Description
Book SynopsisPaul Tillich and Religious Socialism: Towards a Kingdom of Peace and Justice argues that the Kingdom of God—the reign of God over all human affairs via God’s manifestations in love, power, and justice—can be fragmentarily achieved through a religious socialism that creatively integrates the early Tillich’s socialist thinking with later insights throughout Tillich’s theological career and with contemporary developments in just peacemaking. The resulting religious socialism is defined by economic justice and a recognition of the sacred reality in all human endeavors. It employs Christianity to furnish the necessary depth for warding off materialism and affirming the spiritual dimension of both labor and acquiring material goods. The unbridgeable Marxist chasm between expectation and reality is bridged through new being, already historically inaugurated in the Christhood of Jesus. New being is fundamentally oriented toward bringing justice to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized. It affirms the individual and equal value of all persons and thus, in Kantian terms, promotes a kingdom of intrinsically worthwhile ends rather than a kingdom of instrumentally worthwhile means of things.
Table of ContentsDedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Historical Backdrop to Tillich’s Religious Socialism
- Politics and Ultimate Reality
- The Idolatrous Nature of Political Romanticism
- The Demonic Structure of Capitalism
- The Socialist Principle of Expectation
- Power and Ethics
- Socio-Economic Features of a Religious Socialist Government
- Building a Kingdom of Peace and Justice
Conclusion
Bibliography
