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Systematic Theology 3: Life & the Spirit: History & the Kingdom of God
In this volume, the third and last of his Systematic Theology , Paul Tillich sets forth his ideas of the meaning of human life, the doctrine of the Spirit and the church, the trinitarian symbols, the relation of history to the Kingdom of God, and the eschatological symbols. He handles this subject matter with powerful conceptual ability and intellectual grace.
The problem of life is ambiguity. Every process of life has its contrast within itself, thus driving man to the quest for unambiguous life or life under the impact of the Spritual Presence. The Spritual Presence conquers the negativities of religion, culture, and morality, and the symbols anticipating Eternal Life present the answer to the problem of life.
The problem of life is ambiguity. Every process of life has its contrast within itself, thus driving man to the quest for unambiguous life or life under the impact of the Spritual Presence. The Spritual Presence conquers the negativities of religion, culture, and morality, and the symbols anticipating Eternal Life present the answer to the problem of life.
441 pages, paper
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Paul Tillich
277 books425 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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July 2, 2024
THE FINAL 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 434-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1963 book, “With the third volume, my ‘Systematic Theology’ is completed… My friends and I sometimes feared that the system would remain a fragment. This has not happened, although even at its best this system is fragmentary and often inadequate and questionable. Nevertheless, it shows the stage at which my theological thought has arrived. Yet a system should be … like a station at which preliminary truth is crystallized on the endless road toward truth.”
He states, “The principle of ‘agape’ expresses the unconditional validity of the moral imperative, and it gives the ultimate norm for all ethical content. But it has still a third function: it is the source of moral motivation. It necessarily commands, threatens, and promises, because fulfillment of the law is reunion with one’s essential being, or integration of the centered self… The law as law expresses man’s estrangement from himself. In the state of… created innocence (which is not a historical stage), there is no law, because man is essentially united with that to which he belongs… In existence, this identity is broken, and in every life process the identity and non-identity of what is and what ought to be are mixed. Therefore… the law has the power to motivate partial fulfillment, but in doing so it also drives to resistance.” (I, B1, pg. 48-49)
He observes, “The question as to how the self-transcendence of life manifests itself cannot be answered in empirical terms, as is possible in the case of self-integration and self-creativity. One can speak about it only in terms which describe the reflection of the inner self-transcendence of things in man’s consciousness. Man is the mirror in which the relation of everything finite to the infinite becomes conscious. No empirical observation of this relation is possible, because all empirical knowledge refers to finite transcendences, not to the relation of the finite to the infinite.” (I, B3, pg. 87)
He explains, “Religion was defined as the self-transcendence of life under the dimension of spirit. This image makes the image of the essential unity of religion with morality and culture possible, and it also explains the ambiguity of the three functions in their separation. The self-transcendence of life is effective in the unconditional character of the moral act and in the inexhaustible depth of meaning in all meanings created by culture. Life is sublime in every realm dominated by the dimension of the spirit. The self-integration of life in the moral act and the self-creativity of life in the cultural act are sublime… But because of the ambiguity of life, they are also profane; they resist self-transcendence. And this is inevitable because they are separated from their essential unity with religion and are actualized independently.” (I, B3, pg. 96) Later, he states, “But no religion is revealed; religion is the creation and the distortion of revelation.” (I, B3. pg. 104)
He notes, “The ‘transcendent union’ … appears within the human spirit as the ecstatic movement which from one point of view is called ‘faith,’ from another, ‘love.’ These two states manifest the transcendent union which is created by the Spiritual Presence in the human spirit… The two points of view determining the two terms can be distinguished in the following way: faith is the state of being GRASPED by the transcendent unity of unambiguous life---it embodies love as the state of being TAKEN INTO that transcendent unity.” (II, A2, pg. 129)
He argues, “The churches are holy because of the holiness of their foundation, the New Being, which is present in them. Their holiness cannot be derived from the holiness of their institutions, doctrines, ritual and devotional activities, or ethical principles; all these are among the ambiguities of religion. Nor can the churches’ holiness be derived from the holiness of their members; the churches’ members are holy in spite of their actual unholiness, in so far as they … have received what the church has received, i.e., the ground on which they are accepted in spite of their holiness. The holiness of the churches and of Christians is not a matter of empirical judgment but rather of faith in the working of the New Being within them.” (III, A1, pg. 167)
He points out, “the Protestant principle of the infinite distance between the divine and the human undercuts the absolute claim of any doctrinal expression of the New Being. Certainly, a church’s decision to base its preaching and teaching on a particular doctrinal tradition of formulation is necessary; but if the decision is accompanied by the claim that it is the only possible one, the Protestant principle is violated. It belongs to the essence of the community of faith in Protestantism that a Protestant church can receive into its thinking and acting every expression of thought and life created by the Spiritual Presence anywhere in the history of mankind.” (III, A2, pg. 177)
