Tillich's Dynamics of Faith.pdf 信仰的動力

Tillich's Dynamics of Faith.pdf
Dynamics of faith.pdf 信仰的動力
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/f/11760419.html

experpt : page 1-2

FAITH AS ULTIMATE CONCERN

1. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man's ultimate concern.

Man, like every living being, is concenrned about many tings, such as food and shelter.

2. But man, in contrast to other living beings, has spiritual concerns -- cognitive, aesthetic, social, political. Some of them are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a social group.

3. If it claims ultimacy it demand the total surrender of him who accepts this claim, and it promises total fulfillment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name.

4. If a national group makes the life and growth of the nation its ltimate concern, it demands that all other concerns, economic well-being, health and life, family, aesthetic and cognitive truth, justice and humanity, be sacrificed.

5. The extreme nationalisms of our century are laboratories for the study of what ultimate concern means in all aspects of human existence, inlcuding the smallest concern of one's daily life. Everything is centered in the only god, the nation -- a god who certainly proves to be a demon, but who shows clearly the unconditional character of an ultimate concern.

6. But it is not only the unconditional demand made by that which is one's ultimate concern, it is also the promise of ultimate fulfillment which is accepted in the act of faith.

7. The content of this promise is not necessarily defined.

8. It can be expressed in indefinite symbols or in concrete symbols which cannot be taken literally, like the " greatness" of one's nation in which one participates even if one has died for it, or the conquest of mankind by the
"saving race," etc.

9 In each of these cases it is " ultimate fulfillment" that is promised, and it is exclusion from such fulfillment which is threateded if the unconditional demand is not obeyed.