Pastor Tillich: The Justification of the Doubter (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs)

Pastor Tillich: The Justification of the Doubter tells the story of Paul Tillich's early theological development from his student days until the end of the First World War, set against the backdrop of church politics in Wilhelmine Germany and with particular reference to his early sermons. The majority of scholarship understands Tillich primarily as a philosophical theologian. But before and during the First World War, Tillich was Pastor Tillich, studying to become a pastor, leading a Christian student group, working periodically as a pastor in Berlin churches, and preaching to soldiers. Arriving in Berlin after the war, Tillich pursued religious socialism and a theology of culture through the 1920s. But the theological basis of these programmes was what Tillich considered his main concern in 1919: the theology of doubt. Using a wealth of untranslated German sources largely unknown to English-language scholarship, Pastor Tillich presents the stations of Tillich's theological development of the notion of the justification of the doubter up to 1919. Distinguishing between Tillich's later autobiographical statements and the witness of archival sources, a significantly original, contextualised account of Tillich's early life in Germany emerges. From his days as the conservative son of a conservative Lutheran pastor to the battle-worn chaplain who could even talk about 'faith without God', Tillich underwent considerable change. The book should therefore speak to any interested in the history of modern theology, as an example of how biography and theology are intertwined. Cover 1 Pastor Tillich: The Justification of the Doubter 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgements 12 Notes on Translations and Orthography 14 1: Introduction 16 1. The justification of the doubter 16 2. Tillich scholarship 19 i. Tillich’s early biography 19 ii. Tillich’s early sermons 20 iii. Recent work on the early Tillich 22 3. Method 25 4. On the ambiguities of Tillich’s personal life 26 5. Chapter overview 28 2: Justification and Doubt (1919) 31 1. Introduction 31 2. Rechtfertigung und Zweifel in 1919 33 i. Part one: The doctrine of justification from the viewpoint of the paradox 34 ii. Part two: The justification of the doubter 36 a. Critique of all apologetics (general doctrine of certainty) 37 b. Critique of Karl Heim’s apologetics of the concrete absolute 39 c. Faith as affirmation of the absolute paradox 40 iii. Part three: The absolute paradox as principle of theology and culture 42 3. Conclusion 44 3: Defence, Doubt, and Gracelessness (1904–9) 46 1. Introduction 46 2. Tillich on Tillich: The autobiographical writings 47 i. Father and son 48 ii. Liberal theology 49 iii. Kähler and justification by faith 50 iv. Confessional controversy in Wingolf 51 v. The relation between theology and philosophy 51 3. Johannes Tillich and the Prussian church 53 4. Tillich from the archives 56 i. Father and son against liberal theology 57 ii. Great inner contradictions 59 iii. Historical criticism of the Bible 61 iv. Medicus and idealism 64 v. Sittlichkeit and moralism 66 vi. Kähler and Tillich 67 5. Concluding remarks 69 4: Overcoming Despair (Lichtenrade 1909) 71 1. Introduction 71 2. The first sermons in Lichtenrade 73 i. Absolute repentance 73 ii. Assurance of salvation 74 iii. Assurance of the truth 76 iv. Excursus: Severity and disability 77 3. The abandoned sermon 79 i. Theology of religions and the Volkskirche 79 ii. The blaspheming of the Spirit 80 4. The new sermon 82 i. The greatest work of the Spirit 83 ii. The reversal of pharisaic thinking 84 iii. God in Christ accepts the sinner and the doubter 85 5. June sermons in Lichtenrade 87 i. Grace in weakness 88 ii. Disability, inability, and grace 89 5: Schelling and History (1909–11) 90 1. Introduction 90 2. The turn to Schelling 92 i. Fritz Medicus 92 ii. Adolf Schlatter and Wilhelm Lütgert 93 iii. Overcoming Troeltsch: Preparatory theological work 96 3. The philosophical doctorate 97 i. Doubt and Schelling’s doctrine of God 98 ii. God the ironist 100 iii. Schelling’s religious anthropology 100 iv. Religion, revelation, and the sublation of doubt 101 4. Essays on Schelling and Fichte 104 i. Schelling, God, and the absolute 104 ii. Fichte and freedom 105 5. The theological licentiate 106 i. Against moralism 107 ii. Faith is no achievement 108 iii. The identity of sin and grace 109 iv. Publication politics 110 6. Certainty and the historical Jesus 111 i. Uncertainty concerning the historical Jesus 112 ii. Certainty, identity, and autonomy 112 iii. Adjusting Wilhelm Herrmann 113 7. Conclusion 115 6: The Prodigal Doubter (Nauen 1911–12) 119 1. Introduction 119 2. Certainty and the law-gospeldialectic 119 3. Orthodoxy and self-righteousness 123 4. Orthodoxy and heresy 125 5. Songs of the pious in godforsakenness 129 6. Interpreting the age of doubt 133 7. The protest of faith 136 8. Concluding comments 139 7: Convincing the Doubter (Moabit 1912–13) 141 1. Introduction 141 2. Church apologetics 145 i. The concept of apologetics 146 ii. Reaching the educated 147 iii. The limits of apologetics 149 iv. Apologetics in practice 150 v. Apologetics in trend 151 3. Tillich’s critique of Heim 152 4. Moabit sermons 156 i. Correlative sermons 156 ii. Saving the masses 158 iii. Reason, doubt, and assurance 161 iv. Christ and the doubter 163 a. Christ the image of God in the soul 164 b. Christ provident and intimate 165 5. Conclusion: Paradoxes of Christianity and thought 166 8: Doubt and System (1913–14) 168 1. Introduction 168 2. The shape of the systematics 170 i. Apologetics 170 ii. Dogmatics 172 iii. Ethics 174 3. Truth, the absolute, and the distress of reflection 175 i. Inescapable truth 175 ii. Intuition and God the absolute 177 iii. Reflection and its distress 178 4. The absolute paradox 180 i. The paradox as principle, synthesis, and redemption 181 ii. The abstract moment: Justification 184 iii. The concrete moment: Christ 185 iv. The absolute moment 188 5. Is the systematics an ‘intellectual work’? 189 i. The uncanny similarity of structure 189 ii. The distress of reflection 191 iii. Justification in the systematics 191 iv. Anti-synthesis 192 v. What happens to doubt? 193 6. Conclusion 195 9: Tillich at War (1914–18) 197 1. Introduction 197 2. Sermons for doubting soldiers 198 i. The undoubtable war 199 ii. Piety and justification 201 iii. Faith and suffering 204 iv. Friend of the doubter 208 3. Theological letters 1917–18 211 i. Nietzsche, truth, and godlessness 211 ii. Faith without God 212 iii. The absolute is an idol 213 iv. Intellectual and ethical works 214 v. Faith without objectification 215 vi. Hirsch’s submission 216 vii. Tillich’s autonomous immanence 217 viii. God as objectification of the immanence of the spirit 218 ix. God and meaning 220 x. Epilogue to the letters 221 4. Conclusion 222 10: Conclusion 227 1. Developing the justification of the doubter 227 i. The grace of God 227 ii. Faith and reason 228 iii. Rejecting an intellectual work 230 iv. Doubt as a kind of faith 232 v. Tillich’s theological journey 234 2. Epilogue: Doubt and the theology of culture 235 References 238 1. Abbreviations 238 2. The Writings of Paul Tillich 238 3. Other Primary Sources 240 4. Secondary Literature 242 Index 250 This book tells the story of Paul Tillich's early theological development from his student days until the end of the First World War, set against the backdrop of church politics in Wilhelmine Germany and with particular reference to his early sermons.