ABSTRACT
Tillich’s late revisioning of the future of theology and the study of religion around the symbol systems of the religions of the world strongly suggests that these symbols have a common generative source in the human. All of them become legitimate expressions of the essential, humanity’s natural divine core seeking self-manifestation in human consciousness. In Tillich’s own idiom, his metaphysics and anthropology identify this source as the “ground of being” and “depth of reason”. The broadening of the scope of religious studies beyond the confines of specific religions would serve to illuminate the nature of this common source through the variety of its expressions in human history and religion. Each significant expression would be seen as an effort of the common source to attain a fuller entrance into human consciousness in the broadening of such consciousness and in the realization of its own potential made conscious in human consciousness. This sense of a common human origin of the diverse religions serves as an initial affinity with Jung’s understanding of the archetypal dimension of the psyche. For Jung this dimension of the psyche generates religious experience and so the religions. This same sense of the depth dimension of human interiority drew both Tillich and Jung to certain representatives of the Western mystical tradition and to mystical experience itself as the most primordial form of religious experience. Specifically both Tillich and Jung were influenced by Jacob Boehme (15751624) as by a common spiritual ancestor and to differing degrees allowed Boehme major entry to their thought.
