The discussion of autonomy in religious thought today is complicated by the addition of a third concept, theonomy, which emerges briefly in the post-Kantian discussion but does not stand out until Tillich develops it in connection with his theology of culture and of history. Tillich’s discussion of autonomy has the double distinction of working out the dynamics of autonomy and of conceiving the relation between the autonomous and theonomous by reference to what he calls “form” and “depth.”
Autonomous reason is reason that actualizes its structure without regard to its depth; heteronomous reason is a structure of reason that is imposed upon reason as the depth of reason; and theonomous reason is autonomous reason when, as autonomous, it is simultaneously transparent to its depth, or to what in his early works Tillich called Gehalt. “Autonomy does not mean the freedom of the individual to be a law to himself [but] the obedience of the individual to the law of reason, which he finds in himself as a rational being” (Systematic Theology, 1:83f.); the “problem of heteronomy is the problem of an authority which claims to represent reason, namely, the depth of reason, against its autonomous actualization” (1:84); and theonomy means “autonomous reason united with its own depth” (1:85). This concept of autonomy differs from the Kantian conception, according to which empirical knowledge is heteronomous, because it is dependent upon sense-intuition, in contrast to the moral law, which is immanent in reason. For, in contrast to Kant, Tillich conceives autonomy as the self-determination of a structure that is already a bipolar structure of subject and object (in epistemological terms) or self and world (in ontological terms). “The nomos (‘law’) of autos (‘self’) . . . is the law of subjective-objective reason” (1:84). Hence, autonomy is not the self-determination of the subject over against the object but the state in which the subject-object structure determines and is determined by itself; and genuine empirical knowledge is, consequently, not heteronomous, as in Kant, but autonomous (1:64). The question of autonomy in Tillich is not whether the subject is determined by itself or by an object in the world but whether the self-world structure determines and is determined by itself, that is, whether it is free to be the structure it is. Heteronomy has, therefore, a negative connotation in Tillich that it does not have in Kant; it refers to a state of affairs in which one element of the whole structure of reason is equated with the depth of reason and placed over against the structure of reason.
The dynamics of reason are related to the way in which, under the conditions of existence, autonomous reason is in conflict with heteronomous reason as the result of losing its transparency to depth. Heteronomy is the imposition of a law on reason from outside reason; but the outside of reason is in fact an element of reason. “Heteronomy is . . . authority which claims to represent reason . . . against its autonomous actualization” (1:84). Such heteronomy arises as a reaction against an autonomy that has lost its depth. But the reaction is destructive, and the conflict between the two leads to the quest for a new theonomy, that is, a reunion of depth and rational form.
Autonomous reason, the structure of the self in relation to its other, is theonomous when its own rational structure is transparent to the depth of the structure, when “depth” means the transrational that, because it exceeds rational grasp, is neither subject (in opposition to object) nor object (in opposition to subject) but equally beyond as well as apparent in both subject and object—“the absolute Nothing and the absolute Something” that is neither a being nor the substance or totality of beings but “above all being” (“Theology of Culture,” 162). Similarly, autonomous being is theonomous when it is transparent to the depth of being, which is neither the self nor the world but apparent in both of them.
A typology of current usages of the concept of autonomy can be drawn from Tillich’s concept. If Tillich represents one type, then a second type, represented by Karl Barth, sees autonomy and heteronomy as constituting the alternative, the one referring to human self-determination and the other referring to determination by something or someone other than one’s own self, whether the other be worldly objects or other persons. Theonomy, in turn, is not an alternative to autonomy or heteronomy; it belongs to a different frame of reference. Thus, Barth contrasted the theonomy of his dogmatics with the autonomy of a philosophical system by the difference in the center. At the spot where a system of thought has a “basic intuition” as its organizing center, dogmatics has an opening (like, Barth said, the open ring in the center of a wheel) for the self-showing of God (Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1/2:969). This open place is only provisionally filled and always subject to change. The presupposition, made in Barth’s dogmatics, that God shows the divine self in the word of God, is the concrete representation of this theonomous element, which is as different from autonomy as it is from heteronomy. “Autonomy should not be understood, any more than heteronomy, as in opposition to theonomy but as in correspondence and correlation to theonomy” (1/2:958). All other presuppositions are at best provisional and can be corrected as warranted. Barth’s use of autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy differs from the type represented by Tillich in two ways. Unlike Tillich, but like Kant, Barth’s type includes in the legitimate structure of being or reason both an autonomous and a heteronomous element—so that both autonomy and heteronomy can answer to and be related to theonomy. Thus, the assertion of the self-revealing of God in the word of God as an absolute presupposition is intended to be neither autonomous nor heteronomous. In Tillich’s type, such an absolute presupposition would have to be regarded as heteronomous because it is a rational assertion—an assertion about something by someone—but it is treated as though it cannot be rationally judged.
The third type, placed somewhere between Tillich and Barth, is represented by Bultmann, in whose view there is no intermediate position between autonomy and theonomy. Theonomy is either autonomy or heteronomy; but if autonomy is understood in a genuine sense, then autonomy is theonomy. This view resembles the Barthian type in seeing autonomy and heteronomy as the alternative, but it differs from Barth in allying theonomy with autonomy and not with heteronomy. It differs from Tillich because it operates with a polarity of self and other (self-world, subject-object) but not with a polarity of structure and depth (or form and Gehalt).
As the typology of uses indicates, the concept of autonomy cannot be understood in isolation from its related terms. When understood in relation to them, its valuation changes depending on whether theonomy is compatible with heteronomy as well as with autonomy or only with autonomy or only with heteronomy.
ROBERT P. SCHARLEMANN
Bibliography
Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics).
Rudolf Bultmann, “Humanism and Christianity,” Journal of Religion 32 (1952): 77-86.
R. Pohlmann, “Autonomie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 1.
Paul Tillich, “On the Idea of a Theology of Culture [1919],” in What Is Religion?
———, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 83-86, 147-50; vol. 3, 249-68.
Cross-Reference: Alienation, Freedom, Natural Theology, Ultimate Concern.
BAPTISM
Baptism is the chief rite of initiation in Christianity. By the early third century initiation included a five-step process highlighted by baptism: (1) preliminary inquiry, (2) three-year catechumenate, (3) fasting in preparation for baptism (eventually Lent), (4) baptism on Easter, and (5) post-baptismal instruction in the “mysteries” (baptism and eucharist). After Constantine’s conversion in 312, the churches shortened the catechumenate. Major theological emphases included the participation in Christ’s victory over the powers of evil, forgiveness of past sins, spiritual illumination, rebirth and renewal, and the death and resurrection with Christ.
Whether Christian churches baptized infants before 200 is debated. From the third century on, however, baptism of infants became customary in both East and West; Origen and Cyprian regarded it as a tradition of