What do you think?
Rate this book
Christianity and the Encounter of World Religions
One of the Bampton lectures given at Columbia University in 61/2.
1/A View of the Present Situation--Religions, Quasi-Religions & Their Encounters: Tillich claims religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary & which itself contains the answer to the question of life's meaning. Given this definition, secularism, nationalism, communism & capitalism are seen as quasi-religions. The dramatic character of the present encounter of the world religions is produced by the attack of quasi-religions on religions proper.
2/Xian Principles of Judging Non-Xian Religions: It's natural that Xians affirm the fundamental assertion of Xianity that Jesus is the Christ & reject what denies this assertion. Tillich examines the history of Xianity's rejection & its tolerance of other religions. He concludes that Protestantism has the most intimate relation with liberal-humanist quasi-religion.
3/A Xian-Buddhist Conversation: Tillich compares & contrasts the encounter of Xianity with Buddhism, one of the most competitive proper religions. Points of convergence & divergence are shown & the whole is summed up in two contrasting symbols, Kingdom of God & Nirvana.
4/Xianity Judging Itself in the Light of its Encounter with the World Religions: How can a community of democratic nations be created w/out the religions out of which liberal democracy in the Western world originally arose? A mixture of religions destroys in each of them the concreteness which gives it its dynamic power. The victory of one religion would impose a particular religious answer on all other particular answers. But the question of life's ultimate meaning cannot be silenced. Religion cannot come to an end. A particular religion will be lasting to the degree in which it negates itself as a religion. Xianity will be a bearer of the religious answer only so long as it breaks thru its own particularity.
1/A View of the Present Situation--Religions, Quasi-Religions & Their Encounters: Tillich claims religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary & which itself contains the answer to the question of life's meaning. Given this definition, secularism, nationalism, communism & capitalism are seen as quasi-religions. The dramatic character of the present encounter of the world religions is produced by the attack of quasi-religions on religions proper.
2/Xian Principles of Judging Non-Xian Religions: It's natural that Xians affirm the fundamental assertion of Xianity that Jesus is the Christ & reject what denies this assertion. Tillich examines the history of Xianity's rejection & its tolerance of other religions. He concludes that Protestantism has the most intimate relation with liberal-humanist quasi-religion.
3/A Xian-Buddhist Conversation: Tillich compares & contrasts the encounter of Xianity with Buddhism, one of the most competitive proper religions. Points of convergence & divergence are shown & the whole is summed up in two contrasting symbols, Kingdom of God & Nirvana.
4/Xianity Judging Itself in the Light of its Encounter with the World Religions: How can a community of democratic nations be created w/out the religions out of which liberal democracy in the Western world originally arose? A mixture of religions destroys in each of them the concreteness which gives it its dynamic power. The victory of one religion would impose a particular religious answer on all other particular answers. But the question of life's ultimate meaning cannot be silenced. Religion cannot come to an end. A particular religion will be lasting to the degree in which it negates itself as a religion. Xianity will be a bearer of the religious answer only so long as it breaks thru its own particularity.
105 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1963
5 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Paul Tillich
277 books424 followersPaul Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was – along with his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann (Germany), Karl Barth (Switzerland), and Reinhold Niebuhr (United States) – one of the four most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century. Among the general populace, 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. Theologically, 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 2, 2017
Very quick read. Besides the occasionally orientalist picture of Buddhism and Islam, Tillich does a great job of advocating for interfaith dialogue in a way that allows both sides of a discussion to be critiqued by the other in order to better practice their own faiths.
May 26, 2015
Not being a Christian, this series of lectures meant very little to me. A committed Christian might find this challenging.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews