Epistemologia da graça: um estudo do pensamento de Paul Tillich e suas contribuições à teologia protestante brasileira

Abstract

This thesis conducts a study of the thought of the German-American theologian Paul Tillich, delimiting this study to the period here called German, between 1919 and 1933. It analyzes the historical constitution of his thought, through the historical, political, social and cultural context of the Weimar Republic, in addition to its immediate antecedents. In this way, it situates the formation of Tillich's thought as contextual to its environment. Then, it analyzes the sources of formation of his thought and performs the reading and interpretation of some of his key writings that give a sufficient notion of his work and thought in order to understand what the Tillichian theology is, especially with regard to correlation between the themes of cultural theology and religious socialism. After performing this analysis of the formation of his thought, from the historical and intellectual point of view, we search for the contributions of his thought to contemporary Brazilian Protestant theology. To this end, it starts by analyzing its reception as well as the formation of Brazilian Protestantism, paying attention to the relationship between Protestantism and the theme of culture in Brazil. This analysis is necessary to postulate Tillich's contributions to Brazilian theology, but equally important is to look for conceptual keys and epistemological bridges about what is thought about culture, society and what are the challenges that are presented for which contribution is sought in Tillich's thinking. The last chapter, finally, presents the arguments of this thesis, such as about the method, the correlation of religious socialism and theology of culture in Tillich's theology, about Tillich's theology of history and its relationship with eschatology as well as the importance of considering the ambiguity in Tillichian thought. These arguments direct us to the last part of the final chapter where clues are sought for the development of a theological epistemology that addresses contemporary challenges to theology and how Tillich's theology can help us to build this way of thinking, that is, socialist, Protestant and epistemologically of culture.