i like the little i know of tillich pretty well. and this is a good paper -- very clear, easy to follow. you write well.
most of the theology i encounter in my academic work -- not all of it by theologians, also by theorists writing in the western tradition who are interested in the sacred -- is obsessed with transcendence. i find myself asking the question over and over again, why do we need to be so focused on transcendence? how would this theory change if we thought of the sacred as mainly being immanent? what problems would that solve, and what new problems would that create?
for myself, i don't feel like it's possible to get at god without mediation. i put service to being, and especially to humanity, at the center of my life, and don't see that as elevating that which is not god above god. true, only GOD is GOD, utterly transcendent, and not anything that we can see or touch or even conceptualize, but i've never been able to understand how we can possibly do service to or even meaningfully relate to transcendence. we have to try to serve god through the material world that we live in. in my life, that generally means i make service to humanity my ultimate concern, because we are the most conscious embodiments of divine being that we are aware of.
really, not making the medium of your service to the divine into an idol is purely a matter of attitude, i think. even if i was the only person left on earth, there would still be meaningful ways that i could serve the divine. that not being the case, though, the human race (and more locally, my loved ones) are my areas of ultimate concern.
anyway. that is my very personal response. it's not meant so much as a criticism of your paper as a continuing articulation of the issues i have with the western emphasis on transcendence. i'm just not satisfied with the ways that theologians insist on a radically transcendent god and also believe that social justice is our most important task. (the gap is usually filled with a belief in immutable divine law, but i reject that idea on separate grounds.) in my thinking, there's a breakdown in the middle there that can only be filled by immanence, and it's only recently that theologians -- most of them marginalized -- have begun to try to deal with that.
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most of the theology i encounter in my academic work -- not all of it by theologians, also by theorists writing in the western tradition who are interested in the sacred -- is obsessed with transcendence. i find myself asking the question over and over again, why do we need to be so focused on transcendence? how would this theory change if we thought of the sacred as mainly being immanent? what problems would that solve, and what new problems would that create?
for myself, i don't feel like it's possible to get at god without mediation. i put service to being, and especially to humanity, at the center of my life, and don't see that as elevating that which is not god above god. true, only GOD is GOD, utterly transcendent, and not anything that we can see or touch or even conceptualize, but i've never been able to understand how we can possibly do service to or even meaningfully relate to transcendence. we have to try to serve god through the material world that we live in. in my life, that generally means i make service to humanity my ultimate concern, because we are the most conscious embodiments of divine being that we are aware of.
really, not making the medium of your service to the divine into an idol is purely a matter of attitude, i think. even if i was the only person left on earth, there would still be meaningful ways that i could serve the divine. that not being the case, though, the human race (and more locally, my loved ones) are my areas of ultimate concern.
anyway. that is my very personal response. it's not meant so much as a criticism of your paper as a continuing articulation of the issues i have with the western emphasis on transcendence. i'm just not satisfied with the ways that theologians insist on a radically transcendent god and also believe that social justice is our most important task. (the gap is usually filled with a belief in immutable divine law, but i reject that idea on separate grounds.) in my thinking, there's a breakdown in the middle there that can only be filled by immanence, and it's only recently that theologians -- most of them marginalized -- have begun to try to deal with that.