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Systematic Theology, Vol 1
This is the 1st part of Paul Tillich's 3-volume Systematic Theology, one of the most profound statements of the Christian message ever composed & the summation & definitive presentation of the theology of the most influential & creative American theologian of the 20th century. This pathbreaking volume presents the basic method & statement of Tillich's system—his famous "correlation" of man's deepest questions with theological answers. Here the focus is on the concepts of being & reason. Tillich shows how the quest for revelation is integral to reason itself. In the same way a description of the inner tensions of being leads to the recognition that the quest for God is implied in finite being. Here also Tillich defines his thought in relation to philosophy & the Bible & sets forth his famous doctrine of God as the "Ground of Being." Thus God is understood not as a being existing beside other beings, but as being-itself or the power of being in everything. God cannot be made into an object; religious knowledge is, therefore, necessarily symbolic.
307 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Paul Tillich
277 books422 followersPaul Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was – along with his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann (Germany), Karl Barth (Switzerland), and Reinhold Niebuhr (United States) – one of the four most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century. Among the general populace, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership. Theologically, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63), in which he developed his "method of correlation": an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 29, 2017
Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (ST) preserves the message of the gospel while reflecting understanding of 20th century science and culture.
Faith is an existential decision which is made (as Tillich describes in Part I Reason and Revelation) though all our human faculties and in encounter with that which smacks us with the impact of its reality and truth.
At the same time, it is possible to call oneself a Christian, but to worship other gods. If what matters most to us, if what we will risk our lives and souls for (our ultimate concern) is a religion or doctrine or career or priest/pastor’s word, then our god is something less that God. This is just another way of saying that putting anything above God is idolatry and messes up lives. One reviewer says this is the cornerstone of Tillich’s theology. But in fact his cornerstone is the first commandment: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
My theology professor, a student and friend of Tillich’s said that after speaking to American audiences, Tillich used to mutter under his breath (with a bit of grinding of his teeth) “Americans are all nominalists.”
We tend to view reality as made up of material things. It took me three readings of the ST (completed for my Mdiv and MA in 1992), to change the way I see reality, to understand that every cell and every rock is spiritual (or sacramental), to enlarge and enlarge my view of God, who created the laws of nature, space/time, quantum reality, and all possible futures.
Tillich is not a theist, deist, or pantheist. God is "beyond"—inexpressibly separate—from creation while *at the same time* all of creation depends for its existence in every moment on God, who can be seen (as in a foggy mirror, dimly), in every aspect of creation. If one must use a label, it might be "panentheist"--but no label can fairly represent God's relationship to reality.
Augustine ruminates in his Confessions on God’s reality relative to time. Augustine’s dilemma was that, failing to anticipate the nature of the universe at the quantum level, he assumed there is only one possible future (a view Einstein shared). This forced Augustine to assume that God foreknows how we are going to use our free will.
Now we understand that the future is open and probabilistic. What gives these probabilities their reality is their existence in God’s foreknowledge of possible futures. Thus our freedom is very real—but not unlimited.
At the same time, God knows everything that happened in the past—down to the quantum level—which is why the past has stability, reality, and singularity.
The day I glimpsed the magnitude of God’s relationship to time/space—something as beyond us as the cosmos is beyond the knowledge of a fish in an aquarium—I was so overwhelmed by the unimaginable hugeness of it that I had to sit down. God is (Tillich’s favorite symbolic term for God, according to my mentor) "Unvordenklich"—that before which nothing can be thought.
Tillich uses the term Being-Itself to refer to God in much of Volume I. In the introduction to Volume 2, he clarifies that “Being-Itself,” like all terms we use for God, is symbolic (where a symbol is defined as that which participates in, but is not equal to, the power and meaning of what it symbolizes).
My mentor said he once asked Tillich in what tradition he considered himself to be. Tillich answered, after some thought, “Augustinian.” Tillich sheds much that is objectionable in Augustine, but uses his trinitarian structure, which Augustine once summarized/simplified as Lover (God), Beloved (Christ), and Love (Spirit).
Faith is an existential decision which is made (as Tillich describes in Part I Reason and Revelation) though all our human faculties and in encounter with that which smacks us with the impact of its reality and truth.
At the same time, it is possible to call oneself a Christian, but to worship other gods. If what matters most to us, if what we will risk our lives and souls for (our ultimate concern) is a religion or doctrine or career or priest/pastor’s word, then our god is something less that God. This is just another way of saying that putting anything above God is idolatry and messes up lives. One reviewer says this is the cornerstone of Tillich’s theology. But in fact his cornerstone is the first commandment: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”
My theology professor, a student and friend of Tillich’s said that after speaking to American audiences, Tillich used to mutter under his breath (with a bit of grinding of his teeth) “Americans are all nominalists.”
We tend to view reality as made up of material things. It took me three readings of the ST (completed for my Mdiv and MA in 1992), to change the way I see reality, to understand that every cell and every rock is spiritual (or sacramental), to enlarge and enlarge my view of God, who created the laws of nature, space/time, quantum reality, and all possible futures.
Tillich is not a theist, deist, or pantheist. God is "beyond"—inexpressibly separate—from creation while *at the same time* all of creation depends for its existence in every moment on God, who can be seen (as in a foggy mirror, dimly), in every aspect of creation. If one must use a label, it might be "panentheist"--but no label can fairly represent God's relationship to reality.
Augustine ruminates in his Confessions on God’s reality relative to time. Augustine’s dilemma was that, failing to anticipate the nature of the universe at the quantum level, he assumed there is only one possible future (a view Einstein shared). This forced Augustine to assume that God foreknows how we are going to use our free will.
Now we understand that the future is open and probabilistic. What gives these probabilities their reality is their existence in God’s foreknowledge of possible futures. Thus our freedom is very real—but not unlimited.
At the same time, God knows everything that happened in the past—down to the quantum level—which is why the past has stability, reality, and singularity.
The day I glimpsed the magnitude of God’s relationship to time/space—something as beyond us as the cosmos is beyond the knowledge of a fish in an aquarium—I was so overwhelmed by the unimaginable hugeness of it that I had to sit down. God is (Tillich’s favorite symbolic term for God, according to my mentor) "Unvordenklich"—that before which nothing can be thought.
Tillich uses the term Being-Itself to refer to God in much of Volume I. In the introduction to Volume 2, he clarifies that “Being-Itself,” like all terms we use for God, is symbolic (where a symbol is defined as that which participates in, but is not equal to, the power and meaning of what it symbolizes).
My mentor said he once asked Tillich in what tradition he considered himself to be. Tillich answered, after some thought, “Augustinian.” Tillich sheds much that is objectionable in Augustine, but uses his trinitarian structure, which Augustine once summarized/simplified as Lover (God), Beloved (Christ), and Love (Spirit).
June 13, 2012
One of the most amazing presentations of theology that I have seen. It is mostly a philosophic treatise with little to no scripture reference. One wonders how you can build a systematic theology without scripture references, but this is mostly a preliminary to the Scriptures, which is controversial. You can begin down the dangerous road of deciding in your mind what God must be like before you even open the Bible. This isn't to say that it is impossible. Tillich is perhaps one of the greatest theologian/philosophers of the modern era who has tried to bridge the gap between religion and philosophy. But I imagine this work is not entirely accepted by the religious community. Tillich seems to be inclusive and universal in his theology, but he provides a structure which is compelling and understandable. The "ultimate concern" which is the cornerstone of his theology is an amazing tool tool to influence the apologetic discussion that I have not seen too much of in most evangelical circles. A great book to challenge you and inspire you.
December 11, 2020
Ever since I took a course in Contemporary Protestant Theology in college fifty years ago I have been impressed by Paul Tillich. I also noted that he was included in Readings in Twentieth Century Philosophy (Alston and Nakhnikian) as a textbook exemplar of philosophy, as well as of theology. Over the years I have read several of his books, but I felt I finally had to get to his Systematic Theology in order to master his thought. His thinking is how I understand Christianity. He seems to have provided the best theoretical structure for interpreting Christianity in the scientific and post-modernist age.
Reviewing here the first of three volumes, I can only try to reconstruct some of the basic ideas. His book covers too much ground, for example dividing historical theology into “the biblical disciplines, church history, and the history of religion and culture,” to be able to summarize. Tillich’s thinking is based on Heidegger’s thought, taking as its point of departure Dasein, “being there,” the experience we have of finding ourselves in the world. His view is not a materialist view, that is of reducing everything to a physical understanding of the world. That would be an “objective” view of the world, but he argues that Dasein, our experience of being in the world, encompasses many polarities, including both the subjective and the objective, and that a complete theology has to encompass all of them.
Tillich uses the “method of correlation,” saying that our very existence, our Dasein, gives rise to questions, and that revelation (which he analyses in great detail, in a non-supranatural way) gives answers to the questions. The questions and the answers are independent and yet they shape each other. For example, we find ourselves as finite beings, yet able to conceive of the infinite. What is our relationship to the infinite? Revelation offers a view of man as able to transcend his finitude, and to participate in infinity (“unlimited self-transcendence”). My personal gloss on Tillich’s conception of revelation would be “life changing experience,” not suffering an accident, but experiencing and responding to something that gives a new meaning to life.
There are two key terms in Tillich’s conception of God. He holds that God is the “ground of being.” Think of Dasein, our experience of finding ourselves in the world, and think what that is when you put aside all of the intellectualizing and mental jabbering that normally crowd our consciousness. This is a kind of meditation, the nothingness which is ourselves when we try to isolate it. Out of this comes our spontaneous reaction to the world, which often has the character of caring and empathy. The ubiquitous Biblical phrase “God is love” comes to mind.
Tillich’s other key term is that God is our “ultimate concern.” Starting again with Dasein, being there in the world, we find that we are concerned with different things. What is our ultimate concern, the overall concern that encompasses all of our more limited concerns? Notice that “ground of being” and “ultimate concern” are polar concepts designating the innermost and outermost limits of our experience of the world.
It should be clear that Tillich’s conception of God is a non-theistic one. To quote Tillich, “Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern.”
Since this is a review, I will pose two critical questions: First, suppose Tillich is on solid ground in what he describes as “ground of being and ultimate concern.” Does it make sense to call this “God”? The description coheres with some historical and classical views of God, but not with others (such as theism and deism). But if it makes any sense at all, it may provide a translation scheme for atheists to understand what religious people are talking about.
Second, as a Christian theologian, Tillich privileges “the revelation in Jesus as the Christ as the final revelation.” He acknowledges that there are revelations which are partial or preliminary. But can there be other revelations in world history which compare to that of Jesus of Nazareth? My own viewpoint is more pluralistic. Tillich describes revelation with enough precision and detail that it can be recognized in many contexts. Any experience that moves us in a life-changing way, so that we can envision an entire new life, is a revelation. Not only is revelation in the context of a Socrates or a Buddha manifestly plausible, but also people commonly have their ordinary lives transformed by pivotal experiences.
I am chewing up huge territory in my brief review, but I find Tillich immensely rewarding. I will continue reading through volumes two and three, and I’m sure I will reread.
