Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason
Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.
Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the seperated.
Faith includes both an immediate awareness of something unconditional and the courage to take the risk of uncertainty upon itself. Faith says “Yes” in spite of the anxiety of “No.”Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality
Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.” Paul Tillich
man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity
Only if God IS ultimate reality, can he be our unconditional concern; only then can he be the object of surrender, obedience, and assent. Faith in anything which has only preliminary reality is idolatrous.
Faith…is a concern of the whole person; it is the most personal concern, and that which determines all others. …it is not something which we can produce by the will to believe, but that by which we are grasped.
Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.
The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements – as well as one’s deepest failures – is a definite symptom of maturity.
Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.
Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.
…only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.
Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite.
For love … is the blood of life the power of reunion in the separated.
Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone and the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself in spite of being unacceptable.
The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.
The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us or the pain against which it can protect us.
I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment.
He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.
Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.
Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.
Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.
The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith it is one element of faith.
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.
Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.
Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.