Biography:Wolfhart Pannenberg

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Short description: German Lutheran theologian (1928–2014)
Wolfhart Pannenberg
Pannenberg in 1983
Born(1928-10-02)2 October 1928
Stettin, Germany
Died4 September 2014(2014-09-04) (aged 85)
Munich, Germany
Academic background
Alma mater
Influences
Academic work
DisciplineTheology
Sub-disciplineSystematic theology
School or traditionLutheranism
Institutions
Doctoral students
Notable studentsGunther Wenz (de)
Influenced

Template:Lutheranism

Wolfhart Pannenberg (2 October 1928 – 4 September 2014)[4] was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.

Life and career

Pannenberg speaking at a Christian Democratic Union conference in Bonn in 1983

After 1958, Pannenberg consistently served as a professor on the faculties of several universities. Between the years of 1958 and 1961 he was the Professor of Systematic Theology at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal (de). Between 1961 and 1968, he was a professor in Mainz. He had several visiting professorships at the University of Chicago (1963), Harvard (1966), and at the Claremont School of Theology (1967), and since 1968 had been Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Munich.[5] He retired in 1993, and died at age 85 in 2014.[6] Throughout his career, Pannenberg remained a prolific writer. As of December 2008, his "publication page" on the University of Munich's website lists 645 academic publications to his name.[7]

Theological views

Pannenberg's understanding of revelation is strongly conditioned by his reading of Karl Barth and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as well as by a sympathetic reading of Christian and Jewish apocalyptic literature. The Hegelian concept of history as an unfolding process in which Spirit and freedom are revealed combines with a Barthian notion of revelation occurring "vertically from above". While Pannenberg adopts a Hegelian understanding of History itself as God's self-revelation, he strongly asserts the resurrection of Christ as a proleptic revelation of what history is unfolding. Despite its obvious Barthian reference, this approach met with a mainly hostile response from both neo-orthodox and liberal, Bultmannian theologians in the 1960s, a response which Pannenberg claims surprised him and his associates.[8] A more nuanced, mainly implied, critique came from Jürgen Moltmann, whose philosophical roots lay in the Left Hegelians, Karl Marx and Ernst Bloch, and who proposed and elaborated a Theology of Hope, rather than of prolepsis, as a distinctively Christian response to History. As disciple of Karl Löwith, Pannenberg continued the debate against Hans Blumenberg in the so-called 'theorem of secularization'.[9] "Blumenberg targets Löwith's argument that progress is the secularization of Hebrew and Christian beliefs and argues to the contrary that the modern age, including its belief in progress, grew out of a new secular self-affirmation of culture against the Christian tradition."[10]


Eschatological views of Pannenberg discount the importance of temporal process in the New Creation, time being linked with the sinful present age.[11] He preferred an eternal present to limited concepts of past, present and future and an end of time in a focused unity in the New Creation. Pannenberg has also defended the theology of American mathematical physicist Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory.[12][13][14][15]

Central to Pannenberg's theological career was his defence of theology as a rigorous academic discipline, one capable of critical interaction with philosophy, history, and most of all, the natural sciences. Michael Root wrote on First Things in 2012, "In recent years, he has been outspoken in his opposition within the Evangelical Church in Germany to any approval of homosexual relations. He said that a church that approved homosexual relations had by that act ceased to be a true church. In 1997, he created a public stir when he returned his Federal Order of Merit after the order was bestowed on a lesbian activist."[16]

Public Lectures

In 1994, Pannenberg delivered the eighth Erasmus Lecture, titled Christianity and the West, sponsored by First Things magazine and the Institute on Religion and Public Life. In his lecture, Pannenberg reflected on the historical and theological foundations of Western civilization, arguing that the decline of Christian belief in the modern world has profound implications for culture, moral order, and political life. His address exemplified the Erasmus series’ engagement with questions at the intersection of faith and contemporary society.[17]

Partial bibliography

Books by Pannenberg in English

  • 1968. Revelation As History (edited volume). New York: The Macmillan Company.
  • 1968. Jesus: God and Man. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
  • 1969. Basic Questions in Theology. Westminster Press
  • 1969. Theology and the Kingdom of God. Westminster Press.
  • 1970. What Is Man? Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
  • 1972. The Apostles' Creed in Light of Today's Questions. Westminster Press.
  • 1976. Theology and the Philosophy of Science. Westminster Press.
  • 1977. Faith and Reality. Westminster Press.
  • 1985. Anthropology in Theological Perspective. T&T Clark
  • 1988–1994. Systematic Theology. T & T Clark

Online writings

References

  1. ↑ Clayton, Philip (7 September 2014). "Wolfhart Pannenberg – In Memoriam". Theoblogy. Patheos. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2014/09/07/wolfhart-pannenberg-1928-2014/. 
  2. ↑ García, Alberto L. (2012). "Braaten, Carl e. (B. 1929)". in Kurian, George Thomas. The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc0184. ISBN 978-0-470-67060-6. 
  3. ↑ Schlesinger, Eugene R. (2016). "Trinity, Incarnation and Time: A Restatement of the Doctrine of God in Conversation with Robert Jenson". Scottish Journal of Theology 69 (2): 198. doi:10.1017/S0036930616000053. ISSN 1475-3065. 
  4. ↑ Date of Death: http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/glaube-geschichte-und-vernunft-1.18380264
  5. ↑ (in de) Brief biography, University of Munich, http://www.st-foe.evtheol.uni-muenchen.de/personen/pannenberg/vita/  .
  6. ↑ Roger Olson, The Journey of Modern Theology, 479
  7. ↑ Pannenberg, Publications, University of Munich, http://www.st-foe.evtheol.uni-muenchen.de/personen/pannenberg/publikationen/  .
  8. ↑ Pannenberg, Wolfhart (11 March 1981), "God's Presence in History", The Christian Century: 260–63 .
  9. ↑ Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1973). "Christianity as the Legitimacy of the Modern Age". The Idea of God and Human Freedom. 3. London: Westminster Press. pp. 178–91. ISBN 978-0-664-20971-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=dS4mAQAAMAAJ&q=Pannenberg+%22Christianity+as+the+Legitimacy+of+the+Modern+Age%22+%22The+Idea+of+God+and+Human+Freedom%22. 
  10. ↑ Buller, Cornelius A (1996). The Unity of Nature and History in Pannenberg's Theology. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-8226-3055-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=EBwpiVj5skoC. 
  11. ↑ Polkinghorne, John (2002). The God of hope and the end of the world. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09211-3. 
  12. ↑ Tipler 1989.
  13. ↑ Tipler 1994.
  14. ↑ Tipler 2007.
  15. ↑ Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1995). "Breaking a Taboo: Frank Tipler's the Physics of Immortality". Zygon 30 (2): 309–314. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1995.tb00072.x. 
  16. ↑ Root, Michael (March 2012). "The Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg". First Things. 
  17. ↑ Pannenberg, Wolfhart. "Christianity and the West". https://firstthings.com/christianity-and-the-west/. 

Further reading



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