Paul Tillichs Radical Redefinition of Faith:

A Call to Healing for the Modern World

Daniel Ellis

Modern Christian Thought

Professor Yeager
November 22, 2016

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Paul Tillich is widely known as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth
century. His work is truly unique in its ability to engage and synthesize conflicting ideas,
answering the most vital questions of the times. It is astoundingly inclusive, uniting the past with
the present, philosophy with religious thought, and tradition with modernity. Tillichs theology
radically redefines faith, adding new and relevant meaning to the religious experience in the
modern world.
Perhaps the best approach to building a foundation with which to comprehend Tillichs
thought is to understand his personal life. It is probable that there is no better mode of achieving
this understanding than by analyzing his life through the concept of the boundary. This concept
of holding elements of ones experiences in tension with each other is Tillichs own method of
reflecting on his past. In his autobiography, On The Boundary, Tillich writes, At almost every
point, I have had to stand between alternative possibilities of existence, to be completely at home
in neither and to take no definitive stand against either.1 The underpinning of Tillichs thought
grows out of his responses to the series of indefinite questions posed of him. The theologians
life, it would seem, constitutes a sort of dialectic in and of itself.
Tillichs life as a revolutionary theologian can likely be explained by the events of his early
years. He was born and brought up in the eastern German town of Schlnfliess, now part of
Poland. The town was surrounded by a medieval wall, which came to represent both a sort of
confinement and a longing for the infinite for Tillich.2 Perhaps most importantly, his father, a
conservative Lutheran minister, tried to keep tight control of his actions and thinking.3 He sought
out nature as his first escape from the forces opposing his individualism.4 Though his childhood
1 Brown, D. Mackenzie. Ultimate Concern, Tillich in Dialogue. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1970, 13.
2 Brown, 14. ; May, Rollo. Paulus, Reminiscences of a Friendship. New York: Harper and Row, 1973, 67.
3 Brown, 14.
4 Brown, 14.

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set him on a course to seek out his own ideas, Tillich also reflected that it nurtured in him a love
for religion. He wrote, This feeling (of belonging to the church) grew out of the experiences of
my early years- the Christian influence of a Protestant ministers home and the relatively
uninterrupted religious customs of a small east-German city at the close of the nineteenth
century.5
Tillich also cited the tensions between the cultures of eastern and western Germany as a
formative part of his life and thought.6 His mother was a native of the eastern city of
Brandenburg and his father was from the Rhineland, in the western part of the country.7 Tillich
wrote that the zest for life and theological mobility of the west asserted themselves against the
meditative melancholy and strong regard for traditions of the east. 8Though his mother died when
he was young, he believed the character of her world was kept alive in his constant struggle with
his fathers ideas. 9
This grapple between opposing systems of belief drew Tillichs mind to higher questioning with
irresistible momentum. He writes, Ever since the last years of my secondary education, I
wanted to be a philosopher. I used every free hour to read those philosophical books that came by
chance into my hands.10 The young theologian found a copy of Schweglers History of
Philosophy in a forgotten corner of a county preachers library and discovered Fichtes Theory of
Science on top a wagon load of books in a Berlin street.11 He later wrote that these books were
his introduction to the most difficult aspects of German philosophy and that discussions with his

5 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966, 59.
6 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 14.
7 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 14.
8 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 14.
9 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 15.
10 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 46.
11 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 46.

