Abstract
While Paul Tillich’s theological legacy remains alive and well in a wide range of intellectual conversations, his identity as a church theologian and his unique contributions to ecclesiology are often overlooked. This article argues that Tillich provides a substantive and relevant ecclesiological proposal rooted in Christology and pneumatology. Tillich’s thoroughgoing integration of ecclesiology with his overall theological system along with the critical methodological principle of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle demand rigorous reflection and have the potential to equip today’s Church as it engages the diverse challenges facing the worldwide communion.
The assertion that Paul Tillich made significant, constructive theological contributions to the doctrine of the Church that deserve our ongoing consideration may come as a surprise to many. Popularly known through his classic book The Courage to Be with its existential search for meaning and purpose aimed at a post-World War II audience, Tillich was a modern Christian apologist who translated the traditional language of church doctrine and theology into new categories so as to engage the questions, doubts, and concerns of individuals alienated from the Church. In scholarly circles Tillich remains a central figure primarily because of his method of correlation, a methodology that along with its various adaptations has become a standard approach to the study of religion. 1
Tillich’s theological legacy remains alive and well in a wide range of intellectual conversations exploring the intersection of religious life with philosophy, political theory, psychology, and the arts, thus demonstrating his ongoing relevance for scholarship. But what of Tillich and the Church? Tillich is certainly not the first theologian who comes to mind when thinking of a true “churchman.”
Some have argued that ecclesiology was not a chief concern for Tillich, that his “primary interests lay elsewhere, as evidenced by the comparatively scant comment his theology of the Church has evoked.” 2 While this may be true, the fact that the third and final volume of Tillich’s Systematic Theology has not enjoyed the same level of attention as his first two volumes may shed light on this erroneous perception, since in this final volume we find his mature ecclesiological proposal. This neglect has occurred in spite of the claim by one notable reviewer that the third volume is the “crown” of the Systematic Theology. 3
This article offers a corrective to this oversight, proposing that Tillich contributes theological substance and critical methodological guidance that remain relevant for ecclesiological reflection and action amid the complexities of twenty-first-century church life. The contributions of Tillich’s proposal will be examined in three sections: (1) the integration of ecclesiology within his overall theological system; (2) the critical methodological principle of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle, Tillich’s unique contribution to ecclesiology; and (3) three specific areas of application in which his ecclesiological work has continued importance for building up, guiding, and encouraging the life of the Church in today’s world.
Ecclesiology within Tillich’s Systematic Theology
Tillich develops an ecclesiology that is thoroughly integrated with his overall theological system. In other words, the Church is not a mere afterthought but plays a key role throughout his theological proposal. Established upon the theological fundamentals of God’s nature and saving activity, Tillich’s ecclesiology is fully funded and shaped by core doctrines of the Christian faith, in particular, christology and pneumatology. In order to appreciate this integrated relationship between ecclesiology and these core doctrines, some awareness of the overall structure of his theological system would be helpful.
