THE PAUL TILLICH’S CONCEPT OF GOD AS BEING (IN SEARCH OF THE NEW PARADIGM OF RELIGIOSITY)

Abstract

In the article author founds the “two-worldness” of human being, which means existence on the border between empirical and spiritual worlds. Author believes, that the reduction of the second spiritual world, completed by postmodern culture, causes the emergence of one-dimensional man, which means the existence on the horizontal surface without height and depth. Author highlights Paul Tillich’s concept of God as Being, in which empirical dimension represents the surface, and God represents the deepest foundation of human existence, the Ground of Being. Here Tillich follows Heidegger in his differentiation of ontic and ontological, but he doesn’t inherit his negation of metaphysical world. And he doesn’t follow the traditional image of objective God either. In situation of loss of old symbols of God, Spirit, we can find our ground only in our own depth. That reminds us the call to God in “De profundis” Psalm. In the limit situation, when person loses all he believed in, he can open God in the most profound depth of his soul. Spirituality of a person is understood as a measure of the incarnation of the spirit in our life, actions, personality. Author proposes to call such unity of spirit and existence as “spiritual-existential Self”.