Word: tillichs
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Weltschmerz was not the only new attitude that Tillich derived from his four years of war service. Class conflict within Germany was becoming more and more pronounced, and within the young minister there "broke out ecstatically" a sympathy with the cause of social revolution. This feeling led him, during the twenties, to participate actively in political affairs. Meanwhile, he held several chairs of theology and philosophy, and developed his interests in psychology, the visual arts, and existentialism. In January, 1933, at the University of Frankfurt, he one day gave a lecture entitled "Heil Hitler," in which he analyzed the psychological...
...Tillich's physical immigration to America was accomplished easily, but his linguistic transition was more difficult, since he arrived in New York at the age of 47 with virtually no knowledge of English. During his first year at Union he took English lessons twice a week from one of his students and wrote his lectures first in German. "The man really went through torture," Nicbuhr says. He recalls that since Tillich's theology is quite abstract, when one student complained that he couldn't understand Tillich's English lectures, another would reassure him: "That's all right...
...time, of course, Tillich conquered the language, and otherwise adjusted himself to American life. In 1954 he had reached Union's retirement age, and was about to withdraw to his Long Island home. President Pusey stepped in, however, and with the offer of a University Professorship finally succeeded in bringing Paul Tillich to Harvard...
...Tillich's faculty associates here, like everyone who knows him, are constantly amazed by the scope and energy of his mind. "It's a marvel that interests as diverse as his can be united in one mind without pulling it apart," one colleague has said. The point is, however, that for Tillich such interests as psychology, politics, art, and philosophy are not diverse. According to his theology they are all vital aspects of religion, and in studying them he is actually concentrating on just this one subject--the "ultimate concern" of his life...
With the spirit of the true existentialist, moreover, Tillich not only thinks about these aspects of life, but throws himself as actively as possible into each of them. Even in the area of food and drink, he has little patience with the ministry's traditional attitude of teetotaling and asceticism, and is, in fact, something of a gourmet. As one young faculty member admiringly puts it, the eminent theologian is "a good man to share a bottle of wine with...