Tillich, Paul Books

The Courage to Be

Paul Tillich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Surprised me by how much it spoke to my situation 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 10 people found this review helpful.

It seemed at the beginning that it would be too abstract. Too involved in a history of philosophy in its discussion of the Stoics. That Tillich was asserting too much, as if "ex cathedra". But even in the early chapters, I sensed something special and by the time I reached Chapter 4 ("Courage and Participation: The Courage to Be as a Part"), I began to feel the my current situation was being directly and wisely addressed. That feeling only grew stronger from that point on.

There's so much value in this book that I feel somehow unworthy of reviewing it. It doesn't seem that any amount of time I spent preparing a review could do justice to "The Courage to Be". I had heard so much of Tillich but this is the first time I have read him. I have missed a lot and I am grateful I finally turned to him. I had been concerned about religious myths and whether Christianity retained any value for me. Gnostic Christian myths seems fascinating and they made me wonder if Christianity might offer more to me than I had suspected. That concern with myths and Christianity led me to read several books by the progressive Christian Bishop John Shelby Spong (e.g. Jesus for the Non-Religious)). Spong mentioned in at least one of his books that he had been a student of Tillich's. Tillich had challenged Spong with the concept of nontheism, a position that Spong has moved to. That has been my own understanding since my teens but I had turned to nontheistic Eastern religions and to unorthodox, nondogmatic Western religions. Only recently had I been open to reconsidering liberal Christianity. To some extent I had already done that with such postmodern thinkers as Thomas Altizer (The Gospel of Christian Atheism and Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir) and recently Spong. Following up with Tillich and this book has been literally a godsend.

In much of "The Courage to Be", Tillich applies his knowledge of Western Existentialism. This meant all the more to me as in my teens I had devoured such existentialists as Sartre, Camus and to a lesser extent even Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. But it was difficult to apply it to my situation. Altizer had helped by tracing developments from Christianity into postmodern movements including atheism but he was difficult to follow.

Here now is Tillich who ties together Western Existentialist topics such as anxiety and meaninglessness and a postmodern concern to rediscover the relevance of the Christian tradition. Is one's self in danger today of being a thing, or as he writes "a matter of calculation and management"? As Tillich points out, the Existentialist Revolt strongly opposed such objectification. But by transcending the theistic way of understanding the sacred ,by turning to "the God above God", Tillich shares a hope ( at least in finding courage) that speak to those Existentialism addressed but recovers something from Christian roots. It is a project that seems to take better advantage of Western history and Christianity's role in it as it was than Spong's dependence on speculations to salvage an acceptable image of Jesus.

This is not a book for a single reading. I've started already on my second reading and I am also reading more of Tillich, already The socialist decision and am planning to read soon A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT Edited By Carl E. Braaten. I somehow overlooked Tillich all these years and I am eager to make up for lost time. The timing is good because, as Spong has described, I seem to be "a believer in exile", raised a Christian and, although having questioned much about it, still influenced by my Protestant upbringing and by the many writings such as those of the Existentialists, that proceeded directly from or in reaction to Christianity.

Finding "A Courage to Be" and Tillich may be a way for me to accept my background without rejecting what I have learned and felt since.

Editorial Review:

In this classic and deeply insightful book, one of the world's most eminent philosophers describes the dilemma of modern man and points a way to the conquest of the problem of anxiety. This edition includes a new introduction by Peter J. Gomes that reflects on the impact of this book in the years since it was written.

Dynamics of Faith (Perennial Classic.)

Paul Tillich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Paul is all things to all people 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Since I only read two books by Tillich, this one plus "The Courage to Be", it may be somewhat risky to comment upon his ideas. This review should therefore be seen as preliminary. It's really a review of both books, although most of the contents covered are found in "The Dynamics of Faith". For those entirely new to the subject, Tillich was a Christian theologian, usually regarded as very liberal and existentialist. He was German, but fled Germany after the Nazi take-over in 1933, becoming a US citizen in 1940.

Tillich does ask interesting questions and make intruiging observations. The key sentence in "The Dynamics of Faith" is: "Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned". Since every human is ultimately concerned about something, this means that all humans have faith. The existence of faith cannot be disproven, since all attempts to do so are circular. To "disprove" faith, one must assume that there isn't anything to be ultimately concerned about. But this is in itself an ultimate statement. Besides, the philosopher who frantically attempts to prove that everything is meaningless is also ultimately concerned about something, namely the truth of his nihilism. Thus, faith is as self-evident as the Cartesian "Cogito, ergo sum".

