The Unity of Theology: The Contribution of Wolfhart Pannenberg

by Theodore James Whapham

However, with Schleiermacher and Ritschl, Pannenberg’s understanding of salvation is more focused on the idea of bringing humanity to its ultimate fulfillment than making up for a primordial fault.[16]

Traditionally, the idea of representation has been associated primarily with Jesus’s death. However, Pannenberg argues that representation occurs first in the realization of human destiny in Christ’s resurrection. “Only because Jesus stands as the representative of man before God as the ‘Last Adam’ in the light of his resurrection, can his death acquire vicarious significance.”[20]

However, Pannenberg’s presentation of the significance of the cross places the emphasis of the crucifixion on Jesus’s obedience in proclaiming the kingdom. It also emphasizes his free acceptance of the consequences of humanity’s rejection of the kingdom rather than on the idea of the wrath of God that needs to be satiated by the blood of a human sacrifice. In this way, Pannenberg addresses contemporary critics of Anselm’s satisfaction theory or Luther’s notion of penal substitution by making it clear that the crucifixion is the act of sinful human choice rather than God’s need for a bloody sacrifice to maintain a sense of justice.

In the Antiochene School, Pannenberg observes the ancient forerunner to his own christological method, which seeks to start from the humanity of Jesus and then to discuss the union of this complete man with the Logos.

“The dilemma of these two Christological solutions is insoluble so long as Christology is developed from the concept of the incarnation, instead of culminating in the assertion of the incarnation as its concluding statement.”[26]

However, Pannenberg asserts that like most compromise documents, it failed to raise the debate to a new level in order to overcome the underlying problem.

He proposes instead that the basis of the confession of Jesus’s divinity should be sought in the historical particularity of his human activity.

Pannenberg argues instead that a discussion of the mutual interpenetration of the natures of Christ may point the way to overcoming this unhelpful dynamic. He finds such an interpretation grounded in the work of the Cappadocian Fathers and the doctrine of the communicatioidiomatum articulated by the Council of Ephesus.[30]

He establishes his reasons again for arguing the incarnation is best understood as a process that takes place over the entirety of Jesus’s life history and affects the totality of his existence. He argues that only by starting from the full human personhood of Jesus and his perfect obedience to the Father can one come to understand the mutual interpenetration of natures in the divine-human person of Christ.

Pannenberg’s philosophical system, which is implicit in his understanding of the resurrection, works differently. It starts not from certain knowledge of what a thing is but rather with the process of how humans come to know a thing. In this way, Pannenberg builds his Christology around the way that Jesus’s divinity is revealed through the flow of history into the future. Thus, we have seen Pannenberg’s constant emphasis on Jesus’s resurrection establishing the knowledge of his unity with the Father only at the end of his life. On the other hand, Pannenberg insists that the ontological reality that is finally established at the end of Jesus’s life history is present throughout the unity of his entire person and thus must be declared as ontologically present from the earliest moment of his existence. In other words, the truth of a thing is established for Pannenberg over its life history, and it is only at the end of a person’s life that its deepest ontological status is established.

Jenson also suggested that this emphasis on the revelation of God in the man Jesus had the additional benefit of stressing the Trinitarian character of God in a distinctive manner.

The first advantage has already been mentioned: Pannenberg’s proposed ontology is rooted in the revelation of the Triune God in the life of Jesus.

Pannenberg’s future-oriented ontology is better equipped to accommodate the insights of existentialist philosophies than traditional substance ontologies.

Pannenberg’s refusal to give up on metaphysical reflection is another significant advantage of his approach.

In contrast, Pannenberg’s stubborn commitment to ontological categories revised in light of the notion of eschatological anticipation forges a middle ground based on the need for ongoing confirmation.

Rather the union of humanity and divinity in Christ is something that takes place in the entire life history of Jesus and is accomplished the particularities of Jesus’s life being taken up into the divine life of the Father.

God’s unity is not such that it results in the eschatological destruction of all individuality; it is a unity that embraces difference.

