Theology of Paul Tillich edited by Charles W. Kegley

Excerpt from The Theology of Paul Tillich

Though the expression is subject to misinterpretation, there is a sense in which Tillich's work constitutes a kind of Protestant Summa for our time. We are aware that Professor Tillich himself (in his Systematic Theology, I, vii, 59) disclaims any intention of writing a Summa, indicating rather that he presents a system. In the very nature of the case, Protestantism can have no Summa, for the Protestant principle precludes anything like finality. Yet in a given historical situation presumably there can be a work which most fully gathers up the strands of all that is best in secular thought, and unites them with the truths of God's self-disclosure. Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Schleiermacher, for instance, tried to accomplish something like this, and in some important respects the theological thought of Paul Tillich has the same marks.