October 2020 Vol.8 No.10

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Nyagwoka TM
Nandi JOM

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Review

A Theologian of Ultimate Concern: Paul Tillich

Dr. Tom Mong’are Nyagwoka^*, Prof. J.O.M. Nandi

Department of Social Sciences Kaimosi Friends University College (KAFUCO)

*Corresponding Author's Email: tmongare@Kafuco.ac.ke
Mobile No.: 0725948978

Received: 07 August 2020    I    Accepted: 08 September 2020    I    Published: 30 October 2020    I    Article ID: MRJER-20-041
Copyright © 2020 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.
This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine Paul Tillich’s theology in order to gain an insight into his ideas concerning the role of religion, theology, philosophy and culture in the contemporary world, and demonstrate how these four disciplines affect human existence. The paper examined robust existing research findings relevant to the theology of Paul Tillich, in the process of conceptualizing the influence of his theology on contemporary human existence. The article updates Paul Tillich’s theology to the findings herein. Moreover, the paper adopted analytical methods to analyze Paul Tillich’s theology of Ultimate concern. The results indicated that Tillich comprehends religion as the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern which contain the answers to the questions of the meaning of life. Besides, the outcomes showed that religion is dialectically and intimately related to theology, culture and philosophy. Furthermore, the paper stipulated that religion encompasses other disciplines of religions which include and not limited to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, African, Comparative, Oriental and Contemporary. Consequently, all these religions contain a theology and a philosophy which unites or separates them. Likewise, the paper demonstrated that theology and religion are perceived as two complementary human activities which are done by man, who is religious and who develops a theology and a philosophy relevant to his or her religion and applicable to his or her ways of existence. This paper established that every religion in this biosphere communicates to the world through the lenses of philosophy and theology. Subsequently, these outcomes will be useful as a resource and reference material in the teaching of Universities both at graduate, post graduate and undergraduate levels especially in courses such as; New Testament in the modern scholarships, contemporary theologians, contemporary theology and contemporary religious thought. Moreover, the findings will also be useful in the field of research.

Keywords: Ultimate concern, Being, Theology, Philosophy, Religion, Method of correlation, Humanism, Mediation, Dualism and Supernaturalism, Theonomy, Heteronomy and Autonomy