Pannenberg paper

I am working on a PhD looking a Wolfhart Pannenberg (b.1928) the German theologian. Here is the summary of my paper on Pannenberg for ANZATS (associated with SBL). It is a bit dense I know, but I am too close to it at present to give a simpler summary. My supervisor, Dr Chris Mostert, was there and was encouraging. He noted one point that he disagreed with, and I've fixed that up in the summary below. I came up with an local Auckland illustration, and I had a three dimensional diagrams! They were the highlights for the audience I suspect.

In order to understand Pannenberg we need some idea of his whole project. I outlined that in 11 points.
1) Theology is a ‘science’ (or Wissenschaft).
2) Theology must be rational.
3) God is the object of theology.
4) Philosophically God is properly conceived of as the  Christian Trinitarian thought gives the only adequate account of the true infinite.
5) The theological concept of God takes up the philosophical and expands it.
6) Theological claims are hypotheses which find confirmation in the eschaton
7) The truth of any statement stands in relation to God.
8) “Every assertion has an anticipatory structure”.
9) The demise of metaphysics makes the affirmation of the truth of God untenable and the rise of atheism inevitable.
10) Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) are the thinkers who proclaimed the demise of metaphysics.
11) A renewed metaphysical proposal must start with real life-worlds and historicity.

Pannenberg then presents a reconceptualised metaphysic. Dilthey and Heidegger argued that the temporality of understanding makes substantialist metaphysics impossible because there is no unified unchanging understanding of being. Pannenberg proposes to include this feature of change in a new ontology. Pannenberg suggests that things are what they become.

I call this proposal “temporalised essentialism”. It allows Pannenberg to incorporate the fact that truth claims and interpretations shift through time. Pannenberg’s proposal is a response to elements of postmodernity. He does not display any interest in fully developed postmodernism with its deconstruction and rejection of canonical descriptions and final vocabularies, and critique of the notion of the neutrality and sovereignty of reason. Yet in dealing Dilthey and Heidegger on questions of temporality he interacts with thinkers and themes which lie at the roots of postmodernity. This proposal makes use of explicitly theological material, drawing on Christian eschatology and resurrection hope in the light of the resurrection of Christ. Pannenberg’s metaphysical proposal stands in a reciprocal relationship with a theological proposal. “Temporalised essentialism” allows the theological to be recognised as conceivable, while it is only in the theological that the metaphysical finds its validation. Ultimately such validation is eschatological, since it is only when the Triune God is revealed as the reality which determines all reality that the truth of either claim can be established.

This metaphysics is the background for Pannenberg's reformulation of the doctrine of God. He responde to three concerns: i) the need to relate to modern relational categories rather than classical concepts; ii) the need to resolve problems in the traditional doctrine of God; and iii) the need to ground the doctrine of God in revelation. His most basic concern, on his own presentation, is the need to ground the doctrine of God in revelation, particularly the historical revelation of Jesus and the relationships discovered there.

Pannenberg expounds revelation in Christ in terms of the “mutual self-distinction” of Father, Son and Spirit. He argues that all “active relations” have a place in the “richly structured nexus of relationship” of Trinitarian life. Pannenberg treats these relations as truly mutual, so that the Father-Son relation is constitutive for the Father as well the Son. Pannenberg comes to a doctrine of the Trinity in which the deity, distinctive identity and unity of each of the persons is constituted in and through the others in the economy. Pannenberg’s position is that that God’s deity, unity and lordship can not be confessed unless they are thought of eschatologically. It is at this point that the importance of ‘anticipation’ can be seen. For it is only because things are in the present what they will be in the end that we can affirm that the one ruling Lord is already present.


Pannenberg’s exposition of the Trinity has two inseparable aspects: ‘mutual self-distinction’ (i.e. inner Trinitarian relations or what is often identified as the immanent Trinity) and ‘salvation history’ (i.e. the economic Trinity). In Pannenberg’s thought these two aspects must be maintained and related.

Pannenberg’s theological and metaphysical proposals involve a reconceptualisation of the relation of time and eternity. He argues that eternity must be understood as the simultaneity of all time, an eternity which lies in the future of temporal experience.
How can this proposal be assessed? I’d suggest these are important questions
a) Does Pannenberg’s view of anticipation concord with the New Testament presentation of the ‘now-not yet’ tension?
b) Does Pannenberg’s doctrine of God result in distancing God from history?
c) Does Pannenberg’s move to understand the relations of the Trinity as not simply relations of ‘origin’ constitute a theological advance beyond of the Nicene tradition?
d) Is it valid to assert that there is no conceptual distinction between God’s essence and persons?
e) Does Pannenberg’s claim that all history is anticipatory of redemption means that he must relativise wrath and judgement?

