Theological Concepts
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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
. . .
endency begins in connection with Tillich's God-concept ontology, wherein he rejects traditional arguments regarding God's existence and the convention of referring to God as a being in favor of reference to God as unconditionality or the power or ground of all being. The consequence of such a tendency is that dealing with the problem of God is necessary for anyone who is confronted with questions of his or her own being and with questions of being as such. Such a confrontation will lead to the quest for answers.
Tillich explicitly asserts that these answers are given by the Christian faith and are affirmed only from within the theological circle determined by that faith. But the question remains as to how they are found therein. Obviously, Tillich does not employ a proof-text approach. Neither does he ask the Biblical theologians to provide him with an account of major principles running through the Bible or specifically with the teaching of Jesus or Paul. No more does he appeal to the historic creeds and confessions or to the consensus of contemporary theologians or believers. . . .
Rather, we are led to see how man's situation, in so far as he neglects this dimension, leads to insoluble problems and desperate condi
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Approximate Word count = 8339
Approximate Pages = 33 (250 words per page)
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