Paul Tillich And World Religions

The importance of Paul Tillich for understanding not only Christian faith but all religious systems is still being realized. Tillich is widely recognized as the theologian of the modern age--or, as many would have it, the postmodern age. For a new age of preoccupation with interreligious encounters--wherein tolerance may be the watchword but the quest for truth and faith maintains--Robison James reintroduces Tillich as an effective pedagogue for dealing with such encounters and for discovering, in the clamor of so many noisy, insistent religious systems, a voice of truth. James has reread Tillich with the specific purpose of discovering how we may deal with the many kinds of interreligious encounters that have been growing in frequency and importance. Such encounters, James points out, range from reading about "another religion" to "visiting" the other's observances, to dialogue with its members, to simply puzzling over how "my" faith (or nonfaith) relates to this or that "religion." Tillich's lifelong existential encounter with religious systems and his perceptive appraisal of those systems, James concludes, can lead us to the best attitude for our own quest for a way of faith and life among so many "ways" clamoring for our attention. Tillich's theology, James suggests, may best be understood as a synthesis of dialectics and paradox. Further--James contends--the attitude most characteristic of Tillich's thought, "reciprocal inclusivism, " is to be recommended as the best attitude for our own quest for the word of truth among so many noisy voices.