Tillich

Tillich was born into the family of a Lutheran pastor in the village of Starzeddel, Prussia, on Aug. 20, 1886. He studied at the university of Berlin, Tübingen, Halle, and Breslau. In 1912, at the age of 26 he was ordained a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. From 1914 to 1918 he was a chaplain in the German Army. Tillich believed that the traditional concept of God no longer existed and through the rest of his life he worked at redefining the concept of God, directing men to “the God beyond God”.

Tillich taught at several Universities in Germany until 1929 where he was dismissed, when Hitler assumed power, due to his contradictory views with the growing Nazi movement. By 1933 he immigrated to the U.S. and taught at the Union Theological Seminary until 1955. During this time of adapting to a new culture, Tillich is triggered by a single fundamental question of “Who am I?”. He had great concern in his preservation of his old values and their translation into the terminology of this new culture.

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For Tillich, he believes that the answer is implied in the analysis of being. Tillich's "method of correlation" related Christian affirmations to the existential questions arising in human life and history. We have the capability to operate our imagination to surpass our finitude and to point to infinity. Existentialism is the expression of the anxiety of meaninglessness and of the attempt to take this anxiety into the courage to be as oneself.

Tillich relies heavily on his Christian faith and his experiences for his theological theories. He described himself as living on the boundary between theology and philosophy, church and society, religion and culture, idealism and Marxism, his native and his alien land.

Tillich also distinguishes two categories of reason. Later Tillich went on to teach at Harvard University and the University of Chicago as well as being a guest speaker for several colleges. " Nonbeing is experienced as the threat to being, which generates a sense of finitude. I interpret Tillich’s meaning of our “Being” to be our virtues (physical, emotional and religious beliefs) that define our behavior. “The question of God must be asked because the threat of nonbeing, which man experiences as anxiety, drives him to the question of being a conquering nonbeing and of courage conquering anxiety.

The question of God is the fundamental question of theology. Tillich believes that such an ontological question of being-itself springs from the "shock of nonbeing. As for my interpretation of Tillich’s meaning of “Non-being”, this would be our fears to be virtuous which creates anxiety.

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