Paul Tillich (1886–1965) was a German-American Protestant theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher, widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. He is best known for his efforts to reconcile traditional Christian faith with modern secular culture and existentialist thought. Tillich’s discussions of God and faith helped bridge the gap between classical Christianity and contemporary society. Several of his books – notably The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957) – reached a broad audience beyond the usual academic and religious circles. His three-volume Systematic Theology (1951–63) is considered his magnum opus, wherein he outlined a comprehensive theology engaging with philosophy, culture, and the human condition.

Early Life and Education

Paul Tillich
	Paul Tillich, c. 1959
Tradition	Christian existentialism, Systematic theology
Influenced by	Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Schelling, Augustine of Hippo
Lifespan	1886–1965
Notable ideas	Method of correlation; God as the Ground of Being; The Courage to Be
Occupation	Theologian, philosopher
Influenced	John Shelby Spong, Harvey Cox, Richard Kearney, Peter Rollins
Wikidata	Q60104

Paul Johannes Tillich was born on August 20, 1886, in Starzeddel, Brandenburg, Germany (in present-day Poland), into a devout Lutheran family. His father was a conservative Lutheran pastor, and Tillich’s upbringing in a small town church environment instilled in him a deep attachment to the Christian tradition. As a teenager, Tillich moved with his family to Berlin in 1900, where he encountered the intellectual freedom of a modern metropolis and a “humanistic” education that emphasized critical reasoning. This contrast – between his strict religious home and the liberal thought of his schooling – formed a tension that would influence Tillich’s later work. He became preoccupied with the question of how to combine personal freedom with religious meaning, seeking a synthesis between authoritative faith and individual autonomy.

Education

Tillich pursued higher education in theology and philosophy at several German universities. He studied at the University of Berlin, the University of Tübingen, and earned a doctorate in philosophy at Halle, followed by a doctorate in theology at Halle in 1912. He was ordained as a Lutheran minister that same year. During his student years, Tillich was especially influenced by the German Romantic philosopher F.W.J. Schelling, whose ideas about the “philosophy of nature” provided a framework for seeing nature as a dynamic manifestation of God’s spirit. He also absorbed ideas from theologian Martin Kähler, particularly the Protestant Christian doctrine of justification by faith as taught by St. Paul and Martin Luther. Early on, Tillich began wrestling with the relationship between authority and freedom in religion: he analyzed the conflict between heteronomy (imposition of external religious rules) and autonomy (individual freedom), and imagined their resolution in what he called “theonomy,” a state where divine principles guide society without coercing it. This theme of uniting tradition with freedom under God’s ultimate norm became a lifelong motif in his thought.

World War I

Tillich’s life, like that of many in his generation, was profoundly shaped by World War I. He served as a chaplain in the German army during the war (1914–1918). The horrors and disillusionment he witnessed in the trenches had a deep impact on him. He later wrote that the experience made him “purely an eschatologist,” as if living through the end of the world he had known. The collapse of old societal orders and certainties during the war led Tillich to question 19th-century optimism about human progress. After the war, he concluded that European civilization was in crisis and ripe for spiritual and social renewal. He became involved in the Religious Socialist movement, seeing the postwar turmoil as a potential kairos – a critical, opportune moment in history – for transformative change. In 1919, Tillich published an influential essay, “On the Idea of a Theology of Culture,” which laid out principles for interpreting cultural works (art, politics, psychology, etc.) in religious terms. This theology of culture attempted to find the “depth dimension” of the secular world – the spiritual substance beneath cultural forms – thereby affirming that even secular art and philosophy could reveal glimpses of the ultimate or divine.

Career in Germany and Exile to America

After World War I, Tillich embarked on an academic career in the Weimar Republic. He taught theology and philosophy at several German universities, including Berlin, Marburg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. During the 1920s he published numerous essays exploring religion, art, society, and their interrelations. A notable work from this period was Das System der Wissenschaften (1923), an ambitious attempt to systematically classify the human sciences and their methods. Tillich was also active in public intellectual life, participating in discussion circles that sought a new understanding of the human situation in the postwar world.

