Frasi di Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich
Data di nascita: 20. Agosto 1886
Data di morte: 22. Ottobre 1965
Altri nomi:პაულ ტილიხი,پل تیلیش,Пауль Тілліх,بول تيليش,Paul Johannes Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich è stato un teologo protestante tedesco, pioniere del più recente movimento di rinnovamento della teologia tradizionale.
Espulso dall'Università di Francoforte perché aveva preso le difese degli studenti ebrei perseguitati dai nazisti, si rifugiò allora negli Stati Uniti. Paul Tillich è uno dei maggiori teologi del XX secolo. L'opera Teologia sistematica è il suo testo più importante: è composto da una fondamentale "Introduzione" metodologica e cinque sezioni intitolate "Ragione e rivelazione", "L'essere e Dio", "L'esistenza e il Cristo", "La Vita e lo Spirito", "La storia e il Regno".
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presbitero, teologo e scrittore italianoFrasi Paul Tillich
„Dio lo dobbiamo chiamare la potenza infinita dell'essere che resiste alla minaccia del non-essere. In teologia classica è l'essere-stesso. Se l'angoscia viene definita la coscienza di essere finiti, Dio lo dobbiamo chiamare il fondamento infinito del coraggio. In teologia classica è la provvidenza universale.“
— Paul Tillich
da Teologia sistematica
„Soltanto se la tradizione viene trasformata frequentemente può essere salvata come realtà vivente. Una conseguenza fatale del tradizionalismo è l'elusione di questioni assai serie. Sembra che le conferenze ministeriali tendano ad evitare i problemi teologici basilari. In un tempo in cui vengono attaccati tutti gli elementi fondamentali del cristianesimo, tale atteggiamento acuisce fortemente l'irrilevanza. [... ] La parola "controverso" è divenuta oggi, nell'insieme, una parola negativa. Dovrebbe essere invece una parola quanto mai positiva. Nelle controversie, infatti, nel "sì e no", è possibile conoscere la verità e in nessun altro modo. Se si escludono – vuoi da parte della chiesa, vuoi da parte della società – le affermazioni controverse, tale chiesa e tale società sono condannate ad una lenta decadenza.“
— Paul Tillich
da L'irrilevanza e la rilevanza del messaggio cristiano per l'umanità oggi
„Le tendenze conservatrici delle chiese ufficiali non sono mai riuscite a sopprimere la tendenza del cristianesimo al sovvertimento della storia. Tutti i movimenti rivoluzionari dell'Occidente ne dipendono, che lo sappiano o no.“
— Paul Tillich
citato in Vittorio Messori, Ipotesi su Gesù, SEI, Torino 1976, cap. IX
„Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.“
— Paul Tillich
Context: Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith. And this is the first step we have to make in order to understand the dynamics of faith.
„A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is.“
— Paul Tillich
Context: There are realms of reality or — more exactly — of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing.
p. 124
„For in the depth of every serious doubt and every despair of truth, the passion for truth is still at work. Don’t give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don’t be seduced into a truth which is not really your truth, even if the seducer is your church, or your party, or your parental tradition. Go with Pilate, if you cannot go with Jesus; but go in seriousness with him!“
— Paul Tillich
Context: Where else, besides in scholarly work, should we look for truth? There are many in our period, young and old, primitive and sophisticated, practical and scientific, who accept this answer without hesitation. For them scholarly truth is truth altogether. Poetry may give beauty, but it certainly does not give truth. Ethics may help us to a good life, but it cannot help us to truth. Religion may produce deep emotions, but it should not claim to have truth. Only science gives us truth. It gives us new insights into the way nature works, into the texture of human history, into the hidden things of the human mind. It gives a feeling of joy, inferior to no other joy. He who has experienced this transition from darkness, or dimness, to the sharp light of knowledge will always praise scientific truth and understanding and say with some great medieval theologians, that the principles through which we know our world are the eternal divine light in our souls. And yet, when we ask those who have finished their studies in our colleges and universities whether they have found there a truth which is relevant to their lives they will answer with hesitation. Some will say that they have lost what they had of relevant truth; others will say that they don’t care for such a truth because life goes on from day to day without it. Others will tell you of a person, a book, an event outside their studies which gave them the feeling of a truth that matters. But they all will agree that it is not the scholarly work which can give truth relevant for our life.
Where else, then, can we get it? "Nowhere," Pilate answers in his talk with Jesus. "What is truth?" he asks, expressing in these three words his own and his contemporaries’ despair of truth, expressing also the despair of truth in millions of our contemporaries, in schools and studios, in business and professions. In all of us, open or hidden, admitted or repressed, the despair of truth is a permanent threat. We are children of our period as Pilate was. Both are periods of disintegration, of a world-wide loss of values and meanings. Nobody can separate himself completely from this reality, and nobody should even try. Let me do something unusual from a Christian standpoint, namely, to express praise of Pilate—not the unjust judge, but the cynic and sceptic; and of all those amongst us in whom Pilate’s question is alive. For in the depth of every serious doubt and every despair of truth, the passion for truth is still at work. Don’t give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don’t be seduced into a truth which is not really your truth, even if the seducer is your church, or your party, or your parental tradition. Go with Pilate, if you cannot go with Jesus; but go in seriousness with him!
Chap. 8: "What Is Truth?"