He states, “The question is: How is personal self-determination possible if the determining self needs determination as much as the determined self?... The solution is that the determining subject is determined by that which transcends subject and object, the Spiritual Presence. Its impact on the subject which is existentially separated from its object is called ‘grace.’ … ‘Grace’ means that the Spiritual Presence cannot be produced but is given. The ambiguity of self-determination is overcome by grace, and there is no other way of overcoming it…” (III, A2, pg. 211)
He notes, “The important question it: How does an individual participate in a church in such a way that, through it, he participates in the Spiritual Community as a Spiritual personality? The answer, already given, was a negative one: There is no moment in the life of a person which could be singled out as a beginning (or the end) of such a participation… This assertion seems to contradict the concept of conversion, which plays such a role in both Testaments… But conversion is not necessarily a momentary event; it is in most cases a long process which has been going on unconsciously long before it breaks into consciousness, giving the impression of a sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming crisis.” (III, A3, pg. 218-219)
He asserts, “Not faith but grace is the cause of justification, because God alone is the cause. Faith is the receiving act, and this act is itself a gift of grace. Therefore one should dispense completely with the phrase ‘justification by faith’ and replace it with the formula, ‘justification by grace through faith.’ It should be a serious concern in the teaching and preaching of every minister that this profound distortion of the ‘good news’ of the Christian message be remedied.” (III, A3, pg. 224)
He says, “Love is also the motivating power in theonomous morality. We have seen the ambiguities of the law’s demanding obedience---even if it is to the law of love. Love is unambiguous, not as law, but as grace. Theologically speaking, Spirit, love, and grace are one and the same reality in different aspects. Spirit is the creative power; love is its creation; grace is the effective presence of love in man… Where there is New Being, there is grace, and vice versa. Autonomous or heteronomous morality is without ultimate moral motivating power. Only love or the Spiritual Presence can motivate by giving what it demands.” (III, C3, pg. 274)
He wonders, “In terms of religious devotion, one can ask: Is the prayer to one of the three personae in whom the one divine substance exists directed toward someone different from another of the three to whom another prayer is directed? If there is no difference, why does one not simply address the prayer to God? If there is a difference, for example, how is tritheism avoided? … The difficulty appears as soon as the question is asked as to what the historical Jesus, the man in whom the Logos became ‘flesh,’ means for the interpretation of the Logos as the second ‘hypostasis’ in the Trinity?... one cannot attribute to the eternal Logos in himself the face of Jesus of Nazareth or the face of ‘historical man’ or of any particular manifestation of the creative ground of being. But certainly the face of God FOR historical man is the fact of Jesus the Christ. The trinitarian manifestation of the divine ground is Christocentric for man, but it is not Jesu-centric in itself.” (IV, B, pg. 289-290)
He observes, “the revelatory and saving manifestation of the Spiritual Presence is always what it is, and that in this respect there is no more or less, no progress or obsolescence or regression. But the content of such manifestations and their symbolic expressions, like styles in the arts and visions in philosophy, are dependent on the potentialities implied in the human encounter with the holy, on the one hand, and on the receptivity of a human group for one or another of these potentialities, on the other… Progress in this respect is possible between different cultural stages in which the revelatory experience takes place or between different degrees of clarity and power with which the manifestation of the Spiritual is received.” (V, I, A3, pg. 337) Later, he adds, “That history which is a history of revelation and salvation begins the moment man becomes aware of the ultimate question of his estranged predicament and of his destiny to overcome their predicament.” (V, II, A2, pg. 366)
He suggests, “participation in eternity is not ‘life hereafter.’ Neither is it a natural quality of the human soul. It is rather the creative act of God, who lets the temporal separate itself from and return to the eternal. It is understandable that Christian theologians who are aware of these difficulties reject the term ‘immortality’ altogether… But this is not justified… it does not mean a continuation of temporal life after death, but it means a quality which transcends temporality.” (V, III, B2, pg. 410) He adds, “The frequently evil side effects of a literal use of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ are not sufficient reason for removing them completely. They provide vivid expression for the threat of ‘death away from eternity,’ and for its contrast, the ‘promise of eternal life.’” (V, II, B4, pg. 419)
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 434-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1963 book, “With the third volume, my ‘Systematic Theology’ is completed… My friends and I sometimes feared that the system would remain a fragment. This has not happened, although even at its best this system is fragmentary and often inadequate and questionable. Nevertheless, it shows the stage at which my theological thought has arrived. Yet a system should be … like a station at which preliminary truth is crystallized on the endless road toward truth.”
