omplicates the already difficult task of increasing rational human understanding of the divine. Griffin appears to find unpersuasive the view that Tillich's theological language is meant to be symbolic, especially in view of Tillich's referring to God's "'hearing' our prayers, and his 'accepting' us. Despite the fact that God is not a subject, or a self in any sense, Tillich speaks of his 'point of view,' of his 'image' of our fulfillment, and of his being 'a subject even where he seems to be an object'" (Griffin, 1990, p. 36). This analysis leads to the view that such language prevents reaching interpretative religious meaning. "The notorious result is Tillich's position that we must be able to think of God in a certain way for religious purposes, but that of course God is really nothing like that. This implies a violent split between our cognitive and religious dimensions, precisely the type of split that Tillich was most concerned to avoid" (Griffin, 1990, p. 38). To put it another way, Christians are both condemned to the paradoxical boundary and urged to embrace it as the very power of their faith. Griffin notes that Tillich does not combine the contradictory ideas that God could be both a being and unconditional; this is the error of traditional theology. However, when Tillich insists that God is unconditional "in all respects" even as he attributes sentient activity such as desire, acceptance, or love to God, then he makes the religious experience undoubtedly paradoxical and probably unintelligible. Griffin concludes that religious intelligibility is more likely with a doctrine of God that combines the concept of a divine being with the concept that the divine is being-itself. This would appear to provide the potential for an anchor of religious meaning.
«IP5,0»Undoubtedly, Tillich seems philosophically comfortable in the boundary and uncomfortable in the presence of intellectual anchors--a tendency that is noticed by both T...