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father, an examiner in philosophy of students entering the ministry, allowed him to begin
university prepared to engage in a wide swath of conceptual discussions.12
During his years at several German universities Tillich came under the influence of the work of
Schelling, probably the most impactful philosophy in the formation of his thought. Schelling had
been all but forgotten by the academic community and Tillich stumbled upon his work, once
again by chance, in an offhand purchase at bookstore.13 Schellings ideas challenged Tillichs
concept of identity, and led to his later formation of a theology based on the interplay between
subject and object, absolute and relative. 14 His philosophy of nature also spoke deeply to
Tillichs roots in the German countryside, and facilitated his conception of Gods manifestation
through creative spirit.15 The theologian was so moved by Schellings work that he would later
do both of his dissertations for his doctorate and licentiate in theology on the philosopher.16
Tillich spent the majority of his life somewhere in the gap between teacher and student. In his
writing, the end of his graduate work and the beginning of World War One marked the end of
what he called his preparatory period.17 Though this period of transition marked the beginning
of what he considered his own engagement with the external world, he would never cease to see
himself as a student. Tillich would go on to write, I have always walked up to a desk or pulpit
with fear and trembling, but the contact with the audience gives me a pervasive sense of joy, the

12 Tillich, Paul. On the Boundary. 47.

13 Unhjem, Arne. Dynamics of Doubt. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, 11.
14 Scharlemann, Robert P. "Tillich on Schelling and the Principle of Identity." The Journal of Religion 56, no. 1
(1976): 105-112, 105.
15 Britannica Academic. Paul Tillich. http://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/72492. (accessed November
17, 2016).
16 Crockett, Clayton. "Depth and the Void Tillich and Zizek via Schelling." In Retrieving the Radical Tillich, His
Legacy and Contemporary Importance, by Russel Re Manning, 193-208. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015,
195.
17 Brown, 14.

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joy of creative communion, of giving and taking, even if the audience is not vocal.18 This new
phase of life would represent a synthesis between engagement of the ideological and concrete.
Tillichs service as a Lutheran cleric during World War One was perhaps the most challenging
and formative period of his life. The theologian later admitted that at the outset of the war he was
caught up in nationalism and enlisted in the military.19 The night of the battle of Champagne in
particular, during July of 1916, would stay with him for the remainder of his life.20 As a chaplain,
he witnessed the agony and death of hundreds, some of who were close friends. Devastated by
the bloodshed, he suffered two crippling nervous breakdowns.21 The war was a shattering
experience for Tillich; his up-close contact with violence on a massive scale left him questioning
his own idealism and his supposition of the goodness of the human soul.22
Tillich emerged from World War One with a new sense of direction in life. During the fighting at
Champagne he experienced what he called a personal kairos, a New Testament term meaning a
historical movement into which eternity erupts, creating a new and unique paradigm.23 For
Tillich, this meant an engagement of the world that transcended his earlier academic life. He
would retain his love for ideas, but going forward would use them to impact his surroundings. He
found this transcendence in religious socialism, a political attempt to redirect his defeated nation
in the wake of the war. After his acceptance of a prestigious teaching position at the University of
Berlin, Tillich began work on two of his earliest books, Principles of Religious Socialism and the
more widely known, The Socialist Decision.24
18 Kegley, Charles W., and Robert W. Bretall. The Theology of Paul Tillich. New York: Macmillian Co., 1961.
19 Unhjem, 18.
20 Brown, 14.
21 Olson, Roger E. The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction. Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2013, 374.
22 Brown, 14.
23 Britannica Academic.
24 Crossmann, Richard C. Paul Tillich: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Keyword Index of Primary and
Secondary Writings in English. Metuchen: The American Theological Library Association, 1983, 4. ; Olson, 347.

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Engaging the questions of religious socialism necessitated that Tillich develop some of his first
answers to the largest questions of the human condition. He began to believe that political
alignment stemmed from more than pragmatism; instead it was a product of a persons deeper
sense of meaning.25 In his time at Berlin and a few other German universities, Tillich grappled
with understanding the human situation, writing multiple books and over one hundred essays on
the topic.26 Perhaps the work most representative of the entire trend of his thought in this period
is The System of the Sciences. Though he later expressed ambivalence toward the work, he
acknowledged its importance in shaping his later theology, calling it a, first and rather
insufficient step.27 In essence, the book established Tillichs ideas about the relationship
between science and religion; he began to carve out a place for theology within intellectual
rationalism.28 Though often overlooked, these writings reveal the early stages of Tillichs
method of correlation, his use of questions to develop an answering theology.29
Eventually, Tillichs writing began to run against the grain of Germanys political situation and
his life was altered drastically. His book, The Socialist Decision particularly stood in opposition
to the ideas of the rising Nazi Party, and later would be burned publicly.30 In it, Tillich argued
that National Socialism, proposed by the Nazis, was based on a flawed revolutionary
romanticism, a system of ideas that promotes an extreme sense of nationalism at the expense of
human rights and economic equality.31 In response to these assertions, the Nazi Party declared
Tillich an enemy of the state and he was forced to flee his country.32
25 Baum, Gregory. "Paul Tillich on Socialism and Nationalism." Studies in World Christianity 2, no. 1 (1996): 97112.

