Latin Spells/Tillich’s Theology

Analogia entis, docta ignorantia, heteros nomos,imago dei, recta natura a rectitude, potentialer, Deus nudus absconditus, essential, ouk on, nihil, me on, telos, theos dike,eros, agape, libido, philia, existere…testefecandum..


I am reading or rather trying to decipher the book “The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich”. This is just some of the Latin (I think there’s Greek in there too) words that I encountered. No. I didn’t list them down to look at their translations and meanings. No, far from it, I have other plan.

I plan to memorize the whole lot of them and then challenge our neighborhood albularyo (faith healer) to a Latin spell casting challenge. Or, I will cure kulams and barangs using it, lots of money in that business.

I think they’ll never know that there’s some Greek in there because I don’t think these albularyos (faith healers) understand Latin. Who knows, the Latin incantations they maybe saying to cure cancer or gas is a grocery list of some pre-Vatican II priest stolen by a Filipino shaman who needs new spells. Then they passed down this magic spells down to their children and grandchildren and generations and generations together with the mystique it created. Unthinkable, how many boils, gas, headaches, those Latin shopping list may have cured. Unthinkable and incredible…

I’m thinking of a costume…hmmm…Hand movements…The look…The choreography…

Analogia entis, docta ignorantia, heteros nomos,imago dei…

Maybe I’ll write these words down on old paper and give them to one of my classmate and tell him/her that it’s a love spell…Or maybe, I’ll have these words inscribed on wooden pendants and then sell them to one of those amulet sellers in Quiapo for protection against rabies from earthworm bites.

Or…I could just forget all these things and just continue on reading Tillich’s theology.

Tillich’s theology is also one of those science fiction stuffs (again in a nice way). He avoids using traditional language. For example: God is the “Ground of being”, Christ is the “new being”, a saved person is called a “being in itself”, an unsaved person is a “non-being”, sin is not an offense but “estrangement”…etc. While reading this science fiction theology of Tillich, I asked myself, how can you communicate this kind of theology? Reminds me of Luke Skywalker and "The Force".

Then I got hold of Tillich’s collection of sermons “The Shaking of the Foundations” and true enough, it shook a lot of foundations. Without this book as a practical side of Tillich’s theology, one cannot appreciate his works (Of course, I'm speaking from the non-theologs view).