272 - Paul Tillich

Paul Tillich
By John P. Newport
Waco, Word Books, 1984. 264 pp. $12.95.

John P. Newport, currently a director of the North American Paul Tillich Society and professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Rice University, provides this very valuable resource for Tillich studies. Here readers will find a concise, wellorganized march through the major parts of Tillich's system of thought. Prior to the march, Newport ably sketches Tillich's life-history and rightly suggests that the basic idea of his system is the movement from essence to existence to essentialization. After the march, Newport leads readers to reflect on Tillich's views on other religions, on major criticisms of Tillich's work and of his personal lifestyle (assessing views of Hannah Tillich, Rollo May, the Paucks, and Seward Hiltner), and then concludes with brief commentary on special topics (kairos, religious socialism, the demonic, culture, and art). Students are well-served by this concise synopsis of Tillich's thought and of others' thoughts about him.

Here is one of the meatier contributions in the Makers of the Modern Theological Mind series-interesting reading, clearly conceptualized, and helpfully situated against a rich bibliographical background. First readers of Tillich will benefit by having this book placed in their hands. More experienced readers will want to place themselves in relation to the viewpoints aired here. This is a book welcome in the Tillich course and in university and college libraries.

Mark Kline Taylor
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.