Abstract
Paul Tillich is one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, and he produced a corpus of work that is considered canon for Western theology. While his influence is broad in and beyond the field of religious studies, his historic or ideological connection to radical theology has been hotly debated for decades. This introduction engages Tillich’s work as a whole but focuses upon what elements of Tillich are specifically employed by radical theologians, but more importantly, makes the case that Tillich is, in fact, not only influential upon radical theology but rather that he should be counted among them as a proto-radical Christian thinker.
This chapter is a slightly revised version of Russell Re Manning “Introduction: The Real Tillich Is the Radical Tillich” in Russell Re Manning (ed.), Retrieving the Radical Tillich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1–19. I am grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for permission to reproduce this work here.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See the representative texts collected in James Robinson, The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology (Richmond: John Knox, 1968).
- 3.
See also Tillich (1932).
- 4.
Cf. Russell Re Manning, Theology at the End of Culture (Leuven: Peeters, 2005).
- 5.
For a persuasive defence of this contested claim, see Douglas Hedley, “Was Schleiermacher a Christian Platonist?” in Dionysius 17 (1999): 149–168.
- 6.
See Tillich (1981). For Cornelius’ opposition to Tillich, see Werner Schüßler, “Tillich’s Life and Works,” in The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, ed. R. Re Manning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 10.
- 7.
In English, Tillich (1977).
- 8.
On the origin of theology in the response to being shaken or grasped by an awareness (or orientation) towards the unconditioned in the experience of shock, Tillich (1951) observes that
The threat of non-being, grasping the mind, produces the ‘ontological shock’ in which the negative side of the mystery of being—its abysmal element—is experienced. ‘Shock’ points to a state of mind in which the mind is thrown out of its normal balance, shaken in its structure. Reason reaches its boundary line, is thrown back upon itself, and then is driven again to its extreme situation. (113)
- 9.
The first of these is Thesis 115 from a presentation given by Tillich in 1911 at Kassel, in which he delivered 128 theses and a paper with the title “Die christliche Gewissheit und der historische Jesus,” in Tillich (1992), 33.
- 10.
Cf. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953).
- 11.
Robert Scharlemann, “Tillich’s Religious Writings,” in Paul Tillich (1988), 1–12.
- 12.
See Marc Boss, Au commencement la liberté. La religion du Kant réinventée par Fichte, Schelling et Tillich (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2014), 513–524, esp. 521; and Marc Boss, “Paul Tillich and the Twentieth-Century Fichte Renaissance,” Bulletin of the North American Paul Tillich Society 36.3 (2010), 8–21, esp. 15.
- 13.
Harvey Cox, “Introduction” in Tillich (2014), xxiv.
- 14.
John Clayton, The Concept of Correlation (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 5.
- 15.
Durwood Foster, “Introduction,” in Tillich (2007), xiii–xiv; cf. Clayton, 6.
- 16.
Foster, in Tillich (2007), xii–xiii.
- 17.
The feminist critique of Tillich’s theology (and ethos) is the most developed. See Judith Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace (New York: University Press America, 1980); Susan Lichtman, “The Concept of Sin in the Theology of Paul Tillich?”, in The Journal of Women and Religion 8 (1989): 49–55; and the judicious assessment by Rachel Sophia Baard in “Tillich and Feminism,” in R. Re Manning (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 273–287. For a critical engagement with Tillich’s failure to engage race, see Elaine Robinson, “Paul Tillich” in M. De la Torre and S. Floyd-Thomas (eds.), Beyond the Pale (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2011), 151–160. After an overview survey of Tillich’s central theological themes, Robinson defends the claim that “Tillich was a German-born American theologian who became White in the context and culture of the United States”; specifically, that
little evidence exists to suggest that Tillich attempted to understand the social and legal construction of race in the United States, despite the immense cultural implications present in the long history of racial injustice and genocide within the American borders. There is little evidence within his theological corpus that the question of racial injustice was taken seriously, despite the fact that elements of his system could provide openings for just such analysis (e.g. experience as a medium or culture as a source). (156)
For a nuanced discussions of Tillich’s potential and his limitations within contemporary political theology, see Gregory Walter, “Critique and Promise in Paul Tillich’s Political Theology,” Journal of Religion 90.3 (2010): 453–474.
- 18.
Two notable exceptions are Clayton Crockett, Radical Political Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), and Jeffrey Robbins , Radical Democracy and Political Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), and their jointly written work, Religion, Politics, and the Earth (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Works Cited
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———. 1951. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1963. Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions. New York: Colombia University Press.
———. 1966. On the Boundary. New York: Scribner’s.
———. 1969. What Is Religion? Ed. J. Adams. Trans. W. Green. New York: Harper & Row.
———. 1977. The Socialist Decision. Trans. F. Sherman. New York: Harper & Row.
———. 1981. The System of the Sciences According to Objects and Methods. Trans. P. Wiebe. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
———. 1987. Visionary Science. Trans. V. Nuovo. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
———. 1990. Main Works/Hauptwerke. Vol. 2. Ed. M. Palmer. Berlin: de Gruyter.
———. 1992. Main Works/Hauptwerke. Vol. 6. Ed. G. Hummel. Berlin: de Gruyter.
———. 2001. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Perennial.
———. 2005. Dogmatik-Vorlesung, (Dresden 1925–27). Ed. W. Schüßler. Berlin: de Gruyter.
———. 2007. The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
———. 2014. The Courage to Be. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Re Manning, R. (2018). Paul Tillich. In: Rodkey, C., Miller, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96595-6_25
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