The fact that Tillich assigned the term correlation to his own theology further supports the view that his temperament exhibited a tendency toward intellectual reconciliation, not confrontation, and a tendency to use a commitment to, as Forster might have it, "only connect," in sum, to see issues clearly and see them whole. In this regard, Gilkey argues the relevance of the correlational modality for attacking such issues as (for example) the theological implications of the modern age's scientific-technological conquest of nature: "Nature is misunderstood as merely an object over against us, as are we, its knowers, if we understand ourselves as merely objective knowers and manipulators of hits forces. What is lacking here is the correlation of objective logos (system) and subjective logos (knowing and policies), the participation of subject and object in one another, as well as their difference and distance--in this case, the necessary participation of human culture in, and its fostering of, the system of nature if either one is to survive" (Gilkey, 1990, pp. 183-4; emphasis in original). This sensibility of participation and engagement that overlays so much of Tillich's thought is the very element that lends credibility to what might seem an oxymoron, the concept of a dialectic of inclusion. Such a dialectic on one hand admits of a wholly systematic--and rigorously Protestant--approach to theological interpretation of religious and philosophical traditions, and on the other accounts for actual or potential shifts and modifications in thought.
Indeed, there is evidence that Tillich's thought was influenced by encounters with other thinkers and other streams of religious and cultural thought. Eliade's memoir of Tillich notes that Tillich's creative life "was marked by a series of encounters with non-Christian and non-religious realities which he simply could not ignore, for they were part and parcel of his historical moment and, as a...