Sublime

The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheist. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occup

“To be is to be perceived,” said the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753). We exist and give existence by virtue of perception. Berkeley meant that God’s omniscient perception maintains all things. For a moralist—and Berkeley was a bishop—this could mean you’re never out of the sight of God, so you’d better be good! For a metaphysician, “E

You have faith (an ultimate concern) if you are devoted to someone or something as an end in itself, being willing—if the situation so requires—to sacrifice other interests and passions for the sake of what you believe in or hold to be most valuable. In this sense, both secular and religious persons have faith. The crucial difference, however, is t

Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word, and on the grandest scale. They express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the revelation of the soul's nature. From this universal foundation no human soul is cut off.

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.

Barth’s contention is that starting with the nonexplanation, even meaningless assertion, that “God is God” creates a cavity inside the immanent frame. Inside this cavity, the pastor and her people can again speak of God. The church takes hope in the possibility of truly encountering God’s actual (real) presence as its very life.

In their revolt against Hegel’s essentialism, all existentialists contend that the world is fragmented. History is a series of unreconciled conflicts, and man’s existence is filled with anxiety and threatened with meaninglessness. While the ultimate Christian answer is not found in any of these existential assertions, there is much here by which th