Tillich's point, of course, is that all humans assume that there is something higher than themselves, transcending our everyday existence, something of cosmic importance. And this is not simply an abstract idea. All humans actively seek self-transcendence. All humans have faith, even the atheists. Tillich also makes an observation familiar to readers of C.S. Lewis: All humans operate on the assumption that there are universal moral laws, transcending the individual. Even more curiously, humans seemingly create moral laws that are impossible to live up to, and then feel guilty and condemned when they fail. How is this possible?

Naturally, to Tillich this all points to the existence of God. But it is here that his reasoning becomes problematic. There are myriad different conceptions of God. There are also many different opinions on morality. What religion is the true one? And what morality should we live by? Tillich cannot really answer these questions. His conception of God is strikingly similar to that found in certain forms of Hinduism. Tillich's God is really Brahman, the nameless and formless Being beyond all Being (and Non-Being). All religions are reflections of this God, but all religions are purely symbolic. Even Jesus Christ is simply a symbol. But how can we know which symbols are true, "true" in the sense of expressing the truth about God? Tillich never really answers this question. At one point, he seems to be suggesting that we don't know which faith is the true one. All faith therefore entails a risk, the risk of being wrong. At other times, Tillich says that the liberal form of Protestant Christianity is the highest religion, and that the Cross is a more authentic symbol than the symbols of other religions. However, he never explains why this is the case.

Sometimes, I get the impression that Tillich is somewhat disingenous. He defines "God" in such an abstract and nebulous manner, that any "ultimate concern" becomes "God". He also defines God as "being-itself" (perhaps Being-in-itself would be a better term). Thus, everything that exists, is God, simply by definition. By defining God in this manner, Tillich makes it impossible to falsify the idea of God. And by making Christianity symbolic, Tillich makes it impossible to falsify Christianity as well! This sounds like an attempt to save Christianity from being exposed by atheism, by making the Christian concepts completely evasive - a constantly moving target. Paul Tillich's God is all things to all people. But isn't such a God really a nullity?

But perhaps this is a rash criticism of "The Dynamics of Faith" and "The Courage to Be". Still, one wonders what solutions Tillich has to the existential problems he has raised. He doesn't believe in the traditional scenario, where a resurrected Jesus will return one day and set up a Millenium. Nor does he believe in the immortality of the soul. Indeed, he seems to regard the immortal soul as a bad idea, even symbolically speaking! In the end, he can only tell us to be courageously self-assertive in the face of Non-Being, go on living despite our feelings of meaninglessness and guilt, and risk being wrong.

This, of course, could have been said by any atheist of an existentialist bent. Which makes you wonder why "God" is needed as part of the equation at all. Even apart from it not being a very comforting answer...

Editorial Review:

One of the greatest books ever written on the subject, Dynamics of Faithis a primer in the philosophy of religion. Paul Tillich, a leading theologian of the twentieth century, explores the idea of faith in all its dimensions, while defining the concept in the process.

This graceful and accessible volume contains a new introduction by Marion Pauck, Tillich's biographer.

Systematic Theology, vol. 1

Paul Tillich

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the first part of Paul Tillich's three-volume Systematic Theology, one of the most profound statements of the Christian message ever composed and the summation and definitive presentation of the theology of the most influential and creative American theologian of the twentieth century.

In this path-breaking volume Tillich presents the basic method and statement of his system—his famous "correlation" of man's deepest questions with theological answers. Here the focus is on the concepts of being and 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 and the Bible and 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.

The New Being

Paul Tillich

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

All things old made new again... 5 out of 5 stars.
26 of 26 people found this review helpful.

As Mary Ann Stegner states in her introduction to this volume, Tillich is far better known as a systematic theologian and philosopher than as a preacher. Indeed, he is the bane of the existence of many a seminary student who struggles through his magnum opus, the three-volume work entitled simply 'Systematic Theology'. However, Tillich always had the sense that this systematic theological and philosophical work was not an end in itself, but rather was a foundational task toward the greater Christian work, part of which is embodied most directly for most in the preaching and hearing of sermons and homilies. 'In this volume of sermons, Tillich preaches God's love, liberating truth, and fulfilling job, given to us in the New Being of Jesus as the Christ.'

