a kind of new reality, a third reality beside the two of them, and that means the “third man,” the tritos anthropos. This argument is very valid and is the real danger of realistic thinking, and theology is full of such wrong realistic thinking. But there is an argument of which we have become aware since the Middle Ages and again in our modern period, namely the collectivistic danger of realism. Realism, if it is carried through radically, as it was in some periods of the Middle Ages, devalues the individual and would declare, in our example, that the common humanity of Paul and John is important, but not they as individuals. And this was a real danger of the Middle Ages. If this danger had not been recognized and attacked by nominalism, the Middle Ages would have become a relapse into a kind of magic realism without the acknowledgment of the importance of the individual personality. A relapse to primitive collectivism was the danger which was overcome by the nominalistic criticism of realism.

Now here you see that this is not a matter of mere magic, but it is a matter here also of ethics and a philosophical argument against the extinction of the individual.

As far as that, philosophy goes—although already the theological implication indicated itself in my last example.

Now we come to the theological problem implied in this discussion between positivism and ontology. In ontology there is not only the acceptance of the universals as powers of being, which always determine that a tree becomes a tree, but there is more involved, namely that experience of power-of-being itself. And that experience is a matter of ultimate concern. I have often been criticized from nominalistic theologians who of course wouldn't call themselves nominalistic—they call themselves