Paul Tillich

For Paul Tillich, theology is always carried out, and meaning gained, within an existing social situation. Today this situation includes the crises of the whole eco-system.The situation is disorderly and overwhelming. In such an environment, our natural tendencies seem to be: a) to cling to traditional communal meanings even as those meanings prove inadequate to the disorder around us, or b) to discard or invent as much as we can, and face breakdown and lack of common meaning. Both paths undermine our attempts to deal with the complexity and chaos that challenge us. Tillich suggests that awareness of paradox, and facing conceptual disorder, provides a way through such crises. We sit before the contradictions and allow a new openness to being, or the divine, to arise, generating a breakthrough which surprises and transcends without destroying what has gone before. Some of the contradictions we need to face include: the tensions between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in technology and capitalism; the incoherence in ideas of ‘sustainability’ or natural harmony; the relation between unity and variety; the ways our attempts at making order have produced disorders; the contrast between human and divine; the distinction between nature and spirit; and the clash between omnipotence and disorder. Within these paradoxical tensions a new sense of meaning can grow, and social potential develop.

Paul Tillich (1886 –1965) was a thinker of international charisma and worldwide repute. His works provide important impulses for debates on theology, philosophy of religion and cultural theory. The series Tillich Research refl ects on international research on this notable theologian and philosopher, the academic exploitation of his works with its range of different approaches to its reception and interpretation, as well as a diverse selection of themes and emphasis on them. TILLICH RESEARCH This volume investigates Paul Tillich's relationship to Asian religions and locates Tillich in a global religious context. It appreciates Tillich's heritage within the western and eastern religious contexts and explores the possibility of global religious-cultural understanding through the dialogue of Tillich's thought and East-West religious-cultural matrix.

This essay responds to Donald MacKinnon's influential critique of Till-ich in his 1975 essay " Tillich, Frege, Kittel: Some Reflections on a Dark Theme, " in which MacKinnon laments Tillich's " failure at the level of faith " on account of his sexual lifestyle. After outlining MacKinnon's argument in detail, I suggest four possible strategies of response available to those who wish to affirm the value of Tillich's theology in light of the biographical considerations of his sexual ethos. I conclude with a suggestion – contra MacKinnon – of the centrality of ambiguity to Tillich's life and his theology.

In this age of technology, globalization, and rapid change, we are faced with new situations that raise the universal question of what it means to be human in the face of our existential anxiety - anxiety that is rooted in our being and cannot be removed. Theologian Paul Tillich surmised that the anxiety of meaninglessness and emptiness is most pressing in our current situation as exemplified by the earlier illustrations of searches for meaning and the unsatisfactory nature of traditional pathways. He concluded that a new courage-to-be arising from an absolute faith that includes and transcends a mystical and personal encounter with God is needed to address this new context.

This paper intends to explore how mystical, non-Christian spiritual practices embedded within a personal, Christian framework could impact the spiritual formation of a contemporary courage-to-be from Tillich’s concept of absolute faith. To do this, this project will explore the phenomenological and theological aspects of the narratives of two people who integrated non-Christian, mystical spiritual practices into their original Christian spiritual formation amid their own manifestations of existential anxiety: Dr. Ruben Habito and the practice of Zen Buddhist sitting meditation and John Coltrane’s Jazz improvisation. Both narratives contain each person’s formation through these spiritual practices along with a revelatory event - Buddhism’s kensho and Jazz’ Ultimate Flow state. Each narrative will be explored as conversation with theologian Paul Tillich’s theological concept of the courage-to-be arising from revelation in addressing existential anxiety. The implications of this conversation will be applied toward a theological construct of spiritual formation for United Theological Seminary and its students in the exploration of their own existential anxiety as it relates to their formation.

In light of these considerations, I will argue that a trans-religious engagement between each mystical spiritual practice and a Christian background is one effective way for an absolute faith to meet the existential anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness. This will have implications on the formation of seminary students.

There are certain thoughts - intimations - that will seem corny, or laughable, and therefore dismissed - and only seriously absorbed into the changing mind when felt, in the shelter of the quietly moving music of the soul.
It is the function of art, and of love, to make this music heard . . . 

  It is not the music of depression - it is the way through.

