Paul Tillich Quotes on Truth
Paul Tillich approached truth as a theologian and philosopher of religion, and the quotes gathered here express his understanding of it. For Tillich the pursuit of truth is driven by desire: without the eros toward truth, he wrote, theology would not exist, and inquiry is impossible without that longing. He refused the common opposition of faith and doubt, holding, in a formulation marked here as attributed, that doubt is not the opposite of faith but one element of faith, so that an honest faith includes the risk of uncertainty. Tillich also tied truth to justice, insisting that there is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice, so that truth is never merely theoretical. Drawn from Dynamics of Faith and Love, Power and Justice, these passages present truth as the object of an ultimate concern, inseparable from doubt and from justice.
Quotes
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Faith is being grasped by an ultimate concern.”
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Religion is the substance of culture; culture is the form of religion.”
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“It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Sometimes I have the feeling that [irony] shows some awareness of the ambiguity of life—as long as it does not degenerate into mere cynicism. The awareness of the ambiguity of one's own highest achievements (as well as one's own deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.”
The Ambiguity of Perfection”, Time (May 17, 1963) -
“There is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice.”
Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 21 -
“Without the eros toward truth, theology would not exist.”
Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 31