Tillichian spell: Memories of a student mesmerized in the 1950s, The

Theology Today, Oct 1996 by Driver, Tom F

On page 198 of his Tillich book, Langdon Gilkey has a paragraph that is so right on that I want to quote it in full:

Stories gathered naturally around Tillich. This was not because he was "funny," either a natural comic or an experienced raconteur-anything but. It followed, rather, from this rare union of power and pathos, of supreme intellectual strength with a sort of inner frailty and outer vulnerability. Funny things happened to him. He was just helpless enough to be continually buffeted here and there; and he was strong and powerful enough so that this buffeting was funny and neither pathetic nor tragic.

This is very well said. Stories accumulated about Tillich because we loved him and were also awed by him. It's a very unusual combination. And perhaps we could add one thing to Gilkey's observation: The union of power and pathos in the man was but one of what seemed an endless array of contradictions within him. And affirmative humor (unlike the destructive kind) thrives on contradictions.

One of the contradictions in Tillich--everybody comments on it-was between his dry-as-dust manner at the podium and his extraordinary skill as a public speaker. It's not just that some inner power came through, which it did. It's that he knew exactly what he was doing, although he seemed not to. There's a story illustrating this that I got from John Maguire, now President of the Claremont Graduate School:

Tillich went to a college campus to speak at their morning chapel or required assembly. (That shows you how long ago it was!) The college president told Tillich in the anteroom that the assembly would begin exactly at 10:00 and end at exactly 10:30. He said, "At 10:30 a bell will ring, and the students will all get up and rush out. So I will be very brief in my introduction, but you must stop by 10:30." Tillich nodded, reached into his brief case for his text, and pulled out a sheaf of papers an inch and a half thick, all covered with typescript. The president was alarmed. He repeated his message: "Professor Tillich, remember that no one will listen to you once the bell rings." "Yah," said Tillich. So they walked in, and the president said one sentence and turned the podium over to Tillich, who laid his lengthy manuscript in front of him, pulled his glasses from his pocket, put them on, and began to read in a soft voice word for word what was on the first page. After about three minutes, he came to the end of that page, turned it over, and started the second page. The president's dismay increased. This went on for about nine of the thirty allotted minutes. Then, to everyone's astonishment, Tillich picked up a whole bunch of pages at once, turned them over, and continued reading without skipping a beat. After a while, he did that again. And then again. In this manner, he finally arrived at the last page of his manuscript, read it to the end, turned it over, and said, "Thank you"; and the bell rang!

Never tell me that Tillich was not a performer.

Another lecturing story seems to cast him in a bad light as a lecturer, but it's only funny if you know that his lectures put those of others in the shade. Since I got this one from Jim Ross, I can't vouch for its authenticity. Ross said that in the famous course on "The History of Christian Thought," Tillich was speaking about Thomas Aquinas one day when the time ran out, so he said he would continue at the next meeting. When they reassembled, Tillich began to talk about William of Ockham. The students interrupted him, saying, "Professor Tillich, you said you were going to finish what you began about Aquinas." Tillich, looking very surprised, studied his notes. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "Red marks last year! Blue marks this year!"