Word: tillich
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Existential Anxiety. Tillich expounds his theology in two forms: his three-volume Systematic Theology (of which the third volume is still in the writing), and what he calls the "dialectical conversation" of his more popular books-The Protestant Era*, The New Being, The Shaking of the Foundations, The Courage To Be, and others. But in both his systematic theology and his other writings, he deals with the same key themes...
...says Tillich, exists in a state of "finitude." He does not know what he is or where he is going. He feels estranged from some great, unknown thing that is demanded of him. He is filled with wonder at the phenomenon of "being," simple astonishment that things are. This wonder presupposes a darker knowledge that they might not be; being is threatened, always and everywhere, by nonbeing...
Therefore Tillich, like Kierkegaard, sees man's existence a state of anxiety. This "existential" anxiety is not to be confused with fear, for it has no object, and fear must have an object. Nor is it to be confused with neurotic anxiety; the neurotic attempts to "avoid non-being by avoiding being...
...victim of existential anxiety may try to sidestep it by frenetic activity, or by worshiping secular concepts, such as success or nationalism. Or he may try to bury his anxieties in a "heteronomous" religion that offers him readymade certitudes for his uncertainties. In either case, says Tillich, the individual commits idolatry. Against such idolatry, Tillich asserts the Protestant Principle, which considers it presumptuous of any "conditional" institution, such as church or state, to pose as spokesman for the "unconditional," i.e., God. According to the Protestant Principle, as he expounds it, every Yes must be coupled with a corresponding...
...Courage to Be. The only way man can cope with his existential anxiety is by having the "courage to be," which Tillich defines as self-affirmation in spite of the threatened possibility of nonbeing. This courage to be is like a spark across the gap between existential and essential, philosophy and theology, man and God. For this human, self-affirming courage-unlike Nietzsche's Will to Power-has its source and power in "the divine self-affirmation...