This book shows the paradoxical mode by which Christians keep their faith in the Christian message as they relate with science. It reveals how Paul Tillich's method of correlation helps us to understand how Christians interact with science without necessarily conflicting, separating, and dialoguing, and synthesizing with each other. It rules out natural theology but provides a non-eclectic theology of nature that frees Christians to be involved in science meaningfully and without undermining their faith.
This collection moves from COVID to Kairos, engaged with the legacy of Paul Tillich. Liminal spaces reflect ambiguous transitional moments in human consciousness and culture. In early 2020, cultures and states turned inward for protection, exacerbating intertwined health, political, racial justice, and economic crises. Tillich would have understood these overlapping challenges to be heralding a kairotic moment, reflecting simultaneous crises and opportunities. The collected essays reflect on the intersections of COVID and Kairos. Authors engage numerous ethical challenges precipitated by the current Kairos moment, thinking through and with Tillich. Other essays offer reflections on our cultural moment, engaging topics from public health to video games to hate speech. Reflecting on the cultural moment, this collection offers unique insight into the Tillichian legacy for the present and future.
In this book, African Christian theology is introduced as a Kpelelogical reflection about life in the context of Africa, which exists in the context of the cosmos. Kpelelogy is the ontological mode of being grasped by the agape of God in Christ by grace through faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. By this mode, African theology is introduced by way of a definition, a principle of paradox, and a description, as well as a critical view of the works of African theologians. It examines the issues of method, criteria, and sources of doing theology in Africa and introduces the method of Kpelelogy as an African theological method. This is explored further as a holistic theological method that is conscious of its being in existence, and its life in history, that is driven by faith in the triune God in a pneumatic experience that has been termed in this book as the Kpelelogical ontological mode. The book is ecumenical in view of its engagement with Christian tradition. It presents a Kpelelogical theology that is concretely African and universally Christian in the Okpelejen Wulormor—the cosmic Jesus Christ who is and was, but beyond the munus triplex (Priest, King and Prophet, threefold office of Jesus Christ) that is to come. Hence it is a theology which embraces elements of Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox theological insights in the African context.
The following study on Ti1lich's theology is based on a doctoral dissertation, presented to the Ludwig-Maximilian University at Munich in December, 1967. Tillich's theology, however, is not a simple structure to analyze, since it is so systematically interrelated. Certainly every major area of his theo logical system involves all other major areas, and even the minor areas have complex ramifications to the total system itself. The following pages, there fore, can only be construed as one among many viewpoints of his system. Tillich's theological structure might be compared to a painting or some other work of art: one must view it now from this direction, now from that, in order to appreciate the total effect. Certain points should, however, be mentioned here. First of all, a key notion in this system is "essentialization. " This concept rounds off and com pletes Ti1lich's entire work. Unfortunately, Ti1lich himself did not write extensively on this topic, nor did he actually correlate it to the beginning and middle of his system, although it expresses the final telos of his entire theo logical work. I have drawn out of the Systematic Theology as much as possi ble on the subject of "essentialization," and have tried to analyze it in light of other key-concepts in his system.
This book shows the paradoxical mode by which Christians keep their faith in the Christian message as they relate with science. It reveals how Paul Tillich’s method of correlation helps us to understand how Christians interact with science without necessarily conflicting, separating, and dialoguing, and synthesizing with each other. It rules out natural theology but provides a non-eclectic theology of nature that frees Christians to be involved in science meaningfully and without undermining their faith.