By the early 1930s, Tillich had become an outspoken critic of totalitarian ideologies. In 1933, he published Die sozialistische Entscheidung (The Socialist Decision), which advocated a spiritually grounded form of socialism and criticized both unregulated capitalism and the rising National Socialism. When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Tillich’s political and religious views immediately made him a target. He was one of the first German professors to be dismissed by the Nazi authorities, despite not being Jewish, due to his opposition to Nazism and advocacy of religious socialism. Facing censorship and danger, Tillich left Germany in October 1933.

Emigration to the U.S.: With the help of prominent American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Tillich emigrated to the United States later in 1933. He joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1933–1934, beginning a new phase of his career in America. Teaching in English was initially a challenge, but Tillich soon gained respect as a profound, if sometimes abstruse, teacher and preacher. He remained at Union Seminary for over two decades, until 1955. During his years in New York, he also became a U.S. citizen (in 1940) and published works that increased his reputation. Many of his sermons from this era, collected in books like The Shaking of the Foundations (1948) and The New Being (1955), show him applying biblical ideas to modern existential struggles. Listeners found these sermons a helpful entry into Tillich’s thought, as he addressed contemporary anxieties in a vivid, accessible way.

In 1955, Tillich moved to Harvard University, where he was appointed University Professor, one of the highest honors for a scholar (allowing him to teach across disciplines). He continued to write and lecture extensively. In 1962, at age 75, he accepted an invitation to become the Nuveen Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago, partly to engage more directly in interreligious dialogue during his final years. Tillich remained active in teaching and writing until his death. He delivered his last public lecture in Chicago in 1965, fittingly on the topic of the significance of the history of religions for systematic theology – reflecting his late interest in the encounter between Christianity and other faiths. Paul Tillich died on October 22, 1965, in Chicago at the age of 79.

(Table 1: Timeline of Paul Tillich’s life – from his birth and education in Germany, through his World War I service and academic career, to his emigration and influential positions in the United States.) //Potential table listing key dates and milestones, e.g., 1886: Born in Germany; 1912: Ordained; 1914–18: WWI chaplain; 1919: “Theology of Culture” essay; 1933: Dismissed by Nazis, emigrates to U.S.; 1933–55: Professor at Union Seminary; 1952: publishes The Courage to Be; 1955–62: Professor at Harvard; 1957: publishes Dynamics of Faith; 1962–65: Professor at U. of Chicago; 1965: Dies in Chicago.//

Major Ideas and Theological Contributions

Faith as “Ultimate Concern”

A cornerstone of Tillich’s theology is his definition of faith. In his view, faith is not merely assent to doctrines or a feeling of piety, but “the state of being ultimately concerned.” That is, to have faith is to be grasped by an ultimate concern – something that demands one’s complete commitment and promises ultimate fulfillment. This concept allowed Tillich to talk about faith in both religious and secular contexts. Whatever one values above all else functions as an ultimate concern; for religious faith, the proper object of ultimate concern is God. Tillich warned that if people make finite things (like success, nation, or even religious institutions) into their ultimate concern, they fall into idolatry, elevating something less than ultimate into the place of the ultimate. In Dynamics of Faith (1957), he elaborated on this idea, explaining how genuine faith centers the whole personality on the ultimate object of devotion. By defining faith in this way, Tillich created a framework to discuss religion in relation to culture: even secular movements or personal philosophies can be analyzed by what “ultimate concern” they express. This was part of Tillich’s broader effort to make Christian theology conversant with modern people’s existential questions.

“God Above God”: God as the Ground of Being

Perhaps Tillich’s most famous – and to some, controversial – idea is his conception of God. Tillich argued that God should not be understood as a particular being or entity within the universe, nor even a person-like supreme being, but rather as the ground of Being-itself. In other words, God is the infinite foundation or “depth” of existence on which all beings depend, the power of being in which everything has its being. In Systematic Theology and other writings, Tillich even stated paradoxically, “God does not exist.” By this he meant that God does not “exist” in the same way that finite objects or people exist – instead, God “is Being-itself beyond essence and existence”. To argue that God exists as one being among others would, in Tillich’s view, actually diminish God. This radical phrasing led some critics to misunderstand him as atheist, but Tillich was trying to preserve the absolute transcendence and mystery of God. He often referred to God metaphorically as the “Ground of Being” or “the Ultimate Reality.” This approach allowed Tillich to converse with philosophers and scientists who had difficulty with traditional theistic language: he shifted the discussion from a supernatural person-like deity to the idea of an ultimate depth or power underlying all existence. It also re-framed religious devotion as concern with this ultimate ground of being, rather than belief in a supernatural intervening figure – a view some found illuminating, and others found too abstract.

