The Unity of Theology: The Contribution of Wolfhart Pannenberg

by Theodore James Whapham

Because all sciences are concerned with consistency and the unity of truth, they must constantly revise hypotheses considering new experiences without sacrificing the explanatory value of previous hypotheses. Sciences thus proceed primarily through the revision of hypotheses and through the development of new explanatory systems that preserve the strengths and insights of previous systems.

Pannenberg’s position is unique in the role that it ascribes to the future and the provisionality of theological propositions. This is not to suggest that Christians should anticipate new revelations. However, they should anticipate and work toward the refinement of theological propositions through history in fidelity to the received truth of the Christian community. Openness to the future and the search for the consensus of truth is another reason theologians need to be in conversation with the key insights of other scientific disciplines.

Because the fullness of God has already been revealed in an anticipatory fashion through the life history of Jesus, there is a fundamental unity to all knowledge and reality. However, because this revelation is anticipatory—and not simply complete—the individual parts of history, including all of the diverse people and moments that make up this history, are essential to our understanding of revelation.

Pannenberg also identifies a second reason for establishing the foundations of theology in anthropology, namely that “Christian theology is a response to the human question of salvation.”[6] As a result, Pannenberg’s Anthropology in Theological Perspective, in a way similar to Theology and the Philosophy of Science, seeks to develop his arguments primarily without explicit reference to or dependence upon revelation. Instead, Pannenberg in this volume attempts to draw upon biology, psychology, sociology, and history to demonstrate the foundation of religious experience in human existence. His goal is to establish, through rational and philosophical argumentation, that religion is an indispensable component of human life.[7]

First, Pannenberg argues that this insight shows that “in the modern age anthropology has become not only in fact but also with objective necessity the terrain on which theologians must base their claim of universal validity for what they say.”[8]

The deeper implication of this insight is that any society that seeks to privatize or limit the sphere of religious experience only to the personal and private risks alienating a core aspect of what it means to be human and as a result will at least partially distance itself from one of its basic aspects.

First, Pannenberg wants to avoid an overemphasis on individual religious experience over the experience of God in history.

Secondly, Pannenberg is acutely aware of the critique against modern theology leveled by dialectical theologians such as Karl Barth and others that the proper object of theology is God and that any theology that begins from a reflection on human religious experience can only produce an image of God that is an idol. While Pannenberg accepts Barth’s insight that the only proper object of theology is God and his revelation in all things, he also believes that for the voice of revelation to speak clearly in the contemporary world, the way must be prepared by establishing the logical possibility of speaking of a God that is revealed in history.

Second, Pannenberg will later argue that a preconception of God is necessary for a genuine reception of the content of revelation. This preconception is not a rational knowledge of God established by logical proofs of God’s existence but rather an a priori capacity to receive divine revelation. As a result, Pannenberg attempts to establish a foundation for his early and controversial claim that revelation is fundamentally available to all. Such a claim is in need of substantial support because, despite being a presupposition of pre-modern Christian consciousness, in the modern period this idea was undermined by the privatization of religion and the antagonism that developed between faith and reason.

Drawing upon the philosophy of Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, and others, Pannenberg identifies the “innate behavioral pattern” that characterizes human behavior as an “openness to the world.” For Pannenberg, openness to the world suggests that, unlike animals, humans appear to have the ability to transcend the limits of their environment.

Such openness means that human beings have the capacity to voluntarily inhibit their instinctual drives, and that is the source of human freedom, according to Scheler.[15] This spirit ultimately must be “located in the highest Ground of Being itself.”[16]

Exocentricity, then, allows human beings to distance themselves from a situation and gain objectivity in order to more clearly analyze a situation.

In the writings of Gehlen, whose work Pannenberg describes as the classical expression of philosophical anthropology, the notion of openness to the world is broadened to include the idea that human beings display an inhibition of evolution. Because humans are able to distance themselves from a situation (exocentricity) and suppress their instinctual responses in favor of multiple interpretations of a situation (openness), Gehlen describes humans as “deficient beings” who do not act directly on their senses.[17] In his view, the basic task of humans is thus to compensate for this deficiency, which is done primarily through the development of language and culture.[18] Human beings are active creatures who turn their evolutionary disadvantage of distance from instinctual drives to an advantage through the development of culture and a process of self-creation through self-directed activity at both the individual and social levels.

Instead, Pannenberg views openness to the world as the result of a historical process that develops over time and allows humans to actualize their personhood in relation to the world.

Herder’s philosophy of human nature begins from the insight that humanity is characterized by “wants and gaps.”[20] As a result of this, both Herder and Gehlen argue that “we are not yet men, but are daily becoming so.”[21]

Herder, on the other hand, presupposes human freedom and rationality, but rather than being produced by action, “the animal instincts are replaced by a divinely supplied direction for human life,” which he refers to as the image of God.[22] As instinct guides animals, and the image of God directs the life of humans.

