Module 10

Tillich and Judaism

Tillich's statements on antisemitism and on the Christian–Jewish relationship

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

Working time

90 - 120 minutes

Material

Audio

Overview

The module works on Tillich's lecture series “Die Judenfrage” [“The Jewish Question”].

Competences

You are able to locate Tillich's statements on Judaism historically and biographically — his early public opposition to antisemitism as well as the lecture series “Die Judenfrage — ein christliches und ein deutsches Problem” [“The Jewish Question — a Christian and a German Problem”] of 1952/53.
You are able to give the main lines of Tillich's argument against antisemitism, and to explain why he treats it not merely as a political problem but as a theological problem of Christianity itself.
You are able to examine critically where Tillich's language and conceptual vocabulary remain bound to the thinking of his time, and to support your judgement from the text.

Learning section

Original recording · Audio

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Paul Tillich was among the few German theologians who opposed antisemitism early and in public. It cost him his post: in 1933 he was one of the first professors removed from teaching in Frankfurt, and he left for the United States. The question of how Christianity stands to Judaism did not let go of him afterwards — for him it is not a marginal question of comparative religion but a question put to Christianity itself.

He addressed it at greatest length in the lecture series “Die Judenfrage — ein christliches und ein deutsches Problem” [“The Jewish Question — a Christian and a German Problem”], which he gave in Berlin in 1952/53. The title already contains the argument: for Tillich, antisemitism is not a problem that Jews have, but one that Christians and Germans have. Accordingly he looks for its roots not in the politics of the years 1933 to 1945 alone, but in a long Christian prehistory — in the doctrine of disinheritance, in the image of a rejected people, in a theology that treats Judaism as superseded.

At the same time, an honest reading has to note that Tillich’s language does not everywhere stand above its time. The very phrase “Judenfrage” is a formulation that originates with the perpetrators, and he adopts it. In individual passages he argues with attributions that today count as part of the very problem he sets out to fight. This does not devalue the text, but it does forbid quoting it unexamined as a model. Whoever reads it reads it twice over: as an early act of contradiction, and as a document of its time.

For this the module provides a podcast covering the historical and biographical background. The tasks lead from placing the text, through opening up the argument, to a critical examination of its language — and end with the question of what in this argument still holds today.

A note on the tasks

Below you will find recommendations for working through the material, together with the tasks themselves.

Select text to keep a passage.

Origin

Created by

Jan Christian Pinsch, Paderborn University, in cooperation with the Chair of Protestant Theology II at the University of Würzburg.

Version

Version 2018.

Rights

paultillich.de / NeoLecture

Image credit

Group photograph of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education, Keuka College. Hamilton, Penn Yan, New York (Fotografenvermerk auf der Aufnahme). Family collection of Ted Farris, provided for this project, 7. September 1938. By express permission of Ted Farris. The photographer's credit “Photo by Hamilton — Penn Yan, N.Y.” appears on the print.

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 podcast for this module and record the situation in which Tillich gave his lecture series “Die Judenfrage — ein christliches und ein deutsches Problem” in 1952/53: where does he stand at that point, whom is he addressing, how long is the Shoah past?
1. What part does Tillich's own emigration in 1933 play in his position?
2. To whom is the charge addressed — to politics, to the church, to both?
Task 2
The title speaks of a “Christian” and a “German” problem. Clarify what this doubling achieves, and state where, according to Tillich, the specifically Christian share in antisemitism lies.
Task 3
Look at the photograph of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education (Keuka College, 1938) that opens this module, and place it: which milieu does it show, and what position did Tillich hold within it in 1938 — five years after his dismissal from Frankfurt?
Task 4
Work through the language of the text critically. Tillich argues against antisemitism and at the same time remains caught, in part of his vocabulary, in the thinking of his time — the very phrase “Judenfrage” [“Jewish question”] is a formulation that comes from the perpetrators.
1. Mark formulations that strike you as problematic today.
2. Distinguish: where is this a choice of words conditioned by its time, and where is it an error in the thought itself?
3. What follows from your findings for the way the text should be handled in teaching or in a congregation?
Task 5
Put together a small selection: three to five quotations from the material with which you would present the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in Tillich. Justify both the order and the selection — including what you deliberately leave out.
Task 6
Write about a page in response to the question of whether, and how, Tillich's argument can still be used today. Include explicitly those passages you marked earlier as problematic.