The Concept of Correlation : Paul Tillich and the Possibility of a Mediating Theology

## THE LEGACY OF PAUL TILLICH AND THE CONCEPT OF CORRELATION It is no doubt still too soon to assess with confidence what, if anything, Paul Tillich contributed of lasting significance to the history of christian thought. His influence in Great Britain has always been marginal, despite the efforts of a number of individual scholars to win for him a hearing. Tillich emigrated from Germany at a time when his call for a new 'cultural theology' seemed singularly irrelevant to the new situation faced by the christian churches there. And, indeed, the history of German religious thought after 1933 can be traced without significant reference to Tillich until his 'rediscovery' well after the war. 1 As his thought had been popularised in Great Britain largely through J. A. T. Robinson's Honest to God, it was similarly popularised -if somewhat less sensationally received! -in Germany through Die Sache mit Gott by Heinz Zahrnt, who presented Tillich's theology of correlation as a way out of the Barth-Bultmann impasse in German theology. In addition, it might be plausibly suggested that Dorothee Sölle's tracing the roots of 'political theology' to Tillich's early religious socialist writings has been a significant factor in the increased interest in his thought among the current generation of German students. 2 1 It is perhaps not insignificant that nothing by Paul Tillich was published in Germany between 1935 and 1946. His major, post-emigration writings began being translated into German from about 1950. Throughout the war, however, Tillich regularly broadcast 'an meine deutsche Freunde' on the Voice of America. For a recent collection of those broadcasts, edited and introduced by Karin Schäfer-Kretzler, see EN. III. Concerning Tillich's being 'rediscovered' in

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Foreword Abbreviations I. A Dilemma in Modern Theology 1. Introduction: The Legacy of Paul Tillich and the Concept of Correlation 2. The Dilemma and the Concept of Correlation II. Religion and Culture 3. Religion and the Concept of Correlation 4. Culture and the Concept of Correlation III. Two Models of a Correlative Relation 5. Questioning, Answering and the Concept of Correlation 6. Form, Content and the Concept of Correlation Appendices (1) Paul Tillich: Systematische Theologie (1913) (2) Paul Tiilich: Die Gestalt der religiösen Erkenntnis (1927-1928) Bibliography Index of Names