Theologian · Contemporary
Paul Tillich
1886–1965 · Existential and ontological theology; theology of culture
A Lutheran whose work Catholic theologians studied closely in his lifetime, above all the Dominicans Thomas O'Meara and Celestin Weisser and the Jesuit Gustave Weigel; he answered them in Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought (1964).
A German Lutheran pastor and philosopher, chaplain through the First World War, religious socialist in Weimar, dismissed from Frankfurt by the Nazis in 1933 and thereafter the best-known theologian in America, at Union, Harvard and Chicago. His Systematic Theology (1951-1963) proceeds by a ‘method of correlation’ in which philosophy states the questions of human existence and revelation answers them in symbols: God is not a being but ‘being-itself’, the ground and power of being; Christ is the appearance of the ‘New Being’ under the conditions of estrangement; the Spirit is ‘Spiritual Presence’. The Courage to Be (1952) addressed the anxiety of meaninglessness and the ‘God above the God of theism’; Dynamics of Faith (1957) defined faith as ultimate concern; The Protestant Era set a ‘Protestant principle’ of protest against every absolutized finite form in tension with ‘Catholic substance’.
Why he matters: He put ontology back at the center of Protestant theology and so forced a conversation with Catholic metaphysics, which the essays gathered in Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought (1964) carried on in his presence. His theology of culture, of symbol and of ‘Catholic substance’ shaped Catholic reflection on art and on the religious sense in the generation of the Council.
Where to be careful
His God who does not ‘exist’, and his treatment of every statement about God except ‘God is being-itself’ as symbol, depart from Dei Filius on the knowability and real existence of the personal Creator and from Lateran IV on God's real distinction from the world; his justification as ‘acceptance’, his situational ethics and his symbolic reading of the fall, the resurrection and eternal life part from Trent, Veritatis Splendor and the Creeds. Common ground: the analogy of being he half restored, the sacramental ‘Catholic substance’ he prized, and the seriousness about culture that Gaudium et Spes shares.
Reading
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The Courage to BePaul Tillich · The anxiety of fate, guilt and meaninglessness, and the courage that takes them into itself.
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Systematic TheologyPaul Tillich · Volume I on being and God; volume II on existence and the Christ.
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Paul Tillich in Catholic ThoughtThomas A. O'Meara and Celestin D. Weisser, eds. · Catholic essays of 1964, with Tillich's own reply as afterword.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.