TRAMES 1, 6, 2002

TOWARDS A THEOLOGY OF CULTURENATURE

Anne Kull

University of Tartu

Abstract. In this essay I will survey Paul Tillich's views on nature and technology and I will show the primacy of the ontology of encounter in his theology, closely related to his epistemological tools, participation and multidimensional unity of life. Tillich's advice to his contemporaries seemed to be to have a love-affair with everything they encounter or produce while not giving up rationality. I will also consider Tillich's understanding of self-creation of a human being in the moral act, in community with other selves. Lastly, I will assert that Tillich's critique of modernity comes from a non-modern perspective. Thus, since Tillich's theology is relatively free from modern aberrations, it is possible to read his theology as a theology of culturenature (even if for Tillich it remained implicit). The present technocultural and technonatural situation requires this kind of hybridity because otherwise we do not have conceptual devices to think about contemporary culture and nature.

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