April 15, 2013

Updike on Tillich

Category: Ethics,Theology :: Permalink

I got a kick out of novelist and poet John Updike’s review of Paul Tillich’s Morality and Beyond:

The last two chapters, which discuss ethical systems in the context of history, are especially brilliant.  Yet the net effect is one of ambiguity, even futility–as if the theologian were trying to revivify the Christian corpse with transfusions of Greek humanism, German metaphysics, and psychoanalytical theory.  Terms like “grace” and “Will of God” walk through these pages as bloodless ghosts, transparent against the milky background of “beyond” and “being” that Tillich, God forbid, would confuse with the Christian faith (Assorted Prose, 283).

Posted by John Barach @ 11:54 am | Discuss (0)

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