[17] LECTURE III -- Oct. 6, 1955 Last time, I tried to give a concept of faith which, I am convinced, was somehow a shock for many for you because it contradicted the popular ordinary understanding of faith and the... of religion. At the end of the lecture I was asked whether one is allowed to use a concept in such a different way, after this concept has been shaped by the history of thought in a special and definite way. Now my answer to this question was that it is not true that the concept of faith had this one-sided meaning of belief-in-unbelievable-things or, more exactly, of belief in things without evidence. There are two elements in the concept of faith--and this is the way in which we want to go now anyhow--and which answers this question more fully and indirectly. The one element is, as I said, the state of being ultimately concerned--what I called the ecstatic concept of faith^a--ultimately concerned about whatever it may be. But there is no con- cern, not even an ultimate concern, which is not at the same time concrete. One cannot be concerned if there is nothing concrete about which one is concerned. This is just the point to which I want to go now, because this leads to religion in the narrower sense of the word: religion as a special cultural function, with special sociological characteristics, special forms of theoretical and practical expression. The decisive thing about the understanding of religion is that one understand [sic.] the duality of these meanings--the one meaning which is the real center and heart of religion and faith: being-grasped by an ultimate concern; and the other: being-related to special expressions of this ultimate concern. These special expressions are symbols^b, they express, in a concrete way, what is of ultimate concern. And even if these symbols are realities such as the nation, or success, they become symbols in the moment in which they become matters of ultimate concern. The concrete religious life is full of these symbols. Now the question arises: "Which are those expressions in which the REALLy [sic.] ultimate is the object of one's concern?" Here the great problems of the concreteness of the religious content arises. I gave you SOME contents, there are innumerable others. There are as many contents as there are realities, which in the history of mankind have become matters of unconditional concern by human beings. This is the reason for the large history