[66] Protestants? How can Protestants recover the element of the female, mothering ground in the Divine? Is this necessary? Wise? (laughter) Finally, please elaborate fully: "Protestantism^a, in rejecting sexual symbolism, is in danger not only of losing much symbolic wealth but also of cutting off the sexual realm from the ground of being and meaning in which it is rooted and from which it gets its consecration." --The Protestant Era, p. 119. TILLICH: Now I am very grateful for these questions too. First a very simple answer, which I hope I said when I spoke here in class, namely that of course the dying of a symbol happens by a transformation of the fundamental relationship between a man and the ultimate, as it happened in the Reformation. So obviously this symbol didn’t die for the Catholics^b; on the contrary, it has almost removed all other symbols of Christianity^c, in the last decades. The main theological interest of Catholicism today is Mariology, the doctrine of Mary. But for Protestants it has been removed because of the reestablishment of the radical monotheistic element, the exclusiveness of the ultimate in the sense of prophetic religion. This is my first answer. Now your second question does two things for me: first it gives me the occasion to affirm that your question is quite justified. I believe that Protestantism^d REALLY has lost something by having lost the female symbolism^e--to a great extent, not completely. And one of the ways in which I try personally to regain it--what you call "motherly ground" is absolutely justified--terms like ''ground of being^f" have a mystical^g connotation in which the motherly element, the carrying, embracing element, is contained. And this is my way in which at least, preliminarily, I try to overcome the exclusive and often intolerable male character of Protestant symbolism, especially in the Calvinistic realm of Protestantism. There is much more of infant symbolism and mother symbolism in Lutheranism. And then finally, you bring me to a statement about symbols which I left out, and I am glad you reminded me of it, namely the two-edged character of all religious symbols^h. I pointed to this briefly, when I spoke about [the] symbol as healing power,ⁱ and I will use the realm of medicine^j, of healing, as an example for