In the first volume of his Systematic Theology, Tillich presents the basic ontological structure of being in correlation with the doctrine of God, thereby establishing our essential being as creatures. The second volume narrates how this basic created goodness has been distorted under the conditions of existence. Jesus as the Christ provides the divine response to the human predicament of estrangement from God, the ground of our being. For Tillich the core message of Christianity, the kerygma, is the appearance of New Being in Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus who is the Christ, we encounter the unconditional presence and activity of God who overcomes our fundamental estrangement from God and reveals the telos of creation. In the concluding third volume, Tillich describes how this estranged existence is healed through the salvific activity of the Spirit in actualizing the New Creation of which Christ is the bearer. Working within the structured processes of life, the presence of God’s Spirit directs individuals and human communities as well as the history of the world toward their ultimate fulfillment. 4
This final volume marks not only the conclusion but also the fulfillment of his theological system. Here the salvific work of the Spirit takes center stage. This pneumatological emphasis is anticipated at the end of volume two where Tillich asserts that “Christ is not the Christ without the church.” This statement, he continues, “makes the doctrines of the Spirit and of the Kingdom integral parts of the Christological work.” 5 He confirms this statement again in volume three when he writes that christology is “not complete without pneumatology, because ‘the Christ is the Spirit’ and the actualization of the New Being in history is the work of the Spirit.” 6
This statement that “Christ is not the Christ without the church,” a repeated theological maxim throughout Tillich’s system, warrants further attention. Its significance is twofold. First, the statement points to the birth of Christianity and the Church, the moment when one of Jesus’ followers received him as the Christ. According to the scriptural witness, Peter was the first to do so, confessing to Jesus, “You are the Christ.” 7 Peter’s confession functions as the paradigmatic story for Tillich’s understanding of the Church and its correlative relation with the Christ. Defined at the most basic level, the Church’s identity is a “community of those who affirm that Jesus is the Christ.” 8 Jesus’ reply to Peter makes it clear that this expression of faith is a creation of the Spirit and not a decision of the will. To confess Jesus as the Christ represents the proper work of the Spirit. Tillich describes it this way: “It is the Spirit grasping Peter that enables his spirit to recognize the Spirit in Jesus which makes him the Christ.” 9 For Tillich this “grasping” of Peter by the Spirit demonstrates that the Church is essentially in a receptive mode with respect to the Spirit. Thus, with its beginning symbolically marked by Peter’s confession of faith, the Church is a creation of the Spirit.
Second, that “Christ is not the Christ without the church” encapsulates Tillich’s fundamental understanding that the Christ event is not restricted historically to the life of Jesus of Nazareth and his first disciples who confessed him to be the Christ. Jesus the Christ must be both a “historical fact” and a “subject of believing reception.” 10 Whenever Tillich speaks of the Christ event, he consistently maintains that this event comprises these two indispensable aspects: fact and receptivity. Accordingly, the Christ event continues to be actualized throughout history in communities of faith and love where the divine Spirit present in the Christ is also present and at work among the gathered. Here Tillich establishes his christological norm and pattern for the Church’s life, a community marked by faith and love as perfectly manifested in Jesus the Christ that is now actualized by the Spirit.
Given his explication of the Christ event as both historical fact and ongoing receptivity, it could be said that Tillich presents a rather high view of the Church. Indeed, for Tillich the Church plays an indispensable role in the unfolding history of salvation, a role captured in the following passage:
Christianity achieves actuality in a community based upon the appearance of Ultimate Reality in a historic person, Jesus Christ. For Christian faith, this event is in a profound sense the center of history. The community which carries the spirit of Jesus Christ through the centuries is the “assembly of God,” the church.
11
Through its life and witness, the Church is regarded as an ongoing albeit dependent revelation of the Christ event. The qualifier “dependent” points to the primacy granted to the original and normative revelation of Jesus as the Christ and the Church’s utter dependency upon the animating work of the Spirit. In other words, before it can mediate revelation, the Church must first receive it.
In relation to the Spirit, the Church stands in a continuous process of receiving, interpreting, and actualizing the Christian message. Tillich summarizes this entire process with a single word, “participation.” In Tillich’s thought “participation” describes a pattern of giving and receiving, principally, divine giving and human receiving. Based upon the divine communication of the Spirit through Word and sacrament as well as other media, the Church participates in the saving power of New Being, thereby mediating this revelatory power through its life and practices. Only in this way can the Church properly be called a dependent revelation of the Christ event.
