on 25/11/02 2:31 am, Dan Minette at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Why must I use your definition? Yes, you found a theologian, at a minor > school that agreed with you.
>> >> A professor with a Chair at Oxford University? > > No, actually I was talking about the guy at Santa Barbara. The guy at > Oxford didn't state that Marxism was a religion. > But that was an overview article written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The theologian who described Marxism as a quasi-religion was Paul Tillich, one of the foremost theologians of the 20th century. "Tillich, Paul (Johannes) born , Aug. 20, 1886, Starzeddel, Brandenburg, Ger. died Oct. 22, 1965, Chicago German-born U.S. theologian and philosopher whose discussions of God and faith illuminated and bound together the realms of traditional Christianity and modern culture. Some of his books, notably The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), reached a large public audience not usually concerned with religious matters. The three-volume Systematic Theology (1951-63) was the culmination of his rigorous examination of faith. <snip several pages of biography etc> Assessment. Tillich was a central figure in the intellectual life of his time both in Germany and the United States. It is generally held that the 20th century has been marked by a widespread breakdown of traditional Christian convictions about God, morality, and the meaning of human existence in general. In assessing Tillich's role in relation to this development, some critics have regarded him as the last major spokesman for a vanishing Christian culture, a systematic thinker who sought to demonstrate the reasonableness of the Christian faith to modern skeptics. Others have viewed him as a forerunner of the contemporary cultural revolution, whose discussions of the meaning of God and faith served themselves to undermine traditional beliefs. Tillich himself believed he was a "boundary man," standing between the old and the new, between a heritage imbued with a sense of the sacred and the secular orientation of the new age. He asserted that his vocation was to mediate between the concerns voiced by faith and the imperatives of a questioning reason, thus helping to heal the ruptures threatening to destroy Western civilization. He believed that from the beginning life had prepared him for such a role, and his long career as a theologian, educator, and writer was devoted to this task with single-minded energy." [1] [1] Arne Unhjem Professor of Philosophy, Wagner College, Staten Island, New York. Author of Dynamics of Doubt: A Preface to Tillich. In Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002. -- William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
