Word: tillich
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...book, Tillich tries to use his ideas to settle the "obsolete conflict between reason-determined morals (man-centered) and faith-determined morals (God-centered)." Not surprisingly, faith triumphs over reason by subsuming it. In man, faith is prior to reason, Tillich says. It follows that Tillich can dispose of the two major types of reason-determined morals. First, there is "graceless formalism," which is compulsive adherence to religious doctrine. Like Luther, Tillich feels that formal laws separate man from...
Second, "normless relativism." brought on by cross-cultural studies, leaves man agnostic and rootless. He needs a "common fundamental principle." And Tillich finds it; merely by asserting its existence. Most anthropologists disagree with...
...Tillich takes his "common fundamental principle" as far as a moral imperative: "The moral imperative is the command to become what one potentially is, a person within a community of persons." Now what does this mean? There is no clear answer given. It seems to be similar to a notion of Becoming or self-realization held by many contemporary existentialists. But in Tillich, the individual development is tied to a supernatural Logos, "the source of all physical and moral laws." Everyone is impelled toward Logos by the silent voice" or conscience within him. The immoral act, then...
...what kind of a creature is this man who Becomes? Like Rousseau, Tillich is sure that man is essentially good. Why? Because the theologian claims an identity between man's moral imperative, the religious character of the imperative, man's essential being, and the will of God. "Moral commands are religious because they express the Will of God. The Will of God for us is precisely our essential being with all its potentialities, our created nature declared as "very good...
...good is "very good?" What happened to original sin? The difficulties don't stop there. To anyone who questions Tillich's belief in Logos, the giver of absolute moral laws, he writes, "there is self-deception in every denial of the natural moral law (Logos). For those who deny it must admit that a divinely revealed moral law can not contradict the divinely created human nature." This apparently means that Tillich's ontological notion of natural moral law has been confirmed by God himself...