Course outline
Tillich’s Personal Search for the Absolute?
Seeking the Absolute in Human Knowledge
Seeking the Absolute in Moral Life
Seeking the Absolute Through the Holy
Find and You Shall Seek
In this four part course you will delve into Paul Tillich’s last significant work. This course will help to build an understanding of Tillich’s life work, his way of bringing doubt and certainty together, and his understanding of the “God after God”. Over the readings you will discover how the biblical phrase ‘seek and you shall find’ is best understood when we see the truth of the reverse. That our very pursuit of the Absolute in various fields is actually evidence of the Absolute at work in our lives.
The book is based on a series of lectures that Tillich gave shortly before his death, and it represents his last important work. It also happens to be his most personal work, and one of the clearest overviews of his life project.
The lectures explore Tillich’s lifelong search for the Absolute, and draw out how he viewed this passionate search as itself the evidence that the Absolute he sought had already been found.
During this course we’ll confront a powerful argument, beautifully articulated, that explores how ‘seeking’ and ‘finding’ are intimately intertwined. An argument that provides a way to avoid both fundamentalism on one hand and relativism on the other.
By doing this course, you will gain a powerful way of understanding the relationship between faith and doubt, grasp what Tillich means by ‘the God beyond God’, and gain an appreciation of how we might already be grounded in the truth that we seek.
Everyone will get a digital copy of the book with the course.