Tillich on Spiritual Presence and Principled Theonomous Political Action

Tillich despaired of transposing to an Anglo-American English-speaking context his "beliefully realistic" Germanic conception of Geist. This essay revisits his doctrine of the Spirit in Systematic Theology, Volume III, for his philosophico-theological conception of theonomous culture in response to the ambiguity of all moral and political programs, referring also to The Socialist Decision (1933), his expositions of the Protestant Principle, and Love, Power, and Justice (1954), where he discusses how principles promote creative justice in different kairoi. In his usage, 'theonomy' avoids dualism and supernaturalism in political philosophy, seeming to privilege divine law. But his Lutheran Kerygma of anti-idolatry mostly results in negative critiques of the status quo. His subject-object accounts of existential meaning inhibit religious articulation of specific moral or political proposals. Later liberation theologians challenge Tillich on this point.