Module 12

Encountering Paul Tillich

Werner Schüßler on his path to Tillich and on Tillich's concept of God

This version comes from the archive and has not yet been editorially reviewed.

Working time

30 - 60 minutes

Material

Audio

Overview

The module brings your own biography and theology into contact with the life and work of Paul Tillich.

Competences

You are able to follow the path by which Werner Schüßler came to Tillich, and to say what part Tillich's concept of God plays in his own work.
You are able to describe how a history of reception comes about: that a body of work lives on not through its arguments alone, but through people who read it at a particular time and out of a particular interest.
You are able to relate your own engagement with Tillich to this testimony, and to give reasons for what interests you in it and what does not.

Learning section

Original recording · Audio

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Anyone working on Paul Tillich is working on someone who is dead. How a body of work lives on is therefore not decided by the work alone, but by those who take it up: by teachers, by accidents of one’s own biography, by the questions that happen to occupy an age. Reception is not an appendix to the matter itself; it is part of it.

Werner Schüßler wrote his doctorate on Tillich’s concept of God and has for decades been among those who represent and continue to discuss his thought in Germany. In this conversation with Swantje Luthe he describes how he came to Tillich, what held him to Tillich’s way of speaking about God, and how he assesses Tillich’s influence today. The recording was made on 19 September 2018; it can also be found in the archive under “Lectures from Tillich research”.

A testimony of this kind is not an introduction to Tillich’s theology and does not aim to be one. It shows something else: how a topic of study becomes a lifelong preoccupation, which parts of a body of work carry in its reception and which are left lying. Both are instructive — including what the conversation does not talk about.

The module therefore invites you to relate your own engagement with Tillich to this account. The final task reverses the direction: you are asked to tell your own story of encountering him.

A note on the tasks

Below you will find tasks for working through the material in more depth, together with guidance on how to approach them.

Select text to keep a passage.

Origin

Created by

Werner Schüßler

Version

Version 2018.

Rights

paultillich.de / NeoLecture

Tasks · 0 of 6 done

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Prompts for thinking along — no right answer, no assessment. Ticking a box hides the task.

Task 1
Listen to the conversation with Werner Schüßler once all the way through, without taking notes. Afterwards write down from memory what has stayed with you — and on a second listening compare that with what was actually said.
Task 2
Reconstruct the path Schüßler describes: how did he come across Tillich, what led him to write a dissertation on Tillich's concept of God, and what has changed in his view since then?
1. What part do chance, teachers and the circumstances of the time play in this story?
2. At which point does a topic of study turn into a long-term commitment?
Task 3
Schüßler speaks about Tillich's concept of God. Record how he sums it up, and test that summary against what you have read in the other modules about Tillich's way of speaking of God.
Task 4
Pay attention to how the conversation talks about reception — about what has remained of Tillich and what has not.
1. Which parts of the work count here as living, and which as settled?
2. Is it more the person or more the thinking that is remembered?
3. What might account for Tillich having been received differently in Germany than in the United States?
Task 5
A spoken testimony is a source of its own kind. Consider what this recording achieves that an essay would not — and, conversely, where its limits lie.
Task 6
Record a short statement of your own, two to three minutes: how did you encounter Tillich, what interests you in him, what remains alien to you? Listen to it afterwards and check whether you said what you meant to say.