Reviewing here the first of three volumes, I can only try to reconstruct some of the basic ideas. His book covers too much ground, for example dividing historical theology into “the biblical disciplines, church history, and the history of religion and culture,” to be able to summarize. Tillich’s thinking is based on Heidegger’s thought, taking as its point of departure Dasein, “being there,” the experience we have of finding ourselves in the world. His view is not a materialist view, that is of reducing everything to a physical understanding of the world. That would be an “objective” view of the world, but he argues that Dasein, our experience of being in the world, encompasses many polarities, including both the subjective and the objective, and that a complete theology has to encompass all of them.
Tillich uses the “method of correlation,” saying that our very existence, our Dasein, gives rise to questions, and that revelation (which he analyses in great detail, in a non-supranatural way) gives answers to the questions. The questions and the answers are independent and yet they shape each other. For example, we find ourselves as finite beings, yet able to conceive of the infinite. What is our relationship to the infinite? Revelation offers a view of man as able to transcend his finitude, and to participate in infinity (“unlimited self-transcendence”). My personal gloss on Tillich’s conception of revelation would be “life changing experience,” not suffering an accident, but experiencing and responding to something that gives a new meaning to life.
There are two key terms in Tillich’s conception of God. He holds that God is the “ground of being.” Think of Dasein, our experience of finding ourselves in the world, and think what that is when you put aside all of the intellectualizing and mental jabbering that normally crowd our consciousness. This is a kind of meditation, the nothingness which is ourselves when we try to isolate it. Out of this comes our spontaneous reaction to the world, which often has the character of caring and empathy. The ubiquitous Biblical phrase “God is love” comes to mind.
Tillich’s other key term is that God is our “ultimate concern.” Starting again with Dasein, being there in the world, we find that we are concerned with different things. What is our ultimate concern, the overall concern that encompasses all of our more limited concerns? Notice that “ground of being” and “ultimate concern” are polar concepts designating the innermost and outermost limits of our experience of the world.
It should be clear that Tillich’s conception of God is a non-theistic one. To quote Tillich, “Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern.”
Since this is a review, I will pose two critical questions: First, suppose Tillich is on solid ground in what he describes as “ground of being and ultimate concern.” Does it make sense to call this “God”? The description coheres with some historical and classical views of God, but not with others (such as theism and deism). But if it makes any sense at all, it may provide a translation scheme for atheists to understand what religious people are talking about.
Second, as a Christian theologian, Tillich privileges “the revelation in Jesus as the Christ as the final revelation.” He acknowledges that there are revelations which are partial or preliminary. But can there be other revelations in world history which compare to that of Jesus of Nazareth? My own viewpoint is more pluralistic. Tillich describes revelation with enough precision and detail that it can be recognized in many contexts. Any experience that moves us in a life-changing way, so that we can envision an entire new life, is a revelation. Not only is revelation in the context of a Socrates or a Buddha manifestly plausible, but also people commonly have their ordinary lives transformed by pivotal experiences.
I am chewing up huge territory in my brief review, but I find Tillich immensely rewarding. I will continue reading through volumes two and three, and I’m sure I will reread.
July 26, 2012
Paul Tillich is fascinating thinker. I've read a couple of his other books and found them challenging and thought provoking. However, compared to the level of thought Tillich brings to his Systematic Theology those other books might as well be children's stories by comparison. After one reading, I hardly feel qualified to analyze Tillich's ideas in depth. Therefore my thoughts in this review should be taken provisionally and are not meant to be a thorough analysis of what Tillich presents here.
This first volume is focused heavily on ontology as Tillich analyzes the question of God. He argues against typical theological expressions of the divine that it is mistaken to consider God as an existent being. Rather, we ought to recognize that God is being itself. He is the basis of all existence but is himself not part of existence.
That brief description illustrates what is the book's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Tillich is far more of a philosophical thinker than he is a theological thinker. Although he comes at theology from a Christian perspective he approaches theological questions almost exclusively through a philosophical lens (there's hardly any Scripture quoted in the book). This allows Tillich to simultaneously go farther than other theologians by unearthing neglected aspects of Christian doctrine while also falling far short of so many of the great theological minds Christiandom has produced.
In short, Tillich has produced a wonderful book of philosophy and a pitiful book of theology.
Philosophy is certainly an essential part of theological investigation. Theologians who neglect that discipline produce works with glaring errors. However, theology also stretches beyond philosophy. The implication of divine revelation is that God has given us access to that which human thought cannot comprehend.
There is therefore a paradox within theology - revelation invites us to think about the unthinkable. Tillich seems to not understand that paradox and is only willing to explore theology to the extent that philosophy will carry him. As such while he provides many brilliant contributions, his doctrine of God is rife with problems. Rather than accepting the paradox of God's imminence and transcendence, he leaves us with a panentheistic view of God that falls well beyond biblical teaching. Tillich claims that his view of God as not an existent being but being itself still leaves room for the personal God of Christian teaching, but it's difficult to see how. Tillich's God comes off cold and distant, a picture much different than the God of the Bible.
I'll be curious to see how Tillich develops these thoughts in the next two volumes. Perhaps some of the problems will resolve themselves as I get deeper into his thought.
Despite where this volume falls short, it is an absolute must read for students of theology and philosophy. Even if you agree with some of Tillich's conclusions, the book is never less than fully engaging. I disagreed with much of it but I loved all of it
This first volume is focused heavily on ontology as Tillich analyzes the question of God. He argues against typical theological expressions of the divine that it is mistaken to consider God as an existent being. Rather, we ought to recognize that God is being itself. He is the basis of all existence but is himself not part of existence.
That brief description illustrates what is the book's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Tillich is far more of a philosophical thinker than he is a theological thinker. Although he comes at theology from a Christian perspective he approaches theological questions almost exclusively through a philosophical lens (there's hardly any Scripture quoted in the book). This allows Tillich to simultaneously go farther than other theologians by unearthing neglected aspects of Christian doctrine while also falling far short of so many of the great theological minds Christiandom has produced.
In short, Tillich has produced a wonderful book of philosophy and a pitiful book of theology.
Philosophy is certainly an essential part of theological investigation. Theologians who neglect that discipline produce works with glaring errors. However, theology also stretches beyond philosophy. The implication of divine revelation is that God has given us access to that which human thought cannot comprehend.
There is therefore a paradox within theology - revelation invites us to think about the unthinkable. Tillich seems to not understand that paradox and is only willing to explore theology to the extent that philosophy will carry him. As such while he provides many brilliant contributions, his doctrine of God is rife with problems. Rather than accepting the paradox of God's imminence and transcendence, he leaves us with a panentheistic view of God that falls well beyond biblical teaching. Tillich claims that his view of God as not an existent being but being itself still leaves room for the personal God of Christian teaching, but it's difficult to see how. Tillich's God comes off cold and distant, a picture much different than the God of the Bible.
I'll be curious to see how Tillich develops these thoughts in the next two volumes. Perhaps some of the problems will resolve themselves as I get deeper into his thought.
Despite where this volume falls short, it is an absolute must read for students of theology and philosophy. Even if you agree with some of Tillich's conclusions, the book is never less than fully engaging. I disagreed with much of it but I loved all of it
July 2, 2017
So dense. But brilliant. I am not even sure how I could summarize this volume. Tillich reframes God as "Ground of Being" rather than "A Supreme Being." This is not a naive pantheism, as Tillich is critical of Spinoza and others like him. For Tillich, God is not a person, but is not less than personal.
Tillich occasionally sets aside space to rebuke natural theology and inane literalism, as he wrote this in a time when fundamentalism was rapidly becoming less and less credible. It seems that Tillich also seeks to use language that is not clearly religious, as he is aiming to speak to the non-religious as well. That can also explain some of the paradoxical and dialectic ideas found within this work.
Throughout this volume, Tillich labors diligently to reclaim the importance of symbolism in religious language and thought. As children (or grandchildren) of the enlightenment, we are prone to think of symbols as cheap or shallow. Tillich makes the case that this is preposterous: Symbols are language for reality that transcend the literal. You could say it is "more than literal."
All in all, there is much more to be said, but Tillich was brilliant. I wouldn't suggest starting with this book, as it is so technical and daunting, but instead "The New Being." That is a great primer in my opinion.
Tillich occasionally sets aside space to rebuke natural theology and inane literalism, as he wrote this in a time when fundamentalism was rapidly becoming less and less credible. It seems that Tillich also seeks to use language that is not clearly religious, as he is aiming to speak to the non-religious as well. That can also explain some of the paradoxical and dialectic ideas found within this work.
Throughout this volume, Tillich labors diligently to reclaim the importance of symbolism in religious language and thought. As children (or grandchildren) of the enlightenment, we are prone to think of symbols as cheap or shallow. Tillich makes the case that this is preposterous: Symbols are language for reality that transcend the literal. You could say it is "more than literal."
All in all, there is much more to be said, but Tillich was brilliant. I wouldn't suggest starting with this book, as it is so technical and daunting, but instead "The New Being." That is a great primer in my opinion.
August 1, 2023
Don’t let the dense prose distract you from the Gem Mine that is this book. Traversing head and heart, Tillich unapologetically wears his “mystic” hat while writing this text. I especially loved the last section, where he begins to chart God as the ground of being, through a lens that i experienced as panentheistic. I must read for anyone interested in systematic theology.
January 2, 2013
I worked my way up to this one from Tillich's shorter and more popular works. I am glad I did. More Heidegger than Hebrews, more Sartre than Solomon, this volume systematically plumbs the depths of ontology in a way that clicked for me. Distinguishing the ontological elements (polarities like individualization and participation, for instance) from the categories of finitude (time, space, causality, and substance) is fundamental in even thinking about what the term "God" means. The introduction to Tillich's system is here as well as the first two parts of five. The book is excruciatingly well-organized, down to much of the sentence structure, where the reader can anticipate the content of many of the paragraphs by rearranging some of the concepts in the preceding paragraphs. I have to admit there were several sentences where I had no idea what the author was trying to communicate, but that may be due to his thinking in German and writing in English.
April 2, 2014
A very interesting, and often complex, book that looks at the approach of understanding (a "systems approach")our faith journey and quest to comprehend God, His Presence in all that is. This is not an overview of the personal salvation reason that is so prevalent today, but rather a more catholic (universal) approach at discovering how reason, philosophy, and revelation are integral to distinguishing the infinite being from our finite being.
Very much worth the read for anyone who seeks to better understand how people, how you personally, see and discover who God is.
Very much worth the read for anyone who seeks to better understand how people, how you personally, see and discover who God is.
January 9, 2010
Systematic Theology was read for a course. I read all three volumes with great difficulty. In the end I came to understand something powerful about my own experiences and beliefs that I could not have envisioned, especially not from such dense, though rich, exposition.
July 6, 2016
Heidegger for Christians.
This book is very technical and can be difficult at times, but its great theology is worth it.
This book is very technical and can be difficult at times, but its great theology is worth it.
