ABSTRACT
As existentialist philosophy reveals, argues Tillich, the modern age is an age of anxiety and meaninglessness. This is what a living theology must address. It must show that a return to the Christian God is the only solution to our anxious nihilism. It must, however, abandon the traditional conception of God as an extra-terrestrial ‘being’, for such a god can only appear as absurd in the modern age. Since, properly conceived, God is not a being, religious faith is not ‘an act of believing with a low degree of evidence’. Rather, it consists in living the ‘theonomous’ life. To do that is to experience the world as a process, a divine, teleological venture. To surrender oneself to the venture is to live in a ‘sacramental’ world, to live with meaning and without fear. The goal of the theonomous life is the ‘sovereignty of God’. Since capitalism is ‘demonic’, the political implication of the theonomous life is religious socialism. One problem with Tillich’s theology is that is seems to have no special relation to Christian doctrine. Someone with a commitment to no formal religion might live theonomously. At the very end of his life, Tillich recognises this.
