Paul Tillich (1886–1965) experienced World War I as a military chaplain. His experiences had a profound effect, both personally and theologically. Tillich joined the army in October 1914 and served as a military chaplain with the Seventh Division in the trenches on the Western Front.Footnote 1 Here, he lost fellow soldiers and close friends. His own experiences included being hospitalised three times and suffering the first of two nervous breakdowns during the battle of Verdun in May 1916,Footnote 2 only months after he first came under heavy fire. He spent two of his four years in the war preaching under trees, in caves and in the trenches together with another, Catholic, chaplain at the front line.Footnote 3 He had a second nervous breakdown in April 1918 and asked to be discharged from service. His request was denied, and he remained on active service until the end of the war.Footnote 4 He was awarded two medals, one of them the Iron Cross.Footnote 5
Heroism, as well as trust in God, was, according to Joseph F. Byrnes's studies of religion and the Western Front, a key theme for German chaplains during the war. It was a way of finding a religious meaning in the violence as well as a way of keeping spirits up as the war dragged on.Footnote 6 German chaplains were, however, not expected to take part in the fighting.Footnote 7 Instead, they stayed behind the lines, ready to minister to the soldiers before and after combat.Footnote 8 Many German military chaplains had only received basic army training after conscription. Moreover, there were no clear regulations from either the army or the Church on what they should be doing. This resulted in many chaplains starting their service in the army without proper preparation or experience.Footnote 9 Furthermore, mainly because the German army was spread over a very large area, there were few opportunities for them to meet informally and share their experiences. Conferences and theological instruction courses did take place during the war, as Hanneke Takken has pointed out, but this happened more often on the Eastern than on the Western Front where Tillich was stationed.Footnote 10 The Western Front was, moreover, devastated by bombing, destroyed buildings and breaks in communication to such a degree that chaplains stationed there could often find themselves having spent all day travelling – often on horseback – to get to the front-line troops only to find that they had moved to another location.Footnote 11 Because of the amount of travelling, chaplains carried with them a special case with the liturgical material they needed for performing their job.Footnote 12
Military chaplains were not only responsible for religious duties but for a wide range of what Takken refers to as ‘side jobs’, namely maintaining the morale and the fighting power of the troops.Footnote 13 Additionally, they were in close contact with the field hospitals, provided links between the front and the soldiers’ families and friends back home, and even helped to arrange visits.Footnote 14 All these aspects of the job are to be found in the Tillich archival material. Maintaining morale was, according to Takken, especially important, as it was felt to be closely linked to state politics. Thus chaplains described the war as being fought for German culture and religion.Footnote 15 Patrick Porter has described German Lutheran chaplains as part of the war machine: they sanctified the war through their front-line ministry and this in turn implicated them in the sacrifices of the war.Footnote 16 The link between nationalism and religion is also found in Tillich's sermons.
Takken also emphasises that the military chaplain was only human, and thus not exempt from the very personal struggles of the war.Footnote 17 This again is clear from the archival material, especially in Tillich's letters to his family and reports from the front.Footnote 18 That the war had a profound effect on him personally as well as theologically is evident in the degree to which he used the themes of ‘eternity’ and ‘the soul’ in his sermons from before the war compared with his sermons, letters and reports during the war. In the sermons that Tillich delivered before the war, he rarely spoke about eternity and the soul. However, when he did mention them, it was mostly in the context of suffering. During World War I, there was a significant shift: Tillich began to emphasise the importance of eternity and the soul. I believe that this change can be attributed to Tillich's notion of the ‘immanent way of theology’. Tillich uses this concept to describe the importance of sermons, which is also related to eternity and the soul. In this article, a contribution to work on the development of Tillich's early theology, I suggest that Tillich's experience of suffering during the war had a fundamental impact on his theology. As a result, the concepts of eternity and the soul, which Tillich had previously only mentioned briefly, came to play a major role in his theology.
Gary Dorrien has shown that Tillich left the war with ‘one searing conviction’: the only kind of theology that deserved to be written had to address the ‘abyss of estrangement’ that he experienced in four years of horror at the front.Footnote 19 His conviction that theology has an existential focus, particularly concerning the war experiences, led Tillich to reexamine aspects of his theology.Footnote 20 His sermons provide important insight into Tillich himself and his theology, and how they changed in the course of the war.