July 2, 2024
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE MAJOR WORK OF A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER
Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German-American theologian and Christian philosopher, who was dismissed from his teaching position in Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933. He came to America, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary and the Harvard Divinity School. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 300-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1951 book, “For a quarter of a century I have wanted to write a systematic theology. It has always been impossible for me to think theologically in any other than a systematic way. The smallest problem, if taken seriously and radically, drove me to all other problems and to the anticipation of a whole in which they could find their solution … My purpose, and I believe it is a justified purpose, has been to present the method and the structure of a theological system written from an apologetic point of view and carried through in a continuous correlation with philosophy… If I have succeeded in proving the apologetic adequacy and the systematic fertility of this method, I shall not regret the limitations of the system.”
In the Introduction, he states, “a person can be a theologian as long as he acknowledges the content of the theological circle as his ultimate concern. Whether this is true does not depend on his intellectual or moral or emotional state; it does not depend on the intensity and certitude of faith; it does not depend on the power of regeneration or the grade of sanctification. Rather it depends on his being ultimately concerned with the Christian message even if he is sometimes inclined to attack and to reject it.” (Intro, B3, pg. 10)
He explains, “We have used the term ‘ultimate concern’ without explanation. Ultimate concern is the abstract translation of the great commandment… The religious concern is ultimate; it excludes all other concerns from ultimate significance; it makes them preliminary. The ultimate concern is conditional, independent of any conditions of character, desire, or circumstance. The unconditional concern is total; no part of ourselves or of our world is excluded from it; there is no ‘place’ to flee from it. The total concern is infinite; no moment of relaxation and rest is possible in the face of a religious concern which is ultimate, unconditional, total, and infinite… This, then, is the first formal criterion of theology: The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us.” (B4, pg. 11-12)
He points out, “today man experiences his present situation in terms of disruption, conflict, self-destruction, meaninglessness, and despair in all realms of life… The question arising out of this experience … is the question of a reality in which the self-estrangement of our existence is overcome, a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning, and hope. We shall call such a reality the ‘New Being’… it is based on what Paul calls the ‘new creation’ and refers to its power of overcoming the demonic cleavages of the ‘old reality’ in soul, society, and universe… ‘Where is this New Being manifest?’ … ‘In Jesus the Christ.’ … it is the man Jesus who in a paradoxical assertion is called the Christ. Without this paradox, the New Being would be an ideal, not a reality, and consequently not an answer to the question implied in our human situation.: (D9, pg. 49-50)
He observes, “Theology formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence… This point… is not a moment in time. It belongs to man’s essential being, to the unity of his finitude with the infinity in which he was created… A symptom of both the essential unity and the existential separation of finite man from his infinity is his ability to ask about the infinite to which he belongs; the fact that he must ask about it indicates that he is separated from it.” (D12, pg. 61)
He asserts, “Revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us ultimately. The mystery which is revealed is of ultimate concern to us because it is the ground of our being.” (II, A1, pg. 110) Later, he adds, “the knowledge of revelation can be received only in the situation of revelation, and it can be communicated---in contrast to ordinary knowledge---only to those who participate in this situation. For those outside this situation the same words have a different sound.” (Pt. I, A4, pg. 129)
He argues, “But final revelation means more than the last genuine revelation. It means the decisive, fulfilling, unsurpassable revelation, that which is the criterion of all the others… The question, however, is how such a claim can be justified… The first and basic answer theology must give to the question of the finality of the revelation in Jesus as the Christ is the following; a revelation is final if it has the power of negating itself without losing itself… The question of the final revelation is the question of a medium of revelation which overcomes its own finite conditions by sacrificing them, and itself with them… In the picture of Jesus as the Christ we have the picture of a man who possesses these qualities, a man who, therefore, can be called the medium of final revelation.” (B5, pg. 133) He adds, “Christian theology affirms that [Jesus] is all this because he stands the double test of finality: uninterrupted unity with the ground of his being and the continuous sacrifice of himself as Jesus to himself as the Christ.” (B6, pg. 137)
He states, “It may be asked whether a person who has lost the saving power of the New Being cannot, at the same time, still accept its revelatory truth. He may experience the revelation at this own condemnation. In such a situation salvation and revelation seem to be distinctly separated from each other. But this is not the case… As long as the condemning function of revelation is experienced, saving power is effective. Neither sin nor despair, as such, proves the absence of saving power. The absence of saving power is expressed in flight from an ultimate concern and in the type of complacency which resists both the shaking experience of revelation and the transforming experience of salvation.” (B8, pg. 146)
He points out, “The ontological question, the question of being-itself… has often been expressed in the question, ‘Why is there something; why not nothing?’ But in this form the question is meaningless, for every possible answer would be subject to the same question in an infinite regression. Thought must start with being; it cannot go behind it, as the form of the question itself shows. If one asks why there IS not nothing, one attributes being even to nothing. Thought is based on being, and it cannot leave this basis; but thought can imagine the negation of everything that IS, and it can describe the nature and structure of being which give everything that is the power of resisting nonbeing… Whenever… this question is asked, everything disappears in the abyss of possible nonbeing; even a god would disappear if he were not being-itself.” (Pt. II, Intro, pg. 163-164)
He asserts, “It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words ‘God’ and ‘existence’ were very definitely separated except in the paradox of God becoming manifest under the conditions of existence, that is, in the Christological paradox. God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.” (I, D11, pg. 205)
He says, “the person-to-person relationship between God and man is constitutive for religious experience. Man cannot be ultimately concerned about something which is less than he is, something impersonal. This … explains the fact that actually there is a struggle for a personal God in all religions, a struggle which resists all philosophical attacks. A personal God: this indicates the concreteness of man’s ultimate concern.” (II,A2, pg. 223)
He explains, “To sum up the discussion: being a creature means both to be rooted in the creative ground of the divine life and to actualize one’s self through freedom. Creation is fulfilled in the creaturely self-realization which simultaneously is freedom and destiny. But it is fulfilled through separation from the creative ground through a break between existence and essence. Creaturely freedom is the point at which creation and the fall coincide.” (II, B5, pg. 256) He adds, “Man actualizes his finite freedom in unity with the whole of reality. This actualization includes structural independence… At the same time, actualized freedom remains continuously dependent on its creative ground. Only in the power of being-itself is the creature able to resist nonbeing.” (II, B5, pg, 261)
He suggests, “[God] is the creative ground of the spatial structure of the world, but he is not bond to the structure, positively or negatively. The spatial symbol points to a qualitative relation: God is immanent in the world as its permanent creative ground and is transcendent to the world through freedom. Both infinite divinity and finite human freedom make the world transcendent to God and God transcendent to the world.” (II, B5, pg. 263)
He argues, “Theodicy is not a question of physical evil, pain, death, etc., nor is it a question of moral evil, sin, self-destruction, etc. Physical evil is the natural implication of creaturely finitude. Moral evil is the tragic implication of creaturely freedom. Creation is the creation of finite freedom; it is the creation of life with its greatness and its danger. God lives, and his life is creative. If God is creative in himself, he cannot create what is opposite to himself; he cannot create the dead, the object which is merely object. He must create that which unites subjectivity and objectivity---life, that which includes freedom and with it the dangers of freedom. The creation of finite freedom is the risk which the divine creativity accepts. This is the first step in arriving at an answer to the question of theodicy.” (II, B5, pg. 269)
He concludes, “Faith in the eternal God is the basis for a courage which conquers the negativities of the temporal process. Neither the anxiety of the past nor that of the future remains… The dissected moments of time are united in eternity. Here, and not in a doctrine of the human soul, is rooted the certainty of man’s participation in eternal life. The hope of eternal life is based not on a substantial quality of man’s soul but on his participation in the eternity of the divine life.” (II, B6, pg. 276)
Tillich's magnum opus is certainly a cornerstone of any complete modern theological library.
Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German-American theologian and Christian philosopher, who was dismissed from his teaching position in Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933. He came to America, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary and the Harvard Divinity School. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 300-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1951 book, “For a quarter of a century I have wanted to write a systematic theology. It has always been impossible for me to think theologically in any other than a systematic way. The smallest problem, if taken seriously and radically, drove me to all other problems and to the anticipation of a whole in which they could find their solution … My purpose, and I believe it is a justified purpose, has been to present the method and the structure of a theological system written from an apologetic point of view and carried through in a continuous correlation with philosophy… If I have succeeded in proving the apologetic adequacy and the systematic fertility of this method, I shall not regret the limitations of the system.”
