Religion And Culture

Since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as for the establishment of the rational principle and division of self-reliance in every field of our society, the Christianity have increasingly lost the influence as the general standard to each cultural fields and gradually receives the serious challenge from cultural knowledge. As a modern theologian, Paul Tillich attempts to respond theological to the split between religion and culture .His cultural theology contributes to the valid reconciliation of historical Christianity and contemporary culture as the apologetic interpretation religion is the substance of culture and culture is the form of religion that differentiate from the traditional theology. The significance of the cultural theology lies in the theological participation in resolving the split crisis of religion and culture. This paper endeavors to provide us with the constructive reflection and critics to our culture from a theological perspective.This paper is proposed to analyze some important concepts that represent the motif research of the cultural theology and the article is mainly divided into five parts.The first chapter introduces the background of the cultural theology and the various solutions to the tragic division between religion and culture. Kant and Schleiermacher bring forward their theories from philosophy and theology respectively. However the religion becomes a certain function in one field of human spirit that postulated by Kant or Schleiermacher. The cultural theology is creative synthesis based on the German classical philosophy and theology tradition.The second part discusses that the universal extension of the definition of religion is ultimate concern regarded as the depth and foundation in human spirit. Tillich consisted that Ultimate Concern generally exists and inevitably transcends every preliminary concern characterized by infinite, ultimate and unconditional as God and Being. Therefore the mutual dependence of the religion and culture is established by the category of Ultimate Concern with the affirmation of the Christian traditional dogmatic.The third part elucidates the concept of Correlation, the methodology of the cultural theology as a unique method. The questioning-answering correlation and the form-substance correlation are the two models of correlation. The first model emphasize the independence of the religion and culture ,and the second one manly focus on thestatus of religion as the substance and the status of culture as its form, thus keeping the essence of the Christian information.The forth part expounds three different unity types of religion and culture, autonomous, heteromous and theonomy, to illustrate that the religion substance will actualize in the culture fragmentally and gradually. Automous refuses to transcend due to the restriction that human themselves is their own criterion. Therefore it lost the religion substance but remain rational. Secular culture and the profane religion are the typical instances of this self-sufficient type. Heteromous arrogates its absolute authority and impose a divine law to culture regardless of its own finiteness. This part renders the analysis of the cultural ambiguities conquered by the Holy Spirit. Tillich insists that the equilibrium between cultural substance and form is achieved in a theonomy which embrace the truth of autonomy and heteronomy while avoiding their errors. The epigrammatic statement of theonomy is Religion is substance of culture, and culture the form of religion.The last part of the article is a conclusion. The brief comparison between Paul Tillich and Karl Barth shows their different theological models especially on the relationship of region and culture. Indeed the cultural theology is Tillich's greatest contribution to the constructive work of mediating of religion and culture.