Is Faith Communicable? A very intriguing and strong questionW
for faith is elusive and it defies reason, not in the sense of
opposition or contradiction, but faith goes beyond reason.
Tillich (1951) in his book, What is Religion, stated that “faith is
directedness towards the Unconditioned (God who is the ultimate)
in the theoretical and practical act. Faith is not the acceptance of
uncertain objects as true; it has nothing to do with acceptance or
probability. Nor is it merely the establishing of a community
relationship, like confidence or obedience or the like; rather it is
thee apprehension of the Unconditional as the ground of both the
theoretical and the practical.”
Tillich (1951) showed the relationship between faith and
culture; a culture that expresses itself in different forms of belief.
Faith then is directedness of the spirit toward the Unconditioned
meaning. But the two meet in orientation to the completed unity of
the forms of meaning. He calls this unity theonomy. But within this
theonomy there is tension between autonomy and heteronomy.
Autonomy has a twofold element: the “nomos” – the law or
structural form that is supposedly carried out radically
corresponding to the unconditioned demand for meaning, and the
“autos” – the self-assertion of the conditioned which in the process
of achieving form loses the unconditioned import. Hence,
autonomy is at the same hybris and a gift of the God. Heteronomy
on the other hand, rises against the hybris of autonomy and
submits to the unconditioned meaning.
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