In the Introduction, he states, “a person can be a theologian as long as he acknowledges the content of the theological circle as his ultimate concern. Whether this is true does not depend on his intellectual or moral or emotional state; it does not depend on the intensity and certitude of faith; it does not depend on the power of regeneration or the grade of sanctification. Rather it depends on his being ultimately concerned with the Christian message even if he is sometimes inclined to attack and to reject it.” (Intro, B3, pg. 10)
He explains, “We have used the term ‘ultimate concern’ without explanation. Ultimate concern is the abstract translation of the great commandment… The religious concern is ultimate; it excludes all other concerns from ultimate significance; it makes them preliminary. The ultimate concern is conditional, independent of any conditions of character, desire, or circumstance. The unconditional concern is total; no part of ourselves or of our world is excluded from it; there is no ‘place’ to flee from it. The total concern is infinite; no moment of relaxation and rest is possible in the face of a religious concern which is ultimate, unconditional, total, and infinite… This, then, is the first formal criterion of theology: The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us.” (B4, pg. 11-12)
He points out, “today man experiences his present situation in terms of disruption, conflict, self-destruction, meaninglessness, and despair in all realms of life… The question arising out of this experience … is the question of a reality in which the self-estrangement of our existence is overcome, a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning, and hope. We shall call such a reality the ‘New Being’… it is based on what Paul calls the ‘new creation’ and refers to its power of overcoming the demonic cleavages of the ‘old reality’ in soul, society, and universe… ‘Where is this New Being manifest?’ … ‘In Jesus the Christ.’ … it is the man Jesus who in a paradoxical assertion is called the Christ. Without this paradox, the New Being would be an ideal, not a reality, and consequently not an answer to the question implied in our human situation.: (D9, pg. 49-50)
He observes, “Theology formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence… This point… is not a moment in time. It belongs to man’s essential being, to the unity of his finitude with the infinity in which he was created… A symptom of both the essential unity and the existential separation of finite man from his infinity is his ability to ask about the infinite to which he belongs; the fact that he must ask about it indicates that he is separated from it.” (D12, pg. 61)
He asserts, “Revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us ultimately. The mystery which is revealed is of ultimate concern to us because it is the ground of our being.” (II, A1, pg. 110) Later, he adds, “the knowledge of revelation can be received only in the situation of revelation, and it can be communicated---in contrast to ordinary knowledge---only to those who participate in this situation. For those outside this situation the same words have a different sound.” (Pt. I, A4, pg. 129)
He argues, “But final revelation means more than the last genuine revelation. It means the decisive, fulfilling, unsurpassable revelation, that which is the criterion of all the others… The question, however, is how such a claim can be justified… The first and basic answer theology must give to the question of the finality of the revelation in Jesus as the Christ is the following; a revelation is final if it has the power of negating itself without losing itself… The question of the final revelation is the question of a medium of revelation which overcomes its own finite conditions by sacrificing them, and itself with them… In the picture of Jesus as the Christ we have the picture of a man who possesses these qualities, a man who, therefore, can be called the medium of final revelation.” (B5, pg. 133) He adds, “Christian theology affirms that [Jesus] is all this because he stands the double test of finality: uninterrupted unity with the ground of his being and the continuous sacrifice of himself as Jesus to himself as the Christ.” (B6, pg. 137)
He states, “It may be asked whether a person who has lost the saving power of the New Being cannot, at the same time, still accept its revelatory truth. He may experience the revelation at this own condemnation. In such a situation salvation and revelation seem to be distinctly separated from each other. But this is not the case… As long as the condemning function of revelation is experienced, saving power is effective. Neither sin nor despair, as such, proves the absence of saving power. The absence of saving power is expressed in flight from an ultimate concern and in the type of complacency which resists both the shaking experience of revelation and the transforming experience of salvation.” (B8, pg. 146)
He points out, “The ontological question, the question of being-itself… has often been expressed in the question, ‘Why is there something; why not nothing?’ But in this form the question is meaningless, for every possible answer would be subject to the same question in an infinite regression. Thought must start with being; it cannot go behind it, as the form of the question itself shows. If one asks why there IS not nothing, one attributes being even to nothing. Thought is based on being, and it cannot leave this basis; but thought can imagine the negation of everything that IS, and it can describe the nature and structure of being which give everything that is the power of resisting nonbeing… Whenever… this question is asked, everything disappears in the abyss of possible nonbeing; even a god would disappear if he were not being-itself.” (Pt. II, Intro, pg. 163-164)
He asserts, “It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words ‘God’ and ‘existence’ were very definitely separated except in the paradox of God becoming manifest under the conditions of existence, that is, in the Christological paradox. God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.” (I, D11, pg. 205)
He says, “the person-to-person relationship between God and man is constitutive for religious experience. Man cannot be ultimately concerned about something which is less than he is, something impersonal. This … explains the fact that actually there is a struggle for a personal God in all religions, a struggle which resists all philosophical attacks. A personal God: this indicates the concreteness of man’s ultimate concern.” (II,A2, pg. 223)
He explains, “To sum up the discussion: being a creature means both to be rooted in the creative ground of the divine life and to actualize one’s self through freedom. Creation is fulfilled in the creaturely self-realization which simultaneously is freedom and destiny. But it is fulfilled through separation from the creative ground through a break between existence and essence. Creaturely freedom is the point at which creation and the fall coincide.” (II, B5, pg. 256) He adds, “Man actualizes his finite freedom in unity with the whole of reality. This actualization includes structural independence… At the same time, actualized freedom remains continuously dependent on its creative ground. Only in the power of being-itself is the creature able to resist nonbeing.” (II, B5, pg, 261)
He suggests, “[God] is the creative ground of the spatial structure of the world, but he is not bond to the structure, positively or negatively. The spatial symbol points to a qualitative relation: God is immanent in the world as its permanent creative ground and is transcendent to the world through freedom. Both infinite divinity and finite human freedom make the world transcendent to God and God transcendent to the world.” (II, B5, pg. 263)
He argues, “Theodicy is not a question of physical evil, pain, death, etc., nor is it a question of moral evil, sin, self-destruction, etc. Physical evil is the natural implication of creaturely finitude. Moral evil is the tragic implication of creaturely freedom. Creation is the creation of finite freedom; it is the creation of life with its greatness and its danger. God lives, and his life is creative. If God is creative in himself, he cannot create what is opposite to himself; he cannot create the dead, the object which is merely object. He must create that which unites subjectivity and objectivity---life, that which includes freedom and with it the dangers of freedom. The creation of finite freedom is the risk which the divine creativity accepts. This is the first step in arriving at an answer to the question of theodicy.” (II, B5, pg. 269)
He concludes, “Faith in the eternal God is the basis for a courage which conquers the negativities of the temporal process. Neither the anxiety of the past nor that of the future remains… The dissected moments of time are united in eternity. Here, and not in a doctrine of the human soul, is rooted the certainty of man’s participation in eternal life. The hope of eternal life is based not on a substantial quality of man’s soul but on his participation in the eternity of the divine life.” (II, B6, pg. 276)
Tillich's magnum opus is certainly a cornerstone of any complete modern theological library.
June 23, 2025
Was not expecting to finish the book but a very nice intellectual model for engaging Christianity with philosophical rigour. I doubt every (many) Christian thinks about their God this way, which is why I question whether the system actually represents Christian doctrine as we know it.
September 26, 2015
The beginning of this book was a bit tedious, I must confess. Tillich drones on and on for quite a bit about abstract and impractical concepts - what is reason, and how revelation is different than any other kind of knowledge (wait, why cant' scientific knowledge be revelatory?).
But when he gets into the concept of God as the ground being, Tillich is absolutely brilliant. Tillich ties in the concept of God with his idea of faith as "ultimate concern" from "The Dynamics of Faith" with quotes like this one:
And he introduces the concept of God as Ground of Being with one of my favorite quotes from this book - or even among all quotes - is the following:
Tillich defends this idea later:
This is what makes the book worth it - these gems of mind-blowing wisdom.
But when he gets into the concept of God as the ground being, Tillich is absolutely brilliant. Tillich ties in the concept of God with his idea of faith as "ultimate concern" from "The Dynamics of Faith" with quotes like this one:
[God] is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. This does not mean that first there is a being called God and then the demand that man should be ultimately concerned about him. It means that whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and, conversely, it means that a man can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him.
And he introduces the concept of God as Ground of Being with one of my favorite quotes from this book - or even among all quotes - is the following:
It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words “God” and “existence” were very definitely separated except in the paradox of God becoming manifest under the conditions of existence. . . . God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. To argue that God exists is to deny him.
Tillich defends this idea later:
The being of God is being-itself. The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance.
This is what makes the book worth it - these gems of mind-blowing wisdom.
July 19, 2018
If you're reading this review, you likely already know that this book is non-trivial.
I'm not even sure how to review it. Tillich combines theology and philosophy into a dense, comprehensive work redefining concepts of faith, god, love, etc., and assembling them in a logical sequence. The writing is dense, and often obtuse. I had to read it in two phases with an easy book in-between. It's like eating foie gras - amazing stuff, high calorie, and you can only eat so much in one sitting.
It's also hard to know how much to accept in what he writes if you come from a typical American protestant background (let me use the now-charged term "evangelical", even though that word means something new - and unintended - in 2018). I can see why he's viewed as a "liberal christian" instead of "conservative". And frankly I'm ok with that; sometimes I think the biblicists don't give enough credit to the hard questions that philosophy presents, and this liberal treatment of God and faith does a better job.
I'd also assert that an atheist, or agnostic, would be fascinated to read this book. I think many of the assertions made by those readers regarding the (non-)existence of God, etc., are properly challenged by this. This would certainly give their world view an interesting challenge.
In my rating system, 5-stars goes to books I generally want to read again. I'm not sure I could read this again - it's sooo dense. However, it's a masterful work of a lifetime. Not for everybody, but for those who can take it in, it's ... whoa.
I'm not even sure how to review it. Tillich combines theology and philosophy into a dense, comprehensive work redefining concepts of faith, god, love, etc., and assembling them in a logical sequence. The writing is dense, and often obtuse. I had to read it in two phases with an easy book in-between. It's like eating foie gras - amazing stuff, high calorie, and you can only eat so much in one sitting.
It's also hard to know how much to accept in what he writes if you come from a typical American protestant background (let me use the now-charged term "evangelical", even though that word means something new - and unintended - in 2018). I can see why he's viewed as a "liberal christian" instead of "conservative". And frankly I'm ok with that; sometimes I think the biblicists don't give enough credit to the hard questions that philosophy presents, and this liberal treatment of God and faith does a better job.
I'd also assert that an atheist, or agnostic, would be fascinated to read this book. I think many of the assertions made by those readers regarding the (non-)existence of God, etc., are properly challenged by this. This would certainly give their world view an interesting challenge.
In my rating system, 5-stars goes to books I generally want to read again. I'm not sure I could read this again - it's sooo dense. However, it's a masterful work of a lifetime. Not for everybody, but for those who can take it in, it's ... whoa.
November 10, 2014
Having been exposed to some of Tillich's more popular works in college, having come to know one of his associates and being interested in what might constitute modern, liberal theology, I picked up the three volumes of his Systematic Theology while in seminary in New York. I never got beyond the first volume. Discovering that contemporary systematics were not for me, I went on to concentrate the textual criticism of ancient texts and early Church history in addition to my ostensible major in psychology and its philosophical underpinnings.
December 7, 2015
Overcomes Rudolf Bultmann's depressing existential thesis and comes up with his own by incorporating themes from Karl Barth. Truly an awesome work that philosophically and theologically proves man's chief end as being to glorify God. Truly a great read.
May 12, 2009
Reading Tillich was part of my college reading and was also required in seminary. Oddly, Tillich was not actually a Christian.
December 20, 2012
It seems that Tillich will just continually make sense to me.
March 6, 2018
Introduction
Certainly this is a very difficult read, perhaps intended for advanced students of theology. I definitely have to describe this as laborious reading (and re-reading), with dictionary at hand. Nevertheless, reading Tillich has proven rewarding.
Tillich has a fetish for profusely defining words, phrases, and concepts; as well as deeply exploring contradictions and contrasting every minute detail. This tendency has produced the three massive volumes that constitute Systematic Theology, of which this is but the first.
The Problem With Fundamentalism
Tillich begins by first dismantling fundamentalism. The problem Tillich sees with fundamentalism is that it elevates something finite and transitory to infinite and eternal validity and, in this respect, bears demonic traits. Fundamentalism tends toward finitude: by taking parabolic scripture literally, by erecting dogma, by effectuating rituals, by using intimidation tactics to coerce seekers to blindly succumb to embellished theology, and by seeing concrete things as holy, such as the ink and pages of the Bible, a crucifix, or a painting of Jesus.
Fundamentalism destroys the humble honesty inherent to an independent search for truth. Fundamentalism makes its adherents fanatical because they are forced to suppress questions about things that really don’t make sense to them, thus destroying their honesty. To embrace a belief in something without inner justification is essentially idolatry. This sort of deception has affected millions and made Christianity more narrow and superstitious.
In contrast, Christ sacrificed finitude for the infinite. In John 12:44 Jesus says: “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me.” Jesus refuses to relinquish the truth for the sake of His finitude and ultimately sacrifices His finitude in favor of the truth, which truth is eternally sustainable and infinite. This sacrifice has permanently inserted infinite truth into our history.
Never in scripture does Jesus encourage his followers to worship His finite being. Instead, Jesus calls his followers to something beyond the finite, to God, as that which should be of the most ultimate concern.
