On the initiative of Professor Paul Tillich, lectures on theological German were given at Union Theological Seminary, New York (beginning in 1948), later also at Princeton Theological Seminary, at Yale University Divinity School, and at the Theological Seminary of Drew University. In the course of the lectures faculty members and students asked me repeatedly for a special German-English theological vocabulary. This book is intended to meet their request.
It contains basic theological expressions the knowledge of which is indispensable for reading theological texts. Furthermore it seemed to be expedient to include words which, although not strictly theological, are often used in a theological context. . . . In principal my selection has been limited to words and phrases current in theological writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
--from the Preface