Publisher's Synopsis
n this essay Carol Murphy presents the writings of Paul Tillich as one of the exceptional thinkers in our culture. Tillich believes that religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion. He has also written that all human life can be interpreted as a continuous attempt to avoid despair.
Tillich writes of courage and despair which are ever present. The interplay of these can lead not to estrangement but to a sense of wholeness. This wholeness and unitedness with the divine ground is called by Tillich theonomy. Theonomy does not mean the acceptance of a divine law imposed on reason by a highest authority; it means autonomous reason united with its own depth.
Paul Tillich portrays Jesus as the Christ as forgiving sinners and lifting the burden of the Law, and finally as sharing in the despair of those who are free to wreck their own natures by rejecting the God who created them. On the basis of reconciliation, reunion can take place. The man who accepts the forgiveness of God is able to forgive himself, and responds to God with love a desire for reunion. He is also reunited with his fellowmen in the community of the reunited. Reunion means healing, physical, mental and social wholeness.