Στο κείμενο αυτό, διαπραγματευόμαστε μέσα από το έργο του Fernand Braudel, του Κώστα Παπαϊωάννου, του Paul Tillich, του Karl Polanyi αλλά και μέσω της συζήτησης για τη "Βάση και το Εποικοδόμημα" του Karl Marx, το πως γνωστοποιείται στον κόσμο το ιστορικό και κοινωνικό φαινόμενο που ονομάσαμε "Πολιτισμός".

This blueprint for a constructive public theology assumes that Christian theology already includes public discourse. Following David Tracy's delineation of three publics--church, academy, culture--further constructive work leads to a public theology conceived in the church, reflected on critically in the academy, and meshed with the wider culture. Public  reflection on classic Christian doctrines in a post-secular pluralistic context takes the form of pastoral illumination,  apologetic reason, theology of nature, political theology, and prophetic critique.

It is often thought that Christianity keeps its adherents in a state of perpetual immaturity. As a sociological fact, this may be hard to argue against. Much that goes by the name Christianity looks quite near to what Ernest Becker described as a fearful “death denying ideology.” In theological terminology, such ways of being amount to self-salvation programs. The terror of death drives us to avoid all forms of death. Yet, at the heart of Christianity stands one who chose his own death and encouraged his followers to take up their own crosses and follow him. Such an act, apparently, has an important role to play in an understanding of Christian salvation. In this thesis, I make use of developmental stages theory to illuminate what that role is. I argue that Christian salvation is founded on a paradoxical death that is best made sense of in light of contemporary developmental stages theory, in particular, at the thresholds of developmental stage transition. To illuminate this claim I trace out the logic across the rational, desirous, and active dimensions of human being. These dimensions are explored, in order, by way of Paul Tillich’s philosophy of religion, Sebastian Moore’s spiritual Christology, and the practice of Centering prayer. Taken together, it is concluded that Christianity has tremendous resources for helping its adherents come to grips with their death denying strategies and therefore enlarge their capacity for psychological and spiritual maturity.

In 20th century Germany, theologian Paul Tillich witnessed the religious and political crises of his time, and he recognized the need for action at the appropriate time. Out of this rhetorical situation, he adopted the classical concept of kairos, which permeated his life and work. I argue that Tillich's notion of kairos presents three new dimensions: the existential, the demonic, and the extension of the present into the future. Although he believed that his work only spoke to the " kairos of his time, " Tillich continues to address us today, urging us to seize the kairos of our own time, and challenging rhetorical theorists to rethink the notion of kairos.

The ground of being, being-itself, the Unconditioned, and the other descriptions Tillich uses to portray the existential meaning-reality of his highest principle, can all be brought to a resolution. For Tillich, the meaning-reality which is man's ultimate concern, or God, is freedom, the pure will to be absolutely free. This prius is the directing concept for man's existential realization of his potential infinity. Man participates in this freedom until at last "God," absolute freedom, is all in all.

This project is a work of integrating the themes of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in a constructive soteriology. This will be done by correlating Paul Tillich’s existentialist theology with Gustavo Gutiérrez’s liberation theology. Intersections between the two theologians are found in their phenomenological methods as well as their emphasis on historical salvation and its dependence on revelation. These intersections will lead to the thesis that the concept of “the courage to be as solidarity and protest” is the key to integrating Tillich’s and Gutiérrez’s soteriologies, as well as the themes of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in a constructive soteriology.

"This important new book by Thomas K. Johnson casts new light on the
meaning of Romans 1. By treating the passage as a missions training manual, he draws out surprising new interpretations for evangelism and apologetics. Johnson shows how we can join Paul in being proud (‘not
ashamed’) of the gospel, full of confidence that it continues to speak to the human condition even in a postmodern age.” Nancy Pearcey

The goal of a Christian, especially a regenerated Christian, in the 21st century is to tell the story of the various shapes that his religious position underwent with the hope that other unbelievers may follow his footsteps, that is, from a belief in God to atheism and agnosticism, and back to a belief in God. He tries to show by using the arguments of Paul Tillich how the limits of language enabled him to transcend the agnosticism of Russell.

How do we continue to understand concrete religious symbols in the wake of de-constructionist theologies?  This essay will integrate the work of Paul Tillich and Mark Taylor as a test case in imagining ways to answer this question.  The unity of ontological polarities that characterize Tillich's understanding of 'God as living' will be subjected to the 'finitization of the infinite' that is Taylor's approach to disfiguring potentially concretizing theological affirmations about religious symbols for God.  The analysis will generate tentative conclusions for how Tillich's theological appropriation of this metaphor might continue to be relevant to contemporary constructive theologies. Further, it will seek to understand what meaning is potentially left for our understanding of 'God as living' in a theological time suspect of too strongly anthropomorphizing our conception of God.

