Wolfhart Pannenberg

2.1. Early Life and Education

Pannenberg was born on October 2, 1928, in Szczecin, which was then part of Weimar Germany and is now in Poland. His father was a customs officer, leading to frequent family relocations, including a move to Berlin in 1942. Although he received infant baptism in the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, he had virtually no contact with the church during his early years. In his teenage years, he was drawn to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and held critical views toward Christianity. However, at the age of sixteen, in 1944, he experienced an intense religious phenomenon he later described as his "light experience." Seeking to comprehend this experience, he delved into the works of renowned philosophers and religious thinkers. A high school literature teacher, who had been a member of the Confessing Church during World War II, encouraged him to seriously examine Christianity. This led to Pannenberg's "intellectual conversion," where he concluded that Christianity offered the most compelling religious framework. This pivotal moment propelled him into his vocation as a theologian.

Pannenberg pursued his theological studies at several prestigious universities, including the University of Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, and Basel. At Basel, he studied under the influential theologian Karl Barth. At Heidelberg, he formed the "Pannenberg Circle" with fellow students of Gerhard von Rad, including Rolf Rendtorff, Trutz Rendtorff, Ulrich Wilckens, Klaus Koch, D. Rössler, and M. Else. In 1953, he completed his doctoral thesis at Heidelberg under the supervision of Edmund Schlink, focusing on Duns Scotus's views on predestination, which was published a year later. In 1955, he completed his Habilitationsschrift, a post-doctoral thesis, on the relationship between analogy and revelation, specifically the concept of analogy in the teaching of God's knowledge. In July 1956, following his doctorate, he was invited to serve as a pastor at St. Peter's Church in Heidelberg.

2.2. Academic Career

From 1958 onward, Pannenberg held professorial positions at several German universities. He served as Professor of Systematic Theology at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal_{Wuppertal Theological Seminary}^German from 1958 to 1961. Subsequently, he was a professor at the University of Mainz from 1961 to 1968. His academic reach extended internationally, with visiting professorships at the University of Chicago in 1963, Harvard University in 1966, and the Claremont School of Theology in 1967.

In 1968, Pannenberg was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Munich, where he remained until his retirement in 1993. During his tenure at Munich, he established the Institute for Fundamental Theology and Ecumenical Studies, aiming to foster theological exchange between Protestant and Catholic traditions, particularly between the Lutheran and Catholic churches. He also represented the German Protestant Church on the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission from 1975 to 1990. Pannenberg was a remarkably prolific scholar, with his publication list on the University of Munich's website comprising 645 academic publications as of December 2008. He passed away on September 4, 2014, at the age of 85.

2.3. War Experience

Pannenberg's youth was also marked by the tumultuous period of World War II. In 1944, at the age of sixteen, he was conscripted into the German military. In 1945, he briefly experienced life as a prisoner of war in the United Kingdom before returning to Germany to continue his studies.

3.1. Revelation as History

Pannenberg's central and most distinctive thesis is that divine revelation is understood as God's indirect self-disclosure through historical events and actions. He argued that God does not manifest directly in an ahistorical manner, but rather through concrete historical occurrences. This concept, extensively developed in his edited volume Revelation As History (1961), critiques both Karl Barth's view of revelation as a trans-historical event and Rudolf Bultmann's existentialist interpretation. For Pannenberg, revelation is not found at the beginning of a revelatory history, but at its end, as the ultimate meaning of history unfolds.

His understanding of revelation is significantly influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's concept of history as an unfolding process through which Spirit and freedom are revealed. However, Pannenberg integrates this with a Barthian notion of revelation occurring "vertically from above," asserting the resurrection of Christ as a "proleptic" revelation - a foretaste or anticipation of what history is ultimately unfolding. This approach, despite its Barthian references, initially met with a largely hostile response from both neo-orthodox and liberal theologians in the 1960s.

Pannenberg's doctrine of revelation can be summarized in seven key propositions:

• According to biblical testimony, God's self-revelation occurred indirectly through God's historical actions, rather than directly as a divine manifestation.
• Revelation is found at the end of revelatory history, not at its beginning.
• The revelation of history, unlike specific divine manifestations, is open to all who have eyes to see, possessing a universal character.
• The universal revelation of God's divinity was not fully realized in the history of Israel but only in the destiny of Jesus of Nazareth, where the end of all history was proleptically realized.
• The event of Christ reveals the divinity of the God of Israel not as an isolated occurrence, but inasmuch as it is part of God's history with Israel.
• The formation of non-Jewish revelatory representations in the Gentile church expresses the universality of God's eschatological self-manifestation in the destiny of Jesus.
• Language relates to revelation as prophecy, instruction, and proclamation.

Pannenberg also continued the debate against Hans Blumenberg in the "theorem of secularization," arguing that Christianity provides the legitimacy for the modern age, in contrast to Blumenberg's view that modernity, including its belief in progress, arose from a new secular self-affirmation against Christian tradition.

