Religion and Problems of Meaning in Paul Tillich

I examined the structure and character of Paul Tillich's metaphysics of meaning, which is the fundamental frame of his early religious thoughts. What is the place of religion in modern autonomous cultures? When we examine religious thoughts in the 19th and 20th centuries based on this question, a change in thoughts can be observed. The question of religion changed from a question of "value" to that of "meaning". This current of thoughts corresponds to the rise and fall of neo-kantianism. Tillich attempts to understand religion in the frame of his metaphysics of meaning based on his critique of value philosophy of neo-kantianism at the following two points. Firstly, culture and religion are placed side by side in value philosophy. Then religion will be forgotten in autonomous cultures, or religion will oppose itself heteronomously to the culture. Therefore, culture and religion cannot find the true definition of their relation. Secondly, value depends on the subject that evaluates it, resulting in relativism of values. This relativism cannot be overcome in the value theory. Therefore, the problem of relativity of the religious norms cannot be solved. In Tillich's metaphysics of meaning, he searches for solutions to these two problems. Firstly Tillich defines religion as the ground and the abyss of culture. Culture is a context of meaning, and religion is the ground that guarantees the meaningfulness of the context, culture. However, the context of meaning as culture is conditioned. Religion is also the abyss of meaning that demands that the unconditional meaning should be fulfilled. Secondly Tillich attempts to overcome the relativism by developing further the concept of "dynamical truth", a thought that norms are created, which he accepted from Troeltsch. I interpreted its central logic as "logic of fulfillment". This logic is as follows. The religious dimension shakes culture, the old context of meaning. That is, the new breaks through the old context of meaning. The truly new cannot be put into the old context, and the former cannot be known there. It will be known when it is assigned its own place within a new context created on a new principle, that is, when we obey the demand that a new context of meaning should be created. The old context is denyed by the new. However, at the same time the former is, affirmed by being placed in a new context and being given a new meaning. This is meaning-fulfillment. The old context and the new context are cultures and themselves conditioned. If we remain within either of these contexts, we cannot capture the religious dimension. When a new context is created from an old one, we can meet the religious dimension only by standing in front of the unconditioned. Tillich's idea of dynamical truth can lead to a new interpretation of the paradigm-theory