In his introduction to volume three, Tillich draws particular attention to his ecclesiology, noting that it constitutes one of the longest sections in his Systematic Theology. 12 The churchly concerns of Tillich’s theology come into clearer focus in this volume as he offers an extensive description of ecclesial life, ranging from corporate worship, whose basic elements include preaching of the Word and administration of the sacraments, along with praise and prayer, to acts of pastoral care, missions, education, and evangelistic preaching. Tillich also broadens these traditional activities of church life to include works of cultural and cognitive creativity. Reflective of his deep appreciation for the arts and their potential as media of God’s revelatory activity, Tillich lifts up the work of artists as well as theologians who seek to express the truth and meaning of life through artistic symbols and language. Through these manifold activities, the Church lives out its primary vocation to bear witness to the Christ. 13
While the Church is a work of the Spirit, it must also be acknowledged that no church can avoid its creatureliness and the ambiguities inherent to life. The reality of all churches is that they can be both a faithful and a distorted manifestation of their essence. Tillich identifies this essence as Spiritual Community. As the dynamic essence of the Church, Spiritual Community functions as the power and structure within all ecclesial communities, enabling them to be communities of faith and love. One interpreter of Tillich’s ecclesiology deemed Spiritual Community as “the one absolute” in his ecclesiology. 14 It is the “quality in the churches which makes them churches.” 15
Because of the ever-present reality of sin and estrangement that distorts the nature and purpose of all created things, the Church’s relationship to the Spiritual Community always remains paradoxical. Calling attention to this perpetual tension in the Church’s life fosters a sense of ecclesial humility, while beckoning the Church to remember its essence and live out its intended purpose. To the extent that it is empowered and guided by the Spirit, the Church bears witness to the reality of the New Creation ushered in by the Christ. This revelatory activity occurs in spite of the ambiguities and distortions that arise within the Church due to its creaturely existence.
For Tillich the Kingdom of God, the comprehensive symbol of eschatology and salvation, constitutes the apex of his theological proposal. Tillich dedicates the final main section of his Systematic Theology (entitled “History and the Kingdom of God”) to considering the world situation in light of the in-breaking reign of God that has been manifested in Jesus as the Christ. Here again Tillich pays attention to the implications for the Church given this fundamental orientation toward God’s reign.
The central manifestation of the Kingdom is the event of Jesus the Christ, the kairos, which represents the foundation of Christianity and determines the vocational consciousness of the Church. Believing Christ to be not only the center of the Church’s life but also the center of history, the Church undertakes the act of “daring faith” by confessing this kairos to be a unique event that holds universal significance “for every human being, and indirectly, for the universe as well.” 16 The church is called to be the representative of the Kingdom of God in history. This vocation of representation is twofold, categorized by Tillich as the sacramental and prophetic expressions of the Church’s life.
The sacramental element identifies the ways in which the Church embodies Spiritual Community and represents the Kingdom of God. As described above, the Church as a Spirit-empowered community is regarded as dependent revelation insofar as it witnesses to and participates in the Christ event.
This calling to represent the Kingdom, however, does not override the reality that the Church’s life is inescapably paradoxical; the Church both reveals and distorts the Kingdom of God in history. For that reason, the prophetic dimension of the Church’s life is characterized by critical self-examination in which the Spirit exposes the ways in which the Church misrepresents and conceals the Kingdom. The prophetic Spirit also “revives expectation of the coming Kingdom and awakens the churches to their task of witnessing to it and preparing for it.” 17 In this sense churches are called to be “tools” and “fighting agents” of the Kingdom of God as they struggle against all the forces that resist this coming Kingdom. 18
These sacramental and prophetic elements are shaped by basic christological convictions. As Tillich wrote in an earlier essay,
Christian interpretation of history is possible only on the basis of prophecy, implying consequently a sacramental element—Christ, the center of history, has come—and a prophetic element—Christ, the end of history, is coming. So the Christian interpretation of history stands between “already” and “not yet”; the explanation of this “intermediate situation” is the main problem of Christian theology today.
19
In his Systematic Theology, Tillich describes this “intermediate situation” as the tension between the Kingdom of God realized in history and the Kingdom as expected. As the representative of the Kingdom in history, the Church is called to keep this tension alive between the “consciousness of presence” and the “expectation of the coming.” 20 This calling remains an ongoing challenge for the Church. More often than not, this tension gives way, and the Church instead chooses the “shallow ‘middle way’ of ecclesial or secular satisfaction” that is more interested in preserving the status quo. Nevertheless, Tillich continues to envision a Church marked by a sacramental sensibility alive to the “sacred old” as well as open to the “prophetic new” through an active commitment to establishing justice and peace in the world.
While the Church represents the Kingdom of God in history, as the comprehensive and universal symbol of salvation, the Kingdom qualifies the Church’s representative role. The Church simply cannot express the Kingdom of God in all its fullness.