Herder outlines three factors that play a part in the education of the human race: (1) tradition and learning—these terms describe the experiences of those in the past whose lives have formed and influenced us; (2) reason and experience—powers that are innate in the human species that are not the product of outside influence but rather are a part of the present process of self-formation in the life of an individual; and (3) divine providence—the guiding force from outside human existence that guides humanity to its future fulfillment.

In the context of his anthropology, Pannenberg argues that the distinguishing characteristic of human existence is openness to the world, which is rooted in exocentricity and guided by divine providence to its ultimate eschatological fulfillment. Over the course of time, in both the individual life-history of a single human person and the entire history of the human race, genuine anticipation of human actualization can be found as well as the pull toward the ultimate fulfillment of all humans in their divinely appointed destiny.

Against both of these trends, Pannenberg argues that the proper exercise of freedom can only be ultimately fulfilled in cooperation with divine providence.

As a result, it leads Pannenberg to reject the doctrine of a state of original justice (iustitia originalis) in which human beings were created in a perfect state of natural fulfillment before sin entered the world.

In particular, the idea that God created the world in an initial state of perfection before it was impacted by the effects of human sinfulness is difficult to reconcile with the idea that all life on Earth is the product of an evolutionary process that took place over millions, even billions, of years.

The theological interpretation of the imago Dei, in keeping with the fulfillment of human destiny (and anticipated in the current time), must at the same time avoid the theological problems associated with connecting it to an ideal human nature in the past. In this sense the fulfillment of human nature is to be found in the future and anticipated in the person of Jesus Christ rather than primarily in the past.

As a result, Pannenberg contends that the self-reflection and questioning that are unique characteristics of human beings indicate that humans can only truly understand themselves in light of their ultimate destiny. “This idea says in any case that only in relation to God can humans become fully themselves.”

Drawing again upon the work of Plessner, Pannenberg insists that exocentricity creates a tension: this power can either be used to advance one’s egoist desires, or it can be used for the benefit of the species (and indeed all of creation). This tension lies at the foundation of the definition of sin: “the tension between this peculiarity of human activity, which comes with openness to the world, and the striving of the ego for pleasure this is now made responsible for the primary brokenness of human beings as compared with the existence of animals.”[32]

concupiscence.

Pannenberg argues that this reversal of the ends-means relationship means that human beings begin to seek transitory things as an end in themselves rather than using them as a means to ultimate human fulfillment that is to be found in God. It is this attitude that lies beneath materialistic thinking, which seeks possession and the accumulation of material wealth as ends or values in and of themselves rather than as tools that are rightly to be used for advancing humans toward their ultimate destiny.

While Pannenberg’s identification of the definition and origin of human sinfulness in the very structure of human behavior and exocentricity allows him to offer a theological analysis that is more open to contemporary thought, it once again creates a tension in his thought with certain aspects of the Christian tradition—specifically those in the tradition that appeal to a state of original justice as fundamental to a static human nature created at the beginning of time.

However, “human nature,” as used in the second half of the question that he poses, refers to a metaphysical understanding of nature, the essential qualities of what it means to be human. These are not to be found in a perfect state of nature at the beginning of time. Instead, they are a part of our ultimate destiny and fulfillment that will be accomplished only at the end of time.

“Human beings owe it to themselves—that is, to the true self of their as yet unrealized destiny—to correspond to this destiny of theirs and so to themselves. To that extent responsibility is responsibility to the self.”[42]

Human freedom, or the capacity to transcend one’s own basic instincts and primal impulses, includes the call to use this ability well. He is essentially arguing that in order to become fully human, humans must take responsibility for their own sinfulness.

First, Pannenberg accepts the notion of the universality of sin. Original sin means that human beings do not first become sinners through their own bad acts or through following the negative examples of others. Instead, in keeping with the nature of sin as “radical evil,” sin is inherent in the contradiction and ambiguity that is a part of the natural conditions of human existence.

In this quote, Pannenberg offers that it is only in Jesus, as the revelation of the destiny of human nature and the basis for understanding human responsibility for sin, that the full knowledge of human destiny and responsibility can be anticipated.[45]

In other words, he asserts that death is hostile to life (not its natural conclusion), because life is only brought to its natural destiny in fulfillment with God.

In response to this scientific critique, he appeals to the idea, developed by Paul Tillich, that physical illness and death involve a dissolution of self-integration.[48] In this conception illness and death involve a kind of estrangement from oneself rather than completion.