He states, “The principle of ‘agape’ expresses the unconditional validity of the moral imperative, and it gives the ultimate norm for all ethical content. But it has still a third function: it is the source of moral motivation. It necessarily commands, threatens, and promises, because fulfillment of the law is reunion with one’s essential being, or integration of the centered self… The law as law expresses man’s estrangement from himself. In the state of… created innocence (which is not a historical stage), there is no law, because man is essentially united with that to which he belongs… In existence, this identity is broken, and in every life process the identity and non-identity of what is and what ought to be are mixed. Therefore… the law has the power to motivate partial fulfillment, but in doing so it also drives to resistance.” (I, B1, pg. 48-49)
He observes, “The question as to how the self-transcendence of life manifests itself cannot be answered in empirical terms, as is possible in the case of self-integration and self-creativity. One can speak about it only in terms which describe the reflection of the inner self-transcendence of things in man’s consciousness. Man is the mirror in which the relation of everything finite to the infinite becomes conscious. No empirical observation of this relation is possible, because all empirical knowledge refers to finite transcendences, not to the relation of the finite to the infinite.” (I, B3, pg. 87)
He explains, “Religion was defined as the self-transcendence of life under the dimension of spirit. This image makes the image of the essential unity of religion with morality and culture possible, and it also explains the ambiguity of the three functions in their separation. The self-transcendence of life is effective in the unconditional character of the moral act and in the inexhaustible depth of meaning in all meanings created by culture. Life is sublime in every realm dominated by the dimension of the spirit. The self-integration of life in the moral act and the self-creativity of life in the cultural act are sublime… But because of the ambiguity of life, they are also profane; they resist self-transcendence. And this is inevitable because they are separated from their essential unity with religion and are actualized independently.” (I, B3, pg. 96) Later, he states, “But no religion is revealed; religion is the creation and the distortion of revelation.” (I, B3. pg. 104)
He notes, “The ‘transcendent union’ … appears within the human spirit as the ecstatic movement which from one point of view is called ‘faith,’ from another, ‘love.’ These two states manifest the transcendent union which is created by the Spiritual Presence in the human spirit… The two points of view determining the two terms can be distinguished in the following way: faith is the state of being GRASPED by the transcendent unity of unambiguous life---it embodies love as the state of being TAKEN INTO that transcendent unity.” (II, A2, pg. 129)
He argues, “The churches are holy because of the holiness of their foundation, the New Being, which is present in them. Their holiness cannot be derived from the holiness of their institutions, doctrines, ritual and devotional activities, or ethical principles; all these are among the ambiguities of religion. Nor can the churches’ holiness be derived from the holiness of their members; the churches’ members are holy in spite of their actual unholiness, in so far as they … have received what the church has received, i.e., the ground on which they are accepted in spite of their holiness. The holiness of the churches and of Christians is not a matter of empirical judgment but rather of faith in the working of the New Being within them.” (III, A1, pg. 167)
He points out, “the Protestant principle of the infinite distance between the divine and the human undercuts the absolute claim of any doctrinal expression of the New Being. Certainly, a church’s decision to base its preaching and teaching on a particular doctrinal tradition of formulation is necessary; but if the decision is accompanied by the claim that it is the only possible one, the Protestant principle is violated. It belongs to the essence of the community of faith in Protestantism that a Protestant church can receive into its thinking and acting every expression of thought and life created by the Spiritual Presence anywhere in the history of mankind.” (III, A2, pg. 177)
He states, “The question is: How is personal self-determination possible if the determining self needs determination as much as the determined self?... The solution is that the determining subject is determined by that which transcends subject and object, the Spiritual Presence. Its impact on the subject which is existentially separated from its object is called ‘grace.’ … ‘Grace’ means that the Spiritual Presence cannot be produced but is given. The ambiguity of self-determination is overcome by grace, and there is no other way of overcoming it…” (III, A2, pg. 211)