One concrete way in which the Church is reminded of its limitations is the presence of “latent spiritual communities” that may also represent the Kingdom of God. 21 Here Tillich’s expansive understanding of the Spirit comes into sharper focus. Tillich is quick to confess that the Spirit of God is neither limited to nor restricted by the Church and its media of Word and sacrament. 22 The Spirit, as the hidden, dynamic presence of God, may also be at work in guiding latent, even secular, spiritual communities where salvation is evident. While they are not the Church, they should not be viewed as severed from the Spiritual Community. 23 In fact, Tillich suggests that at times these communities may in certain respects more truly reflect the Spiritual Community than the Church does. Latent communities could include anything from political, artistic, and intellectual movements to various religious communities such as Judaism, Islam, and other world religions. While such communities may reject Jesus as the Christ as they encounter him through the preaching and other activities of Christian churches, they may still be regarded as spiritual communities insofar as they are determined by the Spirit. In other words, wherever salvation is occurring, wherever human existence is determined by that which is truly ultimate, and wherever the desire for a communion of love is expressed, the Spirit is present and at work.
By setting the Church’s vocation within the eschatological horizon of the Kingdom of God, Tillich broadens our ecclesiological perspective. The Church is called to witness to and participate in God’s reign, thereby representing the Kingdom to the world. But this calling is always undertaken with humility, acknowledging Kingdom activity within Spirit-led communities and individuals that do not identify themselves as (and may even be hostile toward) the Church. Tillich’s ecclesiology, fueled by a vibrant understanding of the Spirit’s work, sharply challenges any church bent on institutional survival alone.
In this brief overview of Tillich’s ecclesiology, we have seen some of the ways in which he sets forth an understanding of the Church as a Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered reality that is thoroughly integrated with his entire theological system. For our current purposes, we may draw three main conclusions. First, the nature and purpose of the Church is generated by God’s mission in Jesus the Christ who ushers in the New Creation and is sustained by the ongoing presence and activity of the Spirit in actualizing this New Creation. Second, Tillich provides a coherent framework for ecclesiology that avoids reductionistic tendencies to limit the Church to the role of a designated institution for providing the means of grace or as a locus for a praxis-orientated way of life. Rather, Tillich’s expansive proposal demands more rigorous theological reflection upon the nature and purpose of the Church. Third, Tillich avoids an idealized view of the Church. His is a realistic portrayal of church life located in its social and historical context and thus marked by brokenness and ambiguity.
Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle: Tools of the Spirit
Tillich’s vision of the Church entails a vocational life of sacramental and prophetic activity engendered by the presence of the Spirit. The Church’s life is fully sacramental when the practices, structures, and authorities within the Church, that is, the media of the Spirit, are truly transparent to the divine. At the same time, the Church must also be thoroughly self-critical, cognizant of the ambiguities of religion that often confuse the Church with its ultimate concern from which it lives and to which it witnesses. Neither the sacramental foundation nor the power for self-criticism and reform is a possession or capability inherent to the Church. Rather, both are expressions of the Spirit’s work in accordance with what Tillich identifies as Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle.
Years before he developed his own mature ecclesiological proposal, Tillich declared that “an embracing doctrine of the church,” one that fully accounts for the sacramental foundation of the Church, is “one of the most urgent needs of Protestantism.”
24
In this essay, “The Permanent Significance of the Catholic Church for Protestants,” Tillich offers his early thoughts on the intrinsic place Catholic Substance has within the life of the Church and its occasionally oppositional yet always mutually beneficial relationship with respect to Protestantism. His argument in brief is that Protestantism, as a prophetic type of Christianity, cannot live without the priestly, sacramental substance represented by Catholicism.
Protestantism needs the permanent corrective of Catholicism and the continuous influx of sacramental elements from it in order to live. Catholicism, by its very existence, reminds Protestantism of the sacramental foundation without which the prophetic-eschatological attitude has no basis, substance, or creative power.
25
American Protestantism in particular, Tillich asserts, is especially prone to neglect or even to reject this sacramental foundation, thereby becoming reduced to nothing more than “cultural activism” or “moral utopianism.” With the loss of religious substance, Protestantism becomes swallowed up by secularism. 26
It has been said that this dialectic of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle constitutes the heart of Tillich’s ecclesiology. 27 Certainly it is Tillich’s most well-known contribution to ecclesiology, yet is often misunderstood or too narrowly interpreted. As we shall see, for Tillich this dialectic connotes far more than a simplistic dualism between Catholic and Protestant ecclesial bodies.