Im ersten Teil dieser Seminararbeit sollen grundlegende begriffliche und inhaltliche Klärungen zur Allversöhnung vorgenommen werden: Das Themenfeld wird also abgesteckt und der zu untersuchende Begriff definiert. Dann wird aufgezeigt, ob und inwiefern sich die Allversöhnung biblisch und systematisch begründen lässt. Danach soll auf das Verhältnis von der klassischen Rechtfertigungslehre und der Allversöhnung eingegangen und ihre Differenzen beleuchtet werden.  Ausserdem wird die Frage der soteriologischen Macht oder Ohnmacht des Menschen behandelt.
Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit soll einzeln untersucht werden, ob die Entwürfe von Karl Barth und Paul Tillich Elemente dieser Allversöhnung beinhalten. Bei Karl Barth wurde und wird in der Forschung immer wieder gestritten, ob man ihn zum Lager der Allversöhner zählen darf.  Paul Tillichs Systematische Theologie  wurde bisher wenig dazu befragt.

Kritik des Professors am Teil über Tillich:
Die Ausführungen zu Tillich enthalten viele Missverständnisse und Fehldeutungen. Bei der "Methode der Korrelation" geht es gerade nicht um die Antwort des Menschen, sondern um die Antwort des Evangeliums auf die existenziellen Fragen des Menschen. Auch nehmen Sie die polemische Verzeichnung des Tillich'schen Symbolverständnis auf, das "Symbol" der Sache selbst entgegengesetzt (Gericht als solches versus Gericht als Symbol, 23). Dass Tillich die Eschatologie grundsätzlich anders versteht als die meisten anderen Theologen seiner Zeit, ist keineswegs zutreffend. Er folgt im Grunde - wie die gesamte Bewegung der Dialektischen Theologie - einem qualitativen Verständnis von Eschatologie im Gegenüber zu einem endzeitlichen-"topographischen". Auch für Barth ist das Eschaton das Letztgültige und nicht ein raumzeitlicher Ort. Im letzten Satz Ihrer Arbeit geben Sie zu erkennen, das bei Tillich noch viel mehr zu holen sein könnte. Seine Eschatologie ist viel näher bei Paulus, als seine philosophische Terminologie das auf den ersten Blick zu erkennen gibt.

The paper argues that in its focus on finding positive outcomes, bereavement research has neglected or denigrated central phenomena in intense and long-term grief: sorrow and solace. Indeed sorrow is the defining characteristic of grief and consolation historically has been its amelioration. We now seldom describe grief as sorrow.  Inconsolable, the traditional word describing difficult grief, has fallen into disuse. Sorrow has two elements: yearning for the dead person and grief’s depression. The first is best understood within attachment theory, the second is about the human condition and, thus, beyond attachment theory. When we focus on grief’s depression, we attend to grief’s thoughts that can be, as William James said, the “openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.” To be consoled is to be comforted or soothed. Consolation comes into sorrow, but does not remove it. The bereaved can be consoled in human relationships and from inner resources. Solace is found within the sense of being connected to trustable realities outside the self. The paper argues that our research would be more complete were we to include solace that comes into sorrow as one of the outcomes we can help foster.

O artigo tem como objetivo analisar a obra Teologia da Cultura de Paul Tillich. O autor passa pelos temas centrais da obra, apresenta sua es-trutura e principais ideias, e sintetiza a opinião de Tillich ao discutir os elementos centrais do livro. Palavras-chave: teologia da cultura, Paul Tillich Paul  [The task of this paper is to analyse the book Theology of Culture of Paul Tillich. The author analyses the main topics of the book, presents its structures and important ideas, giving a brief statement that presents the main points of the book through the discussion.]

