Abstract

The Courage to Be is Tillich’s best-known work. That this work has retained such popularity perplexes one as a Tillich scholar since this text is anything but easy to understand. This essay offers an analysis of the concepts ‘theism,’ ‘absolute faith,’ and ‘God above God,’ and comes to the conclusion that both proponents of this work as well as its theological critics have misunderstood, and indeed that only because of these misunderstandings could the work have become a bestseller at all.