The Future of Religions

As a man who had always interpreted his own life as being lived "on the boundary," Paul Tillich was uniquely qualified for the task of illumining a revolutionary age of crumbling frontiers and of identifying the new horizons beyond. In these four recent lectures the reader encounters. Tillich in his dual role of analyst and seer. The volume contains "The Effects of Space Exploration on Man's Condition and Stature," "Frontiers" (Tillich's famous German Peace Prize address), and "The Decline and the Validity of the Idea of Progress." In "The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian" (his last Chicago address appearing here in print for the first time), Tillich takes issue both with Neo-Orthodoxy and the "God is dead" theology and proposes that the new constructive phase of Christian systematic theology must relate Christian faith to the basic insights of other world religions. Different aspects of Tillich's impact on America are treated in tributes by Jerald C. Brauer, Dean of the Divinity School and Professor of Church History, the University of Chicago; Wilhelm Pauck, Charles A. Briggs Graduate Professor of Church History, Union Theological Seminary, New York City; and Mircea Eliade, Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor and Chairman of the Department of the History of Religion at the University of Chicago.