ions of institutional Catholicism seem nothing if not unreasonably rigid in the face of the varieties of morbid human experience that have their source in the institution (e.g., Dowd)--it seems incumbent on any serious student of religion to at least begin to sight the limits of ecclesiastical authority while at the same time examining the varieties of religious identity.
In that regard, consider the opening sentence of Systematic Theology, wherein Paul Tillich assigns the term theology to the realm of Christian thought, adding that it "must serve the needs of the church" (Tillich, ST 3). Plainly Tillich's church is not the Roman Catholic Church; his manifest point of departure is what he calls the Protestant principle, the name given to the religious concept that originated in the doctrine of justification by faith, "the idea that separated Protestantism from Catholicism and that became the so-called 'material' principle of the Protestant churches" (Tillich, PE x). The Protestant principle was initially formulated as an alternative to the Roman Church's self-designation (surviving to this day) as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic--each of these characteristics an attribute of the fact that the institution of the Church is authoritative as an institution in all matters of faith and doctrine.
It turns out that a significant number of professing Christians--despite their recitation of the Apostle's Creed--do not consider themselves bound to rely on institutional authority for doctrinal guidance. Methodists are among that number.
This particular study is by no means theological. But the lesson of the theologian's method in the case of Tillich is that it is possible to identify religious difference and evaluate that difference in ways that help explain the content of the need of various communities of faith to address the depth of feeling that accompanies the confrontation with the divine mystery. Furthermore, it does not matter w...