As some of you know, I’m working my way through his Systematic Theology. It is so dense - and way fun to work through - that it is almost impossible to comment on; the reasoning is so tight, and the learning so deep. So I will quote a paragraph from the section on 'Final Revelation". If you read it to the end you will see why I chose it.
“Therefore, the Christian message points to an ultimate salvation which cannot be lost because it is reunion with the ground of being. This ultimate salvation is also the ultimate revelation, often described as the 'vision of God”. The mystery of being is present without the paradoxa of every revelation in time and space and beyond anything fragmentary and preliminary.
This does not refer to the individual in isolation. Fulfillment is universal. A limited fulfillment of separated individuals would not be fulfillment at all, not even for these individuals, for no person is separated from other persons and from the whole of reality in such a way that he could be saved apart from the salvation of everyone and everything. One can be saved only within the Kingdom of God which comprises the universe. But the Kingdom of God is also the place where there is complete transparency of everything for the divine to shine through it. In his fulfilled kingdom, God is everything for everything. This is the symbol of ultimate revelation and ultimate salvation in complete unity.
The recognition or nonrecognition of this unity is a decisive test of the character of a theology."
Wowza. The thing with Tillich, I’m finding, is that you follow his tight reasoning for 30 pages, and it is difficult in a good way, and then he pulls out something like this and Voila!! it has been worth it.