Nonetheless, Pannenberg completely rejects a pantheistic vision of unity as uniformity. The man Jesus is the Son of God because God has joined himself with the cause of Jesus.[54]

In that his discussion of Christ grows directly out of a need to clarify his theology of revelation, the public nature of the Christ event is of major importance to Pannenberg. The most prominent manifestation is found in his insistence on the historical nature of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Pannenberg appeals to these notions of substitutionary representation to counteract the individualism that has developed in modern society—although humans are more dependent upon one another than at any other point in history.

that course of study that seeks knowledge of God and all things in relation to God (sub rationeDei)

However, the dominance and unquestioned efficacy of the natural sciences has gradually been brought into question since at least the middle of the twentieth century as the limitations of scientific methods have become increasingly clear (e.g., Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the rise of historicism, and the critique of progress raised by the Holocaust and the nuclear arms race).

Popper recognized a major limitation in the inductive method of logical positivism. He argues that since scientific theories are abstractions drawn from specific observations, no number of positive experimental outcomes would ever be sufficient to irrefutably verify the truth of a universal theory. This observation is true because it only requires one negative outcome to disprove a universal theory.

“Popper’s description of the idea of truth as a regulative principle relocates the truth of statements at the imaginary end of an infinite process, whereas every assertion in fact makes a claim to truth here and now. This immediate claim to a truth which is nevertheless still open to dispute, so that the most that can be done is to ‘approximate’ to it, might be described as anticipation.”[14]

Accepting the possibility that a theoretical hypothesis in any science may be disproved through falsification is a central aspect of Pannenberg’s overall theory of knowledge.

The notion of falsification also provides an important ground for one of his consistent critiques of Karl Barth, namely, by basing all of faith and theology on adherence to God’s self-disclosure in the Word, Barth has moved theology beyond the realm of rational critique.

This unity of life is broken by the methodology of the natural sciences and thus provides the basis for a distinction between the natural sciences and the human sciences.[19]

Pannenberg’s own philosophy of science is developed in dynamic relation to each of these figures, but bears closest similarity to the work of Dilthey. Pannenberg’s appreciation of him is rooted in the fact that Dilthey upholds both explanation and understanding in the process of coming to knowledge.[22]

As the earlier discussion of Pannenberg’s theology of revelation argued, he is convinced that truth—while present to humanity in a proleptic and anticipatory way now—can only be present in its fullness at the end of history.

In other words, the most adequate way to explain the interaction between individual humans and the whole of human history and society will take account of both the dependence of the individual on society, culture, and their location within human history as well as their independence from this broader social, cultural, and historical framework.

Gadamer proposes instead that the interpretive process that leads to human understanding involves a fusion of horizons between the author of a text and the reader. This fusion of horizons, however, is never the complete understanding of the original author’s intent. (It is an even-better understanding than the original author possessed, as Schleiermacher held.) Rather, understanding is always mediated by the traditions and prejudices that form the individual’s worldview.

For Pannenberg, the dynamic interplay between part and whole, however, must be seen not only in the interaction between individuals and society but also between individual experiences and the whole of human history. Pannenberg argues that this is possible through a process of anticipation of the whole.

“Philosophical analysis of meaning can operate only by systematically describing the totality of meaning which guides its reflection, although a systematic account of this sort is itself no more than an anticipation of the implicit and only partly defined totality of meaning of all experience, to which it is related and in which it possesses its truth. It can demonstrate its truth only by its ability to integrate, and so illuminate, actual experiences of meaning.”

This anticipation of the whole is something that constantly takes place in the formation of knowledge and describes the process by which the truth of a proposition is tested and reformed in light of its ability to explain the unity of knowledge.

Pannenberg’s most significant revision of the concept of falsification in the philosophy of science resides in his emphasis on the provisional nature of knowledge in anticipation of the whole of human experience.

The natural sciences, and indeed all the sciences, offer explanations of human experience that help to predict (or anticipate) future events and synthesize available theories. But the knowledge that they provide must always be seen as provisional in light of the possibility of new experiences that might falsify or require further revision to the available theory.

