The main thing about Tillich is that Lou Midgley did his doctorate on him, as he reminds everyone a few times a year. Does that mean he did his doctorate on nothing, and got a Phd for nothing? The shoe always fits if the foot isn't there.Stem wrote:I didn't realize Tillich and Heidegger lived at essentially the same time--late 1880s through the 1960s. Tillich's ground of being is essentially what Hart ascribes to, it seems to me. And yes, Tillich was aware of Heidegger's philosophy and saw himself drawing from it--as he seemed to promote Heidegger's philosophy to argue for this God of nothing, as I've been thinking of him. Anyway, if you know of any interactions Heidegger and Tillich might have had, I'd be interested. I don't think Hart took the leap from Heidegger to God.
Yeah, I read a review of Hart that mentioned Tillich and I'm sure you're right that Hart didn't go "to the source" directly. Any time someone comes up with a new model of reality, someone else is bound to take that and put an equal sign to God. As you point out, it could be quite heretical to make God Being for other Christians. The upside for an apologist is that the base material is so obscure and dense that nobody is going to take the time to really understand it enough to debate it. Being(?) the God of nothing might not be that bad, Sarte had some pretty important stuff packed into nothingness, and he was also a student of Heidegger.