26 Britannica Academic.
27 Carey, John J. Kairos and Logos. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984, 109.
28 Carey, 144.
29 Carey, 121-165.
30 Olson, 347.
31 Baum, 97-112.
32 Olson, 347.

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Though Tillich is often criticized for his decision to leave Germany rather than go underground,
it must be noted that his choice was not without thought. At the time, he was married with a child
and felt it irresponsible to stay in the country at the risk of his family.33 When Reinhold Niebuhr
secured a teaching position for him at Union Seminary, Tillich decided to take the job.34 He
suffered episodes of depression and intense anxiety within the two months leading up to the
move.35 Finally, at age forty-seven, he crossed the Atlantic to America possessing little
familiarity with the culture and virtually no knowledge of the English language.36
The following years were a period of transition both for the theologian and the world at large. As
World War Two broke out it was clear that the ethos of the time was changing in irrevocable
ways. Tillich, throughout his life, seems to have possessed the intuitive ability to read and
respond to shifts in the cultural attitude. He called the new feeling, sacred void, citing a
general sense of emptiness and anger.37 To better grasp the nature of this void, Tillich turned to
two models of thought, depth psychology, which attempts to understand the unconscious mind,
and existentialism.38
Tillich was drawn particularly to existentialism because of its raw honesty in describing the
times. The philosophy underscores freedom to create ones own life path, but also rests upon the
assumption that the universe is entirely without purpose.39 Tillich felt that this approach to
understanding the human experience was true to the times; it engaged realities many Christians
tried to avoid. He called existentialism the good luck of Christian theology, because it brought
33 Peterson, Daniel J. Tillich, A Brief Overview of the Life and Writings of Paul Tillich. Minneapolis: Lutheran
University Press, 2013, 34.
34 Brown, 15.
35 Peterson, 24.
36 Church, F. Forrester. The Essential Tillich. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, 265.
37 Peterson, 27.
38 Peterson, 27.
39 Peterson, 27.

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up ontological questions that begged for theological answers.40 By the early 1950s,
existentialism would become an integral element of Tillichs work.41
Tillichs theological project for the remainder of his career was beginning to take shape. He
would seek to interpret the Christian message to answer the most vital questions of the times.
The ability of tensions to bring about new understanding would begin to impact not only Tillichs
life, but also his work. The kairos that brought about his desire to engage the world through his
thought would finally come to fruition. He developed a new sense of the purpose of theology; it
was no longer merely a tool for understanding but a means for spiritual-psychological healing of
the world.42
The publication of The Courage to Be in 1952 marked the beginning of a wave of Tillichs most
influential writing.43 During the following ten years the theologian would produce dozens of
works including his three volume Systematic Theology, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the
Christian Message, and Dynamics of Faith, in which he posed a new definition of faith for the
modern world.44 His writing in this period sought not only to make faith compatible to the
modern situation, but also to repair theological problems that alienated intellectuals from the
religious realm. He reflected, There are thinking people who do not doubt, although I cannot
imagine how this is possible; but there are also many thinking people who do doubt and even
more of them who have doubted but do so no longer. They have simply rejected Christianity and
every other religion. This is the actual situation. Now who speaks for them?45 Tillich would take

40 Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology: Reason and Revelation, Being and God. 3 vols. Evanston: University of
Chicago Press, 1967, 2:27.
41 Peterson, 28.
42 Peterson, 29.
43 Peterson, 29.
44 Peterson, 29.
45 Brown, 190.

