The reader of a philosophical theologian like Paul Tillich is inclined to understand his main ideas - for instance, the concepts of religion and culture - as fully universal and valid for all times. Of course, this is not so; all ideas and concepts bear the imprint of their time. As a modern thinker, Tillich is entirely aware of this and developed his own theory of the relationship between the universal, the concrete-historical and the normative. For him, the most universal concepts, like religion and culture, are normative concepts which are answers to the questions arising out of the concrete present situation. Moreover, Tillich offered two detailed descriptions of his situation: in Germany, Die religiöse Lage der Gegenwart (1926) and in the United States, The World Situation (1945). This chapter will consider these cultural-theological analyses after an exploration of the philosophical and theological background to Tillich's constructions.