SEXUAL OUTLIERS

PAUL TILLICH AND KARL BARTH

SEXUAL OUTLIERS

By almost any assessment, the most influential Christian thinkers and
theorists of the twentieth century were Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Paul
Tillich (1886–1965). The marks these two men made on theological and ethical
thinking crossed generational, national, and religious boundaries. Even
Pope Pius XII characterized Barth, a Protestant, as “the greatest theologian
since Thomas Aquinas.” 1 He should probably have added that if Barth was
the greatest, Tillich was the most influential, not only among Protestants
but among Roman Catholics, Jews and even the nonreligious.

Each of these influential theologians demonstrated, by behavior especially,
and to some extent by his teaching, his rejection of the established sexual
ethics of both the Christian Church and the middle class, which (the established
ethics of church and class) were about the same thing. The personal
lives of these two men speak more loudly than their words. Each reached
his prime in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany; each was influenced, to some
extent, by European libertinism of the early twentieth century.