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on these issues and assert himself as a voice for the thinking person, earning the title apostle to
the intellectuals.46
Tillich began to realize the absolute necessity of an actualized God for modernity. This meant
that God must no longer dwell in the realm of the ideological or the undefined, but must be seen
as a transcendent function of existence itself. He came to understand the word God as
symbolic, referring to an expression of the human experience of revelation.47 Tillich often used
the term Unconditioned, by which he meant the meaning of being in its pure form,
unadulterated by the imposition of rigid modes of human comprehension.48 For him, God itself
was pre-cognitive, manifesting itself through human understanding but not actually existing
therein. In these ideas Tillich is largely indebted to Schelling, whose philosophy defined God as
potential that is born into existence purely through its own externalizing nature.49
God, in this new conception, was the salvation from the modern problem of estrangement. Tillich
thought of post World War Two society as having moved toward a struggle with existential
anxiety, a sense of the irreparable meaninglessness of life.50 To some degree, he thought of this
form of anxiety as necessary. People face threats to their own actualization of meaning daily, and
the anxious response is a natural driver for reaction against these threats. Where Tillich saw great
need was in the content of the reactions themselves. He conceptualized the modern struggle as a
tension between two parts of the human existence, being and non-being. Being, in his
writing, is the creative, actualizing essence of life and its meaning. Non-being is the necessary
limitation of being, and is an element of being itself but is constantly overcome by it. Tillich
writes, Being has non-being within itself as that which is eternally present and eternally
46 Peterson, 31.
47 O'Neill, Andrew. Tillich: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2008, 52.
48 O'Neill, 52.
49 O'Neill, 52.
50 Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.

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overcome in the process of the divine life. The ground of everything that is not a dead identity
without movement and becoming; it is living creatively. Creatively it affirms itself, eternally
conquering its own nonbeing. As such it is the pattern of the self-affirmation of every finite being
and the source of the courage to be.51 Through this framework, Tillich defined God itself as the
ground of being, that immovable element of existence within which everything in continuance
is rooted. The modern persons reaction to her own finitude, then, must seek to mend her
estrangement from being itself.
In proposing a new theological mode of response to existential estrangement, Tillich first needed
to radically redefine the concept of faith. In The Dynamics of Faith, he proposed that faith is a
persons ultimate concern, that which demands the total surrender and promises total
fulfillment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name.52 It is that
for which one is prepared to lay down all other concerns of her life in the hopes of ultimate
fulfillment, the actualization of the aim of the faith itself. Tillich conceived of faith as a
centered act which requires commitment of all elements of ones being, emotional and rational,
conscious and unconscious, and transcends each one individually.53
Faith, for Tillich, was not an inherently productive act. He wrote that the object of ones ultimate
concern could itself be ultimate or non-ultimate. It is important to clarify that, in Tillichs
thought, the only truly ultimate object of concern was being itself, that which was symbolized in
the term God. He called faith that was directed toward a non-ultimate object idolatrous
faith.54 He explained that the prevalence of this form of idolatrous faith was the result of a
historical misconstruction of the idea of holiness.55 To maintain societal function in the face of
51 Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. 34.
52 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1957, 1.
53 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 4.
54 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 12.
55 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 15.

