NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 74, Issue 2, 2020

Werner Schüßler regards Paul Tillich’s philosophico-theological thinking to be relevant for today for three reasons: His idea of a theology of culture shows that religion is the depth dimension of culture and that both areas cannot be strictly separated from each other. Therefore, in principle everything can become a subject of theology. With his formal definition of faith as the state of being ultimately concerned, he tries to make clear that every human being as a human being is a religious being and that even secularization is a religious phenomenon. And in contrast to Karl Barth, Tillich draws attention to the indispensable importance of philosophy for theology.

In his assessment of Paul Tillich’s theology, Dirk Martin Grube states that revelation pertains to knowledge about knowledge instead of knowledge about the world. This concept of revelation raises two interrelated questions: 1) Can revelation be restricted to an epistemological metalevel without conveying propositional content?; 2) Does knowledge based on revelation potentially conflict with other forms of knowledge? This article denies the first and affirms the latter, thus arguing against Grube’s thesis and uses the importance of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection as a litmus test.

This article underlines the value of the philosophy of the subject. Its value is contested, both in itself and related to Paul Tillich. In Dutch theology, the philosophy of the subject was never well received, which seems disadvantageous to the study of Tillich. The present article first points out some fundamental questions concerning the subject in recent thought, next describes the approach to the subject from a subject-philosophical point of view, and finally underlines that the subject is a matter of concern for theology.

In the first part, Dirk-Martin Grube follows Paul Tillich’s leads by suggesting that revelation consists primarily in knowledge of knowledge rather than knowledge of facts. Grube holds that the evidence for the resurrection is such that its historicity can neither be confirmed (against Henk van den Belt) nor denied. Rather, it should be considered to be logically undecidable. Different from Van den Belt, Grube follows Tillich by sympathizing with the independence model for relating religion to science. In the second part, Grube takes up the issue Rick Benjamins focusses on, subject philosophy. After delving into the different positions on the way in which Tillich has adopted this philosophy, Grube evaluates subject philosophy, partly deviating from Benjamins, partly agreeing with him.

The first round of the discussion is on Paul Tillich’s famous method of correlation. This method implies that the theological answers are connected with the philosophically-existentialist questions humans ask (rather than being unconnected as in Barthianism). Wessel Stoker worries that this method may privilege Christianity and a particular concept of God over other (quasi-)religions and other concepts in unwarranted ways. Dirk-Martin Grube considers those worries unfounded, given the function Tillich ascribes to this method. In the second round, Stoker insists that the method of correlation is ontologically more heavily loaded than Grube suggests and connects this method with the (religious) a priori. In his response, Grube suggests that Tillich’s a priori has different functions than Stoker assumes.

As part of NTT JTSR’s series on Key Texts, the present article discusses Benjamin Isaac’s monograph The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Despite its favorable reception among ancient historians and classicists, this important book has not garnered much attention from scholars working on ancient Christianity and related disciplines. The article introduces Isaac’s work, situates its contribution in the broader discussion about the origins and nature of racism, and argues that the book opens up new and interesting avenues for the study of the New Testament and related literature as well as the subsequent history of Christianity.