Theology of culture is a branch of theology that studies culture and cultural phenomena. It lies close to philosophy of culture, but it naturally works from a religious focus.
Paul Tillich (1886–1965) popularized the concept of a theology of culture, publishing a book with that title in 1959, that showed the religious dimension of several spheres of culture. He discussed ways of differentiating the sacred and the secular. In Tillich's work existentialism was also an important motif. [1]
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences. All communication is achieved through the use of symbols. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas, or visual images and are used to convey other ideas and beliefs. For example, a red octagon is a common symbol for "STOP"; on maps, blue lines often represent rivers; and a red rose often symbolizes love and compassion. Numerals are symbols for numbers; letters of an alphabet may be symbols for certain phonemes; and personal names are symbols representing individuals.
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, Christian socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at German universities before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago.
Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of gods and differs from atheism, or active disbelief in any gods. It has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as agnosticism, ignosticism, ietsism, skepticism, pantheism, pandeism, transtheism, atheism, and apatheism. It is in use in the fields of Christian apologetics and general liberal theology.
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a private ecumenical liberal Christian seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, affiliated with Columbia University. Columbia University lists UTS among its affiliate schools, alongside Barnard College and Teachers College. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Despite its affiliation with Columbia University, UTS is an independent institution with its own administration and Board of Trustees. UTS confers the following degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Divinity & Social Work dual degree (MDSW), Master of Arts in religion (MAR), Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ), Master of Sacred Theology (STM), Doctor of Ministry (DMin), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
Christian existentialism is a theo-philosophical movement which takes an existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) who is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.
Formal principle and material principle are two categories in Christian theology to identify and distinguish the authoritative source of theology from the theology itself, especially the central doctrine of that theology, of a religion, religious movement, tradition, body, denomination, or organization. A formal principle tends to be texts or revered leaders of the religion, while a material principle is its central teaching. Paul Tillich believed the identification and application of this pair of categories in theological thinking to have originated in the 19th century. As early as 1845 the Protestant theologian and historian Philip Schaff discussed them in his The Principle of Protestantism. They were utilized by the Lutheran scholar F. E. Mayer in his The Religious Bodies of America in order to facilitate a comparative study of the faith and practice of Christian denominations in the United States. This is also treated in a theological pamphlet entitled Gospel and Scripture by the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
Helmut Richard Niebuhr was an American theologian and Protestant minister who is considered one of the most important Christian ethicists in 20th-century America. He is best known for his 1951 book Christ and Culture and his posthumously published book The Responsible Self. The younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr taught for several decades at the Yale Divinity School. Both brothers were, in their day, important figures in the neo-orthodox theological school within American Protestantism. His theology has been one of the main sources of postliberal theology, sometimes called the "Yale school". He influenced such figures as James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, and Gordon Kaufman.
Langdon Brown Gilkey was an American Protestant ecumenical theologian.
Allen James Reimer was a Canadian Mennonite theologian who held a dual academic appointment as Professor of Religious Studies and Christian Theology at Conrad Grebel University College, a member college of the University of Waterloo, and at the Toronto School of Theology, a consortium of divinity schools federated with the University of Toronto. At the University of Waterloo's fall 2008 convocation, he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus, an honor seldom bestowed on retired faculty.
Death of God theology refers to a range of ideas by various theologians and philosophers that try to account for the rise of secularity and abandonment of traditional beliefs in God. They posit that God has either ceased to exist or in some way accounted for such a belief.
The Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture, or ARC, was founded in October 1961 by three people: Alfred Barr, the art critic and founder of the Museum of Modern Art, the theologian Paul Tillich, and Marvin Halverson, an American Protestant theologian sometime of the Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of a 1951 booklet, Great Religious Paintings. Its aims and program are based on the deep and complex relationship between religion and the arts. Its first board of directors included these three as well as Unitarian Universalist theologian and parish minister, James Luther Adams, principal developer of the merger forming the United Church of Christ, mythologist Joseph Campbell], Truman B. Douglass; Congregationalist parish minister and theologian Amos Wilder, and Stanley Romaine Hopper, theologian and co-founder of the first Theology and Literature program in the United States.
Gabriel Vahanian was a French Protestant Christian theologian who was most remembered for his pioneering work in the theology of the "death of God" movement within academic circles in the 1960s, and who taught for 26 years in the U.S. before finishing a prestigious career in Strasbourg, France.
The argument from love is an argument for the existence of God that suggests the depth, complexity, and universality of love point to a transcendent source or purpose.
Honest to God is a book written by the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich John A.T. Robinson, criticising Christian theology and advocating for secularism. It aroused a storm of controversy on its original publication by SCM Press in 1963.
Secular theology is a term applied to theological positions influenced by humanism and secularism, rejecting supernatural metaphysical positions related to the nature of God. Secular theology can accommodate a belief in God, like many nature religions, but as residing in this world and not separately from it.
Robert P. Scharlemann was a radical theologian best known for his theological works on the being of God and as an interpreter of Paul Tillich. Scharlemann taught at the University of Iowa and the University of Virginia.
Jerome A. Stone is an American author, philosopher, and theologian. He is best known for helping to develop the religious movement of Religious Naturalism. Stone is on the Adjunct Faculty of Meadville Lombard Theological School; is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College; is in Preliminary Fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association; and is a member of the Highlands Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS).
Wilhelm Pauck was a German-American church historian and historical theologian in the field of Reformation studies whose fifty-year teaching career reached from the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary, to Vanderbilt and Stanford universities. His impact was extended through frequent lectures and visiting appointments in the U.S. and Europe. Pauck served as a bridge between the historical-critical study of Protestant theology at the University of Berlin and U.S. universities, seminaries, and divinity schools. Combining high critical acumen with a keen sense of the drama of human history, in his prime Pauck was considered the Dean of historical theology in the United States. In the course of his career he became associated with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich as friend, colleague, and confidant.
Mark Lewis Taylor is Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. His major interests are in the political philosophy of religious practices and theological discourse, particularly in Christian communities and also broader social movements. He served as Chair of the Religion & Society Committee at Princeton Seminary. Taylor received the Best General Interest Book Award for his earlier book, The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America (2001). He is also founder of Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
John P. Dourley (1936–2018) was a Jungian analyst, a professor of religious studies, and a Catholic priest. He taught for many years at Carleton University in Ottawa, his doctorate being from Fordham University. He received his Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the C. G. Jung Institute in Zūrich/Kusnacht.