Trinity and Revelation: A CONSTRUCTIVE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY FOR THE PLURALISTIC WORLD

Abstract

Just a few days before his death, Paul Tillich is reported to have confessed that if he had the opportunity to rewrite his three-volume Systematic Theology, he would do so engaging widely world religions. This was due to his brief exposure at the end of his life to the forms of Japanese Buddhism as well as the influence from his famed Romanian religious studies colleague Mircea Eliade. 1While Karl Barth made occasional, scattered references to religions, he also dismissed any revelatory and theological role of religions. Even worse, he made the avoidance of dialogue with the natural sciences a theological theme — and thus could write a massive volume on creation without references to scientific understanding!