And then you can go on: How does this experience express itself? And the universal expression of it, even if something else is named, such as success, or nation, or money, is God. “God” is the name for the expression of our ultimate concern.

Then, as I said in the last hour (shocking many of you), the question of the existence or non-existence of God is not only not a justified question, but it is a blasphemous one because the presupposition of this question is already the ultimacy of our concern—if it is a real question, if it is not only a dialectical play, or a desire to be shocking for other people. But if it is a real, serious question, it is done out of ultimate concern, and then it is affirmed already. But then, not the existence of God is affirmed, but what is affirmed is the truth of the ultimate concern and the possible truth of a special expression of this ultimate concern.

So I announce—somebody reminded me of it in the very first hour—that I would speak about the dialectics, or dynamics, of the holy. I didn’t do it because time is too limited, and I will not go too much into it. But what I called here as experience-of-being-ultimately-concerned can also be called the experience of the holy, because that which has the character of ultimacy, has also the character of the holy. Now in order to help you, I can only say: do read (and I underline this “do” ten times) the book of Rudolf Otto^d, The Idea of the Holy^e.¹ There he describes the nature of holiness as the mystery which both fascinosum (fascinating) and tremendum (producing trembling, producing holy awe about it). The analysis of this experience of the holy is one of the very great things in modern theology in the 20th century. This is the way I go. If you go the other way and start with God and come to man, then you must return to the old arguments for the existence of God, or to a simple authoritarian statement. If you want to avoid these two impossible ways, then the only way which you have is a way from ultimate concern, or experience of holiness, to its expressions; and certainly its central expression is God. Now that was my answer to this first question.

Question (P. H. John^h): You said symbols grow and die; they are not invented. How, and why, does a symbol degenerate—especially a religious symbol? You have stated that the symbol of the Virgin Mary is a dead symbol. How did it die? For whom? Obviously for Catholics it is very much alive. What does it symbolize? Is it dead only for