The Ultimate Concern
Tillich speaks often of what he terms “The Ultimate Concern”, which he defines with the great commandment: “The Lord, our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Man must be most concerned about the infinity to which he belongs. The Ultimate Concern is unconditional; it excludes all other concerns and makes other concerns preliminary.
Tillich cites three ways in which theology attempts to approach the “Ultimate Concern” via “preliminary concerns”: (1) The mutual indifference of placing the Ultimate Concern beside other concerns and depriving It of its ultimacy; (2) Elevating a preliminary concern to ultimacy, as in idolatry; or (3) Letting the preliminary concern become a vehicle for the Ultimate Concern without claiming ultimacy for itself. This latter way is the manner by which our preliminary concerns may become authentic and real. Through every preliminary concern, the Ultimate Concern can actualize Itself, i.e. pictures, poems, music, insights, social ideas, projects, procedures, politics, decisions, etc. … or, as we have seen, in a man such as Jesus.
Because the Ultimate Concern transcends finitude, It is beyond reduction to the mere finite languages we have devised. Yet, we know It by the way in which It manifests Itself to us and to our society. The Ultimate Concern is that which transcends everything else we can think of in importance. The best characterization we can have for It are those adjectives by which we would describe ourselves if we were capable of perfection: peace, compassion, truth, serenity, grace, integrity, justice, honesty, forgiveness, helpfulness, caring, etc.
Christ
Christ succeeds in personifying this perfection and providing for us a visible manifestation of the Absolute. But even Christ asked: “Why ye call me good? Only God is Good.” Yet, through His visible manifestation, Christ allows the average, limited, human mind to grasp the Absolute. The Christian claim is that the universal Logos (infinite Reason manifest physically as our Ultimate Concern) became concrete in Jesus. It is in this way that the Ultimate Concern merges the concrete with the universal so that many might come to validate and worship the truth.
This is how practical and theoretical theology are interdependent. In the true realization of the Ultimate Concern, the difference between theory and practice vanishes. The practical Jesus is necessary for communicating God to the masses.
Experiencing God
Experience is the medium through which we receive truth. The realities of touching, tasting, seeing, hearing, and smelling allow us to sense the essence of “being”. Forgiveness, compassion, honesty, peace, truth, sincerity, grace, integrity, justice, forgiveness, etc. may all be experienced but only to an imperfect level, beyond which we must intuitively perceive the perfection of God. These perceptions point us to God. Thus, it is less about imagining a supernatural being (the trap of fundamentalism) and more about perceiving “Being” itself. The Bible speaks of “being in Christ” or “Christ being in you”. This awakening of “Being” is associated with the “New Being” that one becomes.
It is through such experiences that we discover religious truths. Experience can transcend the letter of the Bible and the doctrines of the church by teaching us first hand. Experience is an inexhaustible source, from which new truths may be taken continually. It is the experience of Christ that brings a new reality and New Being. It is Christian experience (not indoctrination with dogma) that makes God reality within us. This is why the message of the church must be in the context of the cultural situation in which the church lives. We must recognize that we live within the medium of experience and that experience filters the character and distortions of all religious understanding.
Logos
Because experience is so important, we must not ask people to sacrifice their reason in order to accept another's preconceptions. The divine-human relationship changes with the stages of history and with the stages of personal development. It is dynamic. God answers man’s questions within particular space and time; and man must continue to ask questions until question and answer are no longer separated.
It is through the questions arising out of our experiences that we come to understand the answer as the “Logos of Being”, as materialized in Jesus Christ. The Logos is the Christian message spoken to human existence from beyond it; which is, quite simply, that God is the answer to the question of human finitude. The author writes of its manifestation through history as follows:
“According to the classical philosophical tradition, reason is the structure of the mind which enables the mind to grasp and to transform reality. It is effective in the cognitive, aesthetic, practical, and technical functions of the human mind. Even emotional life is not irrational in itself. Eros drives the mind toward the true (Plato). Love for the perfect form moves all things (Aristotle). In the “apathy” of the soul the logos manifests its presence (Stoics). The longing for its origin elevates soul and mind toward the ineffable power of all meaning (Plotinus). The “appetites" of everything fine drives it toward the good itself (Aquinas). “Intellectual love” unites intellect and emotion in the most rational state of the mind (Spinoza). Philosophy is “service of God”; it is a thinking which is at the same time life and joy in “absolute truth” (Hegel). Classical reason is Logos, whether it is understood in a more intuitive or in a more critical way. Its cognitive nature is one element in addition to others; it is cognitive and aesthetic, theoretical and practical, detached and passionate, subjective and objective. The denial of reason is antihuman because it is anti divine.” -Paul Tillich
From this perspective, we see that Reason is more than just the capacity for reasoning. It is certainly not arbitrary decisions serving our “will to power”. It is not mere technical reasoning, which can become sterile and dehumanizing by turning religion into superstition. We must distinguish Reason in its essential perfection from its present predicament in some stage of actualization among human lives.
Living beings are attempts of nature to actualize in accordance with the demands of objective reason. If nature does not follow these demands, its products are unsuccessful trials. That which succeeds in manifesting Reason is retained and that which is unreasonable diminishes, much as set forth in the “Parable of the Weeds” from the 13th Chapter of Matthew. Reason is the Logos of being. We have to look at Christ to see Reason perfectly.
There are those who exhibit a passion for knowing for the sake of knowing. Such ones are thirsting for a reunion with that to which they belong. Such ones experience a vacuum that can only be filled by successful cognition. In every act of knowledge they sense that estrangement is conquered. Knowledge transforms and heals. To know is to do; to know is to be united. It is a radical transformation; it is the transforming power of Logos.
And yet, in order to “know”, one must look at a thing. And in order to look at a thing one must be at a distance. Hence, in order to see, we must first be separated from God and perceive God. By getting far enough away to see greed, we come to understand compassion. By experiencing liars, we better understand truth; and on and on. We gain knowledge of the infinite by first becoming detached from it, which is symbolized in the “Adam” story: the plunge out of infinity into finitude. We must first take a step back, at least once, in order to see. It is only then that we can grasp the revelation that all which is irrelevant cannot stand in the light of pure rationality. We return willingly into a stronger cohesion with God, as symbolized in the story of “The Prodigal Son”.
Anti-Logos
Theologians have called man the “image of God” because of his rational structure and charged man with the task of grasping (receiving) and shaping (reacting to) the world. This is expressed in the fourth Gospel which speaks of “Knowing the truth by doing the truth”. Only in the active realization of the truth does truth become manifest. Karl Marx called every theory which is not based on the will to transform reality “an attempt to preserve evils by a theoretical construction which justifies them”.
Ignorance attests to the finitude of man’s cognitive reasoning; however, recognition of ignorance attests to awareness of the Infinite. There are limitations on what we know but these very limitations let us know there exists something infinitely more perfect. In this way, there is awareness of the infinite in everything finite. In this way, man discovers the finitude in which he is imprisoned, but also sees that his reason protests this bondage and strives toward the Infinite. This is our quest for the Kingdom.
We are thwarted in our quest for the Kingdom by the problem of heteronomy (an authority which falsely claims to represent reason and issues commands from outside our reason). Heteronomous authorities may be represented by myth, cult, government, an over-bearing spouse, social convention, unjust laws, etc. Heteronomy is destructive because it denies to reason the right of autonomy. Citizens of the Kingdom are characterized by the presence of autonomous reason which is actualized in their obedience by volitional choice.
Conventionalism promotes an automated obedience to accepted ways of behavior. Conventionalism has been a tragic force throughout human history. Conventionalism tends to destroy the inborn vitality and creativity of every new being of every new generation. It cripples creative life by external rule. Conventionalism exerts great power of destruction over the mind. This is fully reflected in cult communities. When the mind becomes impregnated with its methodological demands, most every cognitive attempt is met with presuppositions and distrust, such that the receipt of new knowledge is too often disregarded. This makes man a mere cog in the dominating machine of conventionalism. Under capitalism this is manifested in insatiable labor for pathological production and pathological consumption, which dehumanizes man and makes him an object of tyranny. John Locke wrote that: “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common”.
We must not be imprisoned in the anti-logos of finite conventionalism. There is continuous revelation through the church as each new generation transforms it by bringing new potentialities. Zeus has no revelatory significance for Christians and the Virgin Mother Mary has no such significance to Protestants. Humanity progresses in its quest for God. Fundamentalism and orthodox biblicism cannot halt this transformation, which is the dynamic revelation of God in history.
Sacrificing Finitude For God’s Dynamism
The difference between God’s dynamism and finitude is perhaps best expressed as the difference between believing what someone has told you versus truly believing because of your own experience. Gods revolutionary power is manifest through autonomous use of the intellect, not indoctrination. Indoctrination encourages an unauthentic belief which is false and therefore characteristic of the demonic. The breakthrough must happen in a personal life. The congregation of those who have experienced this breakthrough constitutes the beginnings of the Kingdom of God, as manifest in the church.
The thing that restrains such consolidation of people is the difficulty we have in forsaking everything else for what concerns us ultimately. God is love and the purpose of his love is the moral organization of humanity in the Kingdom of God, without conflict, murder, greed, inequitable hoarding, abject poverty, hunger, addictions, suffering, and the other characteristics of hell. We usher in the kingdom of God by letting our faith and love be our utmost concern and existing as examples for those who might similarly grasp God’s power and creativity. The divine manifestation is seen, touched, and heard from the incarnation of the Logos within us. This process is actualization of the Ultimate Concern.
The Word of God contains neither revealed commandments nor revealed doctrines but is nevertheless the “Good News” delivered into the world and made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. The Word is characterized more than it is written and demonstrated more than it is preached. The Word is exhibited by grace, forgiveness, love, unselfishness, community, compassion, and all the attributes of what concerns us ultimately. It transcends our ability to reduce it to any list of rules. In fact, without analogy and symbology, nothing could be said about God.
Jesus never tried to make himself superior to God and He sacrificed everything he could have gained for his finite self. Jesus refused to impose Himself as a finite being upon other finite beings. After successfully resisting power, riches, wealth and all manner of self-inflation He even refused His own finite life. And in so doing, Jesus impressed an infinite message among us that has endured through time. Like Jesus, the more that we bear the example of God the more of our finitude we surrender.
We become the New Creature by sacrificing the finite. Revelation leads to New Being. It is the revelation that we have nothing of ourself but have received everything from God. Finitude is nothing but a temporary medium that we must conquer and not let possess us. If we give into finitude, we stay imprisoned by it and sacrifice our ability to morph into spiritual newness.
We defeat finitude by sacrificing it openly and fearlessly. The Kingdom of God comes when the fear of finitude is extinguished; when no one can be coerced by fear, pain, or threat and an entirely new and different world emerges. This evolution may come on the lives of many martyrs who fall standing firm in the truth, lighting the way with the glare of their disregard for the finite.
The correlation between the sacrifice of the fear of finitude with the emergence of the Kingdom of God is fascinating. It has been clearly demonstrated by Jesus (and many subsequent martyrs). Jettisoning fear introduces freedom and transformation. When fear is extinguished there emerges a new man, a new society, and a new world order. We are restrained from the Kingdom of God only by fear: fear of pain, poverty, loss of tangible items, death, and all the other things that relegate us to finite slavery.
