. He is pointing out the inadequacy of ordinary language built on the model of ‘object and designation’ to describe the subjective world of experience:

“…It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just a well as something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here.The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts—which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or anything else you please” (PI §304).

...to continue with “Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience.”

Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany

Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany

"The spell must be broken so that the German people can live."--Paul Tillich, May 9, 1944

Paul Tillich broadcasted one hundred Voice of America speeches to the German people during 1942 to 1944. Tillich’s collected speeches in, “Against The Third Reich,” Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses to Nazi Germany 1942 to D-Day 1944 (pdf. referred to as WAN here after), represent about half of the broadcasts. [1] Any person listening to these broadcasts, or reading anti-Nazi pamphlets did so at great risk for they could be punished by torture and death. Philosophy students Hans and Sophie Scholl were beheaded by guillotine for distributing anti-Hilter leaflets at Munich University in 1943. A University janitor identified the Scholls as the students who threw leaflets in a campus building. Czech theologian Jakub S. Trojan reported that anyone listening to the Voice of America broadcasts could be executed. During President FDR’s administration, Voice of America was not allowed to broadcast false information. [2]

Tillich’s speeches refer to the Nazis as the “National Socialist dictatorship.” Tillich became a religious socialist after WWI during which he held a higher military rank than Hitler. [3] Socialism was very popular with German labor during the late 1800s and early 1900's so the title of “socialist” was very common like the title “democracy” became popular after WWII. What made “National Socialism” different from other sects of socialism was its fanatical support for an anti-Communist, militaristic, racist, totalitarian state.

Ultimate Concern and Idolatry

Tillich addresses subjects such as the community, power politics, freedom, justice, truth, hate, guilt, and de-humanization. He frequently reports on the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis reminding listeners “to be anti-Jewish was to be antiChristian” (WAN, p. 6). Parochial nationalism is called anti-Christian and idolatrous by Tillich and is the primary focus of his criticism throughout the broadcasts. He defined idolatry as “the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy”(ST.,Vol.I, p.13). Also, Tillich re-interprets the meaning of “religion” to give theology greater relevancy in order to formulate a contemporary socio-political “theology of culture.” Tillich expanded the concept of “religion” to mean ultimate concern: “The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us.” (Ibid., p. 12). And again Tillich explains, “like every human being, he [the philosopher] exists in the power of an ultimate concern, whether or not he is fully conscious of it, whether or not he admits it to himself and to others.”(Ibid., p. 24).

Ultimate concern is for Tillich the essentially religious and an object for theological analysis. Idolatry takes something conditional and elevates it to the unconditional; the particular is given universal significance; the finite is raised to the level of the infinite. If holiness is considered inherent in something, it becomes demonic. Holy objects symbolically represent human ultimate concern, but over time the object, or a system of sacred things tend to become the ultimate concern that then transforms the holy objects into an idol, “Holiness provokes idolatry”(Ibid., p. 216). Idolatry is committed when the relative symbol itself is substituted for the reality of the symbolized. The infinite is reduced to an object; symbols become mere signs, spirituality becomes empty, or misdirected ritual. Religious nationalism is the epitome of idolatry that sets in motion an anti-demonic struggle for Christians.

In Tillich’s broadcast on the defeat of Nazi nationalist belief, he named them a “National Socialist tribal religion against the Christian spirit” (WAN, p.163). The Nazis fought against Christianity because they understood Christianity had “a particular attitude toward life” that was the complete antithesis to Nazism. Nationalist self-idolatry has its origins in tribalism older than Christianity where “every tribe considered itself to be the greatest in the world.” Christianity attempted to rise above this nationalistic tribalism to proclaim one law, truth, justice, and one God--not a national god. A universal God symbolizes the unity of humankind, unity of justice in all nations that uphold the dignity of every person and not one tribe or race, or the idolatry of nationalism—the “dragon of pagan idolatry.” When ancient Israel chose the god of nationalism, the people were “surrendered to foreign powers by the God who was its God.” As the Christian church became weak and irrelevant, ancient pagan nationalistic gods “rose from their graves,” and “equates its own limited power with the highest power and, in this way, destroys itself.” He urged the German people to “return home” to Christianity and humankind.

Tillich warned that Nazi Nationalists wanted to put the German people in the condition where they could be “dragged to the slaughterhouse” by exploiting a fearful nation which renders people unable to form clear judgments. The Nazis instill a “false fear-phantom” of an unknown future to drum up “heroic courage” so the German people will endure their present hardships and continue to sacrifice themselves keeping the sorcerers of fear in power. Like the Japanese, the Nazis turned the belief of their own sacredness of blood and soil into barbarity, arrogance and a false sense of national invulnerability. Tillich warns, “One can deal with what one fears. But out of anxiety one must awaken.”