The Method of Correlation: Connecting Questions and Answers

Tillich saw theology as an active dialogue between eternal religious truths and contemporary human experience. He developed what he called the “method of correlation,” a hallmark of his systematic theology. This method involves first understanding the existential questions that arise from the human situation, and then showing how Christian symbols and doctrines provide answers to those very questions. For example, humans naturally ask ontological questions like “What is the meaning of existence?” or “Why do we experience guilt and suffering?” Tillich would correlate these with theological answers – such as God being the answer to the question of the meaning of being, or the concept of New Being in Christ as the answer to the problem of existential estrangement. In the five-part structure of his Systematic Theology, Tillich analyzed different dimensions of the human predicament (being, existence, meaning, etc.) and then responded to each with a reinterpretation of Christian doctrines (God, humanity, Christ, salvation, etc.) that could speak to those dimensions. This apologetic approach was “interdisciplinary” – drawing on philosophy, psychology, art, and science to formulate the questions – and then offering theological answers grounded in biblical and historical Christian insights. Tillich’s method of correlation made theology a conversation: secular culture provided the questions, and religion provided the answers in a mutually illuminating way. This was Tillich’s strategy to keep Christianity relevant: rather than simply dictating doctrines, theology had to actively engage with the anxieties and doubts of modern people.

Courage and Existential Anxiety

Tillich is often classified as a Christian existentialist, and for good reason. He engaged deeply with existentialist philosophy (from thinkers like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger) and incorporated their insights about human anxiety, dread, and meaninglessness into his theology. His popular book The Courage to Be (1952), written shortly after World War II, exemplifies this engagement. In that work, Tillich explores the human experience of anxiety – not just fear of specific things, but a profound existential anxiety about meaninglessness and non-existence (what he calls the fear of “nonbeing”). He identified three basic forms of this anxiety: fear of death, fear of emptiness or meaninglessness, and fear of guilt or condemnation. The “courage to be” is the courage to affirm one’s being in the face of these anxieties. Tillich argues that this courage ultimately comes from a transcendent source – from being grounded in the God who is the ground of Being. Essentially, accepting that one is accepted by God gives the courage to face finitude and uncertainty. The Courage to Be masterfully blended psychological insight with theology: it applied depth psychology to a theological description of the human condition, analyzing the nature of anxiety and how faith can overcome it. This existential analysis resonated with many readers in the mid-twentieth century, a time when the aftermath of war and the threat of nuclear annihilation made questions of meaning and courage very concrete. Tillich’s work provided a spiritual vocabulary for confronting despair – showing how affirming God (Being-itself) counters the tendency to despair in the face of nonbeing.

Symbols and the “Protestant Principle”

Religious truth, in Tillich’s view, can only be expressed in symbolic or metaphorical language, never in direct literal propositions. He emphasized that all our concepts and images of God are symbols that participate in the reality to which they point, but they are not themselves the ultimate reality. For example, calling God “Father” is a symbol drawn from human experience meant to communicate something about the divine, but God is not literally a male parent. Tillich warned that a great temptation in religion is “the demonic”—the tendency of something finite to claim ultimate status for itself. This happens when people take their own religious symbols, institutions, or doctrines as absolute truth rather than as pointers to the truth. To guard against this idolatry, Tillich articulated what he called the “Protestant Principle.” This principle, distilled from the Protestant Reformation’s spirit, is a perpetual self-critique at the heart of faith: it says that no finite form of religion (no church, creed, ritual, or image) can be equated with the infinite God. Every human affirmation of the divine must be accompanied by critique – “every ‘Yes’ to a religious form must be accompanied by a ‘No’” acknowledging that the form is not God itself. Tillich saw this principle as the genius of Protestantism (especially Lutheranism’s focus on the majesty of God versus human fallibility), and he applied it broadly to all religions and cultures. It underlies his insistence on symbolic interpretation: for instance, the Biblical stories and doctrines must be read as symbols and myths conveying deeper truth, not as literally fixed facts. By interpreting Christianity’s language symbolically, Tillich opened it up to modern minds and also made it more ecumenical – he could find common ground with other religions in the idea that all are reaching symbolically toward the same ultimate reality. This approach has been influential in moving theology away from rigid literalism and towards a more philosophical, dialogical understanding of religious truth.