Tillich is not an easy read. Educated in German schools deeply influenced by liberal theology of the nineteenth century and philosophical schools reacting to the breakdown of Enlightenment thinking, Tillich sought to make theology a relevant subject in the academy. Much of his writing is primarily geared toward other academics, philosophers in particular. But this is not so with his sermons. Many seminarians have difficulty with Tillich, both in making real-world connections as well as traversing the language -- Tillich invents his own terminology and develops his own linguistic methods of discussing theological issues, but these things are made more clear in his sermons, meant for the wider audience. They also have more of a direct application - 'Tillich's sermons speak to us, at least in part, because he experienced deeply the same anxieties we do, anxieties of death, meaninglessness and guilt...'

Tillich was profoundly influenced by his experiences in the first world war, where he served as a chaplain in the trench warfare. Unlike theologians such as Barth, he initially had a young man's bravado and support for the war, until the grim realities set in. This experience would never leave Tillich, and he continued to strive all his life to craft a systematic theology that would on the one hand address the concerns of culture but at the same time resist traditional pitfalls of theology-of-culture that make it less universal, and too much a human construct.

Tillich's development of Christology, with Christ as the New Being, is very significant, the way for Tillich's more general philosophical theology to find a grounding in Christianity. It gives this collection its title. Tillich had a long fascination with other religions, Buddhism in particular, and was charged by some critics of relegating Christianity to a secondary status. Like many of Tillich's theological ideas, there is a tension apparent in his Christological development that exists between different traditional methods of dealing with the issue historically, philosophically and theologically. However, Tillich is clear about the 'reality of the New Being which transforms Old Being, the reality who is Jesus as the Christ surrendering himself in love.'

These sermons draw from passages, pericopes and sometimes single verses from the scriptures that inspire Tillich toward a fuller development of themes of love, reconciliation, liberation, and fulfillment. Perhaps one of the most important sermons is one near the end, developed from the verse in the first letter of John (3:14) - Tillich states, 'In our time, as in every age, we need to see something which is stronger than death. Death has become powerful in our time, in individual human beings, in families, in nations and in mankind as a whole.' We can hear this being preached in today's post-9-11 environment just as easily as Tillich might have preached and felt it after the period of world war. Tillich proceeds to expand on the idea of love as unconquerable, as that which overcomes death and all limitation.

This is a wonderful collection of sermons, unique in many ways, products both of their time as well as words that contain timeless messages.

Editorial Review:

These twenty-three meditations on key passages from the Bible were originally delivered as addresses at colleges and universities. They are short, powerful, and persuasive examinations of the effect of God’s love on the life of the believer and the challenges of living the New Creation—“the infinite passion of every human being.” Tillich scholar Mary Ann Stenger provides a new introduction for this edition.

The Essential Tillich

Paul Tillich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"With this volume, Paul Tillich joins the ranks of the great Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. . . .This volume, compiled by a noted minister and scholar, offers to the theological student, church worker, or, indeed, any serious reader struggling with the existential question, a tantalizing and illuminating introduction to perhaps the greatest mind of twentieth-century Protestant theology."—Booklist

"Church testifies to the power Tillich provides him for his pastoral work, his intellectual formulation and his personal life. He projects, quite properly, that the 'essential' Tillich can do the same for others. . . ."—Christian Century

"This book summarizes in Tillich's own words much of the best of his thought, still highly relevant today."—Library Journal

"[Church] helps Tillich speak to an audience unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of his thought."—Religious Studies Review

Systematic Theology, vol. 3: Life and the Spirit: History and the Kingdom of God

Paul Tillich

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Classic in 20th c. Protestant Theology 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Paul Tillich's ~Systematic Theology~ is one of the most important theological works of the 20th century, and the theological system par excellence of liberal Protestant Christianity. In his day, Tillich was held in high esteem not only among theologians, but by experts in many different fields for his incredible breadth of knowledge, his insight into culture, and his humanity.

'Liberal Protestantism' sought to reconcile the gospel and the Christian faith with contemporary cultural ideas, rather then set the two up against each other. Religion is, for Tillich, the best of culture. (An alternative view, for example, is that of Karl Barth, who saw the gospel as fundamentally a critique of culture - as the Word speaking from outside ~to~ the world, not within the world). So, for Tillich, there should be signs of God everywhere, not just in Christianity, and religion and culture and closely connected.

