PAUL TILLICH BY RUSSELL RE MANNING

[Music] uh paul tillich is probably one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century even if his name is not as well known as some of the other greats of the 20th century and partly i think the reason for that is that tilik's view is very much that theology has to be done in dialogue with the contemporary moment and of course once one adopts that sort of approach then it's inevitable perhaps that one is slightly therefore left behind in fact one of tilik's um commentators has talked about a planned obsolescence to telex works which i think is perhaps a slightly unfair way of putting it but gets to the point that tilik's idea central to tillix till it's thinking really is that theology must engage with the contemporary tilik was born in 1886 in [Music] a village called star cedel which was at that point in uh germany in prussia uh it's now in poland just over the border and it's very much in that kind of uh border country um and the after after um i think about age about 15 till it moved to another town again in east prussia in that area and these are places which have historically shifted between german and polish um and that that figure of of the boundary is something that is quite important in understanding tilik it's the title he chose for his own autobiography on the boundary um so tilly as i say born 1886 in east prussia his father is a lutheran minister who becomes what is known as a superintendent which is essentially a kind of equivalent to a to a bishop figure and then eventually uh moves to berlin and becomes a reasonably prominent figure in prussian lutheran church um he for example accompanies the kaiser on a trip to jerusalem tillich's father is standardly represented as being somewhat austere old-school 19th century patrician church figure i mean his his interest is very much in the kind of more conservative figures of the night of the 19th century i think that's quite important in that tillich is very much somebody who uh is rejecting stands against those kind of conservative tendencies initially those of his father and then subsequently those of the more kind of established academic theology it's pretty clear from very early on that tilik is a bright child and is destined to follow his father into the lutheran church he studies initially in berlin then spent some time in tubingen and then halle that's reasonably standard for theologians of that time in fact it still is in in germany today that studies will be undertaken in various different universities he is especially influenced in hala by someone called martin kayla not very well known today but uh quite an important figure in his time and kayla was very important in the sense that he addressed the question of the historical jesus in the late 19th century the question of the historicity of jesus was essentially one of the big questions um you know the idea of the quest for the historical jesus and all of that um and kayla really says well a lot of that's really irrelevant um the point is not whether a certain man jesus existed and did certain things the important thing is the impact that that figure had so in this contrast between the historical jesus and the christ of faith kayla emphasizes the historical impact of the christ of faith and that's something that tilly very much um uh uh uh is adopts and is very influenced by it so after his well in the midst of his theological studies uh tilik became increasingly interested in in philosophy he'd read uh hegel sorry of course um he'd read hagel yes but he'd read kant more importantly as a as a younger student but it really as his theological side is true to an end he he became more and more interested in a particular figure that is the german idealist shelling the way tillich tells the story he came across the complete works of shelling on special offer for secondhand in a in a book shop somewhere in the back streets of berlin um and then bought them took them home and was uh enthralled now we we have to be slightly suspicious about that in the sense that nietzsche tells a similar story about his discovery of schopenhauer there's a certain sort of sense there that tilik is already perhaps mythologizing his his education there but nonetheless shelling becomes absolutely crucial for tilik shelling is a neglected figure in um the history of german philosophy he's often thought of as a kind of moment somehow between hegel and and marx and faye back and the more radical uh young hegelians but shelling is an important figure in his own right and one of the central things about shelling's thought is that he's constantly trying in different ways throughout his career he's constantly trying to synthesize what we might think of as um the dialectic between the ideal and the real yeah so between thought and being this this idea that philosophy is primarily concerned with forming ideas and yet these ideas must somehow be brought into into interaction into into into dialogue with uh reality as it is encountered yeah uh shelling develops various iterations of this he at one point he's develops a philosophy of nature a philosophy of art and then finally in his later writings a philosophy of revelation in which the real is represented really by the the the sort of un to use shelling's word the unpre-thinkable um arrival of revelation as something that is real that can't can't somehow be incorporated into into the ideal framework that dialectic between the real and the ideal is crucial for tilik so till it say becomes deeply deeply influenced by shelling he writes his phd dissertation on shelling and then subsequently writes a philosophical dissertation on shelling um and this is quite unusual normally of course uh people are encouraged to write on different topics uh but tilik writes primarily say on shelling in this period and essay absorbs this shelling's thought and this this central question in into his own thought another way of putting this which i think is important for subsequent development utility's own thought is that shelling is concerned with what he calls the unconditioned uh the unbedinked the german word bedinkt is thing yeah so it's just sort of the unthinned you know the unthinly it's always a risk to try and translate german words especially proper theological theological philosophical german words but anyway so the unbearing the unconditioned yeah and and for shelling the unconditioned is something that obviously must come before beneath beyond above the conditioned yeah and yet is somehow to be encountered through the condition yeah so we have this dynamic of this in-breaking of the real into the ideal of of of reality being into thought and also of that which transcends the conditioned realities uh somehow making itself manifest within the conditioned realities and yet always through those conditioned realities yeah so the other the final kind of point here is uh intellect's own development is that he rejects explicitly any notion of what he calls supernaturalism yeah so the idea that one could somehow step outside of the conditioned realm of reality of culture of history of religion to come into some kind of direct contact with that which transcends it with god is just implausible fertility yeah so theological thinking must take place within the constraints as it were of the conditioned but always on the understanding that the condition is itself somehow transcended somehow broken through by the condition the unconditioned yeah so tilik's theological and philosophical studies uh were completed really in 1912 and he was then ordained into the lutheran church and took up a position um in in berlin interestingly he was sent to an area called moabit which is now apparently quite a trendy area as as so many areas in berlin are apparently but at that point was very much a working class area until it of course you know the pastor's son from having having studied theology and philosophy very much concerned with abstract ideas the unconditioned absolute all these sort of things yeah then came into contact with uh working class berliners and that that had a profound effect upon him um and he he's said in his subsequent autobiographies that he was he was just not aware of the conditions of the working class in that in that time um and that subsequent that influenced his his own thinking particularly the development of what he came to describe as religious socialism um and that's something which will be important in a later stage until its development um for the moment we can just sort of note that that he he he's struck by that and by the need again there to bring christian theology into dialogue with the situation of the people who are receiving it you know that the theologian must not just

Channel: Timeline Theological Videos

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Keywords: PAUL, TILLICH, BY, RUSSELL, RE, MANNING

Id: M_HcFLa0b1Q

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 25 2012