I have a high regard for Dr. Braatan as a professor of systematics. He taught me much about Tillich, Pannenberg and other systematic theologians and brought me to a greater understanding of that phase of theological enterprise.
I am less impressed with his recent missives on ecclesiology and the role of ELCA publications.
I find it kind of surprising that Braaten still considers himself a "Tillichian."
He explicitly states that he is not and never was a "Tillichian."
Mike Bennett
Maybe he isn't now, but he was when we last drank beer together, which was in 1986.
Wednesday evening last week he explicitly said that he was not a "Tillichian" during the time he was Tillich's teaching assistant and learning from Tillich, nor at any other period of his life. I wasn't drinking beer, so I think I heard correctly.
Mike Bennett
In that case, I'll defer to your sober experience. The local hockey team was celebrating at the next two tables over and I only heard about every other word anyway. In fact, maybe it was "Teilhard" that he said, not "Tillich." Better? Or worse?
So that this isn’t a memory contest, the following from his recent memoir, Because of Christ. I can’t give page numbers because I have it on Kindle, so I’ll show chapters and Kindle Location numbers.
Preface (location 79): “Paul Tillich was my most important mentor on my way to becoming a theologian. Yet, I knew I could never become a Tilichian.”
Chapter Six (location 585): “Although I had been a student of Tillich, I was in no way a Tillichian, and furthermore I never regarded Tillich’s theology as American. It was thoroughly Germanic.”
Mike Bennett
I wonder how he distinguishes "American" from "Germanic". Or, to put it a different way, what's "Germanic" about Tillich?
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts I have worth sharing would come straight from the book, which I've already quoted enough I think. $12.24 at Amazon.com, or $9.99 on Kindle and you can have it in less than 60 seconds. He does talk about what you've asked.
Mike Bennett
