The Christology Of Paul Tillich: The New Being In Jesus As The Christ -- By: Jerome L. Ficek

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 01:2 (Spring 1958)
Article: The Christology Of Paul Tillich: The New Being In Jesus As The Christ
Author: Jerome L. Ficek


The Christology Of Paul Tillich:
The New Being In Jesus As The Christ

Jerome L. Ficek

Trinity Theological Seminary

The appearance of Volume II of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology subtitled Existence and the Christ (University of Chicago Press, 1957) has supplied the theological world with a fresh, highly creative, and penetratingly original Christology. In accordance with the method of correlation, Christ is presented as the theological answer to the existential question of estrangement. In his recent book of sermons, The New Being (Scribner’s, 1955) Tillich sets forth the answer to the questions posed in his earlier book, The Shaking of the Foundations (Scribner’s, 1958). Using these as sources we shall attempt in this paper to investigate the manner in which Tillich presents The New Being in Jesus as the Christ overcoming the predicament of estrangement which characterizes human existence.

Preliminary Considerations:
The Method Of Correlation And The Existential Predicament

1. Method of Correlation. Tillich begins each section of his system with an analysis of human existence and follows it with a section in which he provides theological answers to the questions posed, as for example— Reason and Revelation, Being and God, Existence and the Christ, Life and the Spirit, History and the Kingdom of God — the major headings of his systematic theology. The human situation cannot provide answers, it can only pose the problem or predicament to which theology supplies religious answers. Theology and philosophy both deal with the structure of reality, philosophy dealing with the problem of being “in itself” and theology with its meaning “for us.” While the philosopher is able to exercise detached objectivity, the theologian is committed, involved with his whole being. The former seeks an identity between the logos of reality and the logos working in him; the latter looks “where that which concerns him ultimately is manifest . . . not the universal logos but the Logos ‘who became flesh,’ that is, the logos manifesting itself in a particular historical event.” (ST I, p23).

2. The Existential Predicament. Existence means to “stand out,” to stand out of essential being, i. e., to be estranged from one’s essence. In his analysis of being in Volume I, Tillich shows that in being freedom is always in polar unity with destiny. Man’s freedom, however, is finite freedom which is limited by his destiny. Only God transcends this polarity. According to Tillich the state of “dreaming innocence” precedes actual existence. It has potentiality but not actuality; it is not a perfect state but one of undecided possibilities. In the moment finite freedom becomes conscious of itself...

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