Instead, Pannenberg claims that aggression is a negative response to frustration in achieving one’s fulfillment and a product of anxiety rather than a positive instinctual urge. While he concedes to Nietzsche that in the history of Christianity there have been periods of focus on self-loathing, Pannenberg contends that this self-hatred is the product of a preoccupation with the phase of redemption that requires an awareness of and taking responsibility for sin that is contrary to the essence of the Christian life.

The idea here is that the “ego” refers to the individual subject at any given point. However, individuals undergo changes throughout the course of their lives and are able to effect changes within themselves through the exercise of freedom and self-reflection (which are rooted in exocentricity). The “self,” then, is a term developed by philosophers and psychologists to describe two aspects of the human person. First, the self is the perduring identity of the individual that undergirds all the various bodily and psychological changes that take place over the span of a lifetime. Second, because the ego is the part of the human person that is most in touch with its instinctual nature, the ego isn’t always aware of its self. “Self” also refers to the awareness individuals have of their own existence and their reflection on this. In other words, the “self” is what happens when the ego begins to think about its own existence.

He argues that in reflection upon the relationship between the ego and the self, primacy belongs to the self. He associates the self with the fulfillment of human destiny in the imago Dei, which is achieved in a limited and anticipatory fashion in each moment of the ego.[51] Moreover, Pannenberg argues that the development of the self and the ultimate fulfillment of one’s human destiny can only be achieved in relationship to the other.

A key factor in this process of identity formation, according to Pannenberg, is trust.

“In basic trust, human beings preserve their openness to reality: the reality of other human beings and the world and, via these, the reality of the creator.”[53]

“The word ‘person’ establishes a relation between the mystery—which transcends the present of the ego—of the still incomplete individual life history that is on the way to tis special destiny and the present moment of the ego. Person is the presence of the self in the moment of the ego, in the claim laid upon the ego by our true self, and in the anticipatory consciousness of our identity.”[56]

He contends that religious feelings are those in which “the wholeness of human life which is always present in feeling become thematic.”[59] This affective or pre-cognitive religious experience relies upon the intellect to define and unpack its contents. However, thinking is never able to thematize completely the contents of these feelings. For this reason, feelings have always played an essential role in the Western theological tradition. He states, “The orientation of human beings to a fullness of life that transcends them and manifests itself especially in the community to their fellow human beings finds expression in the positive affects and passions, especially in feelings of sympathy but also in joy and hope.”[60]

Sin was seen primarily as the movement away from human exocentricity that pulls human beings back to their more basic instinctual drives.

“If the being of humans is connected to their as yet unfulfilled destiny, then alienation consists in the fact they close themselves against the future to which they are destined, and not in their being estranged from themselves in the medium of a thing which they already have or produce.”[63]

For Pannenberg, alienation is the result of individuals being estranged from their own destiny and fulfillment as the image of God.

After tracing the history of the development of the concept, he draws upon Freud’s description of conscience as the prolongation of parental authority throughout the life of the individual in the superego. Freud’s analysis has the advantage of identifying a foundation for the development of conscience in social relationships, first in the home and then in broader society—including the Christian community. This allows Pannenberg to describe conscience as the voice of God “but not in an unmediated way, rather it takes place in relation to the individual’s social context.”[65]

Pannenberg, however, seeks the ground of culture in the concept of play following the work of historian Johan Huizinga.[67] Play is central to the development of a theory of culture, first, because it can be found in the behavior of higher animals and thus can be grounded in humans at an instinctual level. However, in human beings, as opposed to animals, play becomes an expression of human freedom and the capacity to transcend their own immediate environment. As a result, play is the concrete process in which human openness to the world is developed in behavior “that is not goal directed, but that secondarily can be used for any goal chosen.”[68] Play is particularly important because in it human behavior turns from its focus on the needs of the individual to the creation of a shared world among individuals. “In play, human beings put into practice that being-outside-themselves to which exocentricity destines them.”[69]

However, play is more than the frivolous preoccupation of children. Pannenberg contends that in pre-modern society, labor was not as divorced from the concept of play. In fact, he sees the separation of work and play in the modern world as a product of the meaninglessness of life that has become a part of much of contemporary life.

Pannenberg sees conversation as a moment where two or more individuals move beyond the conditions of their existence to consider an object and develop shared meaning. A conversation thus means being caught up in a moment where focus moves from a concrete task or the sustenance of basic human activity to developing a community where individuals work toward a common goal of fulfillment.

As a result, all of human society and its institutions have as their goal the fulfillment of human destiny, which must always be understood in relation to God, who is the ultimate source of the unity of meaning of human existence at the individual and social levels.

While recognizing the role that human sexuality plays in marital life, he is critical of an overemphasis on sexuality in marriage. Instead, Pannenberg sees marriage and family life as oriented to the lifelong commitment of spouses, which constantly requires one to move beyond themselves and to enter into relationship.