ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 concluded that Tillich’s understanding of humanity as religious precedes, relativizes and humanizes his Christology by philosophically depicting the Christ event as the answer to humanity’s search for the essential. It went on to present evidence that the late Tillich drew back from identifying the Christ event as the definitive moment of the realization of the essential in history. The same reticence prompts the question of whether the Christ event can any longer be simply described in terms of Tillich’s understanding of kairos as “the center of history”. (Tillich 1963: 147, 364) The question of history is closely related to Tillich’s late qualifications of his earlier Christology because, for Tillich, human history is simply the history of humanity’s search for its existentially impaired essence. History thus understood is itself religious. Historical moments of humanity’s recovery of its essential truth are its crowning moments. Such moments constitute the fullness of historical time, the kairoi, that give to history its meaning and reward its innate religious quest. Because he identifies history with humanity’s search for the essential, Tillich, at least in his earlier Christology, could make the substance of his Christology the unqualified and unique appearance of “essential manhood” in a personal life in existence. (Tillich 1957a: 94) There is no explicit religious language in this description nor is there a need for any. In Tillich’s own words the use of religious language to describe the meaning of the Christ event would be “redundant”. (Tillich 1957a: 94) Christ as essential manhood says it all. From this basis follows the question of whether or not the completion of history as the realization of the essential in existence can be confined to the Christ event as the earlier Tillich and most of Christian orthodoxy would still contend.
