[27] Oct. 11, 1955 Last Saturday there was a discussion with you and Mr. Leibrecht, and some very interesting questions were raised. I want to read them, but I will answer only one, because they will be answered later. QUESTION: Is not the nature of Biblical revelation opposed to philosophy? Has not Karl Barth^a shown that a synthesis between Christianity and culture^b, Christianity and humanism, is [not possible]? TILLICH: The answer to this cannot be given in one word. In any case, the formulation I gave to this problem shows that it is not a matter of synthesis but a matter of mutual immanence, of being-within-each-other--for instance, the fact (to which we will refer very soon) that even Karl Barth has to use a language, which has developed in terms of a culture two thousands of years. But this is a very preliminary answer, and to this first part of the question, "Is revelation opposed to philosophy?"--I must do what I don’t like to do, but I must do it: Please read a very small book of only 80 and some pages, by myself, which has arisen just on the basis of thousands of such questions, namely Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, from the Chicago University Press. There I try to answer this question more fully. QUESTION: If we interpret religion in ontological terms--for instance, the participation of our being in absolute Being--can we still speak of God as our Creator, and the Creator of the world? TILLICH: Now this is the next subject, namely the problem of symbols, and there I will answer this in discussing the meaning and the significance of symbolic language. QUESTION: Is the aesthetic intuition of reality the function of human culture? Is this intuition a form of revelation? TILLICH: This again I must postpone--this will be the problem of the two ways of looking at a painting--until we come to the section on Religion and the Arts. QUESTION: What is the criterion of a true ultimate concern? The answer