Module 15

God does not exist

Tillich in confirmation classes — a double lesson on images of God

This version comes from the archive and has not yet been editorially reviewed.

Working time

90 minutes (one double lesson)

Breakdown

Arriving and gallery: 25 minutes
The sentence that disturbs: 20 minutes
What concerns you unconditionally: 30 minutes
Closing: 15 minutes

Material

Text

Audience

Confirmands aged 13 to 14. Also usable in lower secondary religious education.

Overview

Confirmands bring images of God with them without knowing it: the rewarder, the watchman, the God of those in power. Tillich spent his life disputing that God is any such thing. This unit brings the two together — with sticky dots, a sentence that provokes contradiction, and the question of what concerns you unconditionally.

Competences

The young people are able to name the images of God they meet in everyday life, and to describe what those images say about the relationship between human beings and God.
They are able to state in their own words why Tillich says that God is not a being alongside other beings — and why the sentence “God exists” is not enough for him.
They are able to describe, using an example of their own choosing, what concerns them unconditionally, and to examine whether Tillich's way of speaking about it matches their own experience.

Learning section

Confirmands have images of God long before they talk about them in class. Mostly these are inherited: the God who rewards you for being decent. The God who watches. The God who stands behind those in power. The God who has signed off. These images are rarely spoken aloud, but they are there, and they decide whether someone can still do anything at all with the word “God”.

Paul Tillich spent his life disputing that God is any such thing. His sharpest formulation of this is: God does not exist. God is not a being alongside other beings, not an item in the inventory of the world whose presence could be argued over. Whoever turns God into an object — even into the greatest and most powerful one — has, on Tillich’s account, already missed him. God is the ground of everything that is.

This is not too hard for fourteen-year-olds. It is only unfamiliar. The sentence “God does not exist” provokes contradiction in every group, and that is exactly where its teaching power lies: it forces people to articulate their own image of God in the first place. Whoever contradicts is thereby saying what they picture. Only after that can one ask whether it holds.

The second idea of Tillich’s that works with this age group is his account of religion as what concerns a person unconditionally. It takes the examining tone out of the question of faith. What is at stake is not whether someone holds the right sentences to be true, but what actually counts — and whether it carries when it matters. Young people have answers to that, even when they can do nothing with church.

What this unit does not aim to do

It does not aim to explain Tillich. The name may come up, but it need not. Nor does it aim to refute anything: anyone who still believes after the double lesson in a God who watches has done nothing wrong. The goal is smaller and harder — that the young people have noticed, once, that they hold an image of God, and that an image is something other than the thing itself.

Materials

Seven posters in A4 landscape, each with one image of God and a short description. Sticky dots in two colours, five per person. A sheet with the sentence “God does not exist”, printed large. Slips of paper and pens for the anonymous part, and a bowl.

The posters come from practice in the Kirchspiel West parish; they can be written in an hour. What matters is that the images should not sound silly — the young people should recognise themselves in at least one of them.

A note for whoever is leading

The anonymous part stays anonymous. Slips that get read out to someone are no longer honest slips. Anyone who wants to may speak about it of their own accord; nobody is asked.

The unit ends without resolution. That is not an omission but the consequence of Tillich’s approach: an image of God that you are handed at the end is once again an image.

Select text to keep a passage.

Origin

Created by

Simon Luthe, pastor in Wesselburen and Neuenkirchen

Version

Draft, version 2026. Not yet tested in practice.

Rights

paultillich.de — draft for confirmation work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tasks · 0 of 5 done

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Prompts for thinking along — no right answer, no assessment. Ticking a box hides the task.

Task 1
Gallery: seven posters hang on the walls, each with one image of God — the rewarding God, the God of those in power, the watchman, the stopgap, the clockmaker, the cuddly God, the absent one. Everyone receives five sticky dots in two colours.
1. Green dots: this is how I imagined God as a child.
2. Red dots: this is how other people talk about God — adults, films, the internet.
3. Then stand in front of them together: where are most of the dots? Where are none? What is missing from the posters?
Task 2
Collect on the board what all seven images have in common. The answer should not be supplied — usually it comes on its own: on every poster God is someone who does something. He rewards, punishes, watches, intervenes, has withdrawn.
1. If God is someone who does something — where is he when he does nothing?
2. What is the difference between “God is like a father” and “God is a father”?
Task 3
The sentence that disturbs. Place Tillich's sentence in the middle, printed large on a sheet: “God does not exist.” Then wait. The contradiction comes reliably.
1. First collect all the reactions without evaluating them.
2. Then the second half of the sentence: “God is not a being alongside other beings. He is the ground of everything that is.” What changes?
3. An image to go with it: a fish asks where the water is. Does the comparison hold? Where does it limp?
Task 4
What concerns you unconditionally. Tillich says: religion is what concerns a person unconditionally. Everyone writes on a slip of paper for themselves — anonymously, and it will not be read out: what concerns me unconditionally? What would I give something up for?
1. The slips are folded and placed in a bowl; nobody reads them.
2. In the conversation afterwards, keep it general: can it also be something that has nothing to do with church? Friendship, justice, one particular person, music?
3. Tillich would say: yes. And he would ask a further question: does it still carry when things get difficult?
Task 5
At the end: everyone takes one of the seven posters down from the wall — the one they can do least with. Say briefly why. The posters that come down are gathered in the middle.
1. What stays on the wall?
2. A note for whoever is leading: do not resolve it. The unit ends with an open wall, not with a result.