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The publication of his Systematic Theology made available the results of a lifetime of thought. The most novel feature of this work is its “method of correlation,” which makes theology a dialogue relating questions asked by man's probing reason to answers given in revelatory experience and received in faith—theonomy's answers to autonomy's questions. The dialogue of Systematic Theology is in five parts, each an intrinsic element in the system as a whole: questions about the powers and limits of man's reason prepare him for answers given in revelation; questions about the nature of being lead to answers revealing God as the ground of being; questions about the meaning of existence are answered by the New Being made manifest in Jesus Christ; questions about the ambiguities of human experience point to answers revealing the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life process; and questions about human destiny and the meaning of history find their answers in the vision of the Kingdom of God. Readers of this and other works by Tillich have been impressed by the broad reach of his thought but also baffled by the philosophical terminology that he used in discussing God and faith. Those who see him as an advocate of agnosticism or atheism, however, may have misunderstood his intent. He rejected the anthropomorphic “personal God” of popular Christianity, but he did not deny the reality of God, as the conventional atheist has done. Modern “Christian atheists” who cite Tillich in support of their “God is dead” claim overlook the fact that for Tillich the disappearance of an inadequate concept of God was the beginning of a grander vision of God. Like Spinoza, he was a “God-intoxicated man” who wanted to help his fellow human beings recapture a relevant and dynamic religious faith.

In his last years Tillich expressed some doubts about the viability of any systematic account of man's spiritual quest. But he never abandoned the insight that came to him at the University of Halle—that all of man's cultural and spiritual life could be illuminated by the “Protestant principle” of justification by faith; he was still working out its implications at his death in 1965. --Copyright © Encyclopædia Britannica