Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Emotion Does Not Produce Faith

Faith for Tillich does involve passionate emotions; “but emotion does not produce faith.” Faith cannot be confused with emotional outbursts or feelings of rapture, though it can involve such things.
 
Faith for Tillich also includes a cognitive component, but only “as an inseparable element in a total act of acceptance and surrender.” If one reduces faith to a cognitive act, faith would be confused with mere belief. It would lose its quality as a living reality.
 
Similarly, faith involves the will, but “faith is not a creation of the will.” To reduce faith to an act of the will is to confuse it with a mere act of obedience to a moral imperative.
 
- Paul Tillich and Pentecostal Theology: Spiritual Presence and Spiritual Power, p90-91