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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Paul Tillich's rejection of any attempt to substantiate faith and christological doctrine by extracting from the gospels a biographical picture of Jesus is well known. The reasons he gives in the second volume of Systematic Theology are by no means unusual and certainly not intended to be original. So, for example, we find a basic agreement with Bultmann that, in view of the kerygmatic nature of the gospels, it is illicit to make the liberal Protestant distinction between the man Jesus and Jesus the Christ, in order to confine attention to the allegedly recoverable ‘Jesus of history’. Tillich develops this argument in terms of the inseparability of the ‘fact’ of Jesus and his ‘reception’ as the Christ within the event ‘Jesus as the Christ’, and maintains accordingly that biblical criticism cannot effectually undermine Christology because the empirical truth of Jesus cannot be distinguished apart from the faithful appropriation of that fact, in which the recipient is quite as important as the fact itself.
page 279 note 1 Dynamics of Faith (Harper and Row, New York, 1957), p. 87.Google Scholar
page 279 note 2 Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Nisbet, London, 1964), p. 134. Hereafter cited as ST, 2.Google Scholar
page 280 note 1 It is wrong, therefore, to assume that Tillich does not take the historic fact of Jesus seriously. On the contrary—for him the interpretation of Jesus as the Christ must be considered as a report about something that has happened objectively. The essential element of the historic reality of Jesus of Nazareth is maintained throughout. This excludes the view that the New Testament image of Jesus as the Christ is either the product of man's imagination or the creation of existentialist thought or experience. See ST, 2: 113–14.
page 281 note 1 ibid., p. 131.
page 281 note 2 ibid.
page 281 note 3 ibid.
page 281 note 4 ibid.
page 281 note 5 ibid.
page 281 note 6 ibid.
page 282 note 1 Kelsey, D., The Fabric of Paul Tillich's Theology (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1967), p. 93.Google Scholar
page 282 note 2 ST, 2: 131 (my emphasis).
page 282 note 3 ibid.
page 283 note 1 Tavard, G. H., Paul Tillich and the Christian Message (Scribner's, New York, 1962), p. 109.Google Scholar
page 283 note 2 ST, 2: 132.
page 283 note 3 ibid.
page 283 note 4 ibid.
page 284 note 1 ST, 2: 132.
page 284 note 2 ibid.
page 284 note 3 ibid.
page 285 note 1 ibid, p. 133.
page 285 note 2 ibid.
page 285 note 3 ibid.
page 285 note 4 ibid.
page 285 note 5 ibid, (my emphasis).
page 285 note 6 ibid., p. 134.
page 286 note 1 ST, 2: 133.
page 286 note 2 ibid., p. 132.
page 287 note 1 Cameron, B. J. R., ‘The Historical Problem in Paul Tillich's Christology’, Scottish Journal of Theology, XVIII, no. 3 (Sept. 1965), p. 257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 289 note 1 Smith, D. Moody, ‘The Historical Jesus in Paul Tillich's Christology’, The Journal of Religion, XLVI, no. 1, part II (Jan. 1966), p. 137Google Scholar. Thomas, J. Heywood has also pointed out that to say that the historian can never reach certainty is to confuse truths of fact with truths of logic. Though the former are contingent, this does not deny the possibility of their verification. ‘All we can mean if we say they are probable is that when they are verified they are not verified in the same way as the propositions, which are necessarily true’ (Paul Tillich: An Appraisal [S.C.M. Press, London, 1963], p. 86).Google Scholar
page 290 note 1 D. Kelsey, op. cit., p. 101.
page 292 note 1 D. Moody Smith, op. cit., p. 138.
page 293 note 1 Cushman, R. E., ‘The Christology of Paul Tillich’, The Heritage of Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of Robert Lowry Calhoun, ed. Cushman, R. E. and Grislis, E. (Harper and Row, New York, 1965), p. 178 (my emphasis).Google Scholar