Tillich's sermons can be divided into three distinct periods:Footnote 21 his early parish sermons (1909–14); his sermons delivered as a military chaplain during World War I (1914–18);Footnote 22 and his American sermons.Footnote 23 The context of the periods differs, as does Tillich's evolving assessment of the chaplain's task. Tillich delivered his early parish sermons in various suburbs of Berlin. They were part of his ministerial training and reflected his initial understanding of the task of the chaplain as one of reiterating the Christian message to the Christian congregation. However, this was not the case with the second group of sermons. Tillich's World War I sermons can be divided into two categories, as Tillich himself noted in a report to his army provost. The first was contemplative, employing a mystical and comforting tone. These sermons were primarily directed to soldiers at the front and were used predominately by Tillich during the war. The second form was motivational, used to motivate soldiers and to relate to their inner moral struggles.Footnote 24 The context of the war sermons was the battlefieldFootnote 25 and the audience were Tillich's companions in the war, caught in an existential and spiritual crisis. The third group, Tillich's American sermons, was delivered in the context of being invited to attend church services in academic settings: here Tillich is speaking as a theologian.Footnote 26 In this article, I will focus on the second group, Tillich's sermons from World War I, although I will track themes and their further development from his early sermons as well, using a selection of early parish sermons and his sermons from World War I. In my archival work, I am inspired by Jane E. Sayers's emphasis on the ability of archival work to bring the past into relationship with the future via the present,Footnote 27 Barbara Craig's theories on the selection process in archival appraisal,Footnote 28 Dietmar Schenk's insistence on source criticism in archival work,Footnote 29 and Robert Kretzschmar's stressing of the impossibility of a neutral transmission of archival material.Footnote 30 As none of this material has been translated into English elsewhere and some of it is unpublished, this necessitates the use of long quotations.
Eternity and the soul in Tillich's sermons from before the war
To understand the evolution of Tillich's use of ‘eternity’ and ‘the soul’ in his World War I sermons, it is necessary to analyse how these themes were employed in his earlier parish sermons, so as to help us to identify the changes and developments in his theology. Tillich's sermons from before the war cover several themes,Footnote 31 which appear much more than themes such as ‘soul’ (Seele) and ‘eternity’ (Ewigkeit). When these two themes do appear, however, it is almost always in regard to suffering (Leid) and concern/care (Sorge). Tillich thus emphasises comfort in God amidst suffering: the soul is the active part of the human being which, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, seeks God. The notion of the seeking soul is, furthermore, related to the theme of eternity, as the restless soul seeks eternal calm, i.e. God.
One example of suffering and the soul being mentioned together in the early parish sermons can be found in a sermon on Psalm li.Footnote 32 Here, Tillich states that ‘the sufferer has comfort in God's presence; the godforsaken soul cries out to God to help him’.Footnote 33 This sermon emphasises that the soul is the part of the human being that seeks God during times of suffering. The soul is seen as the active component during such experiences. Later in the sermon, Tillich clarifies his understanding of the soul by referring to the human being's whole being and the human being's death, temporal as well as inner, in relation to the soul.Footnote 34 Death, in addition to suffering, is a theme in this sermon: Tillich states:
What kind of tremendous force is that which loads people with the heaviest burdens, tears apart all the bonds of nature and happiness, makes daily misery and yet brings no peace? It is the anxiety of a death that is much more terrible than all earthly burdens and all deaths, of a death that might happen in the middle of life.Footnote 35
Death can thus be temporal, i.e. physical, and inner, i.e. spiritual. Both temporal and inner death as well as suffering will be closely tied to the soul in Tillich's World War I sermons. Tillich encourages the congregation to ‘pray together with the psalmist, with the prophets and Apostles, with all those who are crushed in spirit’.Footnote 36 Thus, prayer too is important amid suffering.
In another of the early parish sermons, which is unfortunately both untitled, undated and not noted to be related to a specific biblical verse, Tillich states that when the human being in its weakness and abandonment of prayer needs comfort, the Holy Spirit will maintain communion with God on his behalf.Footnote 37 And in the act of praying, which, as in Tillich's sermon on Ps. li, is important amidst suffering, the soul also plays a role: in praying the human being raises its whole soul to God:
Has it not yet happened to someone that his heart was full and he wanted to come before God and talk to him and pour out his heart in the words of prayer and the words were missing, it was like a child's stammering, and we searched and struggled, but this deepest feeling of the heart could not be put into words; and perhaps it is always like that, the most fervent prayer is just pure wordless sobbing, in which we raise our whole soul to God, but this sobbing is wrought by the Spirit, and therefore it is more a word than many words and therefore it contains more than a long prayer.Footnote 38
According to Tillich, in raising its soul to God in this sobbing wrought by the Spirit, the human being comes before God. Just as in the sermon on Ps. li, the soul is seen as the active part of the human being during hard times and suffering. Tillich ends the sermon by praising the ‘wonderful, holy consolation: this quiet and comforting work of the Spirit’.Footnote 39 Thus, in suffering, God comforts the suffering human being – something which will also be seen in Tillich's World War I sermons.