Tillich is exceptionally discerning of the human propensity for idolatry, recognizing it to be one of the fundamental dangers of existence. When manifested in religious forms, Tillich describes these idolatrous tendencies as demonic. 28 According to Tillich, any time that which is finite and limited is attributed with ultimate power and concern, the demonic is at work, for ultimate obedience is only rightly given to God. Within the Church Tillich perceives the presence of idolatry whenever any institution, structure, dogma, ritual, or office becomes absolutized. Lest such idolatry be identified as peculiar to Roman Catholicism, Tillich also points to idolatry that manifests itself in biblical fundamentalism and rigid confessional dogmatism, more frequently Protestant temptations. The secular world, too, is susceptible to idolatrous proclivities through its false assumption of utter self-sufficiency. For that reason Tillich is equally critical of a radicalized autonomy that often accompanies secular humanism. To counter all these idolatrous inclinations and their destructive consequences, Tillich lifts up the Protestant Principle, an expression of the prophetic Spirit’s insistence that no human institution, doctrine, structure, practice, or ritual can elevate itself so as to attempt to take the place of God as the Holy One. 29
The Protestant Principle speaks an emphatic “no” to all absolute claims whether it be for an institution or a doctrine. This principle is far richer and more complex than simply being anti-Catholic rhetoric inherited from the polemically charged Reformation period. Positively, the Protestant Principle expresses a deep reverence for the Holy Other, the transcendent God who is Being-Itself, and for that reason alone judges all attempts to domesticate this God.
The shadow side of the Protestant Principle Tillich identifies as profanization. Profanization is the degradation of something worthy of respect, depriving it of its sacred character. For Tillich this problem is countered by the affirmation of that which he names Catholic Substance. Profanization occurs, for example, when sacramental acts, liturgical rites, or church doctrine are either treated mechanistically or viewed as essentially immaterial to the life of faith. Tillich describes the institutional form of profanization as the transformation of religion “into a sacred mechanism of hierarchical structure, doctrine, and ritual.” 30 Instead of serving as vessels that point to the holy transcendence of God, these religious practices, structures, and beliefs become a self-contained finite reality in and of themselves. When describing this institutionalized form, Tillich offers as an example the “ecclesiastical management” of Roman Catholicism characteristic of the late medieval Church. In the “creative moments of the Reformation,” the freedom of the Spirit broke through this institutionalized expression of Christianity in which office trumped charisma and salvation was quantified and distributed by means of a sacramental system managed by church hierarchy in order to create something new within the churches of the Reformation. 31
Besides this institutional type of profanization, there is another profanization that is even more problematic, the reductive. This latter type of profanization may initially occur in reducing religion to a matter of culture or morality, but often it leads to viewing sacred things as irrelevant or unnecessary. Taken to an extreme, such profanization leads to complete secularism in which meaningful acts, words, and symbols are emptied of significance and value. Tillich finds this kind of profanization to be a temptation especially for Protestant churches that have rejected or forgotten sacramental thinking and feeling through the neglect of religious symbols and church tradition. 32
Recognizing that the Church cannot exist without the Spirit of God communicating the power of New Being, Tillich lifts up Catholic Substance, the concrete embodiment of the Spirit in the Church, as equally essential to the life of the Church. 33 Here the freedom of the Spirit breaks through all forms of profanization by establishing a sacramental foundation for the Church. Without this Catholic Substance as manifested in the concrete symbols, words, acts, persons, and practices that comprise the tradition of the Christian faith, churches would dissolve into nothing more than secular organizations.
For Tillich the origin of this dialectic of divine presence and self-criticism finds its chief expression in the incarnation and cross, thus establishing a christological pattern to the life of the Church. Tillich describes the Christ as the “sacramental foundation” in which both creative power and critical protest are united. 34 As the manifestation of New Being, Jesus the Christ reveals his perfect, unbroken unity with God. Because his life is completely transparent to the divine, he is able to communicate the creative power of New Being present in him that overcomes sin. Yet, at the same time, Jesus refused to be made an idol and never claimed to be the source of that power. He rejected any privileged status or claims to ultimacy on account of his unique relationship with God. He expressed this element of protest by continually pointing beyond himself to God and sacrificing everything he could have gained from this unity, including his very life, so as not to become an idol.
