Abstract

This dissertation explores two main concepts, Durchbruch and paradox, through which Tillich discloses and bridges the tension between the Sacred and Profane, revelation and culture. Tillich sees these poles in critical and creative tension; for him there is neither an easy harmony between divinity and humanity nor an unbridgeable gap between the unconditioned and the conditioned. Rather, the divine breaks through into the human realm and confronts humanity with a radically negative judgment and a limitlessly positive affirmation at once. The dissertation demonstrates that Tillich steers a middle course between liberal theology and emerging neo-orthodoxy of the 1920s through his concepts of breakthrough and paradox for an understanding of the dynamics and form of revelation. The study also points out the connections of the christological breakthrough to Tillich's expectation of a kairos in which a new theonomy would come to break through in the movement of Religious Socialism, a group which Tillich spearheaded in the 1920s. This hope was crushed through National Socialism's rise to terror which, in turn, led to Tillich's forced emigration to the United States in the early 1930s. The dissertation shows that in the American period, "breakthrough" loses its political dimension for Tillich: he now refers almost exclusively to the breakthrough in the Christ event or in a work of art. Thus the early political, and radical, dimension of revelation is largely lost through the overwhelmingly negative impact that world-historical events had on Tillich's developing theological and philosophical reflection