3.2. Christology

Pannenberg is widely recognized for his work Jesus: God and Man (1968), in which he constructs a Christology "from below." This approach derives its dogmatic claims from a critical examination of the life and, particularly, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He emphasizes that the resurrection must be understood as a historical fact, not merely a matter of faith, and serves as the key to understanding Christ's identity.

He rejected the traditional Chalcedonian "two-natures" Christology, preferring to view the person of Christ dynamically in light of the resurrection. This focus led him to defend the historicity of the resurrection, stressing the experience of the risen Christ in the history of the early Church rather than solely the empty tomb. His Christology also diverged from certain Reformed traditions, such as Karl Barth's concept of Christ's election, as Pannenberg advocated for the universality of God's Son.

3.3. Theology and Other Disciplines

A central pillar of Pannenberg's theological career was his staunch defense of theology as a rigorous academic discipline. He argued that theology is capable of critical interaction with philosophy, history, and, most importantly, the natural sciences. In his early major work, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (1973), Pannenberg engaged with contemporary philosophy of science (including the works of Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap) to demonstrate theology's scientific validity and universal applicability. He asserted that theology is not a discipline understandable only to believers but a scientific field with universal validity. He consistently explored the possibilities for a new natural theology.

3.4. Key Theological Concepts

Pannenberg's systematic theological framework encompassed several significant contributions:

• Theological Anthropology: In Anthropology in Theological Perspective (1983), Pannenberg integrated insights from contemporary philosophical anthropology (such as Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, and Helmuth Plessner) into his theological framework. He approached the human being as a historical entity from a theological standpoint.
• Eschatology: Pannenberg's eschatological views emphasized the "end" as the ultimate revelation of God. He discounted the importance of temporal processes in the New Creation, linking time with the sinful present age, and preferred an eternal present to limited concepts of past, present, and future, envisioning an end of time in a focused unity in the New Creation. He notably defended the Omega Point theory proposed by American mathematical physicist Frank J. Tipler, seeing it as consistent with his eschatological understanding.
• Systematic Theology: Pannenberg's magnum opus is his three-volume Systematic Theology (1988-1994). In this comprehensive work, he articulated the truth of Christian faith through a hermeneutics of universal historical experience. His approach implicitly criticized Barth's starting point of direct revelation, as Pannenberg maintained that God's revelation is indirectly manifested through God's entire historical action. This historical consciousness in his systematic theology shows a particular influence from Hegel's philosophy of history.

The structure of his Systematic Theology is as follows:

• Volume 1: Introduction, The Truth of Christian Doctrine as the Subject of Systematic Theology, The Question of God-Concept and its Truth, The Reality of God and Gods in the Experience of Religions, God's Revelation, The Triune God, The Unity of God's Essence and His Attributes.
• Volume 2: The Creation of the World, Human Dignity and Misery, Anthropology and Christology, The Divinity of Jesus Christ, The Reconciliation of the World.
• Volume 3: The Outpouring of the Spirit, The Kingdom of God, The Church, The Messianic Community and the Individual, Election and History, The Completion of Creation in the Kingdom of God.

3.5. Theological Exchange and Social Stance

Pannenberg's thought was shaped by a wide range of philosophical and theological influences. Beyond Karl Barth and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he was influenced by Edmund Schlink, Karl Löwith, Karl Jaspers, Nicolai Hartmann, Friedrich Gogarten, and Gerhard von Rad.

He engaged in significant dialogue with contemporary theologians, notably Jürgen Moltmann. While both shared an emphasis on eschatology and were influenced by Hegelianism and Ernst Bloch, their approaches differed; Moltmann developed a "Theology of Hope" whereas Pannenberg focused on "prolepsis" and a more explicitly systematic historical theology. Pannenberg also encountered process theology during his time in the United States, acknowledging some similarities in the understanding of God's existence with Alfred North Whitehead's thought, though he explicitly stated he did not adopt the process theology position.

Pannenberg was a dedicated proponent of the ecumenical movement, emphasizing theology as an ecumenical enterprise. He founded the Institute for Ecumenical Studies at the University of Munich with the goal of fostering unity among churches and promoting theological exchange between Protestant and Catholic traditions. He also actively participated in the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission.

Beyond academia, Pannenberg took clear public stances on social and ethical issues. He was an outspoken critic of the approval of homosexual relations by the Evangelical Church in Germany, asserting that a church which approves of homosexual practice is "no longer a true church." As a demonstration of his conviction, he returned his Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany after the decoration was awarded to a lesbian activist. He believed that removing authoritarian traces from church life and mission, and fostering rational, mature judgment among Christians, were crucial for the church's relevance in modern society. He also emphasized that Christian communities should actively strive to be a progressive example of human dignity and a force for positive change in society.