It is worth mentioning one more point from the analysis of Tillich's early parish sermons, namely how, in a few early parish sermons, he mentioned eternity in the same sermons that he referred to the soul. One such sermon, on Hebrews i.9–11, was delivered in Lankwitz, probably in 1909.Footnote 40 Tillich begins by describing God as ‘the calm from eternity to eternity’Footnote 41 and the human being's soul as ‘restless from day to day’.Footnote 42 Yet if anyone believes that the eternal laws of nature could give their soul peace, they have, according to Tillich, not yet heard the ‘longing’ voice of their soul. This voice says that, while everything seems great and wonderful, everyone suffers restlessness and aimlessness and yearns for meaning.Footnote 43 The soul says: ‘this is not my final rest’.Footnote 44 The soul is driven on by restlessness, so that it does not linger, but continues to strive. And through all this, God is with the human being as an ‘eternal calm in the middle of time’.Footnote 45 With this knowledge, the human can achieve a peace that transcends turmoil and unrest, namely the eternal rest of God.Footnote 46 In the early parish sermons, the concepts of eternity and the soul are thus frequently mentioned together. They are used with regard to the human being's relationship to God, something which the whole human being – i.e. the soul – seeks during hard and suffering times.
It seems natural that Tillich, when he was faced with the devastating suffering of the war, would turn to these two themes which he had used before the war in the rare instances when he preached on suffering and death. As emphasised by E. W. H. King, contrary to what he refers to as ‘popular understandings of the war’, the experiences of soldiers of the war were not restricted to the trenches. Soldiers were never entirely removed from the civilian front and they were not necessarily alienated from their prewar selves.Footnote 47 Thus it was entirely possible that Tillich would use and further develop themes from his prewar days.
Eternity and the soul in Tillich's World War I sermons
In Tillich's World War I sermons, the idea of the active soul is developed into that of the ‘hero soul’ and the eternal calm is deepened to give it the sense of an eternal stillness, needed to remain strong in the war. Furthermore, eternity and soul are combined in Tillich's understanding of heroism, which, according to him, is to die for eternity. Tillich believed the human being's soul to be in their own hands, and, as the human being should care for eternity, so should the human being fight for eternity in the war. Thus, the themes of eternity and the soul are shaped by the suffering in the war and the resulting need for strength and stillness. At the same time, these experiences imbued the war with meaning.
Tillich describes the hero soul in an untitled war sermon on Luke ii.49.Footnote 48 Here, he first distinguishes between different kinds of souls: the everyday souls (Alltagsseele) and the Sunday souls (Sonntagsseele):
Dear comrades; there are everyday souls and Sunday souls. The everyday soul never gets beyond the dusty country road of everyday life. The Sunday soul has wings and rises again and again to bright, clear heights! Even the common man can do his duty, day after day, in the same way, but he quickly becomes dull and embittered. But whoever carries the Sunday spirit within him keeps bright eyes for the beauty and majesty of the world of God, keeps cheerful in the daily burden and plague, retains enthusiasm for the great earthly and eternal things. And when a new ray of divine beauty falls upon his eyes, and when indestructible peace fills him, and when enthusiasm and high goals move him to the depths of his soul, then it is Sunday in him, then he is in that which is his Father.Footnote 49
Thus, according to Tillich, even in suffering, and through everyday life, the Sunday soul finds comfort in God. The very depths of the human soul are moved by the ‘Sunday’ in it, he states. The soul plays such an important role for Tillich that it is the very soul which speaks to the human being saying, ‘I must be in what is my Father's, on the Lord's day, all life and in eternity!’Footnote 50 This feeling is indispensable in the hard times of war.Footnote 51 Here again is the idea, from the prewar sermons, that the soul is the active part of the human being in times of suffering. And this is further developed into the Sunday soul, active amidst suffering, juxtaposed to the everyday soul, which is dulled and embittered.
