Comparative Theology

Comparative theology proceeds differently from the classical theology of religions. It does not set up, from the outside, a scheme of order into which the religions of the world can be sorted; it works concretely on another tradition — on a text, a concept, a practice. One’s own standpoint is not given up in the process but carried along, and altered in the course of the work. Whoever works comparatively returns from the other tradition with a new question for their own.

Paul Tillich is attractive for this procedure for a particular reason. His account of God as the “ground of being” — not as one being among others, not as a highest entity in the inventory of the world — releases the question of God from the notion of a personal counterpart. This yields a category that remains addressable even where a tradition does not work with a personal God at all. Lawrence A. Whitney uses it in exactly this way in his research on Confucianism: as an approach that opens a conversation without declaring the Confucian tradition in advance to be a deficient form of religion.

That Tillich engages with this field at all belongs to his late work. The journey to Japan in 1960, the encounter with Zen Buddhism and Shinto, visibly moved him; the lectures “Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions” of 1963 are its fruit. Tillich himself later said that he would write his systematic theology anew if he were starting again — in conversation with the religions of the world.

The limits of this approach belong to the matter itself. The “ground of being” is a Christian-philosophical category with a prehistory in Schelling and in Western ontology. Whoever declares it to be the common plane on which all religions meet has already laid the floor of the conversation with material of their own. Whether that is a legitimate beginning or a subtle form of appropriation cannot be decided in the abstract — only in concrete cases, of the kind this module presents.

The sections of the conversation

The conversation can be found in the listening area under Tillich in interreligious conversation — nine sections, each playable on its own.

1. Introduction (0:20)
2. Encounters with Tillich (1:25)
3. Tillich in a nutshell (1:21)
4. Tillich as mediator between the religions (1:48)
5. What is a religion? (0:48)
6. Confucianism (1:09)
7. Identity and tradition in Confucianism (2:08)
8. Tillich as partner for different religions (0:49)
9. Bonus: The future of the Paul Tillich Society (1:56)

Lawrence A. Whitney describes his first contact with Paul Tillich and why Tillich is an ideal partner and mediator in conversation with other religions. Whitney’s research is on Confucianism, and he uses Tillich’s reflections on God as the ground of being as a way in.

Ilona Nord interviews Lawrence A. Whitney, 22 November 2019 in San Diego.