1. Perspective on Theology

For Paul Tillich, to engage in “theology” is a function of the church, systematically interpreting “the content of the Christian faith.” Why then must ‘this content’ be ‘systematically’ ‘interpreted’? Firstly, the reason this content needs interpretation is because the ‘eternal message’ of Christianity within the ‘Scriptures’ and ‘Tradition’ is not identical to its temporal expressions and must always be rediscovered in new ‘situations’ – “the totality of creative self-interpretation of human existence performed in a specific era.” Secondly, the reason it must be systematic or organized is that a system provides clarity by “assigning meaning” to factual or rational statements in responding to the questions demanded by specific situations. As it at least pertains to ‘scholarship’, the formation of a consistent system by semantic, logical, and methodological rationality is required.

This formal or functional definition led Tillich to name his practice of “theology” as ‘Systematic Theology’.

On the other hand, what does ‘theology’ entail for Gordon Kaufman? It is an academic discipline that can be practiced both inside and outside the church, succinctly described as “the study of the concept of ‘god’ used in Western culture and all concepts associated with it.” Here, the distinction is made between God as reality and the imaginative construct of ‘god’, and for him, ‘theologizing’ is no longer about describing or explaining God but “dealing” with ‘god’ as everyday language. Specifically, this means critiquing, constructing, and reconstructing ‘god’, ‘world’, and numerous associated concepts within a “monotheistic” semantic relation. Influenced by the ‘anthropological turn’ from Kant and the ‘linguistic turn’ from Wittgenstein, Kaufman saw ‘theologizing’ as an academic effort to speak about the ‘god’ discourse more accurately and effectively, which he also viewed as an active “(re)construction” that makes it “lived out” in today’s situation and everyday life.

Thus, Kaufman named his practice of ‘theology’ as ‘Constructive Theology’.

2. The Essence of Theology

For Tillich, the essence of ‘theology’ primarily lies in participating in the ‘theological circle’. Of course, being both inside and simultaneously outside the hermeneutical circle of ‘mystical a priori’ with the added criterion of ‘Christian message’, the only criterion by which one can recognize what he is doing as ‘theology’ depends on whether he acknowledges the content of this theological circle as his ultimate concern. Therefore, Tillich offers the following formal criteria for what can be said as ‘theology’: “Is it a proposition concerning our ultimate concern?”, “Is it a proposition concerning the issue of our existence and non-existence?” Furthermore, Tillich extends the essence of theology into Christian theology, declaring that in faith in the ‘Incarnate Logos’, which is “absolutely concrete and at the same time absolutely universal,” ‘theologizing’ ultimately has an ‘existential foundation’ that infinitely transcends “all things” as its academic basis.

On the other hand, what does Kaufman say is the essence of ‘theology’? In distinguishing between ‘faith’ and ‘theology’, he states that while faith is “inherently an attitude of devotion or trust towards God or some other reality comparable to Him,” theology is not only a devotion to the symbols of faith but also an attempt to understand these symbols and how they function in human life, along with efforts to critique and reinterpret them to fulfill their intended purpose, and ultimately, sometimes a thorough reconstitution of these symbols. Moreover, Kaufman declares, “If faith is a gift from God, then theology is certainly a human task, and thus we must bear full responsibility for it.”

3. Material of Theology

Tillich presents the Bible as the fundamental material for his ‘theologizing’. This does not mean that the Bible is the only material but that it is the foundational document of the ‘revelatory event’ upon which Christianity is based. However, since the origin of the Bible is an event in church history, when a systematic theologian uses the Bible as material, he implicitly uses church history as his material, and church history, in turn, is based on the broader terrain of religious-cultural history, making the materials of systematic theology almost boundlessly rich. In the face of such vast materials, Tillich wishes to differentiate the importance depending on how directly or indirectly they are related to the central event upon which Christian faith is based, ‘the new being revealed in Jesus Christ’. For this, he raised the issue of the intermediaries that accept these materials and the norms that must be used when evaluating them.

However, Kaufman does not agree with Tillich’s position on the materials of ‘theologizing’. Tillich’s theological premise is based on ‘divine revelation’, and saying that ‘theologizing’ must start with it implies that we already know what we are talking about when we speak of ‘God’ and ‘revelation’. However, for Kaufman, ‘theologizing’ as a human task cannot start from something unknown, and like all other concepts, the concepts of ‘God’ and ‘revelation’ are thought to have been devised and developed through the process of reflection and interpretation of human life. But this does not mean Kaufman claims that the premise that ‘theologizing’ is based on God’s revelation is incorrect. Rather, he argues that the assumption that God’s revelation tells us where it must start is wrong. Since the languages of the Bible and the church are taken from the everyday language of people living their daily lives, ‘theologizing’ must start from here, and we must carry out our responsible task hoping that God’s revelation becomes the final word.

