On May 16, the Faculty of Religion and Theology at VU organized a symposium in collaboration with the Dutch Paul Tillich society. Chaired by prof. Dr. Dirk-Martin Grube, it was examined whether we can learn something from theology 100 years ago for the 2020s. Here's a short recap.
In the Roaring Twenties people were faced with the almost impossible task of continuing to theologize credibly at a time that God seemed to have died in the trenches of Verdun.
Leo de Graaff opened with a historical exposé about the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, culminating in the only thing that mattered to Nobel Price winner Thomas Mann: everything that promotes humanity!
Using publications from the 1920s, Rainer Wahl explained that two responses are possible to the catastrophe of WWI: on the one hand, Karl Barth's divine 'no' about everything demonic in 'Religion' and culture and on the other hand, the dialectical thinking of Paul Tillich who sought the synthesis between church and culture.
From the world of art, Leo Steinhauzer, inspired by Joseph Beuys, then came up with examples from installation art. An art object has a message, but what language does a putting together of objects speak? Moreover, the direction of gaze is also very decisive. For example, we saw a coffin, which, when placed upright, became the house of a soldier on guard. After the break,
Fokke Omta showed that we have lost the depth dimension in our culture. Tillich wrote about this in the magazine The Saturday Evening Post (June 14, 1958). Little has changed since then.
Based on a Tillichian concept of human co-creator-ship, Peter 't Hoen drew attention to the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. He compared them to the message of the Old Testament prophets, showing how biblically relevant they are.
Aad Woudenberg showed that Tillich found a way forward in his twenties through the movement of Religious Socialism. For Tillich it was a kairos, an 'idea with wings', a decisive inspirational moment that makes history. He wondered whether Klaus Schwab's The Great Reset could be such a kairos. He praised the sharp analysis of the think tank in Davos, but lacked the engine to arrive at something new. In that respect, the various manifestations of Green Theology have more momentum and could well develop into a new kairos in the twenties of our twenty-first century.
The symposium was introduced by Prof. Dr. Dirk-Martin Grube. The intention is to continue exploring the ideas which emerged during the symposium. Possibly, a publication will roll out of the symposium with Paul Tillich's correlative theology as a guiding perspective.
Who was Paul Tillich?
Paul Johannes Tillich (Aug. 20, 1886 – Oct. 22, 1965) was a German-American Lutheran pastor and professor of theology and philosophy. He belonged to the religious socialist movement and left Germany (for the US) in 1933 after being the first non-Jewish scientist to be banned from working by the Nazis. Although Tillich was of great significance in the twentieth century, his theology has always remained rather underexposed in the Netherlands. His book 'The Courage to be' (1951) became a worldwide bestseller. His Systematic Theology is undisputedly one of the great theological concepts of the last century.