Paul Tillich’s Contemporary Pneumatology: The “Spiritual Presence” on the Theology of Boundary

Abstract

This article aims to analyze Paul Tillich’s major theological loci through the ontological lens of Spiritual Presence and evaluate its theological contributions and limitations. To this end, this article seeks to examine the various stages of the dialectical structure between the divine Spirit and the human spirit through a careful analysis of the statements related to “the Spiritual Presence on the Theology of Boundary.” The research methodology is to analyze Tillich’s theological system as a whole according to the concept of “Spiritual Presence” within seven stages of the structure: the boundaries of Revelation/Reason, New Being/Estrangement, Community/Individual, Words and Sacrament, the Divine Prayer/the human prayer, and Kairos/History. Through this analysis, this article seeks to capture the ontological implications and theological and religious limitations of ‘Spiritual Presence’ in understanding Tillich’s pneumatological thought and structure. Tillich’s theology of the Spirit elevated “theology on the boundary” into “the theology above the boundary” by emphasizing the concept of “Spiritual Presence.” Whereas Tillich’s theological system is composed of methods and structures of correlations based on the ontological polarity as well as the dialectical boundary between God and man, his “Spiritual Presence” designed as the transcendent- immanence between God and man overcomes the tension of ontological bipolarity on the boundary in his theological structure. Tillich made the most use of “Spiritual Presence,” the link between the transcendent- immanent Divine Spirit and the human spirit on the boundary of existence, as a lens for the overcoming of the manifold boundaries derived from the bipolar structures of his theology. The limitation of Tillich’s Pneumatology is that His concept of Spiritual Presence is, first of all, regarded as ontological, not as theological. Tillich’s concept of the Spiritual Presence is ontologically significant in the fact that it can overcome the ontological boundary fundamentally, albeit fragmentarily. However, for all the emphasis on the ontological implications, there doesn’t seem to be much focus on the theological implications. Therefore, for Tillich, Spiritual Presence should be regarded as ontological overcoming based on the ontological approach, instead of being religious overcoming based on the theological approach. Furthermore, his ontological analysis might explain the statement about the dimensions of ‘depth,’ but falls short of exploring ‘depth’ itself. Tillich does not try fully to include his ontological concept of the Spiritual Presence into the bottle of theological or religious implication, although he does try more so to include the Holy Spirit in the biblical story into the bottle of his ontological concept of the Spiritual Presence. As a result, while Tillich coherently describes the functional role of the Spiritual Presence, he is limited in his analysis on the substance itself of the depth of the Spiritual Presence. Nevertheless, Tillich’s ontological model can be considered a major innovation in that it attempted to overcome the ontological polarization of boundaries and introduced the “Spiritual Presence” as a new depth of inquiry for the theology of the Holy Spirit in his day and beyond.