Pastor Tillich

Pastor Tillich: The Justification of the Doubter tells the story of Paul Tillich's early theological development from his student days until the end of the First World War, set against the backdrop of church politics in Wilhelmine Germany and with particular reference to his early sermons. The majority of scholarship understands Tillich primarily as a philosophical theologian. But before and during the First World War, Tillich was Pastor Tillich, studying to become a pastor, leading a Christian student group, working periodically as a pastor in Berlin churches, and preaching to soldiers. Arriving in Berlin after the war, Tillich pursued religious socialism and a theology of culture through the 1920s. But the theological basis of these programmes was what Tillich considered his main concern in 1919: the theology of doubt. Using a wealth of untranslated German sources largely unknown to English-language scholarship, Pastor Tillich presents the stations of Tillich's theological development of the notion of the justification of the doubter up to 1919. Distinguishing between Tillich's later autobiographical statements and the witness of archival sources, a significantly original, contextualised account of Tillich's early life in Germany emerges. From his days as the conservative son of a conservative Lutheran pastor to the battle-worn chaplain who could even talk about 'faith without God', Tillich underwent considerable change. The book should therefore speak to any interested in the history of modern theology, as an example of how biography and theology are intertwined.

This text tells the story of Paul Tillich's early theological development from his student days until the end of the First World War, set against the backdrop of church politics in Wilhelmine Germany and with particular reference to his early sermons.

Paul Tillich, more than any other theologian of the twentieth century, maintained an energetic dialogue with psychology, and especially psychotherapy. This book explores what Tillich's theology has to offer psychologists and others working in the field of mental health, spiritual development, and pastoral counseling. Tillich's interaction with Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, Rollo May, and other famous psychologists became an important part of his thinking. Tillich frequently pushed psychologists to see the underlying philosophical assumptions of their work. This investigation of the underpinnings of psychotherapy then encouraged psychotherapists to become more aware of the ultimate questions about meaning, purpose, and ethics that informed their work. Perhaps the greatest contribution this book offers is a careful narrative and analysis of the meetings of the New York Psychology Group, which involved such figures as Tillich, Fromm, May, Rogers, Seward Hiltner, Ruth Benedict, and David Roberts, to name just a few. This important group, which met from 1941 to 1945, dealt with issues that are very much with us today, such as whether faith can be psychologically explained, the meaning of transcendence, the relationship between psychotherapy and ethics, the appropriateness of self-love, and whether human love is parallel with Divine love.

This collection moves from COVID to Kairos, engaged with the legacy of Paul Tillich. Liminal spaces reflect ambiguous transitional moments in human consciousness and culture. In early 2020, cultures and states turned inward for protection, exacerbating intertwined health, political, racial justice, and economic crises. Tillich would have understood these overlapping challenges to be heralding a kairotic moment, reflecting simultaneous crises and opportunities. The collected essays reflect on the intersections of COVID and Kairos. Authors engage numerous ethical challenges precipitated by the current Kairos moment, thinking through and with Tillich. Other essays offer reflections on our cultural moment, engaging topics from public health to video games to hate speech. Reflecting on the cultural moment, this collection offers unique insight into the Tillichian legacy for the present and future.

Meditations on key passages from the Bible by the leading Protestant theologian of the 20th century.

"Why, Tillich asks, has the Christian message become seemingly irrelevant to contemporary society? Is the Gospel able to give answers to the questions raised by the existentialist analysis of the human predicament? Yes, he answers - but in order to do so Christian teaching and preaching need to undergo dramatic renewal, the root of which requires an affirmation of love as central to Christian identity. Further, we need to recognize that this task is not limited to preachers and theologians; all of us together are responsible for the irrelevance or the relevance of the Gospel in our time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved