Philippine E-Journals

Paul Tillich’s Courage to be and Christian Personalism

Emmanuel Lantin

Discipline: Philosophy, Religion

 

Abstract:

 

Contemporary Catholic theology, reflecting upon human experience in the light of revelation has arrived at a notion of Christian personalism in a language more meaningful and more relevant to contemporary man, especially to the contemporary Christian. While previous theological investigations have been constantly centered on the idea of the Absolute and its attributes, present-day theologians, animated by modern philosophy's discovery of the notion of subjectivity, l have shifted the focal point of their study on man himself. However, such a shift does not necessarily lead to a closed anthropology which is devoid of any theological implications; man, while being reflected upon properly as man, is always seen within the context of his relation to the Absolute, a relation which constitutes the very structure of the human person. Thus, while theology may describe the person as a self-determining subject shaping himself by free choice, the freedom which the person experiences is necessarily a freedom for due to his dialogical relationship with the Absolute; the subject shaping himself is doing so in view of his relation with the Absolute.