Paul Tillich at Harvard
When he started teaching at Harvard in 1955, Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was one of the world’s foremost theologians. His early romantic views of the world had been tempered in the cauldron of World War I, where he served as a frontline German Army chaplain. But he became a Christian existentialist eager to fill up the seeming emptiness of modernity with moments of ecstasy. Tillich was 69 when he began his sojourn at Harvard. He had longed for a setting where he could reconnect the deep inquiries of art, science, and religion that modern culture seemed bent on dividing. Harvard became that setting, an intellectual crossroads where poets, scientists, artists, and philosophers were gathered. The University witnessed Tillich’s final flowering as a great synthesizer; his goal was to connect the myriad ways we grapple with what he called ultimate concerns. This important scholar of theology, art, and philosophy — author of the landmark...