He notes, “The important question it: How does an individual participate in a church in such a way that, through it, he participates in the Spiritual Community as a Spiritual personality? The answer, already given, was a negative one: There is no moment in the life of a person which could be singled out as a beginning (or the end) of such a participation… This assertion seems to contradict the concept of conversion, which plays such a role in both Testaments… But conversion is not necessarily a momentary event; it is in most cases a long process which has been going on unconsciously long before it breaks into consciousness, giving the impression of a sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming crisis.” (III, A3, pg. 218-219)
He asserts, “Not faith but grace is the cause of justification, because God alone is the cause. Faith is the receiving act, and this act is itself a gift of grace. Therefore one should dispense completely with the phrase ‘justification by faith’ and replace it with the formula, ‘justification by grace through faith.’ It should be a serious concern in the teaching and preaching of every minister that this profound distortion of the ‘good news’ of the Christian message be remedied.” (III, A3, pg. 224)
He says, “Love is also the motivating power in theonomous morality. We have seen the ambiguities of the law’s demanding obedience---even if it is to the law of love. Love is unambiguous, not as law, but as grace. Theologically speaking, Spirit, love, and grace are one and the same reality in different aspects. Spirit is the creative power; love is its creation; grace is the effective presence of love in man… Where there is New Being, there is grace, and vice versa. Autonomous or heteronomous morality is without ultimate moral motivating power. Only love or the Spiritual Presence can motivate by giving what it demands.” (III, C3, pg. 274)
He wonders, “In terms of religious devotion, one can ask: Is the prayer to one of the three personae in whom the one divine substance exists directed toward someone different from another of the three to whom another prayer is directed? If there is no difference, why does one not simply address the prayer to God? If there is a difference, for example, how is tritheism avoided? … The difficulty appears as soon as the question is asked as to what the historical Jesus, the man in whom the Logos became ‘flesh,’ means for the interpretation of the Logos as the second ‘hypostasis’ in the Trinity?... one cannot attribute to the eternal Logos in himself the face of Jesus of Nazareth or the face of ‘historical man’ or of any particular manifestation of the creative ground of being. But certainly the face of God FOR historical man is the fact of Jesus the Christ. The trinitarian manifestation of the divine ground is Christocentric for man, but it is not Jesu-centric in itself.” (IV, B, pg. 289-290)
He observes, “the revelatory and saving manifestation of the Spiritual Presence is always what it is, and that in this respect there is no more or less, no progress or obsolescence or regression. But the content of such manifestations and their symbolic expressions, like styles in the arts and visions in philosophy, are dependent on the potentialities implied in the human encounter with the holy, on the one hand, and on the receptivity of a human group for one or another of these potentialities, on the other… Progress in this respect is possible between different cultural stages in which the revelatory experience takes place or between different degrees of clarity and power with which the manifestation of the Spiritual is received.” (V, I, A3, pg. 337) Later, he adds, “That history which is a history of revelation and salvation begins the moment man becomes aware of the ultimate question of his estranged predicament and of his destiny to overcome their predicament.” (V, II, A2, pg. 366)
He suggests, “participation in eternity is not ‘life hereafter.’ Neither is it a natural quality of the human soul. It is rather the creative act of God, who lets the temporal separate itself from and return to the eternal. It is understandable that Christian theologians who are aware of these difficulties reject the term ‘immortality’ altogether… But this is not justified… it does not mean a continuation of temporal life after death, but it means a quality which transcends temporality.” (V, III, B2, pg. 410) He adds, “The frequently evil side effects of a literal use of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ are not sufficient reason for removing them completely. They provide vivid expression for the threat of ‘death away from eternity,’ and for its contrast, the ‘promise of eternal life.’” (V, II, B4, pg. 419)
Tillich's magnum opus is certainly a cornerstone of any complete modern theological library.
