[28] was "self-sacrifice." What does this mean? If it is merely self-sacrifice of the believer, many idolatries demand that. TILLICH: Now that is certainly true, and I am very grateful for this question especially, because we had a very quick conclusion of the last lecture, in which I pointed to the criterion, to the anti-idolatric criterion, of faith. l said this anti-idolatric criterion is self-sacrifice. Now obviously this has been misunderstood as the self-sacrifice of an individual--for instance a martyr, or a prophet, or the Christ himself. That was not meant. Self-sacrifice^a was meant as the sacrifice of the FINITE BEARER of that which is infinite, in the finitude of what he represents: in his language^b, in his religious tradition, in his obedience to the law^c, in his piety, and all this. My idea was NOT that the religious "genius"--or however we use that word ("genius" is not too good)--must sacrifice himself, in terms of giving his life. This belongs to another level of problems. And we can say, Yes, this is very often the case, but this is not the answer because (as the question rightly says), MANY idolatries, e.g., Nazism^d, Communism^e, and many others, have a tremendous amount of martyrs. So this is not the answer. The answer is that everything finite which, as finite, claims ultimacy^f, must acknowledge that it is not the ultimate itself. And only on this basis do we have what I would call the ultimate criterion. Now I believe that, after two weeks, four lectures, having first discussed the different functions of culture^g on the basis of a consideration of man and culture, and the meaning of faith^h in its double sense (as ultimate concern and as acceptance of special expressions of this ultimate concern), you all desire that we now go directly into the concrete problems of our lecture[s], namely the relation of religionⁱ and the different functions of human culture--or, if you prefer the phrase, of the human mind. You remember that at the very beginning I spoke intensively--and somewhat ecstatically--about the meaning of language^j, language as the expression of human freedom^k, as the possibility of using universals^l and, by using them, transcending any given situation-- language, at the same time not only designating reality but also communicating reality, in the life of a community. From this we derived the two main groups of cultural