While this dialectic of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle provides the key conceptual framework for characterizing Tillich’s ecclesiology and evaluating the actual life of the Church, it is not merely a formal methodological principle. Catholic Substance, all that concretely mediates God’s presence, and the Protestant Principle, the prophetic protest of all forms of idolatry, both express the fullness of the Spirit’s presence and activity in relation to the Church. Empowered by this creative and corrective work of the Spirit, Tillich’s ecclesiology assumes a christocentric pattern in which the Church is a community shaped and defined by the faith and love perfectly revealed in Jesus the Christ. As a manifestation of Spiritual Community and the locus of ongoing dependent revelation of the Christ event, the Church seeks to live out this calling, ever guided and reformed by the Spirit.
Tillich’s Ecclesiology as a Resource for the Church Today
Having set forth Tillich’s main contributions to the doctrine of the Church, we return to the claim made at the onset that these contributions deserve greater consideration in contemporary ecclesiology. In what follows I lift up three areas in which Tillich’s ecclesial insights offer valuable guidance.
Challenges of Modernity
In the contemporary North American context, many churches are wrestling with questions of identity and mission while some are simply struggling for survival. These challenges are felt most acutely among mainline Protestant churches whose perception of their waning influence corresponds with a sharp numerical decline in membership and shrinking financial resources. These factors lead to an increasing sense of marginalization. To these churches Tillich offers a message of hope and encouragement. Rather than perceiving the Church as marginalized, Tillich invites churches to reimagine their life and ministry on the boundary.
Tillich often described himself as a theologian on the boundary, with the primary boundary existing between the Christian message (kerygma) and the human situation. 35 By living and working at this intersection, Tillich demonstrated his commitment to take seriously the concrete situation in which theological reflection and ministry take place, a commitment which is expressed in the breadth of his theological questions and concerns. Likewise, Tillich understood the Church as called to explore and live in the manifold expressions of this boundary between the Christian message and the concrete situation. The church on the boundary must learn to enter deeply into the particular context where the Church finds itself located for the sake of proclaiming the gospel message in ways that are faithful, meaningful, and creative.
The Church on the boundary is not without ample resources. As a creation of the Spirit, the Church continues to be graciously sustained and nourished by the Spirit through the stories, rites, and traditions that constitute and structure the life of all church communities. These are the media of the Spirit that communicate the power of New Being. For that reason Tillich described churches as the “treasure chests in which the religious substance is preserved.” 36 Tillich counsels churches not to neglect these treasures bestowed upon them by the Spirit that have characterized the life of the Church throughout its history.
This appropriation of the riches contained within the Christian tradition includes a renewed appreciation of church doctrine. The substance of Tillich’s own theology, rooted in the breadth of the classical traditions of the Church, reflects what one interpreter has described as the “catholicity of Tillich’s mind.” 37 Tillich did indeed hold the doctrines of the Church in high regard as the “accepted expressions of the life of the church” that function to protect the core message of Scripture, the confession that Jesus is the Christ. 38
At the same time, Tillich did not believe that dogmatic formulations of the Church were to be unquestioningly accepted. He was equally critical of dogmatism in which doctrines are viewed as static formulations requiring total acceptance while suppressing intellectual honesty. Instead Tillich sought to interpret church doctrines in such a way as to honor their original intent and meaning while also employing language and categories that would open up the significance of these doctrines for the Church today. Tillich understood the Christian tradition as a living object that continually evolves and grows as it encounters the questions and challenges of the times. In his own words, “there must always be two things in church life: the duality of tradition and reformation. If either disappears completely, then Christianity is gone.” 39
As we witness a renewed appreciation and appropriation of the Church’s ancient traditions and rituals, Tillich can serve as a wise theological guide for both mainline and evangelical Christians alike as they discover anew the treasures within the Church. Holding together both tradition and reformation, Tillich’s own theological course encourages a willingness to engage the intersections of Christianity and culture, the kerygma and context, for the sake of faithfulness.