Legacy and Influence

Paul Tillich’s impact on modern theology and philosophy of religion has been vast. Alongside contemporaries like Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr, he is considered a giant of Protestant thought in the 20th century. Through his teaching posts at leading institutions and his prolific writing, Tillich influenced generations of theologians, pastors, and lay thinkers. His integration of existentialist philosophy with Christian theology helped set the agenda for theology in an age of secularism and doubt. Concepts that Tillich popularized – such as “ultimate concern,” “ground of being,” and the importance of symbolism in religion – have entered the vocabulary of contemporary religious studies and are still discussed today. Notably, Tillich’s work provided a way for religious faith to converse with disciplines like psychology, cultural studies, and science, anticipating the interdisciplinary approaches common now in religious scholarship.

Tillich’s prominence extended beyond academia. For example, in 1959 he was featured on the cover of Time magazine as a leading voice articulating the relevance of religion in the modern world. This attests to his status as a public intellectual of his era. Many Christian ministers and educated laypeople in the 1950s and 60s found Tillich’s writings helpful for understanding their faith amid rapid social change and the existential crises of the post-war period. The Courage to Be in particular became a classic, read not only in seminaries but also by secular philosophers and psychologists grappling with anxiety and meaning.

At the same time, Tillich’s ideas stirred debate and criticism. His abstract, philosophical style of theology – talking about God as “Being-itself” or the “Unconditioned” – worried more traditional Christians. Some critics accused Tillich of diluting or even negating the personal reality of God; his statement “God does not exist” was, unsurprisingly, controversial. Neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, for instance, strongly disliked Tillich’s term “the Unconditioned” to describe God, calling it a “frozen monstrosity” as a way to say it was too impersonal and obscure. Others felt Tillich’s reliance on existential philosophy compromised the uniqueness of the Christian message. Evangelical scholars often rejected Tillich’s symbolic interpretation of doctrines, worrying it undermined concrete truths of faith. Nonetheless, even many who disagree with Tillich acknowledge his profound intellect and the boldness with which he tackled the hardest questions of belief. His work set a benchmark for intellectual seriousness in theology and demonstrated a method of engaging secular thought that continues to inspire liberal and ecumenical theologians.

In summary, Paul Tillich left an indelible legacy as a bridge-builder between religion and modern thought. He addressed the deepest questions of meaning, anxiety, and faith in a way that spoke to a world in crisis and transition. Whether appreciated for his insightful analysis of human existence or critiqued for his abstract conception of God, Tillich remains a central figure in contemporary theology. His vision of a “God above God” – an ultimate reality that shines through all our symbols and concerns – still provokes reflection on what it means to believe in the modern age.

Sources

Encyclopaedia Britannica – “Paul Tillich | Biography, Theology, Works, & Facts” (britannica.com)
Britannica (Article Summary) – “Paul Tillich (German-born U.S. theologian)” (britannica.com)
Encyclopedia.com – “Tillich, Paul Johannes (1886–1965)”, updated May 29, 2018 (encyclopedia.com)
New World Encyclopedia – “Paul Tillich” (newworldencyclopedia.org)
John B. Cobb Jr., Living Options in Protestant Theology, Chapter 10: “Paul Tillich” (religion-online.org)
John Drury – “Tillich’s Concept of a Holistic Faith” (drurywriting.com)