Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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these and other Christian symbols] is a symbol of God (as
He is)."L's
Contemporary man needs the healing offered in the
Christian message. "Today man experiences his present
situation in terms of disruption, conflict, selfdestruction,
meaninglessness, and despair in all realms
of life." 1 Living without a true center causes this
life of painful isolation. Man focusses selfishly on
himself, thus living alienated from the truly ultimate,
God (and alienated from all else as well). This is
'sin'. His attempts to find satisfaction in objects or
persons in the created world always fail and serve only
to increase man's isolation, guilt, and despair.
Tillich further defined 'sin' in terms of three
"marks of man's estrangement."'5
The first is "unbelief." 1 Natural man cannot
bear the approach of the Holy and thus rejects God.
"Whenever the Divine appears, It is a radical attack on
everything that is good in man, and therefore man must
repel It, must push It away, must crucify It."17
In "unbelief," man fails to relate properly with
God. In the second "mark of estrangement," which Tillich
calls "hubris," man is alienated from himself. le He
gives himself a position of all-importance which no
person can rightfully bear. As a finite being, he cannot
take the place of that which is ultimate. In trying to
do this, a person moves toward self-destruction.
The person who is alienated from God and self cannot