Word: pannenberg
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...least a century, German and Germanic theologians have dominated Protestant thought. In the current generation, the two acknowledged theological stars are Tübingen's Jürgen Moltmann and Munich's Wolfhart Pannenberg. Moltmann, of Theology of Hope fame, has been the better known and the more popular, especially among Protestant social reformers. Pannenberg is still largely unknown outside the tight little world of religious scholars. But, says John Cobb of California's School of Theology at Claremont, he "is fairly widely recognized to have published more substantive work in theology in the past decade" than...
...most promising new developments-the theology of hope-rejects the death of God by stating, in effect, that God is alive and well in history. German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg cleared the stage for this movement by challenging Biblical Demythologizer Rudolph Bultmann, the dominant voice in postwar German theology. Pannenberg dramatically asserted God's past action in history by reaffirming that Christ actually rose from the dead, and established his future activity by making the eschaton ("last things") once again real and important: Judgment and Christ's Second Coming were the proper endpoint of history. But it remained...
...most controversial of Pannenberg's theses is his contention that the Resurrection is, properly understood, a historical event. Largely because the idea of a return from death is a concept incomprehensible to modern man, Bultmann considers the Resurrection a trans-historical myth. Pannenberg concedes that there is no way of knowing the exact mode of the Resurrection-was it simply a special vision given to Jesus' disciples, or a reconstitution of his body?-but he insists that there is no justification for dismissing it as legend. The fact of the Resurrection, he declares, was one of the primitive...
...Theonomous" Controller. Pannenberg's own theories have inevitably come in for attack-and not only from the Bultmannites. Conservative Protestants are offended by his opinion that the virgin birth is probably a legend. More radical critics point out that it is beyond the province of history to establish the Resurrection as a fact, since the historian can deal only with events that are within the range of human experience. American "Death of God" Theologian William Hamilton contends that Pannenberg is simply reviving the outdated medieval concept of God as the "theonomous" controller of all forces in the universe...
...remains to be seen whether Pan nenberg-who is now working out the philosophical foundation for a full-scale theology of history-proves to be an effective counter to Bultmann. But even Pannenberg's critics concede that he has once again raised several traditional issues that have been largely ignored by contemporary German theologians. In contrast to both Bultmann and Switzerland's Karl Barth, who strongly emphasizes the uniqueness of God's revelation in Christ, Pannenberg stresses the continuity of Old and New Testaments. Compared with theologies that place exclusive stress on Biblical authority, Pannenberg...