4. Experience in Theology

For Tillich, the materials of ‘theology’ can only become materials for those who have “participated” in them, hence experience serves as a medium. However, experience is not the primary content of ‘theology’ from which materials can be inferred, and the event upon which Christianity is based – the unique event of Jesus Christ – is already given in history. Although ontological experiential theology has significantly contributed by clearly showing that “the religious object is not one among other objects” and “this religious object is an expression of a dimension or characteristic of our general experience,” it has led people not to question ‘the existence of God’ but what ‘the holy’ means, and mystical experience, following the Reformers, is seen as the Holy Spirit testifying to the message of the Bible within us, not as a new revelation being given. For Tillich, experience was only considered as a medium for ‘the eternal message’, coloring the formation of the message and determining the interpretation of what it received.

Kaufman also concurs with Tillich in opposing the argument that (religious) experience can serve as the foundation for ‘theologizing’. For that to be possible, we need to be able to see how theological terms and concepts were devised and formed through specific experiences and to develop criteria for evaluating the appropriateness of these concepts. However, it is very unclear which competing concept of (religious) experience can be determined as the fundamental one, and indeed, none of them can be clearly presented as fundamentally. Especially, this approach treats the relationship between ‘individual experience’ and ‘the social context of experience, composed of language, society, and institutions’ too simplistically, and Kaufman criticizes it for failing to recognize the importance of ‘language’ always operative in all dimensions of experience. In other words, within human cognitive activity (unless ‘theologizing’ is an unconscious act), ‘experiences’ are named and awakened through linguistic symbols, hence (religious) experience is never a pure pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic concept or an indisputable foundation for establishing theology. However, this does not mean Kaufman denies the existence or impact of religious experience. It is an argument that religious experience does not provide the fundamental foundation or starting point for ‘theologizing’, rather, ‘theologizing’ must instead be based on the language and tradition that “form the experience”. At that time, (religious) experience becomes the final appellate court to find out if such ‘theological’ work still holds significance in our lives, not as the starting point but as the final word of our ‘theologizing’.

5. Norms of Theology

We have seen that for Tillich, the start of ‘theologizing’ is based on ‘revelation’, and it becomes the material for my ‘theologizing’ mediated through ‘experience’, while for Kaufman, both ‘revelation’ and ‘religious experience’ are located not at the starting point but at the endpoint of ‘theologizing’. Therefore, the norms of ‘theologizing’ for Tillich pertain to what the criteria for judging the materials and mediating experiences are, and for Kaufman, the issue becomes the criteria for judging the constructive work of ‘theologizing’ itself. For Tillich, since ‘theology’ is a function of the church, the encounter between the questions raised by experiences under historical conditions and the message of the Scriptures gives rise to a norm (principle), with the content norm of his ‘theologizing’ thought to be “the new being revealed in Jesus Christ”. However, such a norm is not an unconditional and absolute criterion, but one that emerged within the religious-cultural context of the church at the time of Tillich.

On the other hand, the issue of norms appears more ambiguously for Kaufman. We can never transcend the concepts we have to ascertain whether the concepts he is constructing correspond to reality. Therefore, the criteria for judging constructive ‘theologizing’ depend on whether these claims “open up more new possibilities, infuse new hope, and enable people to leap to new dimensions of being human”, which is practical and humane. This is not because theologians pursue a utilitarian or pragmatic truth concept in general, but because such practical requirements are thought to be the only standards by which we can ultimately evaluate the ways of life, worldview, overall perspective on things, and the concept of ‘God’.

6. Method of Theology

The existential question itself, raised in various existential situations, is interrelated with the answer from the eternal message, thus Tillich named this the ‘method of correlation’. The term ‘correlation’ can be used in three senses here: 1. Correspondence of a series of materials, 2. Logical interdependence of concepts, 3. Actual interdependence of things or events within the overall structure. If this term is used in ‘theology’, it means 1. Correspondence between religious symbols and what is symbolized by these symbols, 2. Logical interdependence between concepts indicating the human and concepts indicating the divine, 3. Actual interdependence between human ultimate concerns and the object of ultimate concern. The significance of this is dramatically read from Tillich’s statement that “although God in his abysmal nature is never dependent on man, God in his self-manifestation depends on how man accepts this manifestation,” and why he wove ‘reason and revelation’, ‘existence and God’, ‘existence and Christ’, ‘life and the Holy Spirit’, ‘history and the kingdom of God’ into one relationship to form the overall structure of his theological system.

On the other hand, what may have seemed to Kaufman as if the conclusion of his ‘theologizing’, the presupposition of revelation, had been disguised as a transcendence damaging, more specifically, a disruption of the logical status of ‘God’. Of course, for Kaufman as well, ‘world’ and ‘God’ are related in the third phase of the construction work, but only after the concept of ‘God’ as ‘the ultimate relativizer’, which relativizes the ‘world’ and destroys its absoluteness and appropriateness within the dual motives of absolutization and humanization formed in the second phase, are theological terms and concepts along with ‘God’ intellectually “aligned with” ‘the world’ through the work of reconstructing ‘the world’. Kaufman is confident that only through such a method will God become a suitable object of our true worship and devotion and also the central direction governing our life and actions.