Quotes from Paul Tillich

Self-affirmation, for Tillich, is the paradox of "participation in something which transcends the self" (165).

Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern. God is not God without universal participation. "Personal God" is a confusing symbol.

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.

Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.

To overcome our sense of loneliness is a life long pursuit. Let us not despair in its pursuit!

The faith which makes the courage of despair possible is the acceptance of the power of being, even in the grip of non-being. Even in the despair about meaning being affirms itself through us. The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith.

It is not Christianity as a whole, but Calvinist Protestantism whose attitude towards nature contradicts almost completely the Buddhist attitude.

God] is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him. It means that whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and, conversely, it means that a man can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him.

Neither the Ten Commandments nor the great commandment is revelatory if separated from the divine covenant with Israel or from the presence of the Kingdom of God in the Christ. These commandments were meant and should be taken as interpretations of a new reality, not as orders directed against the old reality. They are descriptions and not laws. ~ vol. 1, p.125

Faith…is a concern of the whole person; it is the most personal concern, and that which determines all others. …it is not something which we can produce by the will to believe, but that by which we are grasped.

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. (190)

Le courage d'être s'enracine dans le Dieu qui apparaît quand Dieu a disparu dans l'angoisse du doute.

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

Tugas pertama mencintai adalah mendengar.

But if it is life alone that dies, love is born, which is the innermost part of the spirit. It is the most mature and most precious fruit of the life that sacrifices itself. Love breaks out of the prison of individualism and nationalist stupidity. Love goes to another person, even one with a different language or of a different race, and returns from him richer.

Spiritual self-affirmation occurs in every moment in which man lives creatively in the various spheres of meaning.

il confine è il luogo migliore per acquisire conoscenza.

loss of an economic basis is what, above all, fate means today.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the meaning of life.

Faith includes both an immediate awareness of something unconditional and the courage to take the risk of uncertainty upon itself. Faith says "Yes" in spite of the anxiety of "No." Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality

Courage as an element of faith is the daring self-affirmation of one's own being in spite of the powers of "non-being" which are the heritage of everything finite.

it is remarkable that among the emperors it was not the willful tyrants of the Nero type or the fanatical reactionaries of the Julian type that were a serious danger to Christianity but the righteous Stoics of the type of Marcus Aurelius. The reason for this is that the Stoic has a social and personal courage which is a real alternative to Christian courage.

In all these warnings against pleasure, truth is mixed with untruth. Insofar as they strengthen our responsibility, they are true; insofar as they undercut our joy, they are wrong.

God is always revived in something or somebody; He cannot be murdered. The story of every atheism is the same.