#existential theology

[doseofdavis]

Socrates could not prove that the soul was immortal. He merely said: This occupies me so much that I will order my life as though immortality were a fact—should it be proven wrong, eh bien, then I won’t regret my choice; for this is the only matter I am concerned about. What a great help it would be already in Christendom if someone said, and acted accordingly: I don’t know if Christianity is true, but I will order my whole life as if it were, stake my life thereon—then if it proves not to be true, eh bien, I don’t regret my choice, for it is the only matter I am concerned about.

Søren Kierkegaard, 1850.

[remembranceof]

The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposes a relation to the ground of being which we have called "absolute faith." It is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the "God above God." Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God.

Paul Tillich, from “The Courage to Be”

[doseofdavis]

...'For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.' Our anxiety puts frightening masks over all men and things. If we strip them of these masks their own countenance appears and the fear they produce disappears. This is true even of death. Since every day a little of our life is taken from us––since we are dying every day––the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely completes the death process.

Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be

[classy-cutoffs]

"Within the subject-object separation, observation and conclusion are the way in which the subject tries to grasp the object, remaining always strange to it and never certain of success. To the degree that the separation is overcome, observation is replaced by participation (which includes observation) and insight (which includes conclusion).” - Paul Tillich, ST vIII

[classy-cutoffs]

In the temporal order, in the unrest, in the noise, in the pressure of the mob, in the crowd, in the primeval forest of evasion, alas, it is true, the calamity still happens, that someone completely stifles the voice of his conscience - his conscience, for he can never rid himself of it. It continues to belong to him, or more accurately, he continues to belong to it.

- Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing 

[classy-cutoffs]

The proper function of religion is not to explain but to express.

[classy-cutoffs]

One must be willing to acknowledge that the moment has a richer content than what can be established by observation, by measurement and calculation, rich in possibilities of joy and gratitude, pain and repentance, duty and love, possibilities which demand decision in the present, a decision no science can take from him, a decision in which one loses or gains his existence.