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religious upheaval, historical people had redefined holiness as moral perfection and made it the
object of ultimate concern.56 Tillich believed it imperative to the condition of the modern world
that holinesss genuine meaning be rediscovered.57
The test of true faith, then, was the resolved tension between two of its elements. Tillich wrote
that true faith must overcome the difference between subjectivity and objectivity.58 When God is
thought of as the ultimate or the unconditioned, Tillich writes, The ultimate of the act of faith
and the ultimate meant by the act of faith are one and the same God never can be object
without at the same time being subject.59 The object of the ultimate concern must be of equal
gravity with the concern itself. Thus, God cannot be understood as a being subject to nonbeing, for existential estrangement is not solved through this conception of faith. Instead, God
must be thought of as being itself, the ground of existence from which all else arises.
The impact of Tillichs new concept of faith was tremendous. Perhaps the best external evidence
of this impact can be found in the unexpected success of a book called Honest to God, published
two years before Tillichs death and written by a relatively unknown Anglican bishop named
John A. T. Robinson. The book, which drew its most controversial elements from Tillichs work,
sold over 350,000 copies and sparked an international debate.60 The questions it raised included
the role of metaphysics in a secularized world, the modern rejection of the supernatural, the
confrontation between scientific and biblical thinking, and the demands placed on theology by
secularization.61 It is clear that his theology struck a chord with a much wider base of readers
than the theological community.62 Tillichs significance can also be seen in his effort to unite
56 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 15.
57 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 15.
58 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 11.
59 Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. 11.
60 Armbruster, Carl J. The Vision of Paul Tillich. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967, 304.
61 Robinson, John A. T. Honest to God. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963.
62 Armbruster, 306.

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previously opposing systems of thought. His work displays a rare inclusiveness that reaches out
to the intellectual as well as the deeply spiritual.63 He synthesized the nineteenth with the
twentieth century, essentialism with existentialism, modern personalism with classical ontology,
and tradition with modernity.64 Ultimately, he constructed a vision of faith that would reach a
group of people largely forgotten by religious traditionalism.
Tillichs work as a theologian can be seen as revolutionary. His ability to synthesize ideas
in tension with each other allowed him to make some of the most impactful contributions to
theology of the modern age. His redefinition of faith constitutes a sort of unlocking, allowing a
group once separated from the religious experience to embrace it fully. Through addressing the
most vital questions of human existence, Tillichs thought engages the world in a new way,
healing the wounds of a broken age.

Bibliography
Adams, James Luther. Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Culture, Science, and Religion. New York:
Harper and Row, 1965.
Armbruster, Carl J. The Vision of Paul Tillich. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967.
63 Armbruster, 306.
64 Armbruster, 307.

Ellis 13
Baum, Gregory. "Paul Tillich on Socialism and Nationalism." Studies in World Christianity 2, no.
1 (1996): 97-112.
Britannica Academic. Paul Tillich. http://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/72492.
(accessed November 17, 2016).
Brown, D. Mackenzie. Ultimate Concern, Tillich in Dialogue. New York: Harper Colophon
Books, 1970.
Carey, John J. Kairos and Logos. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984.
Church, F. Forrester. The Essential Tillich. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Crockett, Clayton. "Depth and the Void Tillich and Zizek via Schelling." In Retrieving the
Radical Tillich, His Legacy and Contemporary Importance, by Russel Re Manning, 193208. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.
Crossmann, Richard C. Paul Tillich: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Keyword Index of
Primary and Secondary Writings in English. Metuchen: The American Theological
Library Association, 1983.
Kegley, Charles W., and Robert W. Bretall. The Theology of Paul Tillich. New York: Macmillian
Co., 1961.
Martin, Bernard. The Existentialist Theology of Paul Tillich. New York: Bookman Associates,
1963.
May, Rollo. Paulus, Reminiscences of a Friendship. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.
Olson, Roger E. The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction.
Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013.
O'Neill, Andrew. Tillich: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2008.
Peterson, Daniel J. Tillich, A Brief Overview of the Life and Writings of Paul Tillich.
Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2013.
Robinson, John A. T. Honest to God. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963.
Scharlemann, Robert P. "Tillich on Schelling and the Principle of Identity." The Journal of
Religion 56, no. 1 (1976): 105-112.
Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1957.
. On the Boundary. New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966.

Ellis 14
. Systematic Theology: Reason and Revelation, Being and God. 3 vols. Evanston: University
of Chicago Press, 1967.
. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.
Unhjem, Arne. Dynamics of Doubt. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.