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Tillich's Implicit Natural Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
By his well-known method of correlation, Paul Tillich sought a formal pattern by which he could combine his philosophical interests and theological concerns in a joint effort to achieve a systematic theology. In formulating this correlation, Tillich is very careful to assign the substantive, constructive role to theology, leaving philosophy with the task of articulating those fundamental questions concerning the ground of our being arising out of our existential situation. In particular, Tillich argues that philosophy cannot say anything positive concerning the existence and nature of God.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1971
References
page 257 note 1 University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1951, 1957, 1963. We shall incorporate our references to these three volumes in the body of the text by means of the abreviations ST I, ST II, ST III.
page 257 note 2 The Protestant Era (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1948), p. 88.Google Scholar
page 258 note 1 cf. ibid., p. 91: ‘There is no philosophy deserving the name without transformation of the human existence of the philosopher, without his ultimate concern and without his faith in his selection for truth in the place to which he belongs.’
page 259 note 1 ‘The Problem of Theological Method’, Journal of Religion, 27 (January 1947), p. 17b.Google Scholar
page 260 note 1 cf. ST I, 44, where Tillich treats such philosophical concepts as Brightmann's ‘cosmic person’, Boodin's ‘cosmic mind’, and Wieman's ‘creative process’ as ‘symbolic expressions of our ultimate concern’.
page 260 note 2 The Protestant Era, p. 89.
page 262 note 1 ‘Problem of Theological Method’, p. 24a.
page 264 note 1 Casserley, J. V. Langmead, Graceful Reason: the Contribution of Reason to Theology (Seabury Press, Greenwich, Conn., 1954), p. 18f. Cf. also pp. 81–98.Google Scholar
page 267 note 1 Casserley (p. 82f) points out that proponents of the ‘existential form’ of the cosmological argument tend to speak of the experience of God as implicit in the radical awareness of one's finitude rather than as inference based upon this finitude. He suggests that the two cannot be radically separated, for inference is an element in experience. Yet it is probably more inferential, since the atheistic existentialists are ‘vividly aware of the limitations, the finiteness, and the contingency of man’ without any awareness of God which might be secured through analysis.
page 268 note 1 See Ross, James F., Philosophical Theology (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1969), pp. 176–182 for an excellent presentation of the Scotistic argument using the resources of modern formal logic.Google Scholar
page 269 note 1 See my essay, ‘Tillich's One Nonsymbolic Statement: A Propos of a Recent Study by Rowe’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 38/2 June 1970, pp. 176–182.Google Scholar