Tillich did not merely preach about the Sunday soul amid suffering in general. He also preached about the Sunday soul in the context of war, whether this fight is the next battle or future battles: this is irrelevant for it ‘makes no difference before eternity’.Footnote 52 He even believed the Sunday soul to be even more important in wartime, as wartime knows no holidays.Footnote 53 Tillich therefore introduces a variation on the Sunday soul, the hero soul (Heldenseele). The hero soul has ‘a Sunday glow, a shine of eternity, a light from the Father's house’ over it.Footnote 54 And this hero soul will be needed, as ‘a lot of heroism, a lot of overcoming death is required of you in these and the coming days!’Footnote 55
What does such heroism entail? What does it mean to overcome death? The answer can be found in a wartime sermon on Philippians ii. Here, Tillich has an entire section titled ‘Dying is my gain’Footnote 56 which takes up one-third of the short sermon. Tillich states that:
Dying is my gain. It is so hard for us to get accustomed to this thought. All of us, the pious and the godless, regard dying as a loss; but that is untrue; even life can be a loss; a life of dishonour, of cowardice, of selfishness, of primal unity, that is a loss of eternity. But a death in heroism, in the service of love, that is gain, gain of eternity.Footnote 57
Here, Tillich juxtaposes living with a loss of eternity with dying while gaining eternity.Footnote 58 This is what heroism is for Tillich: to die for eternity in the service of love. This idealisation of self-sacrifice was a common motivational motif during World War I. In their study of the German war effort, Alexander Watson and Patrick Porter contend that this ideology contributed to the mass slaughter of the war and even exacerbated the violence. Such rhetoric encouraged the soldiers to endure and seek vengeance as an act of vindication for their dead.Footnote 59 The suffering of the war, in turn, contributed to this ideology of sacrifice, as the intense physical suffering, rather than disillusioning the soldiers, imbued sacrifice with greater meaning.Footnote 60 And the soldiers were far from disillusioned about death – death was far from just an abstract concept for them; it was a very present experience. The notion of death for the German soldiers at the front was an event which was witnessed violently, in forms of extreme brutality, and repeatedly.Footnote 61
These existential experiences of suffering and death at the front transformed Tillich's understanding of eternity and the soul: the soul is to sacrifice itself, and through this sacrifice it will gain eternity. In Tillich's sermons, the intense suffering of the war imbued sacrifice with greater meaning when related to eternity and the soul. In his sermon on Phil. ii, dying is not only gain for eternity, but for the Fatherland – a concept directly related to the ideology of sacrificeFootnote 62 – as Tillich states later in this sermon.Footnote 63 He furthermore, refers to this as dying in heroism and dying in the service of love.Footnote 64 Thus, the hero soul does not merely fight for eternity, but for the Fatherland in the service of others too. And through this, dying seen as a loss is overcome. The emphasis on eternity, on its spiritual significance and on the Fatherland was not unfamiliar in the sermons of the first two years of the war delivered by German Protestant clergy. Following Mark R. Correll, a common thread in these sermons was the emphasis on the war being part of God's plan for the world, as well as for the German nation, giving to it a cosmic, eternal importance – something reflected in Tillich's belief that the hero soul's sacrifice is gain for both eternity and for Germany.Footnote 65 As Correll writes, ‘it was a war fought as much with weapons of faith and prayer as with machine guns and biplanes’.Footnote 66
In such a war, strength is needed. Tillich comments on the need for strength in a wartime sermon, dated 24 January 1915, on Ps. lxii.2. Here, Tillich further develops the stillness of the soul which was expressed in his early (1903) parish sermon on Heb. i.9–11. In the war sermon, Tillich asks his listeners to think back to ‘the past few days as you walked through a valley of death’.Footnote 67 Looking back on the past and forward to the coming days, Tillich encourages his listeners to become still. Only by being still can they remain strong and conquer. Restlessness makes one weak.Footnote 68
How does one's soul become still? Much like ‘the eternal calm in the middle of time’ from Tillich's early parish sermon on Heb. 1.9–11, the answer is eternity. There is always quietness wherever eternity appears in time, as ‘the eternal stillness of God sinks into the restlessness of temporality’.Footnote 69 The soul is still before God who helps the human being.Footnote 70 Eternity can be felt in the soul, as Tillich emphasises in his New Year's sermon (1914/15) on Luke xxiv.29. Here, he encourages his listeners to look back on the past year. Some worried about the future, some hoped the coming year would bring them joy, and yet some were ‘in quiet gathering before God, feeling the breath of transience in the passing of a year and also the eternal for their soul’.Footnote 71 The soul becomes still when it is conscious of eternity.
