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In his search for a solution Tillich found help in the writings of the German philosopher F.W.J. von Schelling (1775–1854) and the lectures of his theology teacher Martin Kähler. Schelling's philosophy of nature, which appealed to Tillich's own feeling for nature, offered a conceptual framework interpreting nature as the dynamic manifestation of God's creative spirit, the aim of which is the realization of a freedom that transcends the dichotomy between individual life and universal necessity. Kähler directed his attention to the doctrine of justification through faith, laid down by St. Paul and reiterated by Martin Luther. Tillich now concluded that this doctrine, which he called the “Protestant principle,” could be given a far wider scope than previously had been thought. Not limited to the classical religious question of how sinful man can be acceptable to a holy God, it could be understood to encompass man's intellectual life as well, and thus all of man's experiences. As the sinner is declared just in the sight of God, so the doubter is possessed of the truth even as he despairs of finding it, and so cultural life in general is subject both to critical negation and courageous affirmation. The rigid formulas of the Lutheran Church could thus be rejected while their essential content was affirmed.

Tillich's first attempts to work out the details of this insight were in the form of Schelling studies, dissertations for a doctorate in philosophy (1911) and a licentiat in theology (1912). In the latter work especially, Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung (“Mysticism and Consciousness of Guilt in Schelling's Philosophical Development”), one can discern a probing of the implications of the Protestant principle for the very nature and structure of reality, especially in his explication of Schelling's view of sin and redemption as a cosmic event embracing all existence. --Copyright © Encyclopædia Britannica