Tillich Research

From 1925 to 1929, Paul Tillich taught at the Saxon Technical University in Dresden. These were turbulent years in the Weimar Republic, their interpretation fiercely contested. This volume is the first to examine Tillich’s influence in Dresden, situating it within the intellectual discourses of the time, reconstructing it against that backdrop, and thereby painting a multifaceted picture of his theology and philosophy of religion.

Paul Tillich (1886–1965), who made significant contributions to philosophy of religion, symbolism, and cultural theology, also fundamentally examined the ethical questions of being human. Love and recognition are central concepts in his complete works. This book interprets Tillich's ethics in a text- and subject-historical perspective against a contextual as well as intellectual-historical background.

This book addresses school pastoral care and the identity of the Catholic school in francophone Belgium. In a post-modern context, how do we redefine the ultimate goals of pastoral care in schools so as to preserve its relevance in the eyes of our contemporaries who no longer share the same faith? To answer this question, five concepts from Paul Tillich’s work have been drawn upon in order to establish a dialogue with other thinkers of our time.

Paul Tillich's philosophy of religion also found resonance in other disciplines, which is illustrated by the writings of the American existential psychotherapist Rollo May. This volume outlines the reciprocal influences of both thinkers by looking at the topics of fear, freedom, love, the demonic, power, and myth, and their significance for a contemporary examination of these topics.

Die Tillich-Forschung hat sich in den letzten 20 Jahren grundlegend verändert. Stand in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts vor allem das Spätwerk, wie es in der Systematischen Theologie vorliegt, im Blickpunkt des Forschungsinteresses, so mehrten sich seit der Jahrtausendwende Untersuchungen zum Frühwerk und zur Werkgeschichte. Das liegt vor allem an den neuen Quellen, die der Forschung durch die Editionstätigkeit von Erdmann Sturm zur Verfügung gestellt wurden. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes gehen der Frage nach, wie sich das Bild der werkgeschichtlichen Entwicklung von Tillichs Theologie und Religionsphilosophie unter Einbeziehung dieser neuen Quellen darstellt und welche Aspekte seines Denkens Anknüpfungspunkte für gegenwärtige theologische Debatten bieten. Der Band umfasst folglich drei Teile: werkgeschichtliche Perspektiven, problemgeschichtliche Kontexte und systematische Anknüpfungspunkte. Auf diese Weise bietet der Erdmann Sturm zum 85. Geburtstag gewidmete Band einen prägnanten Überblick über die Tendenzen der gegenwärtigen Tillich-Forschung.

A colloquium entitled "Paul Tillich and Paul Ricœur in dialogue" was held in Paris 2019, organized by the Association Paul Tillich d'expression française (APTEF) in collaboration with the Fonds Ricœur. Each of the contributions offers particular crossovers, specific explorations, comparisons favoring certain texts by the protagonists which, in a certain sense, embody snippets of dialogue that could have taken place between Tillich and Ricœur.

This volume investigates questions of eschatology and the theology of history, opening up a new material context in the theology of the twentieth century by focusing on the thought of Paul Tillich. The author locates the relationship between history and eschatology within Tillich’s overall system, presenting the fundamental, theological, dogmatic, and ethical dimensions of Tillich’s oeuvre in their relationship to one another.

This book addresses the seldom addressed question of the meaning of the term “power” in theology and 20^th century philosophy. After considering the theories of Arendt, Foucault, Plessner, and Jaspers, the authors examine Tillich’s ontology of power. They show that Tillich shaped his understanding of power by a theory of meaning and how he linked his considerations of power to the concept of being.

Sabrina Söchtig examines the understanding of truth held by the theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965). For the first time, based on Tillich’s lecture on the philosophy of religion (1920), the author evaluates Tillich’s understanding of non-Christian religions. The lecture forms a core element in his treatment of the problem of truth. The correlation between philosophy of religion and theology proves to be a key function in this analysis.

Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen Tillichs Verständnis von 'Reformation' und 'Revolution' vor dem Hintergrund seines Gesamtwerks in einer problemgeschichtlichen Perspektive. Diskutiert werden die verschiedenen Facetten und Bezüge seiner Reformations- und Revolutionsdeutung ebenso wie Perspektiven, die sich für gegenwärtige Debatten ergeben. Auf diese Weise erschließt der Band ein Themenfeld, welches bislang kaum untersucht wurde.

