Tillich, Paul Johannes

(1886–1965)

   Theologian.

   Tillich was the son of a Lutheran pastor and was born in Starzeddal, Germany. He was educated at the Universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Halle and Breslau and his doctorate was on the work of schelling. Subsequently he taught at the universities of Berlin, Marburg, Dresden, Leipzig and Frankfurt, but he was dismissed from his post in 1933 because of his opposition to Hitler’s National Socialism. He moved to the United States of America where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia, Harvard and Chicago. Influenced by the philosophy of heidegger and the psychology of jung, his writings have been highly influential on Protestant theology in the second half of the twentieth century. His most famous work was his Systematic Theology, in which he de- fined God as ‘Ground of Being’ and the object of ‘ultimate concern’. Jesus was the ‘New Being’ and his death on the cross made him ‘transparent’ to the ‘Ground of Being’.

   K. Hamilton, The System and the Gospel: A Critique of Paul Tillich (1963);

   C.W. Kegley and R.W. Bretall (eds), The Theology of Paul Tillich (1952);

   D. Ford, The Modern Theologians (1997).