Paul Tillich: THEOLOGY OF CULTURE
III The Struggle Between Time and Space

TIME and space should be treated as struggling forces, as living beings, as subjects with power of their own. This of course, is a way of speaking, but it is a way which I think is justified by the fact that time and space are the main structures of existence to which all existing things, the whole finite realm, are subjected. Existing means being finite or being in time and space. This holds true of everything in our world. Time and space are the powers of universal existence including human existence, human body and mind. Time and space belong together: We can measure time only by space and space only in time. Motion, the universal character of life, needs time and space. Mind, which seems to be bound to time, needs only embodiment in order to come to existence, and consequently it needs space.

But while time and space are bound to each other in such an inescapable way, they stand in a tension with each other which may be considered as the most fundamental tension of existence. In the human mind, this tension becomes conscious and gets historical power. Human soul and human history, to a large extent, are determined by the struggle between space and time.

It is extremely interesting but it would lead too far to consider at length the struggle between space and time in nature itself: The entire control of time and space in the realm of mathematical physics, in which time for the purpose of calculation can be used as the fourth dimension of space, and the physical process can be turned around whereby time is deprived of its most essential quality — to have a direction. Time without direction is time under the full control of space. Therefore, it is the first victory of time that the process of life goes from birth to death, that growth and decay create a direction which cannot be reversed. The aged cannot become young again in the realm of life. Nevertheless, the predominance of space remains. The life-process cannot be reversed, but it can be repeated. Each individual life repeats the law of birth and death, of growth and decay. The direction of time is deprived of its power by the circular motion of continuous repetition. The circle, this most expressive symbol of the predominance of space, is not overcome in the realm of life.

In man the final victory of time is possible. Man is able to act towards something beyond his death. He is able to have history, and he is able to transcend even the tragic death of families and nations, thus breaking through the circle of repetition towards something new. Because he is able to do so, he represents the potential victory of time, but not always the actual victory. What has happened in nature unconsciously happens in man and history consciously: The same struggle and the same victory.