The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message

'The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message' is a transcript of Paul Tillich's 1963 Earl Lectures at the Graduate Theological Union. Delivered just two years before his death, these lectures present Tillich's heartfelt and deeply personal understanding of the relevance of Christian preaching and Christian theology. Why, Tillich asks, has the Christian message become seemingly irrelevant to contemporary society? Is the gospel able to give answers to the questions raised by the existentialist analysis of the human predicament? Yes, he answers -- but in order to do so Christian teaching and preaching need to undergo dramatic renewal, the root of which requires an affirmation of love as central to Christian identity. Further, we need to recognize that this task is not limited to preachers and theologians; all of us together are responsible for the irrelevance or the relevance of the gospel in our time. Much of the vast sweep of Tillich is spontaneously summed up here, as only he could have done it, speaking from sparse notes, personably and candidly, to both poles of his life's calling as theologian of culture and interpreter of the Christian message. We have in these lectures, as nowhere else with such brevity, the fully rounded out Tillich. -- from the Introduction by A. Durwood Foster Paul Tillich (1886-1965), an early critic of Hitler, was barred from teaching in Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, holding teaching positions at Union Theological Seminary, New York (1933-1955); Harvard Divinity School (1955-1962); and the University of Chicago Divinity School (1962-1965). A. Durwood Foster is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California.