Word: tillich
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tillich adapted Earth's emphasis on the Bible and personal salvation, but he could not stomach the Barthian conviction that it is impossible to project the Word of God into the context of modern culture. Neither nature nor civilization is wholly evil, Tillich protested. On the contrary, he wrote, "God reveals himself not only in history but also through history as a whole." His conclusion: without losing his image of Christ as Savior, the Christian must adjust the externals of his faith, his philosophy and culture to the circumstances of the time. The Protestant religions, for example, resulted from...
Schleiermacher's Thesis. Starting off from this premise, Tillich began to build a new synthesis of Protestantism. The essence of Protestantism, he taught, need not be fixed in sacraments, ecclesiastical authority, or even in Protestant churches themselves. ("Protestantism may live in the organized Protestant churches. But it is not bound to them.") Churches and sacraments have meaning only because of what they symbolize. Thus, their outward forms may and in fact must constantly change. As an earlier German thinker Friedrich Schleiermacher put it, "The Reformation must continue...
What does not change, said Tillich, is "the Protestant principle," a prophetic power to call men to an awareness of God's infinite nature and their own limitations. Tillich held that the Protestant principle has existed since the dawn of Christianity, and must exist because it is necessary to Christianity. It is the "protesting" voice of the prophet outside the temple calling the people back to God and away from the formalism and sophistries of the priest...
...Tillich, the quarreling liberal and orthodox theologies are merely different aspects of the Protestant principle. Although the Protestant principle gave liberals "the right and the good conscience" to criticize the Bible scientifically, it also led the orthodox to look at the Bible as "Holy Scripture, namely as the original document of the event which is called 'Jesus the Christ' . . . The Protestant principle made the liberals realize "that Christianity, as well as every Christian, is involved in the universal structures and changes of human life"; it made the orthodox proclaim "that man in his very existence is estranged from...
Aquinas' House. Around the Protestant principle Tillich has constructed one of the most impressive Protestant theological systems since the time of the reformers. Critics compare him with St. Thomas Aquinas, who in the isth century integrated Catholic thought so that theology, philosophy and art are coordinated in one impressive system. Like Aquinas, Tillich has been weaving his religious thought into a broad pattern, but his is looser and more adjustable. As he explains it, "Catholicism deals with these things from the point of view of having the entire truth and the perfect form of life. Protestantism is always learning...