Paul Tillich (1886–1965)

Paul Johannes Tillich, a German-born Lutheran pastor turned influential scholar, died on October 22, 1965, in Chicago at age 79. His death closed a career that pressed modern men and women to look despair and doubt in the face and respond with what he famously called “the courage to be.” For many, Tillich gave language to anxiety in an age marked by war, ideology, and the unsettling pace of change.

Tillich’s early life was shaped by Europe’s upheavals. He served as a chaplain in World War I, encountering suffering that left lasting marks on his theology. When National Socialism rose in Germany, his opposition cost him his academic position. His flight from Nazism carried a note of moral courage—choosing truth over safety—and his emigration to the United States became part of a larger story of refugees who rebuilt lives while warning the world about tyranny.

In America, Tillich taught and lectured widely, leaving a deep imprint through his preaching, public addresses, and especially his multivolume Systematic Theology. Students found him unusually able to engage the doubts of secular culture, urging honesty about fear, guilt, meaninglessness, and the longing for ultimate hope.

Yet Tillich’s description of God as “the ground of all being” often moved faith toward abstraction. Scripture’s witness is not mainly to a concept behind reality, but to the living, personal Lord who speaks and acts in history, who judges sin and saves sinners, and who makes Himself known in Jesus Christ. “God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). And, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

Tillich’s passing in Chicago also serves as a quiet summons to believers: meet honest questions with patience, listen to the wounded without scorn, and refuse shallow answers. At the same time, hold fast to the God who is not an idea to be managed, but a Redeemer to be trusted. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).