God, for Tillich, is not therefore the anthropomorphized God of the Old Testament, who has a personality and creates and destroys and judges in an almost arbitrary fashion. Instead, Tillich sees God as 'the ground of being'. God is the very fundament on which rests everything that is. God is the Abyss.

The problem with man, for Tillich, is his 'finitude'. Man's life is finite, his body makes him finite, his capacities are finite, yet he craves to transcend these, to be unlimited, to be God. This is impossible; rather one should accept one's finitude courageously. This is what Jesus did singularly and perfectly - he never sinned, because he always accepted the finite nature of his being; he faced death courageously. Tillich's christology is therefore a 'spirit christology' (Jesus was led by the spirit) rather than a 'logos christology' (Jesus was God incarnate, the Word made flesh).

The last important thing is that Tillich makes use of his famous 'theory of correlation'. This is how the 3 volumes of his ~Systematic Theology~ are set up. According to this theory, things in culture are correlated with the theology; theology provides the 'answers' to the 'questions' posed by culture. So his five sections (divided among the 3 volumes) are called: 'Reason and Revelation', 'Being and God', 'Existence and the Christ', 'Life and the Spirit', 'History and the Kingdom of God'.

Tillich's writing is for the most part easy enough to read for the layperson - just don't get bothered by particular tricky bits. I would recommend it to anyone interested in theology; it has influenced a generation of theologians.

Editorial Review:

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.

A History of Christian Thought (Touchstone Books)

Paul Tillich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Tillich's Most Accessible Work 5 out of 5 stars.
34 of 36 people found this review helpful.

Paul Tillich was perhaps the most important and influential 20th Century theologian writing in English. His books, however, are tough slogging--especially for those who haven't read all the many continental philosophers and theologians with whom Tillich was arguing. This book, which consists of transcriptions of lectures Tillich gave on the history of Christian thought, is, besides being a wonderful introduction to the subject matter, the best possible introduction to Tillich's own thinking. Wonderfully accessible, engaging and lively, this book is thoroughly readable. If only more of his lectures on other topics were available!

Brilliant and scholarly, but a bit dry. 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 22 people found this review helpful.

These lectures clearly reveal Paul Tillich as one of the greatest, most brilliant, theologians of the 20th century. The book summarizes and critiques the entire history of Christian thought (with special emphasis on German theologians). Tillich's appraisals of others are completely fair. His own insights that he shares along the way are those of a devout and brilliant liberal Christian. He summarizes his approach as follows: "Theology must see both sides, man's essential nature, wonderfully and symbolically expressed in the paradise story, and man's existential condition, under sin, guilt, and death."

I have only one reservation. This may well be Tillich's most accessible work, as one reviewer states. But that speaks more to the difficulty of Tillich's other works than to the ease of working through this treatise. It is brilliant, it is beautiful, but it is tough going. I had to reread many passages two or three times to understand them (and a few I simply had to give up on). The book is absolutely worth the effort, but for anyone looking for a somewhat simpler (but excellent) introduction to Christian thought, I would recommend Alister McCrath's "Christian Theology, an Introduction."

Editorial Review:

In this book, Tillich has accomplished the supremely difficult feat of creating a work at once brilliantly authoritative and comprehensive, while remaining clear and uncluttered by scholarly annotation and debate.

Systematic Theology, vol. 2: Existence and the Christ

Paul Tillich

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The 20th c. classic in Protestant liberal theology 5 out of 5 stars.
43 of 45 people found this review helpful.

Paul Tillich's ~Systematic Theology~ is one of the most important theological works of the 20th century, and the theological system par excellence of liberal Protestant Christianity. In his day, Tillich was held in high esteem not only among theologians, but by experts in many different fields for his incredible breadth of knowledge, his insight into culture, and his humanity.

'Liberal Protestantism' sought to reconcile the gospel and the Christian faith with contemporary cultural ideas, rather then set the two up against each other. Religion is, for Tillich, the best of culture. (An alternative view, for example, is that of Karl Barth, who saw the gospel as fundamentally a critique of culture - as the Word speaking from outside ~to~ the world, not within the world). So, for Tillich, there should be signs of God everywhere, not just in Christianity, and religion and culture and closely connected.