In another of Tillich's wartime sermons, on John xxi.7, he sheds some light on how one might experience the eternal in the soul. Here again, the interpretative key is the experience of suffering in the war.Footnote 72 In a section on the ‘conquerors who lie before us’,Footnote 73 i.e. the heroic fallen soldiers, Tillich describes how the ‘the first glow of eternity in a human soul’Footnote 74 is the human being going beyond itself and its ego, happiness, comfort, honour, even its own life. Here, according to Tillich, is to be found the beginning of all true humanity and all true Christianity. And it is the first source of inner strength, of inner worth and of the eternal in the soul. And once again, this is related to the Fatherland, as the human being in this act gives their life to the Fatherland.Footnote 75 By overcoming oneself, one overcomes, for example, suffering and death, and through this victory, one helps one's comrades, platoons and companies as well as the entire Fatherland.Footnote 76 Thus, the suffering and death of the war are described as the glow of eternity in the soul. The themes of eternity and the soul are once again understood in light of the devastating and often fatal suffering of war.
Just as overcoming oneself is used by Tillich in his wartime sermons to define true humanity, so is pastoral care (Seelesorge).Footnote 77 One example is a sermon on Matthew vi.25–34, where pastoral care is described as the highest and most important form of care and that which distinguishes the human being from others.Footnote 78 It is through caring that ‘we take part in God's rule and his eternity’, Tillich states.Footnote 79 Suffering is once again used as an interpretive key, as it is juxtaposed with the correct care. Correct care is an action which makes the human being strong, proud and free while suffering, in turn, enslaves the human being, humiliates it and makes it weak.Footnote 80
Tillich was not the only German military chaplain to stress the importance of pastoral care. As evidenced by Takken, Johannes Gersbach lectured on this very subject after returning from the war. Gersbach, however, saw the role of military chaplains to be pastoral care and teaching soldiers to die well.Footnote 81 Tillich, on the other hand, stated in his sermon on Matt vi.25–34 that human beings – not just chaplains – had to take part in pastoral care. One has to take part in the pastoral care of oneself. There is, according to Tillich, only one person who can take care of the human being's soul, and that is that human being himself. As Tillich states in this sermon, ‘your soul is in your hands!’Footnote 82 By caring for one's own soul, one furthermore cares for eternity. And therefore, one is, according to Tillich, blessed: ‘Blessed is he who cares about his soul and does not let it rest for his entire life! He does not care about time, he cares about eternity!’Footnote 83 Eternity and the soul are again interwoven by Tillich; the human being must care for its own soul in order to care for eternity – even amidst suffering, during which Tillich believed the soul to be active as the whole human being.
The importance of sermons as the immanent way of theology during the war
One of Tillich's early lectures offers some insight into why eternity and the soul became more important in Tillich's sermons during the war. In the lecture ‘The two ways in which systematic theology is possible today’ (‘Die beiden Wege der systematischen Theologie, die heute möglich sind’), Tillich describes exactly why sermons are important. Sermons are the immanent way in which systematic theology is possible, while philosophy and existence, and thus the analysis of being, is the transcendent way.Footnote 84 Describing the immanent way, the first thing Tillich notices is that the self of the sermon is identical to the self of theology. This results in Tillich believing that the content of the sermon characterises the development of a concrete situation.Footnote 85 He emphasises that the concepts used in sermons ‘must remain in the sphere of the world of concepts foretold by sermons’,Footnote 86 which he refers to as a ‘strict immanence of concept formation’.Footnote 87 Such concepts would be, among others, eternity and the soul. The concepts of the sermon thus imply a concrete understanding of the world that is taken along the path of immanence. The concepts must not, according to Tillich, point beyond, but must be supported by a religious impulse that can be understood in the sermon itself.Footnote 88 There are several dated war reports in the archives which can shed some light on the context in which the strict immanence of concept formation took place amidst the suffering of the war.Footnote 89
Tillich's report of 3 November 1914 illustrates how he looked at what he called the unveiled view of the eternal in moments of danger and suffering. Here, he depicts the two forms of sermons: the motivational and the contemplative. Tillich describes how he employs the motivational form of sermon when preaching to troops (permanent or temporary) behind the lines, and the contemplative form when preaching to front-line troops. Tillich justifies his choice: ‘in the case of troops at the front, who are constantly in a state of great inner excitement and in grave danger, I have emphasised quietness. In the case of the troops behind the lines, who easily get the hang of the situation and can settle down in a bad way, I have put motives first’.Footnote 90 Thus, Tillich uses a mystical comforting tone when preaching to front-line troops but uses the language of inner, moral struggle when preaching behind the lines. Furthermore, he aims to balance stillness and activity: this is seen in sermons on the soul which is both said to rest and be still and to be active and heroic amidst suffering.