Ecumenical Significance
As we assess the ecumenical strengths of Tillich’s ecclesiology, his most obvious contribution is the dialectic of Catholic Substance and the Protestant Principle. In light of the conversations and agreements that emerged during the ecumenical heyday following the Second Vatican Council, his ecclesiological synthesis may appear rather conventional. However, considering that the vast amount of Tillich’s writings on ecclesiology occurred before this council, his work may be characterized as prescient. Catholic–Protestant relations are, however, only the starting point.
When we understand this dialectic as theological shorthand for describing the constitutive and corrective work of the Spirit within the Church as a whole, the ecumenical possibilities multiply. For that reason it may be helpful to expand the terms used to express the heart of this ecclesiological synthesis. Indeed this broadening of terminology is precisely what Tillich does in the essay cited above, “The Permanent Significance of the Catholic Church for Protestants.” Here Tillich presents Catholicism and Protestantism as a typology and proposes the following pairings to demonstrate the interpretive depth and complexity generated by this synthesis: the priestly and prophetic, the sacramental (incarnational) and eschatological, the “holiness of being” and the “holiness of what ought to be,” and the constitutive and the corrective. These additional categories help to ensure that “Catholic” and “Protestant” not be reduced to univocal descriptors, thereby obscuring their function as multivalent symbols. For example, in order to define “Catholic Substance,” we must move beyond the parameters of the Latin West (both in its Protestant and Catholic expressions) to include the Orthodox communions as well as other global expressions of Christianity. As we do so, the categories of sacramental, incarnational, and priestly become more apt.
Included within the parameters of ecumenism, Tillich may also aid in assessing the burgeoning world phenomenon of Pentecostalism, a rise some have described as indicative of a new Age of the Spirit. 40 As “a theologian of the Spirit,” Tillich consistently lifted up the ecstatic dimension of Christian life in the Spirit while remaining rooted in the Christian tradition of doctrine and sacramental life. 41 For that very reason, Tillich’s portrayal of ecclesial life in which ecstasy is united with structure could provide a helpful bridge for connecting the wide-range of ecclesial expressions in the twenty-first century that share the common identity of “Church.” Indeed, if the spirit of ecumenism today is truly marked by the shared commitment among ecclesial communities to explore the possibilities for mutual enrichment through the exchange of their particular spiritual gifts (rather than conversion to or convergence upon any one institutional church body), then Tillich’s ecclesiological proposal should provide a fruitful foundation for such work. 42
The Global Church
Finally, we note Tillich’s expansive pneumatology in which the Spirit is not restricted to self-identified churches but is present wherever the salvific power of New Being is at work. The Spirit provides the theological basis for his world-engaging doctrine of the Church. This pneumatic reality is a central theme in the Book of Acts as God’s Spirit is discernible not only within established communities of those who follow Christ but is also always moving out ahead of them into new households, languages, and places. Rather than trying to contain, control, or manipulate the Spirit, the earliest Christians instead found themselves trying to “catch up” with what the Spirit is already doing in the world. 43
As a theologian of the Spirit, Tillich calls the Church to be more attentive to its concrete historical existence in the world for the sake of inspiring a church that is both missional and thoroughly ecumenical in nature. Tillich makes this observation:
The more a Christian group embraces elements from all these different aspects of the present world, the more adequately will it comprehend the true questions and formulate right answers. This means that the Christian church can speak authoritatively and effectively to our world today only as it is truly “ecumenical,” that is, universal.
44
Such a vision of the Church, a Church that is ecumenically minded and world-engaging, represents the fruit of Tillich’s ecclesiological labors. As church leaders and theologians alike navigate the changing landscape of ministry and church life in the twenty-first century, they would do well to consult this unexpected but valuable guide.
Footnotes
1
See Jonathan Z. Smith, “Tillich[’s] Remains…,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.4 (December 2010): 1139–70.
2
Ronald Modras makes this claim in Paul Tillich’s Theology of the Church: A Catholic Appraisal (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1976), 16. It should be noted that Modras’s work provides the only extensive treatment published on Tillich’s ecclesiology available in English.