Tillich testifies how German youth are educated by state “preachers and teacher, and educators of death” to seek the meaning of life in the death of an opponent, or one’s own death. Community, instead of providing life, turns education against humanity and any true religious-ethical meaning. They hate the spirit and try to kill the spirit, distort truth, deface justice, and teach tragic heroism. Educators teach a cult of death and heroism, which is really “an education for the extinguishing of all personality and for the mechanization of all humanity”(WAN, p. 45). Germany allowed itself to become “half willingly, half unwillingly” an instrument of destruction and self-destruction and are now entrapped by Nazi power.

How did Germany with such an advanced culture become the instrument of Nazi power? Tillich gives three reasons: 1). Germany, especially German Protestant religion, emphasized escapism from this life to another afterlife. German Evangelical churches in particular speak of the kingdom of heaven as otherworldly, and should not have any power in this world. However, this otherworldly attitude hands “this world over to satanic powers.” Tillich noted that Catholicism and Protestant Anglo-Saxon religions always felt responsible for the political and social organization of this world. 2.) German Protestantism withdrew from the political sphere by emphasizing spiritual freedom and setting themselves in opposition to political freedom. Freedom of thought which only means the freedom to dream replaced freedom of life (WAN, p. 54). Lastly, 3) the political sphere became ideologically separated from the human. In Germany, the nation and authority become separated. The original relationship between the nation and authority was forgotten so that political power became inhuman power in hands of the Nazi Nationalists. Government is accountable to the nation so that the political sphere is not outside the human, or the religious, or the intellectual for these are “part of what it means to be human, the absence of which makes full humanity impossible”(Ibid, p. 55).

Tillich views Nazi Nationalism as a revival of an ancient pre-Christian pre-historic repressed barbarism by pre-human monsters that are malicious to spiritual depth, freedom, and individual human dignity. In fact, they desire and compulsively seek human degradation. Nazi Nationalism is the “ancient dragon” that must be slain. Nazi Nationalism can easily give security with slavery, but not security with freedom. The German people could not tolerate freedom because they never had to struggle for freedom and have genuine revolutions like other countries and so stayed submissive to authority of the princes, nobles, teachers, magistrates, property owners, and mayors. What makes this false fanatical nationalistic German revival so frightening is its synthesis of ancient barbarism with a modern Machine Age Anti-Humanism that replaces all authentic community traditions with an artificially created “phantom” culture. [4] The German government preferred a society of human machine to true human beings. Young men are made into war machines, and young women into incubators (WAN, p. 231). Nationalistic fascism only produce “semi-intellectual products,” taken from inferior ideals dressed in un-German anti-Christian symbolism that is affirmed by the “priests of German idol worship.”

Tillich urges the German people to spiritually separate themselves and break away from the enslaving Nazi spirit. They are “thieves of millions who are adorned with medals,” and even worse than this they “deliberately set the earth aflame”(WAN, p. 201). The Nazis know that they are losing the war and want to disappear so to re-appear later when conditions are right. For now they urge the German people to fight against the Allies only to prolong Nazi rule as long as possible so to prolong their lives. The fascists reason that even if they lose their life in battle they at least escaped facing justice. In other words, the Nazis are heading to catastrophe and are willing to let the world perish with them while “knowingly allow German people to bleed to death for the sake of their power”(WAN, p. 236).

[1] Page numbers cited are the original book’s pagination, and not the pdf document page numbers.

[2] On July 2, 2013 the U.S. repealed the ban on broadcasting propaganda to the American people. Today the Pentagon posts directly and by proxy on social media to influence news and political commentary.

[3] Interestingly, William L. Shirer wrote in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), “…there is no doubt that Corporal Hitler earned the Iron Cross, First Class” (p. 30).

[4] Tillich must of known that “phantom” in Greek eidolon (εἴδωλον ) as in “ideology,” means both “idol” and  “phantom.” He avoided all academic language in his broadcasts.

Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand

I've been downhearted baby

Ever since the day we met

Jan lays down and wrestles in her sleep

Moonlight spills on comic books

And superstars in magazines

An old friend calls and tells us where to meet

Her plane takes off from Baltimore

And touches down on Bourbon Street

We sit outside and argue all night long

About a god we've never seen

But never fails to side with me

Sunday comes and all the papers say

Ma Teresa's joined the mob

And happy with her full time job

I've been downhearted baby

Ever since the day we met

Am I alive or thoughts that drift away?

Does summer come for everyone?

Can humans do as prophets say?

And if I die before I learn to speak

Can money pay for all the days I lived awake

But half asleep?

A life is time, they teach you growing up

The seconds ticking killed us all

A million years before the fall

You ride the waves and don't ask where they go

You swim like lions through the crest

And bathe yourself in zebra flesh

I've been downhearted baby

Ever since the day we met