On the boundary

pp. 147-169

in: George Pattison, Anxious angels, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Although Paul Tillich (1886–1965) was of the same generation as Gogarten, Barth and Bultmann, his life was significantly different from theirs in that, leaving Germany and the German-speaking world in 1933, he experienced something like an intellectual reincarnation in the New World of the United States, where, although his theology retained many of its pre-emigration features, the overall effect was significantly transformed. He was also unique amongst religious existentialists in the extent to which he held on to the nineteenth-century ambition to present his theology in and as a systematic whole. Furthermore, whereas Bultmann (and, despite the contemporary resonances of The Letter to the Romans, Barth) remained very much a theologians' theologian, addressing issues that were primarily (and often solely) of concern to theologians working within and for the Church, Tillich was from the very beginning of his career concerned to contextualize theological questions in relation to the social, political, cultural and intellectual situation of the day. One of the most significant figures in twentieth century theology to pay serious attention to the visual arts and, in doing so, laying the foundations for the current expansion of that field in theological study, he simultaneously played a key role in the dialogue between Christianity and Marxism, anticipating many of the themes of liberation theology in his writings from the 1920s and early 1930s.