3
Wolfhart Pannenberg, review of Systematic Theology, vol. 3, by Paul Tillich, Dialog 4.3 (Summer 1965): 230.
4
Their fulfillment in life under the Spiritual Presence is expressed by the eschatological symbols of Eternal Life and the Kingdom of God. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), 108.
5
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957), 180.
6
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:285.
7
See Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:97.
8
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:174.
9
Ibid., 150.
10
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:98.
11
Paul Tillich, “The World Situation,” The Christian Answer, ed. Henry P. Van Dusen (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 39.
12
Tillich suggests this attention paid to ecclesiology to be indicative of his commitment to “Catholic Substance,” the concrete embodiment of the Spiritual Presence in the life of churches. See Systematic Theology, 3:6.
13
Tillich writes that the “Christian church has always been conscious of its vocation to be the bearer of revelation for nations and individuals.” See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1951), 121.
14
Maurice B. Schepers, “Paul Tillich on the Church,” Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought, ed. Thomas A. O’Meara and Celestin D. Weisser (Dubuque, IA: The Priory, 1964), 239.
15
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:164.
16
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:151.
17
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:375.
18
Ibid., 376.
19
Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History, part 1 trans. N.A. Rasetzki; parts 2, 3, and 4 trans. Elsa L. Talmey (New York: Scribner, 1936), 264.
20
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:391.
21
See Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:152–55.
22
See Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:246–47. See also his sermon, “Spiritual Presence,” Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), 81–91.
23
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:155. According to Tillich, such communities are to be viewed as “teleologically related to the Spiritual Community.”
24
Paul Tillich, “The Permanent Significance of the Catholic Church for Protestantism,” Protestant Digest 3.10 (February–March 1941): 27.
25
Ibid., 25.
26
Ibid., 25–26.
27
See Modras, Paul Tillich’s Theology of the Church, 22, 183.
28
The concept of the demonic, the structural and inescapable power of evil, plays a significant role in Tillich’s thought and theological analysis. For Tillich’s most extensive treatment, see The Interpretation of History, 77–122.
29
For Tillich’s comprehensive application of the Protestant Principle, see, for example, Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, trans. and with a concluding essay by James Luther Adams (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), xvi, 163, 203–205.
30
Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:244.
31
Ibid., 117, 244.
32
See “Nature and Sacrament,” The Protestant Era, 94–112, for elaboration of this point.
33
This concept of Catholic Substance appears in Tillich’s early writings beginning in the 1920s. See “The Protestant Message and the Man of Today,” The Protestant Era, 192–205.
34
Tillich, The Protestant Era, xxiii; 211–12.
35
See Paul Tillich, On the Boundary: An Autobiographical Sketch (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966).
36
Paul Tillich, Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue, ed. D. Mackenzie Brown (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 177. Cf. The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message, ed. Durwood Foster (Cleveland: The Pilgrim, 1997), 62.
37
See Carl E. Braaten, “Paul Tillich and the Classical Christian Tradition,” A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967, 1968), xv.
38
Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism, ed. Carl E. Braaten (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967, 1968), xxxviii. These comments come from Tillich’s opening lecture on “The Concept of Dogma.”
39
Tillich, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message, 49.
40
See Harvey G. Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
41
In describing the work of the Spirit, Tillich writes that “Paul is primarily the theologian of the Spirit. His Christology and his eschatology are both dependent on this central point in this thinking.” See Systematic Theology, 3:116. In many ways the very same assessment could be made of Tillich himself given his interpretation and frequent appropriation of Paul’s teaching on the Spirit.
42
See Walter Cardinal Kasper, “Present Day Problems in Ecumenical Theology,” Reflections. VI. The 2003 Public Lectures (Princeton: Center of Theological Inquiry, 2003), 56–88.
43
Lois Malcolm explores this dynamic between the Spirit and the early church in her article “‘It Has Seemed Good to the Holy Spirit and to Us’: Mission and Ecumenism in the Power of the Holy Spirit,” The Ecumenical Future, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 218–35.
44
Tillich, “The World Situation,” 70.