Paul Tillich is exceptional in modern theologians that his distinctive and abundant understanding of the concept of life and spirit has the potential to engage with other disciplines, such as biology, psychology, cosmology and social science; and that his ontological understanding of “life as spirit” which is so crucial in the ecological consideration, is so complex and subtle that enables powerful and critical inter-religious dialogue in environmental ethics. This book argues that, despite the fact that Tillich did not engage in ecological and environmental theology directly, his abundant personal experience of nature-mysticism and intellectual understanding of the idea of nature rooted in his Lutheran and German idealist heritages and, more importantly, his ontological-pneumatological holistic and multi-dimensional conception of unifying and differentiated reality, perfectly and organically coupled with the theonomous vision of theology of culture, nature and morality is profoundly ecologically oriented.

Tillich’s early religious philosophy aimed not only to be a cultural theology but also a contemporary dogmatics. In it, Tillich modified his concept of religion based on a structural theory of concrete human existence. The result is the important conception of an anthropological religious philosophy, which continues to mark Tillich’s late principal works with its correlation of anthropological questions and theological answers.

The notion of the demonic is a key category in the philosophical–theological works of Paul Tillich. This volume discusses this fundamental idea in religious philosophy, theology, and cultural theory in terms of its problematic history and its systematic function in Tillich’s theory of religion.

These studies explore Paul Tillich’s concept of revelation. They examine the derivation of revelation, whether it is subjectively narrowed, and its relationship to science. In addition, it shows the great relevance of Tillich’s concept of revelation for his postulate of mystical immediacy, his notion of religious experience, his method of correlation, and his concept of interreligious dialogue.

Fifty years after his death in 1965 the essays in this collection return to Paul Tillich to investigate his theology and its legacy, with a focus on contemporary British scholarship. Originating in a conference held in Oxford in 2014, the book contains 16 original contributions from a mixture of junior and more established scholars, most of whom have a connection to Britain.

The contributions are diverse, but four themes emerge throughout the volume. Several essays are concerning with a characterisation of Tillich's theology. In dialogue with recent emphases on the radical Tillich, some essays suggest a more conservative estimation of Tillich's theology, rooted in the Idealist and classical Christian platonic traditions, whilst in constant engagement with changing existential situations.

Secondly, and perhaps reflecting the context of religious diversity and theories of religious pluralism in Britain, many essays engage Tillich's approach to non-Christian religions. Thirdly, some essays address the importance of existentialist philosophy for Tillich, notably via an engagement with Sartre. Finally, a number of essays take up the diagnostic potential of Tillich's theology as a resource for engaging contemporary challenges.

For the first time, this volume examines from an interdisciplinary perspective how Paul Tillich’s experience of forced exile impacted the development of his theology and philosophy in the United States, thereby discursively combining exile research and Tillich scholarship.

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.

"The language of faith is the language of symbols" – according to Paul Tillich’s notable formulation. His theory of religious symbols represents the most significant contribution made by Protestant theology to contemporary discourse on symbolism. Heinemann’s study examines the premises of this theory, its systematic formulation, as well as its religious-theoretical implications.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Paul Tillich, the French-speaking Association held a symposium on the ambiguities of life. Of the ambiguity that runs throughout the Tillichian corpus, three main areas were analyzed: politics, morality and religion. We regularly denounce political power, moral legalism and religious fanaticism. These ambiguities are subject to criticism and spiritual overcoming by the "spiritual presence".

À l’occasion du 50e anniversaire du décès de Paul Tillich, l’APTEF a fait un colloque portant sur les ambiguïtés de la vie. Si l’ambiguïté traverse l'œuvre tillichienne, trois principaux domaines furent analysés : politique, morale et religion. On dénonce régulièrement le «pouvoir» politique, le «légalisme» moral et le «fanatisme» religieux. Ces ambiguïtés sont objet d’une critique et d’un dépassement spirituel par la «Présence Spirituelle».

This volume examines the multifaceted origins of Paul Tillich’s “critical theology” during the Frankfurt years (1929–1933) from the perspectives of source and reception history. In this way, it provides a compelling picture of the rich interactions between Tillich and his academic environment as well as the spiritual situation at the University of Frankfurt just before the National Socialist takeover.

This is the first published book-length treatment on Paul Tillich and Judaism, which is a neglected aspect of Tillich’s thought. It has three compelling features. First, pivotal biographical details show the importance of Judaism for Tillich, and that he ardently opposed anti-Semitism before WWII and after the Holocaust. Second, Tillich’s theological method is examined in key primary sources to show how he maintains continuity between Judaism and Christianity. The primary source analysis includes his 1910 and 1912 dissertations on Schelling, the 1933 The Socialist Decision, the 1952 Berlin lectures on “the Jewish Question,” and his final public lecture on the importance of the history of religion for systematic theology. Particular attention is paid to his dialectical and theological history of religion. Third, Tillich’s positive theology of Judaism contrasts sharply with the many complex, negative ways in which Judaism is portrayed in Western thought. This contributes significantly to our understanding the evolving history of Christian anti-Judaism.

