Paul Tillich and His Theology - Essay Example

 Paul Tillich and His Theology Paul Tillich, the most prominent and prolific Protestant theologian and philosopher of the last century, played the key role in shaping the philosophy of Christian existentialism. A great master of abstraction, Tillich adopted a highly specific approach in his analysis of theological problems. Eventually, his approach developed into the so-called methodology of correlation the essence of which was the attempt to relate the traditional Christian concepts, symbols and ideas to the problems of human existence. With the help of this method Tillich effectively demonstrated how deeply religion is rooted in human life (Kegley & Bretall, 1964). Despite the sometimes overwhelmingly abstract nature of Tillich’s methodology, it had much stronger relation to the reality than many could imagine. Even brief analysis of the political and cultural contexts that surrounded Tillich during his life and career reveals how strongly those contexts affected his theological views. Born on August 20, 1886 in a little village called Starzeddel, Germany, Paul was introduced to religion early in life. His father was a Lutheran minister and his mother was brought up as a more liberal Calvinist. Paul received his Ph.D. from Breslau in 1911 and was ordained as a Lutheran minister, like his father, in 1912 (Pauck & Pauck, 1976). The period from Tillich’s birth to the First World War was the time when his theological system only started to develop. Born in the last quarter of the 19th century, Tillich spent his young years surrounded by the spirit and traditions of Romanticism, the dominant movement in the European culture of that period. The Romantic protest against the rationalization of nature, coupled with the stress on the emotional aspects of existence and, of course, confronting the sublimity of nature could not but affect the way Tillich perceived his relation to the surrounding world (Henderson, 1986). Tillich's perception of the world was put to the severe test during the years of World War I. Tillich headed toward the front “….filled with nationalistic fervor and even enthusiasm over the opportunity to serve both God and country as a military chaplain” (Henderson 1986, p. 143). However, the realities of war almost immediately undermined Tillich’s belief in “…a nice God who would make everything turn out for the best” (Pauck & Pauck, 1976, p.40). One of his duties was to bury the dead and soon the young chaplain found himself spending more time digging graves than fulfilling his direct duties (Henderson, 1986). The essence of the impression produced on Tillich by those horrors of warfare is illustrated by the following phrase: “I have constantly the most immediate and very strong feeling that I am no longer alive. Therefore I don't take life seriously... not that I have childish fantasies of the death of the world, but rather that I am experiencing the actual death of this our time” (Pauck & Pauck, 1976, p.51). This statement perfectly conveys the sense of despair and disillusionment that seized the whole generation, including the young chaplain. The realization that much of his classical philosophy was inadequate in the contemporary world, made Tillich revise many of his pre-war views. After the war, Tillich continued his academic progress at the University of Berlin where he spent five years from 1919 to 1924. Delivering lectures on the philosophy of religion, Tillich started to use the newly adopted views to develop his specific theology. In particular, the young scholar proposed the so-called ‘theology of culture’ which related religious problems to political and philosophic issues, art, psychology and social sciences. Tillich’s strive to bring together the fields of study that had not been related to each other by the orthodox theology earned him deserved popularity as a lecturer. However, the key feature of Tillich’s theological studies was his desire to bring theology to everyday life: the scholar believed that in doing so he would bring people closer to God (Kegley & Bretall, 1964). The after-war spread of neo-existentialist philosophy with its belief that humans create the essence of their lives was absolutely in line with Tillich’s stance. In particular, Tillich was deeply influenced by the most famous German existentialist of those days, Martin Heidegger. Using Heidegger’s existentialism as the template, Tillich continued to elaborate his theological theory in an attempt to make it an instrument to answer “…the questions implied in human existence” (Tillich, 1973, p. 61). Although the theological views expressed by Tillich belong to the Christian theology, some of his ideas are very controversial. In particular, Tillich called Christ the “New Being” and opposed the dogmatic view of the Christian theology that Christ was both God and man at the same time claiming that Christ was a man similar to any other human being and that he was only the proof of God, not God himself (Henderson, 1986). These basic ideas forming the core of Tillich’s theology clearly illustrate the depth of the influence of existential philosophy on life and thinking of the scholar. The influence of Marxist philosophy and political theory also had major influence on Tillich’s works: he even became a socialist following the end of World War I. In his book “The Socialist Decision” the scholar even made an attempt to explore the relationship between religion and key ideas of socialism using