Toward a salvageable Tillich: The implications of his late confession of provincialism

Late in Paul Tillich’s life a series of events conspired to effect a perceptible broadening of his theological perspective. This expanded consciousness was most evident in late confessions of an earlier and, by implication, somewhat sustained provincialism running throughout much of his theological endeavor to that point. Such confessions of provincialism led him, in his more occasional late statements, to positions in considerable tension if not contradiction with his earlier Systematic Theology. Some of these provincialisms are to be found even in the third volume of his Systematic Theology written at the same time, in the early 1960s, when he was deploring such provincialism in statements made elsewhere.