God, for Tillich, is not therefore the anthropomorphized God of the Old Testament, who has a personality and creates and destroys and judges in an almost arbitrary fashion. Instead, Tillich sees God as 'the ground of being'. God is the very fundament on which rests everything that is. God is the Abyss.

The problem with man, for Tillich, is his 'finitude'. Man's life is finite, his body makes him finite, his capacities are finite, yet he craves to transcend these, to be unlimited, to be God. This is impossible; rather one should accept one's finitude courageously. This is what Jesus did singularly and perfectly - he never sinned, because he always accepted the finite nature of his being; he faced death courageously. Tillich's christology is therefore a 'spirit christology' (Jesus was led by the spirit) rather than a 'logos christology' (Jesus was God incarnate, the Word made flesh).

The last important thing is that Tillich makes use of his famous 'theory of correlation'. This is how the 3 volumes of his ~Systematic Theology~ are set up. According to this theory, things in culture are correlated with the theology; theology provides the 'answers' to the 'questions' posed by culture. So his five sections (divided among the 3 volumes) are called: 'Reason and Revelation', 'Being and God', 'Existence and the Christ', 'Life and the Spirit', 'History and the Kingdom of God'.

Tillich's writing is for the most part easy enough to read for the layperson - just don't get bothered by particular tricky bits. I would recommend it to anyone interested in theology; it has influenced a generation of theologians.

Editorial Review:

In this volume, the second of his three-volume reinterpretation of Christian theology, Paul Tillich comes to grips with the central idea of his system—the doctrine of the Christ. Man's predicament is described as the state of "estrangement" from himself, from his world, and from the divine ground of his self and his world. This situation drives man to the quest for a new state of things, in which reconciliation and reunion conquer estrangement. This is the quest for the Christ.

Systematic Theology, vol. 2: Existence and the Christ

Paul Tillich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The 20th c. classic in Protestant liberal theology 5 out of 5 stars.
43 of 45 people found this review helpful.

Paul Tillich's ~Systematic Theology~ is one of the most important theological works of the 20th century, and the theological system par excellence of liberal Protestant Christianity. In his day, Tillich was held in high esteem not only among theologians, but by experts in many different fields for his incredible breadth of knowledge, his insight into culture, and his humanity.

'Liberal Protestantism' sought to reconcile the gospel and the Christian faith with contemporary cultural ideas, rather then set the two up against each other. Religion is, for Tillich, the best of culture. (An alternative view, for example, is that of Karl Barth, who saw the gospel as fundamentally a critique of culture - as the Word speaking from outside ~to~ the world, not within the world). So, for Tillich, there should be signs of God everywhere, not just in Christianity, and religion and culture and closely connected.

God, for Tillich, is not therefore the anthropomorphized God of the Old Testament, who has a personality and creates and destroys and judges in an almost arbitrary fashion. Instead, Tillich sees God as 'the ground of being'. God is the very fundament on which rests everything that is. God is the Abyss.

The problem with man, for Tillich, is his 'finitude'. Man's life is finite, his body makes him finite, his capacities are finite, yet he craves to transcend these, to be unlimited, to be God. This is impossible; rather one should accept one's finitude courageously. This is what Jesus did singularly and perfectly - he never sinned, because he always accepted the finite nature of his being; he faced death courageously. Tillich's christology is therefore a 'spirit christology' (Jesus was led by the spirit) rather than a 'logos christology' (Jesus was God incarnate, the Word made flesh).

The last important thing is that Tillich makes use of his famous 'theory of correlation'. This is how the 3 volumes of his ~Systematic Theology~ are set up. According to this theory, things in culture are correlated with the theology; theology provides the 'answers' to the 'questions' posed by culture. So his five sections (divided among the 3 volumes) are called: 'Reason and Revelation', 'Being and God', 'Existence and the Christ', 'Life and the Spirit', 'History and the Kingdom of God'.

Tillich's writing is for the most part easy enough to read for the layperson - just don't get bothered by particular tricky bits. I would recommend it to anyone interested in theology; it has influenced a generation of theologians.

Editorial Review:

In this volume, the second of his three-volume reinterpretation of Christian theology, Paul Tillich comes to grips with the central idea of his system—the doctrine of the Christ. Man's predicament is described as the state of "estrangement" from himself, from his world, and from the divine ground of his self and his world. This situation drives man to the quest for a new state of things, in which reconciliation and reunion conquer estrangement. This is the quest for the Christ.