Module 11

Tillich and German Idealism

Schelling, Fichte, Hegel — the philosophical roots of Tillich's theology

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

Working time

180 - 240 minutes

Material

Audio + Text

Overview

An introduction to the influence of German Idealism on Paul Tillich's theology.

Competences

You are able to place German Idealism in time and in substance, and to distinguish the positions of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel in outline.
You are able to explain why Schelling was the most important philosophical point of reference for Tillich — Tillich took two doctorates on him — and which figures of thought passed from there into his theology.
You are able to describe, on the basis of Christian Danz's lecture, what part philosophy plays in Tillich's design for a systematic theology, and to question that connection critically.

Learning section

Original recording · Audio

Christian Danz: German Idealism and Theology

6:04 · Audio track of the video recording, 2018

0:006:04

Paul Tillich was a theologian, but he came from philosophy. German Idealism is usually framed by the years between Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781) and Hegel’s death (1831) — barely half a century in which Fichte, Schelling and Hegel worked on the question of how thought and being, the finite and the infinite, freedom and necessity stand to one another. Tillich did not study this question historically and then set it aside. It passed into his theology.

This is clearest in the case of Schelling. Tillich took two doctorates on him: a philosophical dissertation in Breslau in 1910, and a theological licentiate in Halle in 1912 — both on Schelling’s philosophy of the history of religion. That someone should treat the same author twice, once as a philosopher and once as a theologian, is more than diligence. It is already the programme: in Schelling it could be shown that the boundary between the two disciplines is not a wall. Fichte’s thinking of freedom and Hegel’s concept of mediation come in as well, but Schelling remains the place where Tillich found his own basic concepts.

The inheritance can be recognised in the language. When Tillich speaks of “the unconditional”, of “the ground of being”, of the correlation between question and answer, he is working with figures of thought that come from this tradition — including where he reshapes them theologically and turns them against their origin. Without that background Tillich is easily misread: one takes for pious metaphor what is, in substance, philosophical work.

Christian Danz, one of the editors of Tillich scholarship in the German-speaking world, pursues this in a short lecture: “Paul Tillichs Denken im Licht des Deutschen Idealismus”. In it he asks about the role philosophy plays in Tillich’s design for a systematic theology. The recording can also be found in the archive under “Lectures from Tillich research”.

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

Christian Danz

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
Begin by getting an overview in time: German Idealism is usually dated between Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781) and Hegel's death (1831). Note in keywords which question connects these philosophies.
Task 2
Listen to Christian Danz's short lecture on “Paul Tillichs Denken im Licht des Deutschen Idealismus” [“Paul Tillich's thought in the light of German Idealism”] and secure the line of argument.
1. What role does Danz assign to philosophy in Tillich's systematic theology?
2. At which point does he distinguish between taking over idealist figures of thought and reshaping them?
3. Which concepts does he name as an inheritance from Idealism in Tillich?
Task 3
Tillich took two doctorates on Schelling — a philosophical one in Breslau in 1910, a theological one in Halle in 1912. Consider what this double work on a single author says about Tillich's own programme.
1. Why Schelling and not Hegel?
2. What does it mean when someone treats the same subject once as a philosopher and once as a theologian?
Task 4
Using a text by Tillich you already know — from the modules on his understanding of religion, say, or on religion and culture — examine where idealist figures of thought show through: the talk of the absolute or the unconditional, thinking in terms of opposition and mediation, the concept of the ground.
Task 5
Formulate the objection: if theology is bound so closely to one particular philosophy, does it not make itself dependent on that philosophy's fate? Assemble arguments for both sides.
Task 6
Finally, explain in no more than ten sentences, to someone with no philosophical training, why Tillich's theology is harder to understand without German Idealism. Take care to manage without technical terms.