Theological Content and Implications for Theological Dialogue
Tillich comes to a specific concept of God so that he may come to a concept of the place of religion in modern human experience, and his explanation of the God-concept points to the religious and spiritual claims he makes for Christianity as relevant to such experience. Historically, God-concept treats of what (and perhaps whether) God is and does. What is believed about God, or divine attributes, also comes into the equation: God is good, powerful, loving, and so on. But as is the case with so much of Tillich's theological interpretation, what is believed or interpreted about God has to be stated and understood by the theologian with a great deal of qualification. Theological interpretations of God also have to have direct relevance for human experience, a point Tillich makes when he says that human experience is "cultural in form and religious in substance" and that there is a "boundary between religion and culture" to which a theology or a philosophy of religion must respond (Tillich, 1966, pp. 68, 69). The need for a coherent response and an adequate God-concept is implied in Tillich's statement that religion as such "cannot relinquish the absolute, and therefore, universal claim that is expressed in the idea of God. . . . It is also true, however, that culture has a claim on religion that it cannot surrender without surrendering its autonomy and therefore itself." Tillich continues:
[R]eligion's intentionality is toward substance, which is the unconditioned source and abyss of meaning, and cultural forms serve as symbols of that substance. Culture's intentionality is toward the form, representing conditioned meaning. The substance, representing unconditioned meaning, can be glimpsed only indirectly through the medium of the autonomous form granted by culture. Culture attains its highest expression where human existence is comprehended in its finitude an...