Learning modules
Every module can be used on its own; none builds on another. Working times are shown on a shared scale up to 240 minutes, so you can see at a glance what fits into one session.
All modules · ordered by theme
This module offers an introduction to Paul Tillich’s understanding of religion. To this end, a pop-cultural approach is chosen that enables students to develop their own definitions of religion, theology and God independently of Tillich.
In his text “Religion und Kultur” [“Religion and Culture”], Paul Tillich sets out a reciprocal relationship between the two. This relationship can be opened up against the background of his definitions of religion and of culture, and with the help of his account of a “contemporary culture” — and it can be carried over into the world we live in today. The module was created by Marlene Rudolf, a student at the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd, as part of a bachelor’s thesis in Protestant theology. Because of its length it has been divided into two parts; this is the first.
In his text “Religion und Kultur” [“Religion and Culture”], Paul Tillich sets out a reciprocal relationship between the two. This relationship can be opened up against the background of his definitions of religion and of culture, and with the help of his account of a “contemporary culture” — and it can be carried over into the world we live in today. The module was created by Marlene Rudolf, a student at the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd, as part of a bachelor’s thesis in Protestant theology. Because of its length it has been divided into two parts; this is the second.
In contrast to contemporary Protestant theology, Paul Tillich had already taken an interest in the "living" Judaism of his time in the 1920s. After emigrating to the USA in 1933 following Hitler's rise to power, he repeatedly commented on Nazi anti-Semitism, particularly after the Reichspogromnacht in 1938.
Paul Tillich repeatedly commented on anti-Semitism during the Nazi era – with a clarity that was still lacking in the first church confessions of guilt after 1945. With his lectures on the “Jewish question” in 1953, he did important groundwork for the necessary readjustment of the Christian-Jewish relationship.
This module offers an introduction to Paul Tillich's understanding of religion, based on a Deutschlandfunk radio interview with Matthias Kroeger.
The module works through the course of Paul Tillich's life. It also helps to place his publications in their biographical and historical context.
The boundary is the truly fruitful place of knowledge — with this sentence Tillich opens an autobiographical reflection of 1936 that is not a life story but a walk along boundaries: between theology and philosophy, church and society, home and foreign land. Written three years after his forced emigration, and to be tested on exactly that: how far does a reading carry that turns loss into a figure of thought?
The module works on Tillich's sermon “What Is Truth?” alongside “The Depth of Existence”.
Tillich was a theologian, but he came from philosophy. He took two doctorates on Schelling, and German idealism remains the ground his concepts stand on — "ground of being" cannot be understood without it. Christian Danz shows what Tillich takes over and where he breaks away.
To work on Tillich is to work on someone who is dead. Whether a body of work lives on is decided not by the work alone but by those who read it. This module brings your own biography into contact with his — and asks what of it holds.
This module deals with comparative theology: how Tillich's understanding of God as the “ground of being” can help towards understanding other religions and towards building a bridge to them.
This module works closely on the book “Love, Power and Justice”. Verna Ehret gives an insight into her own engagement with Tillich's work and into the way the US government dealt with the Seneca Nation in the region around Pittsburgh. Tillich's remarks on justice connect particularly well with present-day questions about racism.
Twelve images of God are on offer — the rewarder, the watchman, the plumber, the Supreme Being. You accept them or reject them, and in doing so you notice that rejecting comes more easily than saying what you would put in their place. That is exactly where Tillich's sentence begins: God does not exist. Not as a denial, but as an objection to a God who would be one thing among other things.
In 1928 Tillich gave a lecture in Dresden on the technical city. He sees in it a victory over the uncanny — and recognises at the same time that this very victory brings forth a new threat: the more powerful technical structures become, the more they take on a life of their own.