Weber's explanation of how virtually all social structures have developed. His way of using the term is important because it is not absolute. That is, he uses it to imply a whole range of complex issues that are not limited to but do include the development of the scriptural response to human experience. For Weber, rationality is that invisible force, process, and (most important) attitude whereby a society moves away from impulses, superstition, and emotion that probably cannot be controlled by mankind and toward social structure and organization that can be controlled by man.
Weber's presumption of rationality is consistent with Tillich's work, to the degree that Tillich is engaged by an exploration of meaning in general, the basic structures of thought that explain it, and the basic structure of reality that informs it. This environment of rationality as an intellectual category also turns out to be an important feature of the character of engagement that Tillich's own thought has with competing traditions of ideas. Tillich is at some pains to describe three different categories of rationality in connection with what he describes as his systematic theological design. Semantic rationality refers to the fact that explanation, differentiation, and connotation of words must be carefully undertaken. In particular, if theology is to have relevance for the modern world, semantic rationality demands "that all connotations of a [any] word should consciously be related to each other and centered around a controlling meaning" (Tillich, 1951, p. 55). Logical rationality as interpreted by Christian theology "posits in a new way the question of the relation of the structure of thought to the structure of being" (Tillich, 1951, p. 56), which is another way of saying that it takes account of meanings associated with such religious concepts as transcendence and paradox, which in some measure derive power when something "breaks into our experience ...