PERSPECTIVES ON 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY PROTESTANT THEOLOGY, by Paul Tillich. Harper & Row, New York, N. Y. 252 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Ind.
This book is published from tape
recordings of lectures Tillich gave
in 1963 in Chicago. The contents
are impressionistic pictures of a
number of recent philosophers and
their themes.
This procedure, which is allowable to a thinker in his mature
years, enables Tillich to reflect on
his view of faith and the nature of
religion. He notes that rationalism
and mysticism are akin, not antithetical. The particular state of theology in America is, in one respect,
the result of this nation's never going through a period of Romanticism — Goethe contributed so much
to German theology.
Some of the impressions are a little startling. One wonders whether
secularism's reluctance to face death
is due to the Jesuits' support of
bourgeois capitalism. Orthodox Protestants will be surprised to hear,
even though they are familiar with
Tillich's bias, that they believe God
dictated the Bible as a boss dictates
a letter to a stenographer at a typewriter; and that they also believe
that the King James version is the
very Word of God.
Naturally we must not expect liberal scholars to study very carefully
the religion they attack.
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