"First Things" Perspective on Pannenberg

Browsing at Barnes & Noble last month, I noticed the new issue of First Things with an article about the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who turns 84 this year. I purchased the issue so I could revisit my earlier interest in his theology.

When I was in div school in 1979-1982, one of our teachers (Robert Clyde Johnson) referenced Pannenberg in his systematic theology lectures and commented on his innovations and insights.  At that time I dipped into the Basic Questions of Theology. Then several years later, I was privileged to write a review of volume 1 of Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology---and also to see the review referenced in a couple books, like F. LeRon Shults’ The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology. In the review, I discussed some of Pannenberg’s “characteristic leimotifs: the historical character of understanding, the linking of universal history and ultimate reality; the conviction that theology is a science with universal scope; his eschatological approach to ontological issues; his careful biblical exegesis; his Barthian insight that revelation is God’s self-revelation and self-presentation, as well as Pannenberg’s demurral that revelation cannot be something outside normal human understanding and public discourse” (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61:2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 375-377, quote on p. 375).

In that First Things issue, Michael Root writes about “The Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg” (pp. 37-42). He covers Pannenberg's interests which I mentioned in my review (which, over the years, I'd forgotten). Root also notes how non-postmodern is Pannenberg in his concern for metanarratives, and how Pannenberg resists several prevalent concerns. For instance (sad to me), he disapproves of the church allowing for homosexual relations. He has also criticized the liberationist interests of the WCC as well as confessional focuses within his own Lutheran church.

Root's article provides an excellent summary of the theologian's interests and legacy.  I learned about the debate between Pannenberg and Eberhard Juengel: the latter theologian’s concern that Pannenberg lacks an “existential,” that is, a view of theology from the perspective of the self addressed by God (as in Luther’s theology), in favor of a “sapiential” dimension (like Aquinas’) which takes the view from God’s self-revelation. While agreeing with Juengel’s observation, Root argues that Pannenberg tries to “break with the turn to the subject that has been so determinative for over two hundred years” in favor of “a public history and a shared reason oriented to that history” (p. 41).

Root comments that a “virtuoso” element haunts Pannenberg’s work, that is, “the creative mind who recasts the field, the Schleiermachers and Barths of the discipline, Promethean figures who blaze the path others are to follow.” While Pannenberg’s own path has been somewhat different (though by no means disappointing), he nevertheless remained concerned with reshaping and reinterpreting aspects of the theological tradition with his own intention of addressing the present needs of the church (p. 42).