The Dialectic of Inclusion: Systematic Theology in Dialogue

In the historiography of twentieth-century theology, Tillich is remembered by former students, colleagues, and intellectual antagonists alike with affection and admiration. Gilkey speaks fondly of "the incredible stamp that [Tillich's] personal presence made" on those who knew and worked with him (1990, p. xv). Elsewhere, he cites the dramatic theological differences between Tillich and Brunner on one hand and between Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr on the other, noting, however, the "essentially friendly and certainly respectful" character of the rivalry (p. 202). The philosophical-theological dialogues at the University of Chicago that took place between Mircea Eliade and Tillich and the end of Tillich's life in 1965 were recalled by Eliade as "the almost charismatic experience of witnessing a creative mind in the very process of creation . . . for he was not afraid of the strangeness and sometimes almost demonic expressions of religious experience" (Eliade, 1966, p. 33). Thomas's (1990) transcription of dialogues between Tillich and Zen Master Hisamatsu Shin'ichi at Harvard in 1957 is marked by a charming collegiality, despite rather abundant evidence of vast differences in their philosophical predispositions. The relevant point is that despite Tillich's differences of opinion with other theologians and despite evidence that Tillich never changed certain core ideas about the method, content, or form of his

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has indeed made its appearance, although only from the standpoint of the consciousness that is conscious of absolute Being; but absolute Being in and for itself, the self-consciousness of Spirit, has not appeared in those 'shapes'. . . . Even Consciousness, in so far as it is the Understanding, consciousness of the supersensible or the inner side of objective existence. But the supersensible, the eternal, or whatever else may be called, is devoid of self; it is only, to begin with, the universal, which is a long way yet from being Spirit that knows self as Spirit (Hegel, 1977, p. 410). Notice that the vicissitudes of the more "elemental" ideas covered in the Phenomenology are contained in the abstract rational challenge to Religion. This is not to say that Religion, for Hegel the culture of a postulated absolute, has somehow "disposed of" the precedent concepts, any more than Spirit has "disposed of" Reason or Reason has disposed of Self-consciousness. Each of these attributes lies more or less along the dialectical continuum. The ultimate overtaking of Religion by Absolute Knowing is what really matters to Hegel. Science, arrived at by the dialectical method, is what is shown to have disposed of Religion and all the rest. Hegel i
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