April 8, 2025
This may be the most insightful of the three volumes, but that may be because it’s the longest. So there is some genuine insight here, but it is buried in mounds of philosophizing.
This is no doubt the work of a German theologian, although it was written in English. There are endless definitional and excavational explorations. Always seeking to get under reality one level lower, sometimes with a jackhammer of an exhausting series of redefinitions.
His favorite word is clearly, “ambiguous.” That word and its cognates occur thousands of times in this volume. In fact, to summarize this volume in one sentence: “Life is ambiguous.” Expand on that idea in the style of existential philosophy and use Christian “symbols.” (That prompt may perhaps get AI to generate this from scratch.)
It’s hard to see how this carries much weight in modern theology. It has in effect dissolved the substance of Christian theology in an existential acid bath, and what remains are only “symbols.” By symbols, he seems to mean traditional words and concepts that he reinterprets in the existential frame. Keep the words, but make sure we understand them as pointing to an existential understanding of reality. It seems like it would not be difficult to recast this entire work without the Christian “symbols.” Substitute in the symbols of your choice, and it all still works. The theology in here is only in the “symbols,” not the meaning or content. And I suppose, for many, that is a feature, not a bug. But, this creates a work of little enduring theological value and a poor substitute for pure existential theology.
It really seems like a work captured by the hubris of the 1950s and 60s modernist intellectuals. It should be read in the voice of the 1960s documentary narrator. “Man has now discovered the true meaning of…” There doesn’t seem to be a lot of interaction with other theologians or, for as a matter of fact, with scripture. It is a bit of a free-standing edifice. One that, to my eye, seems to have crumbled rather extensively.
Overall, I don’t think it’s worth the effort, but he sure is famous and highly regarded.
This is no doubt the work of a German theologian, although it was written in English. There are endless definitional and excavational explorations. Always seeking to get under reality one level lower, sometimes with a jackhammer of an exhausting series of redefinitions.
His favorite word is clearly, “ambiguous.” That word and its cognates occur thousands of times in this volume. In fact, to summarize this volume in one sentence: “Life is ambiguous.” Expand on that idea in the style of existential philosophy and use Christian “symbols.” (That prompt may perhaps get AI to generate this from scratch.)
It’s hard to see how this carries much weight in modern theology. It has in effect dissolved the substance of Christian theology in an existential acid bath, and what remains are only “symbols.” By symbols, he seems to mean traditional words and concepts that he reinterprets in the existential frame. Keep the words, but make sure we understand them as pointing to an existential understanding of reality. It seems like it would not be difficult to recast this entire work without the Christian “symbols.” Substitute in the symbols of your choice, and it all still works. The theology in here is only in the “symbols,” not the meaning or content. And I suppose, for many, that is a feature, not a bug. But, this creates a work of little enduring theological value and a poor substitute for pure existential theology.
It really seems like a work captured by the hubris of the 1950s and 60s modernist intellectuals. It should be read in the voice of the 1960s documentary narrator. “Man has now discovered the true meaning of…” There doesn’t seem to be a lot of interaction with other theologians or, for as a matter of fact, with scripture. It is a bit of a free-standing edifice. One that, to my eye, seems to have crumbled rather extensively.
Overall, I don’t think it’s worth the effort, but he sure is famous and highly regarded.
December 5, 2025
This series was a lot of work to get through, definitely some theological/philosophical gems to be found in this dense tome. The beginning was hard to grasp, but it gets more interesting and easier to comprehend the further you get.
April 9, 2013
I finally finished Tillich's system! This was the longest of his three volumes by far but very interesting. The fourth part of the system was almost as difficult for me to get a grasp of as the second part, while the fifth part was very enlightening as to Tillich's understanding of the historical meaning of Christian symbols. The great thing about reading the Systematic Theology was how it helped me understand some of the concepts he covered in his shorter works.
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