The Danger of Religion
There is this tendency in religion to fashion the finite medium into an idol. Religion attempts to establish sacramental objects, whether it is an object of nature, a human being, a historical event, or a sacred text. We endeavor to take sacred texts literally and to transform events described therein into rituals. We cherish relics that are finite things perceived to possess power. We don priests in elaborate costumes and encourage them to embark upon the effectuation of spell-like ritualistic endeavors contrived to satisfy our superstitious natures. Quite frankly, this is nothing less than confusing the medium with the revelation.
We must learn to reflect the ground of being within our physical dimension without allowing the seductions of the physical environment to extinguish our rational message. We must not be lured into superstitious nonsense. Nonsense is demonic. We must not worship things, not even the cross, the Bible, relics, or icons of any sort. Instead, we must seek to embody within ourselves that nature which others can see for themselves.
That which we are called to worship transcends the finite. We cannot represent it with icons, statuary, or buildings. We can represent it only within ourselves. We cannot excuse ourselves from representing it internally by trying to construct it with finite, external building blocks. It is the Word within us; not the concrete thing we have fashioned outside of us. We must relinquish the finite in favor of transformation to a new being.
Revelation is received via a personal transformation of the receiver. Peter had to leave his fishing environment to follow Jesus. Paul experienced a revolution of his whole being. We must not allow authoritarian systems, conventionalism, cultic religion, or other systems outside ourselves to steal away from us the personal experience of transformation. Revealed truths are not ready-made commodities to be distributed to people as something they must accept. There must be a creative and transforming participation of every believer.
If someone is grasped by the divine Spirit, their personality is transformed. We must relinquish the fear that restrains us from becoming transparent enough for the divine to shine through us. We must not allow the desire for social acceptance to direct our morality.
REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW IN COMMENTS SECTION
Certainly this is a very difficult read, perhaps intended for advanced students of theology. I definitely have to describe this as laborious reading (and re-reading), with dictionary at hand. Nevertheless, reading Tillich has proven rewarding.
Tillich has a fetish for profusely defining words, phrases, and concepts; as well as deeply exploring contradictions and contrasting every minute detail. This tendency has produced the three massive volumes that constitute Systematic Theology, of which this is but the first.
The Problem With Fundamentalism
Tillich begins by first dismantling fundamentalism. The problem Tillich sees with fundamentalism is that it elevates something finite and transitory to infinite and eternal validity and, in this respect, bears demonic traits. Fundamentalism tends toward finitude: by taking parabolic scripture literally, by erecting dogma, by effectuating rituals, by using intimidation tactics to coerce seekers to blindly succumb to embellished theology, and by seeing concrete things as holy, such as the ink and pages of the Bible, a crucifix, or a painting of Jesus.
Fundamentalism destroys the humble honesty inherent to an independent search for truth. Fundamentalism makes its adherents fanatical because they are forced to suppress questions about things that really don’t make sense to them, thus destroying their honesty. To embrace a belief in something without inner justification is essentially idolatry. This sort of deception has affected millions and made Christianity more narrow and superstitious.
In contrast, Christ sacrificed finitude for the infinite. In John 12:44 Jesus says: “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me.” Jesus refuses to relinquish the truth for the sake of His finitude and ultimately sacrifices His finitude in favor of the truth, which truth is eternally sustainable and infinite. This sacrifice has permanently inserted infinite truth into our history.
Never in scripture does Jesus encourage his followers to worship His finite being. Instead, Jesus calls his followers to something beyond the finite, to God, as that which should be of the most ultimate concern.
The Ultimate Concern
Tillich speaks often of what he terms “The Ultimate Concern”, which he defines with the great commandment: “The Lord, our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Man must be most concerned about the infinity to which he belongs. The Ultimate Concern is unconditional; it excludes all other concerns and makes other concerns preliminary.
Tillich cites three ways in which theology attempts to approach the “Ultimate Concern” via “preliminary concerns”: (1) The mutual indifference of placing the Ultimate Concern beside other concerns and depriving It of its ultimacy; (2) Elevating a preliminary concern to ultimacy, as in idolatry; or (3) Letting the preliminary concern become a vehicle for the Ultimate Concern without claiming ultimacy for itself. This latter way is the manner by which our preliminary concerns may become authentic and real. Through every preliminary concern, the Ultimate Concern can actualize Itself, i.e. pictures, poems, music, insights, social ideas, projects, procedures, politics, decisions, etc. … or, as we have seen, in a man such as Jesus.
Because the Ultimate Concern transcends finitude, It is beyond reduction to the mere finite languages we have devised. Yet, we know It by the way in which It manifests Itself to us and to our society. The Ultimate Concern is that which transcends everything else we can think of in importance. The best characterization we can have for It are those adjectives by which we would describe ourselves if we were capable of perfection: peace, compassion, truth, serenity, grace, integrity, justice, honesty, forgiveness, helpfulness, caring, etc.
Christ
Christ succeeds in personifying this perfection and providing for us a visible manifestation of the Absolute. But even Christ asked: “Why ye call me good? Only God is Good.” Yet, through His visible manifestation, Christ allows the average, limited, human mind to grasp the Absolute. The Christian claim is that the universal Logos (infinite Reason manifest physically as our Ultimate Concern) became concrete in Jesus. It is in this way that the Ultimate Concern merges the concrete with the universal so that many might come to validate and worship the truth.
This is how practical and theoretical theology are interdependent. In the true realization of the Ultimate Concern, the difference between theory and practice vanishes. The practical Jesus is necessary for communicating God to the masses.
Experiencing God
Experience is the medium through which we receive truth. The realities of touching, tasting, seeing, hearing, and smelling allow us to sense the essence of “being”. Forgiveness, compassion, honesty, peace, truth, sincerity, grace, integrity, justice, forgiveness, etc. may all be experienced but only to an imperfect level, beyond which we must intuitively perceive the perfection of God. These perceptions point us to God. Thus, it is less about imagining a supernatural being (the trap of fundamentalism) and more about perceiving “Being” itself. The Bible speaks of “being in Christ” or “Christ being in you”. This awakening of “Being” is associated with the “New Being” that one becomes.
It is through such experiences that we discover religious truths. Experience can transcend the letter of the Bible and the doctrines of the church by teaching us first hand. Experience is an inexhaustible source, from which new truths may be taken continually. It is the experience of Christ that brings a new reality and New Being. It is Christian experience (not indoctrination with dogma) that makes God reality within us. This is why the message of the church must be in the context of the cultural situation in which the church lives. We must recognize that we live within the medium of experience and that experience filters the character and distortions of all religious understanding.
Logos
Because experience is so important, we must not ask people to sacrifice their reason in order to accept another's preconceptions. The divine-human relationship changes with the stages of history and with the stages of personal development. It is dynamic. God answers man’s questions within particular space and time; and man must continue to ask questions until question and answer are no longer separated.
It is through the questions arising out of our experiences that we come to understand the answer as the “Logos of Being”, as materialized in Jesus Christ. The Logos is the Christian message spoken to human existence from beyond it; which is, quite simply, that God is the answer to the question of human finitude. The author writes of its manifestation through history as follows:
“According to the classical philosophical tradition, reason is the structure of the mind which enables the mind to grasp and to transform reality. It is effective in the cognitive, aesthetic, practical, and technical functions of the human mind. Even emotional life is not irrational in itself. Eros drives the mind toward the true (Plato). Love for the perfect form moves all things (Aristotle). In the “apathy” of the soul the logos manifests its presence (Stoics). The longing for its origin elevates soul and mind toward the ineffable power of all meaning (Plotinus). The “appetites" of everything fine drives it toward the good itself (Aquinas). “Intellectual love” unites intellect and emotion in the most rational state of the mind (Spinoza). Philosophy is “service of God”; it is a thinking which is at the same time life and joy in “absolute truth” (Hegel). Classical reason is Logos, whether it is understood in a more intuitive or in a more critical way. Its cognitive nature is one element in addition to others; it is cognitive and aesthetic, theoretical and practical, detached and passionate, subjective and objective. The denial of reason is antihuman because it is anti divine.” -Paul Tillich
From this perspective, we see that Reason is more than just the capacity for reasoning. It is certainly not arbitrary decisions serving our “will to power”. It is not mere technical reasoning, which can become sterile and dehumanizing by turning religion into superstition. We must distinguish Reason in its essential perfection from its present predicament in some stage of actualization among human lives.
Living beings are attempts of nature to actualize in accordance with the demands of objective reason. If nature does not follow these demands, its products are unsuccessful trials. That which succeeds in manifesting Reason is retained and that which is unreasonable diminishes, much as set forth in the “Parable of the Weeds” from the 13th Chapter of Matthew. Reason is the Logos of being. We have to look at Christ to see Reason perfectly.
There are those who exhibit a passion for knowing for the sake of knowing. Such ones are thirsting for a reunion with that to which they belong. Such ones experience a vacuum that can only be filled by successful cognition. In every act of knowledge they sense that estrangement is conquered. Knowledge transforms and heals. To know is to do; to know is to be united. It is a radical transformation; it is the transforming power of Logos.
And yet, in order to “know”, one must look at a thing. And in order to look at a thing one must be at a distance. Hence, in order to see, we must first be separated from God and perceive God. By getting far enough away to see greed, we come to understand compassion. By experiencing liars, we better understand truth; and on and on. We gain knowledge of the infinite by first becoming detached from it, which is symbolized in the “Adam” story: the plunge out of infinity into finitude. We must first take a step back, at least once, in order to see. It is only then that we can grasp the revelation that all which is irrelevant cannot stand in the light of pure rationality. We return willingly into a stronger cohesion with God, as symbolized in the story of “The Prodigal Son”.
Anti-Logos
Theologians have called man the “image of God” because of his rational structure and charged man with the task of grasping (receiving) and shaping (reacting to) the world. This is expressed in the fourth Gospel which speaks of “Knowing the truth by doing the truth”. Only in the active realization of the truth does truth become manifest. Karl Marx called every theory which is not based on the will to transform reality “an attempt to preserve evils by a theoretical construction which justifies them”.
Ignorance attests to the finitude of man’s cognitive reasoning; however, recognition of ignorance attests to awareness of the Infinite. There are limitations on what we know but these very limitations let us know there exists something infinitely more perfect. In this way, there is awareness of the infinite in everything finite. In this way, man discovers the finitude in which he is imprisoned, but also sees that his reason protests this bondage and strives toward the Infinite. This is our quest for the Kingdom.
We are thwarted in our quest for the Kingdom by the problem of heteronomy (an authority which falsely claims to represent reason and issues commands from outside our reason). Heteronomous authorities may be represented by myth, cult, government, an over-bearing spouse, social convention, unjust laws, etc. Heteronomy is destructive because it denies to reason the right of autonomy. Citizens of the Kingdom are characterized by the presence of autonomous reason which is actualized in their obedience by volitional choice.
