Volume 10, Issue 1

This contribution analyzes the connection between Tillich’s eschatology and morality against the historical background of Immanuel Kant and Albrecht Ritschl. Both in his early and in his later work, Tillich connects the idea of the kingdom of God with his own historical context and with the knowledge of the changing character of all historical norms.

Paul Tillich’s eschatology is strongly linked to his ethics. In order to understand the theological and philosophical implications of this linkage it is necessary to consult his systematic main works from the 1920’s era. The intellectual environment of the Weimar era was used to apocalyptical descriptions of its present age - which within protestant theology was reflected in eschatological terms. Tillich’s contribution to the eschatological discourse of that time consisted in the development of an eschatology which (while preserving the critical attitude of dialectic theology) was designed to be a transcendental theory reflecting the conditions of the constitution of agency.

Tillichian correlation tendency presents undeniable advantages towards a nuanced and dynamic articulation of philosophy and theology, and as such of ethics and religion. Nonetheless, there are reasons to wonder whether the modern rediscovery of apocalyptic and eschatological discourse in the heart of theological thinking will not create new tensions that might subvert the conception of ethics in itself. Can we reconsider this critical dialectic with tillichian categories, or must we also touch on this problematic under a new angle?

Expectation and utopia are rooted in the ontological structure of man’s being. The struggle for a meaningful society and against a demonized society is a necessary expression for the expectation of the Kingdom of God. In his paper on “The Kingdom of God and History” from 1936, Tillich does not start from man’s ontological structure and his expectation or utopia but from the symbol for the Kingdom of God. In his bi-polar “applied theology” and his doctrine of the kairos he affirms the idea that the Kingdom of God is involved in historical events, in actualization in time.

During the last decade of his life, Tillich saw the possibility of constructing ethics and theology from below in his multidimensional view of the unity of life. His view brings together the late Plato and Aristotle: essences are potentials which the historical process actualizes and enriches both for all beings and for God as the ground of being. In his eschatology, his differential monism avoids the problems of strict teleological finalism and of a dualism between living beings and God. For Tillich, there is no unbridgeable gap between immanence and transcendence but a mutual bond of connection, interdependence and interaction. In love, the positive in creation and in history is brought into the Kingdom of God and fulfills justice for all beings.

This article is an attempt to reconstruct the inherent ethical approach of Tillich’s theology. In the process it will show that Tillich’s ethic strives to be a timely, consistent formulation of the Christian paradigm of charity. This leads to the moral imperative that one becomes a person in the midst of a community of persons. The presuppositions and genesis of this central ethical insight are traced historically in his work

The following essay reconstructs Tillich’s political ethics during the period of Weimar until the end of World War II (1919-1945). After a short introduction into his early understanding of theological ethics and normativity selected publications and statements are discussed with special respect to the topics Democracy, Religious Socialism and human rights. Thus Tillich’s theological reason in combination with his view on contemporary political questions indicates a development in mutual dependency. It also shows his theological basis as the main protection against ideological thinking especially in regard to the thoughts and consequences within German National Socialism.

The theological “eschatologism” of the 1920’s can be described as a radical criticism of traditionally spoken language and a rapid expansion of the historio-semantic universe. In the discourses on the interpretation of time in the Weimar Republic, ‘kairos’ experienced a unique career. The fascinating openness of the word’s concept made it very attractive from a linguistic point of view, but it also meant that it was vulnerable to a takeover by the intellectual elements connected with the National Socialist seizure of power that endeavored to make it their own. This essay picks out one of the most central elements within the kairos discourse: it analyzes both connections between Paul Tillich and controversial sociologist Hans Freyer from Leipzig while presenting contrasts of philosophy of life, political romanticism and religious socialism.

The title of the recent work by Ronald Dworkin, “Religion without God” (2013), reveals the basic thesis of the book that religion is something deeper than God. For his argument, Dworkin refers to Paul Tillich, among others. This article shows that Dworkin completely missed Tillich’s meaning and that his presentation is unfair to both modern theology and the classical metaphysical tradition. He reinterprets the concept of religion in a way that makes no sense

This paper works out Tillich’s discussion of Nominalism as a base of contrast, against which his own thought developed. This is true for what he called his “constructive ontology” in his American period, during which he replaced the transcendental philosophical approach to meaning of his early period. But he also began to sketch this out already in his early writings, especially in his historical interpretation of the late medieval direction of thought. One can also find this in his analysis of culture and ask how it affects his present philosophical relevance.

Why is religion vulnerable to fundamentalism? This question plays no significant role in the current empiric and historical rather than religio-theoretical research. At first the article reconstructs structures of Tillich’s concept of religious fundamentalism in his later works. In a second step it scrutinizes elements of Tillich’s Religionsphilosophie (1925), which are relevant to a theory of the conditions of the possibility of religious fundamentalism, even to the present debate. The central thesis is: Religious fundamentalism grounds on the confusion of absoluteness with relativeness.

This edition shows the problems associated with Tillich’s habilitation in Halle (1914- 16), and provides details of his subsequent “Umhabilitierungen” (transfers of habilitation) from Halle to Berlin and Marburg. Tillich had been obliged to write his habilitation thesis on supernaturalism as a historical study, but he wrote it as a purely logical and dialectical work from the standpoint of Schelling’s philosophy of identity. That was the conclusion of the referees of his thesis (Kattenbusch, Loofs, Lütgert). But Lütgert’s argument helped in getting the work accepted. Tillich’s anti-supernaturalism is reflected in his correspondence with E. Hirsch. In January 1919, Tillich was allowed to change from Halle to Berlin (“because of economic reasons”). Another “Umhabilitierung”, this time to Marburg, was made in 1924 although Tillich would have preferred to stay in Berlin.