Abstract

Scholars have paid only occasional attention to Paul Tillich's presentation of the Trinity. This dissertation delineates the centrality of the Trinity in Tillich's theology. An investigation of even his relatively modest explicit treatments reveals an increasing role of the Trinity as his theology through the years develops its mature systematic form. In Systematic Theology, the presentation of the Trinity concludes part 4, serves as the organizing principle of the three central parts of the system, and is treated at some length in each of the five parts. Moreover, Tillich's crucial doctrines of revelation and of the religious symbol are, in this analysis, shown to be inherently trinitarian. A trinitarian understanding of the revelatory situation provides a way to view both the unity and the distinctions of the trinitarian personae. The life of symbols, traced as datum, development, doctrine, dogma, dilemma, and danger, offers an understanding of the need for an ongoing renewal of trinitarian theology. Finally, what Tillich calls the three roots of trinitarian thinking, which are increasingly precise and ultimately christological specifications of the triune God, are worked back into the entire system at many points; this project, often overlooked, is laid bare. Constructively, Tillich's continuity with and transformation of both the Augustinian line of trinitarian thinking and the heritage of German idealism, coupled with Tillich's appreciation of the crises of the twentieth century, create a distinctive trinitarian understanding in which the Trinity, specified in the event of Jesus as the Christ, is the ground of all reality: the world is the form of the Trinity, and the Trinity is the substance of the world. This position creates dialogue with, possibilities for, and challenges to the several strands of the contemporary renewal of trinitarian thinking