Conventionalism promotes an automated obedience to accepted ways of behavior. Conventionalism has been a tragic force throughout human history. Conventionalism tends to destroy the inborn vitality and creativity of every new being of every new generation. It cripples creative life by external rule. Conventionalism exerts great power of destruction over the mind. This is fully reflected in cult communities. When the mind becomes impregnated with its methodological demands, most every cognitive attempt is met with presuppositions and distrust, such that the receipt of new knowledge is too often disregarded. This makes man a mere cog in the dominating machine of conventionalism. Under capitalism this is manifested in insatiable labor for pathological production and pathological consumption, which dehumanizes man and makes him an object of tyranny. John Locke wrote that: “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common”.
We must not be imprisoned in the anti-logos of finite conventionalism. There is continuous revelation through the church as each new generation transforms it by bringing new potentialities. Zeus has no revelatory significance for Christians and the Virgin Mother Mary has no such significance to Protestants. Humanity progresses in its quest for God. Fundamentalism and orthodox biblicism cannot halt this transformation, which is the dynamic revelation of God in history.
Sacrificing Finitude For God’s Dynamism
The difference between God’s dynamism and finitude is perhaps best expressed as the difference between believing what someone has told you versus truly believing because of your own experience. Gods revolutionary power is manifest through autonomous use of the intellect, not indoctrination. Indoctrination encourages an unauthentic belief which is false and therefore characteristic of the demonic. The breakthrough must happen in a personal life. The congregation of those who have experienced this breakthrough constitutes the beginnings of the Kingdom of God, as manifest in the church.
The thing that restrains such consolidation of people is the difficulty we have in forsaking everything else for what concerns us ultimately. God is love and the purpose of his love is the moral organization of humanity in the Kingdom of God, without conflict, murder, greed, inequitable hoarding, abject poverty, hunger, addictions, suffering, and the other characteristics of hell. We usher in the kingdom of God by letting our faith and love be our utmost concern and existing as examples for those who might similarly grasp God’s power and creativity. The divine manifestation is seen, touched, and heard from the incarnation of the Logos within us. This process is actualization of the Ultimate Concern.
The Word of God contains neither revealed commandments nor revealed doctrines but is nevertheless the “Good News” delivered into the world and made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. The Word is characterized more than it is written and demonstrated more than it is preached. The Word is exhibited by grace, forgiveness, love, unselfishness, community, compassion, and all the attributes of what concerns us ultimately. It transcends our ability to reduce it to any list of rules. In fact, without analogy and symbology, nothing could be said about God.
Jesus never tried to make himself superior to God and He sacrificed everything he could have gained for his finite self. Jesus refused to impose Himself as a finite being upon other finite beings. After successfully resisting power, riches, wealth and all manner of self-inflation He even refused His own finite life. And in so doing, Jesus impressed an infinite message among us that has endured through time. Like Jesus, the more that we bear the example of God the more of our finitude we surrender.
We become the New Creature by sacrificing the finite. Revelation leads to New Being. It is the revelation that we have nothing of ourself but have received everything from God. Finitude is nothing but a temporary medium that we must conquer and not let possess us. If we give into finitude, we stay imprisoned by it and sacrifice our ability to morph into spiritual newness.
We defeat finitude by sacrificing it openly and fearlessly. The Kingdom of God comes when the fear of finitude is extinguished; when no one can be coerced by fear, pain, or threat and an entirely new and different world emerges. This evolution may come on the lives of many martyrs who fall standing firm in the truth, lighting the way with the glare of their disregard for the finite.
The correlation between the sacrifice of the fear of finitude with the emergence of the Kingdom of God is fascinating. It has been clearly demonstrated by Jesus (and many subsequent martyrs). Jettisoning fear introduces freedom and transformation. When fear is extinguished there emerges a new man, a new society, and a new world order. We are restrained from the Kingdom of God only by fear: fear of pain, poverty, loss of tangible items, death, and all the other things that relegate us to finite slavery.
The Danger of Religion
There is this tendency in religion to fashion the finite medium into an idol. Religion attempts to establish sacramental objects, whether it is an object of nature, a human being, a historical event, or a sacred text. We endeavor to take sacred texts literally and to transform events described therein into rituals. We cherish relics that are finite things perceived to possess power. We don priests in elaborate costumes and encourage them to embark upon the effectuation of spell-like ritualistic endeavors contrived to satisfy our superstitious natures. Quite frankly, this is nothing less than confusing the medium with the revelation.
We must learn to reflect the ground of being within our physical dimension without allowing the seductions of the physical environment to extinguish our rational message. We must not be lured into superstitious nonsense. Nonsense is demonic. We must not worship things, not even the cross, the Bible, relics, or icons of any sort. Instead, we must seek to embody within ourselves that nature which others can see for themselves.
That which we are called to worship transcends the finite. We cannot represent it with icons, statuary, or buildings. We can represent it only within ourselves. We cannot excuse ourselves from representing it internally by trying to construct it with finite, external building blocks. It is the Word within us; not the concrete thing we have fashioned outside of us. We must relinquish the finite in favor of transformation to a new being.
Revelation is received via a personal transformation of the receiver. Peter had to leave his fishing environment to follow Jesus. Paul experienced a revolution of his whole being. We must not allow authoritarian systems, conventionalism, cultic religion, or other systems outside ourselves to steal away from us the personal experience of transformation. Revealed truths are not ready-made commodities to be distributed to people as something they must accept. There must be a creative and transforming participation of every believer.
If someone is grasped by the divine Spirit, their personality is transformed. We must relinquish the fear that restrains us from becoming transparent enough for the divine to shine through us. We must not allow the desire for social acceptance to direct our morality.
REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW IN COMMENTS SECTION
January 9, 2025
Die protestantische liberale Theologie scheint bereits die Grenze der Theologie selbst erreicht. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass das Paradigma, das sie setzt, schwer zu überwinden ist. Die Rede von Gott selbst, sei es in einer bejahenden oder einer verneinenden Form, kann als Wissen, das als gesichert gilt, kaum eine legitime Existenz im akademischen Bereich beanspruchen. Die Theologie selbst wird zunehmend zu einem interpretativen Rahmen, der den Menschen Orientierung bietet – das ist der Sinn dieser griechische Wissenschaft, deren Anfang und Ende drin liegt. Die liberale Theologie hat jedoch nichts über das Wissen von Gott zu sagen. Sie beginnt mit der Ablehnung der barocken scholastischen Theologie. Der Zweck der liberalen Theologie besteht darin, Gott als das Symbol des transzendentalen Seins in ein Wort umzuwandeln, das wir verstehen können. Sie ist daher stark auf Religionspsychologie, Tiefenpsychologie und Mythologie angewiesen. Doch was das Wort „Gott“ überhaupt bezeichnet, kann die Theologie selbst nicht klären. Denn Gott ist per Definition das transzendente Sein, das nicht erklärbar ist. Wenn du also sagst, Gott ist das Sein, musst du das Wort „Sein“ selbst erklären, was dazu führt, dass die Last der Erklärung auf der Ontologie der Philosophie liegt. Ontologie-Philosophen würden sagen, „ich will diese Last nicht tragen, ich weiß, dass Sein eins ist“, und so würden sie die Philosophen der Mathematik heranziehen, um zu erklären, was „eins“ ist… Jede theologische Erklärung braucht unzählige Erklärungen im Hintergrund. Wenn dieses Vorgehen fortgesetzt wird, wird das System der Erklärungen kollabieren (ähnlich wie bei einer unendlichen Rückkopplung).
Der Theologe kann nur hoffen, dass seine Erklärung bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt die Psyche des Hörers berührt, eine emotionale Reaktion erzeugt und ihm emotionale Unterstützung in praktischer Hinsicht bietet. Die Theologie selbst wird in diesem Kontext zu einer Form der psychologischen Therapie! Andernfalls wird der Mensch, von der Wahrheitsperspektive aus, wahrscheinlich zu einer Wittgenstein-ähnlichen „Theologie des Nicht-Sprechens über Gott“ gelangen. Wenn du nach Gewissheit suchst, wirst du in der Theologie keine finden. Das ist das Dilemma der Menschheit. Der Mensch kann keine Gewissheit durch systematisches Wissen erlangen. Die Grundlagen der Theologie, „die Offenbarung Gottes / das menschliche Denken“, beruhen auf äußerst instabilen religiösen Erfahrungen und bedeutungslos gewordenen Begriffen. Selbst Karl Barth, der versuchte, Gott in seiner Freiheit und Transzendenz zu bewahren, konnte dies in der Theologie nicht wirklich erreichen. Seine späteren Jahre waren von vagen und unsicheren Ansichten geprägt, die versuchten, seine strenge frühe Haltung zu kompensieren. Eines Tages wird der Mensch das „Scheitern“ der Theologie erkennen und zugeben. Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in der Theologie tat, ähnelt dem, was Wittgenstein in der Philosophie tat: Er erkannte dieses „Scheitern“ und versuchte, die redundanten, emotional überladenen und bedeutungsarmen theologisch-philosophischen Aussagen zu bereinigen. Die katholischen Priester nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil neigen oft dazu, in der ersten Hälfte der Freiheitstheologie ernsthaft auf die Probleme der Zeit einzugehen, nur um dann in der zweiten Hälfte plötzlich auf die Bestätigung des traditionellen Glaubensinhaltes der Kirche zu springen. Oft fühlt es sich an, als würden sie den Gläubigen in unterentwickelten Regionen weiterhin ein Bild von etwas malen oder zumindest eine Legitimität für das noch nicht zusammengebrochene Kirchenleben bieten. Diese halbe-liberale Theologie kann mit dem modernen Leben in städtischen Gebieten nicht Schritt halten (dies bezieht sich nicht auf das Problem der katholischen Kirche oder die Kritik am Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil; vielmehr bedeutet es, dass der Katholizismus, im Gegensatz zum Protestantismus, nicht auf abstrakten evangelischen Prinzipien basiert, sondern auf mystischen, intuitiven und emotional vermischten Traditionen). Man könnte ein protestantisches Prinzip zusammenfassen, aber man kann und muss kein katholisches Prinzip zusammenfassen. Wenn man das möchte, wird man schließlich die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes als Glaubenssatz entdecken, aber auch dieser Glaubenssatz bleibt intuitiv und schwer fassbar. Manchmal habe ich das Gefühl, dass moderne Schriftsteller Recht haben. Literatur hat, egal wie man es betrachtet, in dieser Situation eine gewisse Bedeutung. Zumindest ist das Schaffen von Literatur eine Art, eine „Theologie des Nicht-Sprechens über Gott“ zu formulieren, und vielleicht ist das eine der seltenen Arten, wie man Gott Respekt erweisen kann.
