Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be, first delivered as the Terry Lectures at Yale in 1950 and published in 1952, is one of the twentieth century's most successful attempts to articulate Christian faith in the language of existentialist philosophy. Drawing on Heidegger's analysis of anxiety and non-being, on Nietzsche's analysis of the death of God, and on the biblical vocabulary of faith, trust, and courage, Tillich constructs a philosophical theology of extraordinary cultural reach. The book became a bestseller - unusual for academic philosophy - and its central concepts, particularly 'ultimate concern' and 'Ground of Being,' entered the vocabulary of liberal Protestant theology and American religious culture more broadly.
The Thinker and His Work
Tillich (1886-1965) was a German-American theologian who had been shaped by World War I chaplaincy, German Expressionism, and the Frankfurt School's cultural criticism before being forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933 (he was the first non-Jewish academic expelled by the Nazis). At Union Theological Seminary in New York, he developed his 'method of correlation' - the idea that Christian theology must correlate its answers with the questions that contemporary culture actually asks. The Courage to Be is his most focused application of this method: existentialist philosophy has posed the question of anxiety and meaninglessness with new urgency; Christian faith provides the answer in the concept of courage rooted in ultimate reality.
Biblical Texts Engaged
Psalm 23:4 - 'even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me' - is one of the book's governing texts. Tillich reads the Psalmist's fearlessness not as naive optimism but as courage that has looked into the abyss of anxiety - the threat of non-being, death, and meaninglessness - and affirmed being despite it. This is the paradigmatic form of the courage to be: not the absence of anxiety but the affirmation of being in spite of it.
John 16:33 - 'in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world' - provides the Christological ground for courage. Jesus's command to 'take heart' (tharseite - be courageous) is addressed to disciples who are about to be scattered into fear and persecution. Tillich reads this as the announcement that the Ground of Being has triumphed over the threat of non-being, making courage ontologically grounded rather than mere psychological bravado.
Romans 8:38-39 - 'I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord' - is Paul's affirmation of ultimate security in the face of every threat. Tillich reads this as the biblical expression of what he calls 'the courage of confidence' - the personal God's power over every form of non-being.
Core Argument
Tillich's argument has three phases. First, he maps the three principal forms of anxiety in Western culture: the anxiety of fate and death (which dominated classical antiquity), the anxiety of guilt and condemnation (which dominated the medieval and Reformation periods), and the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness (which dominates modern culture). Each period produced characteristic cultural responses to anxiety, and each reveals something about the fundamental structure of human existence.
Second, he argues that there are two fundamental types of courage: the courage to be as part (which participates in a larger whole - community, nation, class) and the courage to be as oneself (which affirms one's individual identity against every external determination). Both are authentic but incomplete: pure participation swallows the self; pure individualism isolates and empties it.
Third, he argues that the Ground of Being - what religious traditions call God - is not a being alongside other beings but the power of being itself, 'being-itself' in which all beings participate. True courage is not self-assertion in the face of anxiety but 'the acceptance of one's own finitude' grounded in the infinite ground. Faith, redefined as 'the state of being ultimately concerned,' is the act of courage that affirms meaning in the face of meaninglessness.
Intellectual Context
Tillich was working primarily in dialogue with Heidegger (whose analysis of anxiety and being-toward-death provides the philosophical framework) and Nietzsche (whose announcement of the death of God identifies the cultural crisis Tillich is addressing). His response to Nietzsche is particularly significant: he acknowledges that traditional theism - God as a supreme being who intervenes in the world - has become intellectually untenable for many modern people, and proposes 'God above God' (the Ground of Being beyond the personal God of theism) as a philosophically adequate alternative.
Reception and Critique
Karl Barth criticized Tillich for allowing the questions of secular culture to dictate the content of theological answers - a 'method of correlation' that, in Barth's view, resulted in Christian faith being distorted to fit existentialist categories rather than existentialist categories being transformed by Christian proclamation. This critique - that Tillich's method of correlation is actually a method of accommodation - has continued to divide Protestant theologians.
Anthropologists and psychologists of religion found the book extremely productive. Rollo May, Tillich's colleague at Union Seminary, developed his own existential psychology partly in response to Tillich's philosophical theology. William James's pragmatist criterion - judge beliefs by their fruits - is echoed in Tillich's willingness to describe faith functionally, in terms of its role in sustaining courage against anxiety.
Legacy
The Courage to Be made existentialist theology accessible to a broad educated public and established Tillich as the leading liberal Protestant theologian of mid-century America. His concept of 'ultimate concern' as the definition of faith - making faith a structural feature of human existence rather than a confessional commitment to specific doctrines - has been criticized for dissolving the specificity of Christian faith but has proved enormously influential in religious education, pastoral counseling, and interfaith dialogue.
Key Passages
'The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation.' (The Courage to Be, Part I, Ch. 1)
'Theism in all its forms is transcended in the experience we have called absolute faith. It is the accepting of the acceptance without somebody or something that accepts. It is the power of being-itself that accepts and gives the courage to be.' (Part III, Ch. 6)
Contemporary Relevance
Tillich's diagnosis of the anxiety of meaninglessness has only become more relevant in the decades since the book's publication. The crises of purpose, belonging, and significance that characterize contemporary Western culture - documented by Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, and Jonathan Haidt - are precisely the crises Tillich identified. His account of faith as ultimate concern, rather than intellectual assent to doctrines, provides a framework for understanding the spiritual lives of people who do not identify with institutional religion but who are deeply engaged with questions of meaning, mortality, and ultimate value. The 'nones' of contemporary sociology are, in Tillich's framework, people for whom the traditional symbols of ultimate concern have broken down - and his analysis remains one of the most sophisticated tools for thinking about their situation.