Tillich believed that the activity of chaplains was often urgently desired in wartime, but rarely in times of peace. Now, in time of war, it is something which supports and strengthens.Footnote 91 The war was seen by the German clergy as an opportunity and a second chance for those who had forgotten God; now they could find God again. Correll believes that the clergy saw a spiritual importance in the war which went beyond any political success ‘each time a soldier on the front cried out to God in the heat of battle and as each parent prayed for a son's safety on the battlefield’.Footnote 92
In his report on May and June 1915, Tillich follows up on his distinction between the two different forms of sermons expressed in his report of 3 November 1914. This report is somewhat more grim. Tillich states that ‘the sermon has to struggle with the tangible limitation of material, especially since the church year has not been of any help since Pentecost; there is nothing left to broaden the field of vision from the world of war to thoughts of the future form and liveliness of religious life’.Footnote 93 Tillich therefore found that providing motivation and quietness – which he now referred to as the task of the field sermon in accordance with his previous report – remained the most important task.Footnote 94 But he also found it necessary to expand upon it so that it may also hint at a future after the war. He saw hope for the future as an essential element of these sermons, along with motivation and quietness. Through this hope, which is described as the living force of the soul, the power of immanence remains unbroken in the revelation of the eternal. Thus, eternity and the soul, themes that received a fuller development in Tillich's theology when he had experienced the suffering and devastation of the war, are understood as important pastoral elements. These, in turn, gain their importance through the immanent way of theology.
The distinction between the immanent and the transcendent way of theology is also to be found in a report from November and December 1915. Here, Tillich does not only describe this distinction but also relates it to the soul. The living force of the soul is here stated as the hope for peace. And this hope is described as the only thing left, not merely as an isolated utterance, but as the keynote.Footnote 95 And through this hope, ‘the power of immanence is not broken in any way. Since it cannot work in the form of enjoyment being tied to the world, it works as impatient longing’.Footnote 96 The longing of the soul, described by Tillich in several of his wartime sermons, is tied together with the power of immanence.
Both immanence and transcendence are referred to in this report with regard to Christmas and the New Year of 1915/16. Tillich states that a storm of immanence was poured into the Christmas party but was inhibited by the burden of the present. However, some few people could understand the transcendent meaning of the Gospel, which is why there was something liberating in the New Year. ‘It is’, as Tillich writes, ‘only slightly burdened with melancholic moments of danger, and one could look with an unveiled view at the eternal that so majestically has revealed itself over time and human life.’Footnote 97 In his 1914/15 New Year's sermons on Luke xxiv.29 Tillich emphasised how eternity can be felt in the soul; with this report from the New Year 1915/16 we can now add that the eternal reveals itself over the course of time and amid suffering.
The study of the themes of eternity and the soul in Tillich's prewar sermons showed that they rarely occurred, and where they did it was in relation to concern/care, death and suffering. When Tillich found himself amidst the tremendous suffering of World War I, however, these two themes became the major focus of most of his sermons. His sermons concentrated on the eternal in the soul, on Sunday souls, on hero souls, on the care for one's soul and thus for eternity. All of these themes were interpreted in light of Tillich's experiences of suffering. As a result, Tillich's theology developed a fuller understanding of the themes of eternity and the soul, as is seen in the World War I sermons. By using the suffering of war as an interpretive key, Tillich was able to uphold his own criteria for theology after World War I: to be meaningful any theology must address the question of suffering. The use and development of the themes of eternity and the soul became Tillich's way of addressing both his own and his audience's experience of the war and their experience of suffering. As evidenced in a letter from Tillich to his father of 23 November 1916, it was precisely for eternity that Tillich fought and preached: ‘I preach about the text: we have no permanent place here – what are we supposed to do here, when everything leaves us! But I cling tighter than ever to the future. I will, I preach, I fight for eternity.’Footnote 98