Para el contexto social de secularización y ateísmo que vivimos,y la inversion geográfica a la realidad de que el cristianismo hoy se encuentra en el hemisferio sur, es necesario reflexionar sobre la historia, la teología y buscar correlacionar y disminuir el sesgo eclesial para responder a las necesidades de nuestro tiempo. Buscando disminuir así la tendencia que el protestantismo tiene a secularizar y dividir al cuerpo de Cristo

This is a paper for those for whom prayer has become a problem. Part of growing up is learning how to work in this world. Work is the effort and skill put to the service of applying means to some end. Almost anything we do in life can be conceived of in terms of work, it is natural then that one's life of prayer might be thought of thusly as well. However, this is a mistake that will guarantee that the spiritual lifeblood of one's prayer life will soon run out. Prayer does not work. I conclude that "living" is a better metaphor for what happens in prayer. To get there I utilize the framework of Paul Tillich and suggest that Centering Prayer can be a practice suitable to reconnecting the surface of life, ecstatically, with its depths.

This thesis argues that the 1996 novel Infinite Jest, by David Foster
Wallace, offers to Unitarian Universalism a much-needed resource for reimagining the concepts of sin and salvation. By examining the novel in
conversation with Paul Tillich’s theology of sin and salvation, and by applying Tillich’s theology of art, I show how Infinite Jest’s formal elements, subject matter, and style combine to create symbols of sin and salvation that resonate with contemporary readers.
Having eschewed religious language of sin and salvation, Unitarian Universalism lacks shared language and liturgy that addresses the universal human experience of brokenness and the quest for wholeness. This thesis uses Tillich’s theology of art, with attention to literature in particular, to argue that art must be embraced as a source for theology. Great works of art serve as symbols that both open us up to deep levels of theological realities and allow us to participate in those realities.
Using a dialogical method, this thesis then explores what Infinite Jest
expresses about the human experience of estrangement. By examining
Wallace’s writing style and the novel’s theme, characters, and structure, I show how the novel creates a sustained symbolic window that invites readers into participation in the theological reality of estrangement from God, self, and others.
The thesis also explores how Infinite Jest creates a symbolic window into salvation as an existential process, primarily in the character of Don Gately. In dialogue with Tillich’s theology and through close readings of several passages, I show how Gately represents salvation not as assent to doctrine but as surrender to reality, acceptance of grace, and transformation through faith. Finally, in a brief application, I show how Unitarian Universalism might incorporate insights from the novel and its theology of sin and salvation into revised shared language about those concepts.

This dissertation examines the relationship of ontology and soteriology - the classic problem of nature and grace. Paul Tillich and Arnold van Ruler have been chosen as the best representatives of the classical tradition of the reformation.
It is seen that although there is a significant formal difference between the theologies of these two theologians, there is a material identity. The combination of these two perspectives, Tillich’s philosophical theology with Van Ruler’s more traditional Calvinistic theology, helps to shed more light on the subject.
The first subject to be considered is the ontological background for understanding reality as a whole. This is discussed as the trinitarian-predestinarian-eschatological framework of ontology. Everything finds its possibility in the trinitarian being of God, its reality in the eternal decrees and its purpose in the eschatological will of God. Creation has become (morally, not ontologically) separated from God in the fall and therefore salvation is needed. Christology is a function of soteriology and is to be understood in terms of substitution.
This salvation, gained in Christ, is expressed in us by the outpoured Holy Spirit according to the eschatological will of God. Pneumatology is to be related to, and distinguished from christology. We are not replaced by the Spirit, but taken into a relationship with God. This is to be understood in terms of the struggle of the Spirit with the flesh. The presence of the Spirit is kerygmatic, paradoxical, anticipatory and miraculous. There is an ambiguous and fragmentary realization of salvation in the Spirit.
Protologically and eschatologically there is an identity between culture (i.e. creation and history) and the kingdom of God. But in time and space there is a duality (not a dualism). This finds expression in the duality of church and state. The state is the kernel of culture and the church is the representative of the kingdom. The state is essentially the servant of God, and insofar as it orders life it is serving God. But it is separated from God and needs the church to call it back to its proper function.
Where there is the duality of church and state in a nation, there is a theocratic situation. This leads to the Bible. That is a state where the Word is proclaimed and the state, because of its essential relationship to God, can understand this proclamation. In a theocracy there is a partial union of creation and salvation. Theocracy is a Spiritual reality. It is kerygmatic and paradoxical. It is not an ideal or an ethical system imposed on life. It has a conservative character as it stands in opposition to the demonic.
As the document of God’s struggle with the religious nationalism of Israel, the Old Testament provides the paradigm for a theocracy. In this sense a christianized state is an incidental repetition - mutatis mutandis - of the nation of Israel.
Eschatologically, the particularity of salvation is completely done away with. The incarnation and the outpouring are undone. Then there is only the triune God and the naked existence of creation.