Abstract:
This thesis is a study of theological anthropology in post-modernity. It is based, fundamentally, on the German-American Protestant theologian Paul Tillich in dialog with other authors. Its central conceptual base is from Tillich from the book The Courage to Be, from which it develops an anthropology from the concepts of anxiety and courage. The research is developed through Tillich’s method of co-relation, in which the existential questions of the human being are answered with theological symbols, which, in turn, are contextually translated. The two first chapters are the foundation for the discussion and final co-relation in the third chapter. In the first chapter the existential question is developed, based on the context of post-modernity and on the condition of the human being in this context. The second chapter develops the conceptual tools through which the existential question and the theological answer are co-related, that is, the ontological structure of the human being and the understandings of the concepts of anxiety and courage. The third chapter interprets the anthropological condition in post-modernity confronted with the co-relation of the concepts developed in the prior chapters of alienation and anxiety and applies the concept of courage into this condition. Finally, it presents as a thesis, the concept of courage as a theological answer to the anthropological question of the openness of the human being to the transcendence as key to overcoming the condition of alienation and non-fulfilment of the human being. The central issue of the thesis is to point out a theological anthropology that is specific to the context of post modernity which is based on existence instead of a dogmatic formulation and which responds to the existential condition in terms of its openness, or, in other words, courage to be.