his theological approach. In that book (which was eventually confiscated and burned by the Nazi party) Tillich argues that the ideas underlying Christianity and socialism were almost similar (Kegley & Bretall, 1964). Thus, in 1933, Tillich’s professorship at the University of Frankfurt was dismissed almost immediate after Hitler’s coming to power in Germany. Reinhold Niebuhr who was Germany when that happened, invited the famous theologian to the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Tillich readily accepted the invitation and immigrated to the United States of America together with his family in November 1933 (Pauck & Pauck, 1976). During his period in the Union Theological Seminary Tillich joined several major theological organizations such as the Theological Discussion Group and American Theological Society and continued his search for the divine. In particular, Tillich got interested with the depth-psychology movement that emerged in Columbia University those days. Fascinated by the promises of the new discipline, Tillich even claimed that “…it is impossible today to elaborate a Christian doctrine of man, . . . without using the immense material brought forth by depth psychology” (Kegley and Bretall, 1964, p.19). However, the scientist maintained the basic features of his theological approach despite the fundamental differences of the new environment where he was forced to live. On October 22, 1965, Tillich died; his body was cremated and interred in a park named after him in New Harmony, Indiana. Evidently, the central point in Tillich’s theology was the search for the hidden divine (religious or theological) aspects in every sphere of human life and being such as politics, economics, social and natural sciences, culture etc. The purpose of this search was revealing the confirmation and justification of the Christianity while the basic premise Tillich relied on in performing it was expressed in his simple and basic definition of the religion: “Religion is ultimate concern” (Tillich, 1973, p.212). In fact, Tillich’s theological inquiries about the death of God reflected political developments in those days Europe as well as the vision of nations and empires that disappeared during that warfare. As the war made Tillich get an insight into the depth and variety of the basic human emotions and experiences bringing to the forefront fear and uncertainty, the scholar responded with the attempt to show every aspect of that depth and relate it to the divine thus helping people feel less anxious and less scared of it. Tillich claimed that getting acquainted with that depth is an essential and necessary part of human life: “Depth is a dimension of space; yet at the same time it is a symbol for a spiritual quality.... The depth of thought is a part of the depth of life. Most of our life continues on the surface.... We are in constant motion and never stop to plunge into the depth. We talk and talk and never listen to the voices speaking to our depth and from our depth” (Tillich, 1948, p. 55-56). However, only his theology made an attempt to facilitate that acquaintance turning it harmless to humans. Tillich related his personal experience of what he called ‘God’s absence’ to the non-theological experiences of other people who felt the same gap though in different form or context. That gap eventually resulted in emergence of new trends in philosophy, social and economical studies, and Tillich reasonably believed that since his theology reflected the same kind of experiences it had to be explored in relation to other non-theological trends (Henderson, 1986). The concept of culture occupies one of the central places in Tillich’s theology. The scholar applied his doctrine of the presence of religious elements in every aspect human life to European and American cultures in an attempt to prove that each and every cultural artifact produced by human beings relates in some or other way to theology. Based on this assumption, Tillich, in fact, rejected the concept of purely secular culture claiming that even an atheist culture contains an element of divine. The same principle applies to other spheres of human being such as economy, sciences, politics and others. In particular, Tillich believed that the spread of Marxist ideology of social justice is rooted in the ability of this ideology to effectively substitute traditional theological religion. Tillich summarized these conclusions in his famous aphorism "Religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion” (Tillich, 1959, p.42). Tillich’s theology did much to bridge the gap between the traditional Christian faith and the world that suffered immense political, cultural and economic changes. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Tillich’s works were instrumental in providing the old religion with an opportunity to adapt to the new circumstances. References Kegley, Ch. W., and Bretall, R. W. (eds.) (1964). The Theology of Paul Tillich. New York: Macmillan Henderson, Ch. P. (1986). God and Science: The Death and Rebirth of Theism. John Knox Press, Atlanta, Chapter 6. Tillich, P. (1948). The Shaking of the Foundations. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Tillich, P. (1973). Systematic Theology, Vol. 1. University Of Chicago Press. Tillich, P. (1959). Theology of Culture. New York: Oxford University. Pauck, W., & Pauck, M. (1976). Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought. Volume 1: Life. New York: Harper and Row. Read More