Selon Tillich, l’apologétique signifie « défendre » la foi chrétienne lorsqu’elle est menacée, et en « répondre » devant des adversaires. Dès lors, dans le contexte d’une culture en voie de sécularisation, où la religion se trouve de plus en plus contestée dans ses prétentions à organiser et à régir la société, il était normal que l’apologétique occupe une place importante dans la réflexion théologique.
Chez Tillich, on note une évolution importante dans sa manière d’envisager cette notion. En effet, loin de proposer une approche purement dualiste de l’apologétique, qui opposerait par exemple la vérité chrétienne au doute athée, Tillich cherchera toujours à rencontrer son interlocuteur athée sur un « terrain commun » d’entente. Ce critère du terrain commun sera d’ailleurs le critère fondamental de sa compréhension de l’apologétique, même si cette dernière se reconfigure de différentes manières au fil du temps. En effet, d’autres critères seront également parfois soulignés, surtout durant toute la période allemande de son enseignement.
Pour montrer les convergences et les discontinuités dans cette compréhension de l’apologétique, nous avons envisagé la recherche de manière chronologique, en nous basant sur les principaux textes qui abordaient explicitement le terme « apologétique ». Le résultat de notre recherche fut alors de constater qu’il existait deux grands paradigmes dans la compréhension tillichienne de l’apologétique, à savoir : une apologétique de l’attaque et une apologétique de la réponse. Schématiquement, nous rattacherons la première à la période allemande de son enseignement, et la seconde à la période américaine. Il faut aussi noter que notre recherche commence par aborder la question de l’apologétique à partir des écrits de l’année 1913, c’est-à-dire des écrits antérieurs à la période d’enseignement allemande, qu'elle contient également une reprise à rebours de son sujet, via une étude des rapports entre Tillich et Barth, qui mettent en jeu la possibilité, ou non, d’une démarche de type apologétique, et qu'elle ouvre à la question du dialogue interreligieux, ainsi qu'à une actualisation de la question apologétique.

L'ouvrage retrace la manière dont Paul Tillich envisage la question de l'apologétique. L'étude s'étend des premiers écrits du théologien et montre un glissement dans sa compréhension de l'apologétique: d'une apologétique de l'attaque vers une apologétique de la réponse, en lien avec la méthode de corrélation. En outre, l’étude reprend le débat qui opposa Tillich et Barth sur ce sujet, et envisage une percée du côté du dialogue interreligieux.

This volume engages in the first systematic exploration of Paul Tillich’s understanding of myth. The essays describe the evolution of the notion of myth since the Enlightenment along with the progression of Tillich’s own ideas about myth throughout his works, in the context of contemporary discourse. In this way, the volume elucidates a key element in Tillich’s religious philosophy and theology.

In the summer of 1960 Paul Tillich visited Japan. Together with his wife Hannah, he spent eight weeks in the country sightseeing, lecturing, and having discussions with local scholars. This monograph provides the first comprehensive documentation of Tillich’s journey, highlighting the political context and the itinerary of his visit. Moreover, Tomoaki Fukai presents the manuscripts of Tillich’s lectures, his conversations with leading Buddhists in Kyoto, and his correspondence with his Japanese hosts.

Salvation is a dramatic event. What form of thought is appropriate for the relationship between God and Man: analogy, dialectics, or paradox?
Paul Tillich and Walter Kasper may be regarded as the 20th century heirs to Schelling’s version of German Idealism. In response to the conundrums that emerge from the anthropological transition to postmodernism and from modern man’s position of alienation from God, Tillich and Kasper boldly attempted to conceptualize theology in terms of soteriology. Is there still a Christian message that speaks to the predicament of modern man and can “embrace” people today?

The challenges of Late Modernism form the shared horizon of Christian and Buddhist religious-hermeneutic efforts to demonstrate the relevance to everyday life of their respective transmitted doctrines. This work applies an interreligious comparison based on the implicit homiletics of Paul Tillich to examine how a particular understanding of faith and reality affects religious communication. This approach reveals that Buddhism has been a kerygmatic religion from the start, as is especially clear in the tradition of Japanese Shin Buddhism.

This volume examines a comprehensive range of aspects of Paul Tillich's theology of culture from the perspective of the history of his work and its problems. The themes discussed are the development, the context and the individual structural elements, as well as the impetus and further perspectives of Tillich's theology of culture. This volume is the first systematic and comprehensive account of Tillich's theology of culture and its history.

This volume is the first to examine the theology of the young Paul Tillich against the background of his academic theological teachers, fellow students and contemporaries. It sketches a picture of the complex theological debates around 1900 and traces the development of theology’s self-image as a science in the first two decades of the 20th century on the basis of the formation of Tillich’s theology.