The Shaking of the Foundations

by Paul Tillich

Book Overview

Author Biography: Paul Tillich (1886-1965), an early critic of Hitler, was barred from teaching in Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, holding teaching positions at Union Theological... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068471910X
• ISBN13: 9780684719108
• Release Date: January 1940
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

You ARE accepted....

This is a masterpiece. The writings of Paul Tillich contain truths that touch us at the deepest level. Tillich was no perfect saint in his lifetime - far from it - but he had a quiet wisdom to discern the deepest truths of our human condition. This quote has stuck with me for more than 40 years.... "Sometimes at that moment [of despair] a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you..." This is how faith really is: not something taught but something discerned when you least expect it, in the still quiet moments of our lives, in those moments when we feel most troubled and alone. Then, the light breaks through for what may only be a few moments and we realise that there is a love beyond our comprehension holding and caring for us if we only open our hearts to it. Tillich deserves to be read.

Forgotten Classic

I picked up this book by the great Twentieth-Century philosophical theologian Paul Tillich and was pleasantly suprised. Being familiar with Tillich's rather dry systematic theology, I was expecting more of the same. However, I was greeted by an immensely readable collection of sermons which I found both inspirational, thought-provoking and masterful. If Tillich's dogmatic theology is now regarded as out-moded, this sample of his devotional literature marks him out as insightful and relevant: he speaks as much to our generation as to the one he was speaking to.While the opening sermon 'The Shaking of the Foundations' is a little anachronistic in that it is couched in the terms of a by-gone debate (critiqueing mid-Twentieth-Century liberal theology)its message is an enduring one: that humanity must recognise its dependence on God and trust in him rather than in humanity's own inadequate ability. What follows this sermon is pure delight. The remainder of the collection testifies to Tillich's honesty and profound insight into the human heart and the tensions of human existence. 'You are accepted' is probably the best of the rest, expounding on the frustrations of life, and being unable to live up to your own expectations, let alone God's. Furthermore, it sounds a confident note of grace. It certainly stirred up a few emotions in me, I can tell you.On the negative side, those of a more conservative Christian persuasion may be troubled by the implications of Tillich's Christology. The question I was left asking, however, concerned Tillich's eschatology (the 'last things'). It seemed to me that Tillich either didn't believe in an ultimate overcoming of evil, or he simply wanted to emphasise the present reality of God's victory over it. I suspect there is some truth in both alternatives: Tillich was a complicated man, with an ambiguous relationship to the Christian faith, almost, it seems, of a love-hate quality.Nevertheless, don't let this, or anything else you might hear of Tillich, deter you from reading The Shaking of the Foundations. It truly deserves to be regarded as a modern classic of devotional literature.