Abstract

Thus if I understand him correctly, Prof. Tillich professes to find the root of the distinction between the two disciplines in theology's peculiar orientation toward the existential situation or "concrete place" at which or in which the divine ground of being has manifested itself. This it is that is at once theology's point of departure, as well as its ultimate point of reference. In contrast, metaphysics and ontology are represented as being rather frigidly objective by comparison, indifferent to their own existential origins and directed rather "towards the observation and analysis of the categorical structure of being and its general spheres".