Instead, Pannenberg accepts the provisional nature of truth claims in all scientific disciplines and gives significance to the principles of coherence and consensus. These terms have very specific meanings in his system. Coherence refers primarily to his confidence in the unity of knowledge and truth. This unity indicates that meaning acquired in one discipline cannot ultimately contradict meaning that is uncovered in another discipline. Rather, truth is one, and contradiction between competing claims raises serious questions that demand further study.[30]

Pannenberg’s goal (as is frequently the case) is to navigate a middle path between two divergent approaches. The first approach is characterized by those in modern universities who, under the influence of the modern critique of metaphysics, reject theology’s claims to make genuine contributions to human knowledge. The second approach is characterized by those within theological circles who have accepted the non-scientific status of theology and built a separate home for theology in the realm of faith in opposition to reason.

In simplest terms, he defines science as the process of establishing and refining human knowledge in anticipation of the unity of truth through a process of falsification and consensus.[35]

Pannenberg defines theology as the science of God and all things in relation to God (sub ratione Dei).

He argues, “If God is to be understood as the all-determining reality, everything must be shown to be determined by this reality and to be ultimately unintelligible without it.”[37] Consequently, theological analysis of all things in relation to God serves as the best form of argumentation for the existence of God and for the meaningfulness of the whole of human history.

Pannenberg joins Barth in rejecting natural theology and the analogy of being.

However, Pannenberg’s historical study of “analogy” reveals that in Greek philosophy the term always denotes a commonality that can be ascribed between the two diverse concepts under comparison. This requires “a moment of univocity between the compared realities” that for Pannenberg transgresses the infinite qualitative difference that exists between God and all of creation.[44]

One key reason for Pannenberg’s departure from the definitions of theology as established by Schleiermacher and Barth is his conviction that it is an academic discipline that belongs in conversation with other academic disciplines. In other words, theology is a science—a form of human inquiry that seeks to anticipate eschatological truth through a process of formulating hypotheses and refining them through the development of consensus (across time and place) and falsification. Falsification, while completely objectionable to both Schleiermacher and Barth, is key for Pannenberg because it is a central aspect of the method of the natural sciences and because it conforms to his understanding of the hermeneutical task of theology.

Pannenberg’s insight is that God is revealed in religious experience, and given the changing nature of human history and cultural forms, the continuity within this tradition and the eschatological fulfillment that it anticipates is “the theme of religion and the sphere of divine self-revelation.”[47]

Instead, Pannenberg views all religious traditions as giving communal expression to the religious experience of its adherents. While this experience can be studied from a variety of perspectives (e.g. phenomenological, sociological, and psychological), the specifically theological study of religion investigates the religious intention of these communities and attempts to understand the self-revelation of the divine in each of these religions.[48] Since the proper object of theology is God and all things sub ratione Dei, the success of a religious tradition is to be judged by its capacity to integrate the full range of possible experience. “The traditional claims of a religion may therefore be regarded as hypotheses to be tested. . . . They are to be judged by their ability to integrate the complexity of modern experience into the religion.”[49]

Pannenberg emphasizes the concern for internal coherence and consistency in systematic theology because “an investigation which seeks truth must be systematic in order to correspond to the unity of truth, the mutual correspondence of everything that is true.”[51] Pannenberg’s emphasis on the ultimate unity of all truth in God, who is the all-embracing reality, and his appreciation for the limitations of human understanding and expression of this truth in the successive incarnations of history and culture are also evident in his treatment of the specialized role of systematic theology.

Pannenberg’s insistence on the unity of truth and the transferability of knowledge from one discipline to the next has been met with a significant amount of skepticism from theologians such as John Polkinghorne, who views his attempts to transfer the use of terms across disciplines problematic because they are used in different ways.[55]

Pannenberg’s commitment to theological interdisciplinarity and the need for theology to be in conversation with the best insights available from the natural, social, and human sciences matures in this second stage out of his commitment to the idea that revelation is open. This conversation, however, is not a one-sided one. Given the unity of truth and the goal of the sciences, theology must be open to learning from other academic disciplines.

Pannenberg’s argument for the scientific status of theology, on the contrary, rests in his claim that Christian truth claims must eventually be verified. Likewise, he holds the claims of Christians can be disproven if they fail to incorporate the insights of new experiences or if central claims, such as the resurrection of Christ and the parousia, are disproven.