Paul Tillich Theologian of Culture

Paul Tillich:Theologian of Culture provides an accessible account of the nature and development of Tillich’s thought. Written by a leading scholar and biographer of Tillich, this book presents a new interpretation of Tillich as first and foremost a theologian of culture. Concerned with Tillich’s overall project as a systematic whole, this book reconstructs Tillich as critical excavator of the religious substance within all cultural forms, including his own religious tradition, Protestant Christianity. Engaging contemporary research and newly published primary texts, this book presents and defends Tillich as a truly great theologian of his time, whose thought resonates today as a powerful challenge to engrained theological orthodoxies. The book begins by giving an account of the philosophical and theological foundations of Tillich’s approach, in particular his engagement with Schelling and the theology of crisis of the early twentieth century. Russell Re Manning then turns to two neglected yet crucial aspects of Tillich’s system: his philosophy of science and his interpretation of history. Out of these elements emerge Tillich’s distinctive position and the conceptual tools of his theology of culture. The book shows how Tillich developed these ideas in dialogue with the prominent philosophical and theological tendencies of his day, including the idealism-renaissance of the early twentieth century, phenomenology, existentialism, and dialectical theology. Like all Great Theologians, Tillich’s thought defies easy categorisation and stands in creative tension with the intellectual currents of his time. With Tillich, the book moves through the theology of culture in the areas of science, art, and metaphysics; the areas of politics and ethics; and finally the areas of explicit religion both outside and inside the churches. It concludes with an evaluation of Tillich’s radical orthodoxy and of his legacy for contemporary theology.

Russell Re Manning, is the Lord Gifford Fellow in Natural Theology at the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and holds a Visiting Fellowship at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. He is the past-President of the North American Paul Tillich Society (2010-11) and Co-Chair of the American Academy of Religion group Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture . He has published and presented widely on Tillich. In November 2011, he gave the Fall 2011 Paul Tillich Memorial Lecture at Harvard University. Select publications on Tillich include, Theology at the End of Culture. Paul Tillich’s Theology of Culture and Art (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2005), The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Radical Tillich: Paul Tillich and Radical Theologies (ed.) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), ’A Kind of Metaphysical Dizziness. Tillich’s Theology of Culture and the Encounter with non-art ’ in ed. Christian Danz, Paul Tillichs Theologie der Kultur. Aspekte-Probleme-Perspektiven (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), ’Paul Tillich’ in The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought, eds. Chad Meister and James Beilby (London: Routledge, 2013), ’Tillich’ in Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, gen. ed. Karla Pollman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and ’Tillich’s (Re)Turns’ in Religion Compass (2013). Other publications include The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (OUP, 2013), New Varieties of Natural Theology (OUP, 2013), and Philosophy of Religion. The Complete Introduction (Hodder & Stoughton, 2013).