Der Theologe kann nur hoffen, dass seine Erklärung bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt die Psyche des Hörers berührt, eine emotionale Reaktion erzeugt und ihm emotionale Unterstützung in praktischer Hinsicht bietet. Die Theologie selbst wird in diesem Kontext zu einer Form der psychologischen Therapie! Andernfalls wird der Mensch, von der Wahrheitsperspektive aus, wahrscheinlich zu einer Wittgenstein-ähnlichen „Theologie des Nicht-Sprechens über Gott“ gelangen. Wenn du nach Gewissheit suchst, wirst du in der Theologie keine finden. Das ist das Dilemma der Menschheit. Der Mensch kann keine Gewissheit durch systematisches Wissen erlangen. Die Grundlagen der Theologie, „die Offenbarung Gottes / das menschliche Denken“, beruhen auf äußerst instabilen religiösen Erfahrungen und bedeutungslos gewordenen Begriffen. Selbst Karl Barth, der versuchte, Gott in seiner Freiheit und Transzendenz zu bewahren, konnte dies in der Theologie nicht wirklich erreichen. Seine späteren Jahre waren von vagen und unsicheren Ansichten geprägt, die versuchten, seine strenge frühe Haltung zu kompensieren. Eines Tages wird der Mensch das „Scheitern“ der Theologie erkennen und zugeben. Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in der Theologie tat, ähnelt dem, was Wittgenstein in der Philosophie tat: Er erkannte dieses „Scheitern“ und versuchte, die redundanten, emotional überladenen und bedeutungsarmen theologisch-philosophischen Aussagen zu bereinigen. Die katholischen Priester nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil neigen oft dazu, in der ersten Hälfte der Freiheitstheologie ernsthaft auf die Probleme der Zeit einzugehen, nur um dann in der zweiten Hälfte plötzlich auf die Bestätigung des traditionellen Glaubensinhaltes der Kirche zu springen. Oft fühlt es sich an, als würden sie den Gläubigen in unterentwickelten Regionen weiterhin ein Bild von etwas malen oder zumindest eine Legitimität für das noch nicht zusammengebrochene Kirchenleben bieten. Diese halbe-liberale Theologie kann mit dem modernen Leben in städtischen Gebieten nicht Schritt halten (dies bezieht sich nicht auf das Problem der katholischen Kirche oder die Kritik am Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil; vielmehr bedeutet es, dass der Katholizismus, im Gegensatz zum Protestantismus, nicht auf abstrakten evangelischen Prinzipien basiert, sondern auf mystischen, intuitiven und emotional vermischten Traditionen). Man könnte ein protestantisches Prinzip zusammenfassen, aber man kann und muss kein katholisches Prinzip zusammenfassen. Wenn man das möchte, wird man schließlich die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes als Glaubenssatz entdecken, aber auch dieser Glaubenssatz bleibt intuitiv und schwer fassbar. Manchmal habe ich das Gefühl, dass moderne Schriftsteller Recht haben. Literatur hat, egal wie man es betrachtet, in dieser Situation eine gewisse Bedeutung. Zumindest ist das Schaffen von Literatur eine Art, eine „Theologie des Nicht-Sprechens über Gott“ zu formulieren, und vielleicht ist das eine der seltenen Arten, wie man Gott Respekt erweisen kann.
March 15, 2025
Admittedly, this was a bit of a chore to read.
Steeped in the existentialism of the 1950s, it is laden with ontological language. The word being must occur a few thousand times. Being and non-being are constantly contrasted. It is full of existentialist vocabulary: essence, existence, anxiety, fear, freedom, absurd, being, etc. It is as if Jean Paul Sartre wrote a theology, or Karl Barth without the exegetical foundations.
About ¾ of this volume is prolegomena. Some of it seems self evident, other parts are flights of philosophical fancy along the lines of Aquinas’ question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A few insights here, but a lot of chaff.
The final ¼ is Theology proper with a bit of anthropology mixed in. As is well known, he posits God as the ground of being. Here he is clearly drawing on existentialism. He defines the ultimate problem as the problem of non-being. He is very adamant, several times throughout the volume that God is not a being, he is the ground of being. A distinction that likely only carries freight in an existential framework.
He avoids the Trinity, but with a promise to address it later when the ‘existential’ Trinity is revealed. This seems like a mistake, especially after reading Karkäinnen’s Constructive Theology and its convincing argument that the Trinity is the central aspect of God that touches everything.
The final 40 pages are the most valuable. There he addresses more traditional theological ideas about God with some insight. He almost never engages with tradition, with the exception of an occasional reference to Luther or Calvin. Similarly, there is no exegesis of the kind that fills Church Dogmatics, none.
On the whole, it seems very dated and contextual in the psychology and existentialism of the 1950s. One can more beneficially read Calvin or even Augustine. It may be that his insights have been taken up as obvious so his contribution is overlooked, but hard to see this works enduring value.
Steeped in the existentialism of the 1950s, it is laden with ontological language. The word being must occur a few thousand times. Being and non-being are constantly contrasted. It is full of existentialist vocabulary: essence, existence, anxiety, fear, freedom, absurd, being, etc. It is as if Jean Paul Sartre wrote a theology, or Karl Barth without the exegetical foundations.
About ¾ of this volume is prolegomena. Some of it seems self evident, other parts are flights of philosophical fancy along the lines of Aquinas’ question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A few insights here, but a lot of chaff.
The final ¼ is Theology proper with a bit of anthropology mixed in. As is well known, he posits God as the ground of being. Here he is clearly drawing on existentialism. He defines the ultimate problem as the problem of non-being. He is very adamant, several times throughout the volume that God is not a being, he is the ground of being. A distinction that likely only carries freight in an existential framework.
He avoids the Trinity, but with a promise to address it later when the ‘existential’ Trinity is revealed. This seems like a mistake, especially after reading Karkäinnen’s Constructive Theology and its convincing argument that the Trinity is the central aspect of God that touches everything.
The final 40 pages are the most valuable. There he addresses more traditional theological ideas about God with some insight. He almost never engages with tradition, with the exception of an occasional reference to Luther or Calvin. Similarly, there is no exegesis of the kind that fills Church Dogmatics, none.
On the whole, it seems very dated and contextual in the psychology and existentialism of the 1950s. One can more beneficially read Calvin or even Augustine. It may be that his insights have been taken up as obvious so his contribution is overlooked, but hard to see this works enduring value.
May 30, 2018
Recommended for anyone interested in ontology
As a Buddhist I am interested in ontology from a Christian perspective to compare with. In this first volume, a lot of preliminary material is covered with respect to the remaining volumes. The systematic arrangement of material is readily apparent; but not comparable to similar endeavors by other theologians.
As a Buddhist I am interested in ontology from a Christian perspective to compare with. In this first volume, a lot of preliminary material is covered with respect to the remaining volumes. The systematic arrangement of material is readily apparent; but not comparable to similar endeavors by other theologians.
November 9, 2017
Impressionante como Tillich consegue transitar por temas tão diversos e ser igualmente acurado.
April 5, 2025
Need to read again and take notes paragraph by paragraph. Infinite and eternal logos is expressed symbolically on these pages.
May 13, 2025
Paul Tillich's book is difficult language . I have to reread paragraphs and sentences several times to understand his message. He uses language I am not familiar. I need to read simpler books written by Tillich before attempting Systematice Theaology.
I found his section on Reason and his section on God as BEING informative, but difficult to understand. I plan to reread after reading about Tillich and his easier writings.
Such as The Courage To Be and The New Being.
When I have googled Paul Tillich's belief in Jesus Christ, he identifies Jesus Christ as the "New Being".
Rather thatn focusing on the historical Jesus of Nazareth, he statate the Christian focus on a Biblical picture of Jesus aas the Christ. Tillich saw Jesus as a symbol of the devine-human unity, the manifestation of the "New Being" Jesus is a union of the biblical tradition and human experience.
Influenced by existentialism, he focuses on the human experience .Jesus speaks to the existential questions of human experience
I found his section on Reason and his section on God as BEING informative, but difficult to understand. I plan to reread after reading about Tillich and his easier writings.
Such as The Courage To Be and The New Being.
When I have googled Paul Tillich's belief in Jesus Christ, he identifies Jesus Christ as the "New Being".
Rather thatn focusing on the historical Jesus of Nazareth, he statate the Christian focus on a Biblical picture of Jesus aas the Christ. Tillich saw Jesus as a symbol of the devine-human unity, the manifestation of the "New Being" Jesus is a union of the biblical tradition and human experience.
Influenced by existentialism, he focuses on the human experience .Jesus speaks to the existential questions of human experience
August 28, 2015
This really is a book that forces you to think through your theological assumptions. Rarely, if ever, have I been presented with such a thoroughly systematic thinking. I think I can only compare it with Aquinas, Calvin and Barth, but since I haven't read them enough I will not continue with that comparions. There are, of course, great differences as well. I was simply thinking of the consistency of the overall system of thought.
Having said that, it is still not very easy to know exactly where one has Tillich. He, on the one hand, is very liberal in what that answer to the question of ultimate concern is. It seems, in one perspective, to be possible to be anything that the human beings find to be the answer. Yet, on the other hand, there seems to be a priority of the Christian answer to that question in a God that is both Lord and Father and that has been ultimately revealed in the Christ when Jesus chose to give up all claims to divine power.
A great, great benefit for me with Tillich's work is his almost scary clarity in his distinction between theology and philosophy and also how he clarifies the particulars of the theological method on the one hand and the theological theory on the other. This is one of my main problem areas as a theologian. I think that method and theory are extremely difficult to get my head around. This was certainly a good step on the way to understanding.
Much, much, much more can and should be said about this book, but maybe I will have reasons to get back to Tillich at some point in some more formal occasion. If so, then I will certainly need to work out what he means with "symbolic". I think that is a key question if one is to work out what "God" is and how God relates to creation in Tillich's thought.
Having said that, it is still not very easy to know exactly where one has Tillich. He, on the one hand, is very liberal in what that answer to the question of ultimate concern is. It seems, in one perspective, to be possible to be anything that the human beings find to be the answer. Yet, on the other hand, there seems to be a priority of the Christian answer to that question in a God that is both Lord and Father and that has been ultimately revealed in the Christ when Jesus chose to give up all claims to divine power.
A great, great benefit for me with Tillich's work is his almost scary clarity in his distinction between theology and philosophy and also how he clarifies the particulars of the theological method on the one hand and the theological theory on the other. This is one of my main problem areas as a theologian. I think that method and theory are extremely difficult to get my head around. This was certainly a good step on the way to understanding.
Much, much, much more can and should be said about this book, but maybe I will have reasons to get back to Tillich at some point in some more formal occasion. If so, then I will certainly need to work out what he means with "symbolic". I think that is a key question if one is to work out what "God" is and how God relates to creation in Tillich's thought.
June 21, 2025
"Sin is a state of being in which the holy and secular are separated, struggling which each other and trying to conquer each other. It is the state in which God is not 'all in all', the state in which God is 'in addition to' all other things." (218)
May 20, 2014
Not terrible, but not good either. The definition of inaccessible writing and unnecessarily complex in its language.
April 26, 2014
painfully waded through this book, which really you must read to make up your mind on. don't trust my reviews, or anyone else's..
January 22, 2025
I have read many systematic theology books, but Tillich's by far has the most depth and span of thought.
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