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

Theology Today, Oct 1996 by Driver, Tom F

Here's another example, which I got second-hand but think it's authentic because who could have made it up? He was with a few students having a meal in one of those ordinary little restaurants along Broadway, not far from the seminary. For dessert, he ordered strawberries and cream. The waitress soon brought a bowl of strawberries covered with thick cream. He objected. "Ziss," he said, "is not what I ordered."

"Yes, it is," replied the waitress.

"No," he persisted, "I ordered strawberries and cream, but you bring me strawberries wiss cream."

You can imagine the reaction of that New York waitress. "Oh," she said, "What the hell! Strawberries and cream, strawberries with cream, what's the difference?"

He looked at her with his usual patience. "Young woman," he said at last, "do you know ze difference between a muzzer and child and a muzzer wiss child?"

Sometimes, however, Tillich's broken English resulted in inadvertent puns. Beverly Harrison claims to have been present when Tillich got off a howler during a discourse about Gnosticism. As you know, he had a certain appreciation for it and felt it should be defended against its many detractors. (In this he was right, of course.) He ended his remarks on the subject by saying, "Zo remember: Wizout ze noses zere is no face."

When the students laughed at this, Tillich looked bewildered and said, "Vat did I zay?" Then they laughed more, of course, and he didn't help matters by continuing to ask, "Vat did I zay?"

I remember a time in the systematic theology course when Tillich was holding forth on the doctrine of God. He decided to shake us up a bit by satirizing a popular idea of the omniscience of God.

(But let me interrupt here. You need to know that Tillich's speaking voice was full, mellow, and resonant-much more than mine. All these sibilants might make you think of a high or raspy voice, but it was not like that. Neither was it loud or bombastic. It just resonated from deep inside, and so it resonated also inside the listener.)

He was talking about and thinking about the omniscience of God: "When zeez people zink about Gott, zey are zinking about an old man zitting on a zrone in ze heaven. And zey zink zat he iss knowing everyzing. He iss knowing everyzing zat did happen, and everyzing zat iss happening, and everyzing zat will happen. And even he iss knowing what would have happened if not had happened what did happen."

Tillich decided to give an evening series of extracurricular lectures on art, which he illustrated with slides. We crowded into the room. At the beginning of the second lecture, he told us that his wife had been critical of the first one. She had told him that it was too abstract. He defended himself to us in this way:

"I cannot help it. It iss how I am. Sometimes I am in Chicago to change trains in ze railroad station. And near to ze railroad station is ze Art Institute in Chicago. Zo I go zere to look at ze pictures. I love to look at ze pictures. And while I am looking at ze pictures, concepts are coming!"