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Paul Tillich

Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German American Christian existentialist philosopher and theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.

  • Among the general public, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership.
  • In academic theology, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63) in which he developed his “method of correlation,” an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.

This is part four of Tillich’s Systematic Theology. In this part, Tillich talks about life and the divine Spirit.

Life remains ambiguous as long as there is life. The question implied in the ambiguities of life derives to a new question, namely, that of the direction in which life moves. This is the question of history. Systematically speaking, history, characterized as it is by its direction toward the future, is the dynamic quality of life. Therefore, the “riddle of history” is a part of the problem of life. — Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol.2, p. 4

Source: Click here to learn more about Paul Tillich.

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Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous Yes to one's own true being.

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