Abingdon Pillars of Theology is a series for the college and seminary classroom designed to help students grasp the basic and necessary facts, influence, and significance of major theologians. Written by major scholars, these books will outline the context, methodology, organizing principles, primary contributions, and major writings of people who have shaped theology as we know it today. "Tillich served as a theological pioneer, exploring boundaries and traversing creatively between the territories of philosophy and theology, between the faith and culture, between Christianity and Buddhism, between the academy and the public. He was a thinker who theorized about everything and who attempted to show what matters and why." from the book Explores Tillich's influence as a groundbreaking thinker who illuminated the boundaries between philosophy and theology Donald W. Musser is Senior Professor of Religious Studies and Hal S. Marchman Chair of Civic and Social Responsibility (Emeritus). Joseph L. Price is the Genevieve Schaul Connick Professor of Religious Studies at Whittier College, Whittier, California. Tillich By Joseph Price Abingdon Press Copyright © 2010 The United Methodist Publishing House All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-687-34344-7 Chapter One Life and Career James William McClendon once wrote that all theology is autobiography. That aphorism and its cognate—that all theology is contextual—surely apply to Paul Tillich's theology, which was decisively shaped by his life's personal and cultural contexts. A sketch of his life and the shape of his career illumine this intersection. Tillich was born into a Lutheran pastor's home on August 20, 1886, in Starzeddel, Germany (now Poland). Until 1933 he resided in Germany; in that year he immigrated to the United States, where he lived the remainder of his life in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. After he died on October 25, 1965, his ashes were interred at Paul Tillich Park in New Harmony, Indiana. Tillich studied at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Halle, and Breslau. Seminal influences on him were the theologian Martin Kähler, the idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the religious theorist Rudolf Otto, and the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger. Schelling was the topic of both of his dissertations, at Breslau in 1910 and at Halle in 1912. While at Halle, he became an army chaplain during World War I. His experiences with violence and death caused him psychological trauma, resulting in treatments and expressing itself in radical shifts of his point of view. When the war ended, for example, he received an appointment at the University of Berlin, where he became a social and political activist, sharply criticizing capitalism and embracing religious socialism. His marriage to Margarethe Wever (in 1914) ended in divorce in 1921. In 1924 he married Hannah Gottschow. Also in 1924 Tillich became a professor of theology at Marburg, where Rudolf Otto and Martin Heidegger were colleagues. In 1925 he moved to a position in Dresden, and in 1927 to the University of Leipzig. Then from 1929 to 1933 he served at the University of Frankfurt as professor of philosophy until the Nazis dismissed him from his position for his public criticism of the Hitler regime and his close relationship with Jewish intellectuals. With the support of Reinhold Niebuhr, in 1933, he left Germany for a position at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he taught until 1955. Thereafter, he became University Professor at Harvard University and, in 1962, the Nuveen Professor of Divinity at The University of Chicago until his death. A prolific writer and frequent lecturer, Tillich addressed public and academic audiences with such clarity that many of his works remain in print. Foremost is his Systematic Theology , published in three separate volumes in 1951, 1957, and 1963. Other notable works are The Courage to Be (1952), Love, Power, and Justice (1954), and The Dynamics of Faith (1957). Collected essays include The Protestant Era (1948), Theology of Culture (1959), What Is Religion? (1969), Political Expectation (1971), and The Thought of Paul Tillich (1985). A fruitful entryway into Tillich's intellectual world is through his sermons, which are collected in The Shaking of the Foundations (1948), The New Being (1955), and The Eternal Now (1963). Engaging autobiographical writings include On the Boundary (1966), My Search for Absolutes (1967), and My Travel Diary (1970). A selection of Tillich's writings can be accessed at www.religiononline.org. Click on "Tillich." At the conclusion of this volume, there is a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. By the mid-1950s Tillich had become the most notable and perhaps the most controversial theologian in America. In 1959 he appeared on the cover of Time , which featured him as America's "foremost Protestant thinker." In 1963 he was the plenary speake