Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 14:1 (Nov 1951)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 14:1 (Nov 51) p. 55

Reviews Of Books

Paul Tillich: Systematic Theology. Vol. I. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1951. xi, 300. $5.00.

This is the first of two volumes, which will be the fully worked out and enlarged presentation of the material that Professor Tillich has been offering at Union Seminary, New York, in his course in advanced systematic theology. It includes an extensive introduction and the first two sections of the total work: “Reason and Revelation” and “Being and God”.

The book can not be read on a quiet evening, nor can it correctly be approached piecemeal. It must be studied and understood as a whole. It is the result of many years of concentrated and systematic study, and it displays the author’s extensive and masterly grasp of the history of philosophy and theology. It is unfortunate that the written page can not fully transmit the power of Tillich’s lectures, which enthrall the students who dare to grapple with his course. Tillich is certainly one of the most brilliant of Protestant theologians, and his book has rightly been called one of the most important theological writings of our time.

Tillich is a representative of the dialectical theology (pp. 234, 235, 255). However, he prefers the term “neo-dialectical”, to distinguish his thought from that of Karl Barth, who he thinks is not dialectical enough. Besides being dialectical, Tillich is also a religious existentialist (p. 23). In his work one encounters such familiar existentialist themes as existential experience (p. 113), Angst (p. 191), the situation (p. 4), the claim that reality is beyond subject and object (pp. 9, 112), the idea of man’s estrangement from himself (p. 66), and the tragic character of existence (pp. 202 f., 218). There are thoughts similar to those of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jaspers. However, Tillich is by no means a follower of the nihilism of existentialists such as Heidegger or Sartre. Though he offers an existentialist analysis of the human predicament (p, 62), he tries to respond with theological answers to the questions it raises (p. 49). According to a principle of correlation (p. 60), the question of reason is answered in terms of revelation (pp. 94, 105), and the question of being is answered in terms of the doctrine of God (p. 211). The answer to the threat of meaninglessness, so powerful in our time, is found in the New Being in

WTJ 14:1 (Nov 51) p. 56

Christ (p. 49). Tillich is, furthermore, strongly influenced by Kant (pp. 18, 82), Nicolaus Cusanus and the docta ignorantia and coincidentia oppositorum (p. 81), by Schelling in his second period, by the mysticism of Böhme and Eckhart, and by the Neo-Friesian philosophy of Rudolph Otto (pp. 113, 215). One can also ...