Whatever conclusion we come to on those questions Pannenberg’s project offers important insights for Christian talk about God in the face of the fragmentation of postmodernity. In the ongoing debate about the place of metaphysics in Christian theology Pannenberg insists that Christian talk about God can not abandon metaphysics. His approach suggests that a response to postmodernity can not simply rest on classical metaphysics. He shows us that in eschatology we find resources for rethinking our view of God and time and eternity.

SBL Wednesday

We've reached Wednesday evening in Auckland. This morning saw two papers by people with PTC connections. Peter Lau who started a PhD with us before moving the the slightly larger and more prestigious University of Sydney presented on the presentation of Boaz in Ruth and Rochelle Gilmour, who is teaching Hebrew this year, looked at the rhetorical strategy in 1 Samuel 9 in which Saul seems to take so long to actually meet Samuel. She showed the devices used to raise tension and that it is quite possible to make sense of the final form of the text without resorting to textual history explanations. It stretched my Hebrew but was very enjoyable.

At least one person was interested in Peter Lockwood's paper, and I liked it, so here is a little more on"Genocidal warfare in the book of Joshua: Does the implied author have qualms of conscience?" Peter argued that the book is written to encourage Israel to courageous Torah-keeping in the 6th and 7th centuries and so is not aimed at calling the reader to enter holy war. Israel are presented has having a legal right to the land as an inheritance (1:3, 6,11; 11:23; 21:43-45) and the conquest is a kind of Jubilee in which all land reverts to its proper owner (Josh 6 uses the term yovel, the word for jubilee and rams horn stressing the parallel between the feast of Jubilee and the conquest). Israel’s right to the land is not based on their greatness but on the Lord’s promise (Dt 7:7; 8:7-18; 9:4). He also pointed to various factors which make the Joshua conquest less ethically troubling. For example the contrast between Rahab and Achan undermines any claims that Yahweh is a national god who will always fight for Israel. This is reinforced by Joshua’s encounter with the commander of the Lord’s armies in Joshua 5 where Joshua asks “Are you for us or for our enemies?” and the answer is “No” and then “but I have now come as commander of the army of the LORD”. Peter also pointed to the presentation of the sin of the Canaanites in the Deuteronomic history and the presentation of the Canaanites as the aggressors and that Israel’s first widespread military action was to assist the Gibeonites. The Canaanites are presented as corrupt and corrupting (Jsh 23:7-16; 24:19-20) This all presents the conquest in a different light to the way it may be seen in a superficial reading, though I was not convinced that it shows the narrator was troubled by the conquest.

SBL in Auckland - Tuesday lunch

Several of us are at SBL International conference in Auckland this week. If has been good fun so far. There are heaps of Aussies here (the majority of delegates I'd guess) and lots of people various ones of us know from different places. Like all conferences of this sort some papers are better and more stimulating than others.

My favourites so far have been a paper by Mervyn Duffy on the place of language in Eden, and one by Peter Lockwood from the Lutheran College in Adelaide arguing that the narrator of Judges in sensitive to some of the ethical problems of the conquest and builds a case to "qualify, modify and justify" the violence of his account. Mervyn's paper was stimulated by a claim by the modern Catholic theologian Chauvet that Augustine and Aquinas suggest that there is no place for language in the garden of Eden. Chauvet sees this as an example the classical metaphysics (or onto-theology) of the tradition and he opposes this with a view which see reality as constituted by language all the way down. Mervyn was arguing that the tradition has a stronger place for language than Chauvet allows. He pointed to some material in both Augustine and Aquinas which go some way to demonstrating this, though I was not convinced that their Neoplatonism does not have more of an effect on their views. 

I'll try to mention a few other papers later today, but now I am off to do my own paper on Pannenberg.

Why John D has been the only blogger

You may have noticed that only one of us has contributed to the blog in the last few weeks and have wondered why. Even if you have not wondered let me tell you. We've had a busy end to the semester with a fairly frantic dash to get all the marking finished. John D has had that as well, but has persevered with the blog. The last week has been the NSW Presbyterian Church annual assembly, which occupied most of us. John however has started study leave and Ian is acting principal, so John got on with his projects and the rest of us spent a week at Assembly.

As John explained some us of are heading to Auckland next week for SBL, and I'll try to write some posts from there.