Scientia Dei (Part Five): Wolfhart Pannenberg (Section Two)
I earlier
mentioned that Pannenberg’s use of universal, publicly accessible criteria was
a favoring of Heinrich Scholz’ demands against Barthian criteria. Yet in another way Pannenberg would side with
Barth and Torrance against Scholz, because the criterion of demonstration are
still, as we mentioned briefly, intricately tied to an understanding of the Trinitarian God and revelation. Here of course “God,” is a contestable
hypothesis. The problem arises, of
course, that we cannot test God, so
to speak, as we could an object. God is
not to be understood at our disposal.
Rather Pannenberg’s theological testing of the hypothesis of God is
based on the Popperian (and Kuhnian) hypothesis-concept that theories achieve
degrees of verification in their ability to illuminate reality and prove as
useful heuristics.[i] “The idea of God, if it corresponds to an actual
reality, must be able to illuminate not only human existence, but also
experiences of the world as whole, providing the unity of all reality.”[ii]
Thus Pannenberg’s goal in his Systematic
Theology, for example, is
To present an integrated interpretation of God and
humanity and the world which we may with good reason regard as true in relation
to the knowledge which comes from experience of the world and human life, and
also to the knowledge of philosophical reflection, so that we can assert it to
be true vis-à-vis alternative religious and non-religious interpretation.[iii]
Only
in facing this test, so to speak, can the idea of God demonstrate its
validity. “[R]ightly understood, the
revelation of God as the revelation of God
is only borne in mind when all other truth and knowledge is organized around it
and appropriated by it.”[iv] Here we see the fundamental theme of sub ratione Dei for a scientific
theology. Everything that is must have a
fundamental and explainable relation to God—however limited or provisional this
may be: “if there is no unity [to the world, to man, to history, to meaning,
etc…] there is no God. There is
certainly no God in terms of an all determining reality, no God as understood
in the notions of creation and redemption, no God as understood through the
interplay of Greek and Hebrew thought, which has guided Western theology and
philosophy.”[v] Thus it is not surprising that Pannenberg
proposes that “epistemologically the statements of dogmatics and the theses of
the Christian doctrine which it presents are given the status of hypotheses,”
that is, assertions which are treated as
if they might be true or false.[vi] The success of this approach sub ratione Dei which depends on the
possibility of showing that the reality of God is the all-determining reality
implicit in all finite reality,[vii]
is not an arbitrary concept foisted upon concrete existence by
theologians. We saw earlier all fields
of knowledge implicate a concept of the theoretical unity of the world by their
assertions. Thus
If the concepts
of the objects with which theological investigation is concerned are not
separated from the relations in which
they stand, but the relations are seen as the expression of the reality of the
objects, the examination of the various objects of theological study sub ratione Dei becomes not merely a
subjective approach unrelated to their objectivity, but the approach which is
appropriate to them and to the nature of theological objects as such. It is only
this consideration sub ratione Dei
which distinguishes the treatment of a wide range of topics in theology from
their treatment in other disciplines which concern themselves with the same
areas but from different points of view.[viii]
It is this sub ratione Dei concept through which we
must interpret one of Pannenberg’s most famous statements, namely that “history
is the most comprehensive horizon of Christian theology. All theological questions and answers are
meaningful only within the framework of history God has with humanity and
through humanity with the whole creation—the history moving towards a future
still hidden from the world but already revealed in Jesus Christ.”[ix] Originally of course, “history” was seen by
many of his interpreters as Pannenberg’s primary theme. Yet as we have seen, history is but a facet,
even if perhaps one of the most important ones, for the demonstration of
reality sub ratione Dei. And that this is so became evident in
Pannenberg’s later works where the concrete nature of man and the world in
their complexity are approached only on the level of the historical
investigation of phenomenon, where other sciences—like psychology, or biology,
or physics—provide us only varying levels of abstraction from the concrete and
historically embedded nature of man.[x] In order to “preserve the phenomenon” of
historical humanity, its culture, language, imagination, etc…one must rescind
from purely reductive explanations in order to attain higher levels of
integration (a la Torrance above). It is
thus at the historical level of reality that the question of the unity of man
and his world most immediately asks about its boundary conditions and
explanations regarding the source of that unity, and is thus the most
immediately suited to analyses sub
ratione Dei.
The
repeated emphasis on “unity,” of the world should not mislead us to think
Pannenberg is not allowing the Trinity to shape the God that is under question,
however. The unity of reality that is
disclosed to us is fundamentally Christocentric and Trinitarian. To Pannenberg
the only way to give a coherent account of the Christian God is
to reference the Trinitarian relations, which Pannenberg regards as “concrete
monotheism.”[xi]
In this way God’s attributes (e.g. omnipotence, omnipresence etc…) are nuanced
by being seen as a manifestation of the interconnections between the reciprocal
communion of Trinitarian persons.[xii] An example of this modification of attributes
(and one key for our purposes here) is how the doctrine of the Trinity modifies
Pannenberg’s understanding of God as the unity
of the world, and hence how Pannenberg sees the Trinity as key to balancing
God’s transcendence and His immanence.
As early on as 1972, though not explicitly formed, Pannenberg wanted to
insist the “finite and infinite, temporal and eternal, are not merely opposed to each other.”[xiii] As Pannenberg’s theology progressed, the
concept of the true infinite emerged, so that Pannenberg wanted to say
(following Hegel), that strictly speaking,
the infinite is not that which is without end but
that which stands opposed to the finite, to what is defined by something
else…to be finite is to be in distinction from something and to be defined by
the distinction. The relation of
something to something else is an immanent definition of the something
itself…the infinite is truly infinite only when it is not thought of merely as
the opposite of the finite, for otherwise it would be seen as something in
relation to something else and therefore as itself finite.[xiv]
However,
this definition by itself is somewhat nebulous and seems to be simply an
abstract and empty assertion as Philip Clayton observed critically of
Pannenberg: “…the principle of ontological distinction in this differentiated
intermingling [of the true infinite] remains unclear, leaving the basis for
God’s ‘otherness,’ from creation in question.”[xv] As an answer to this, and in relation to the
concept of “true infinity,” Pannenberg offers what is perhaps his clearest
summary statement, noting “the infinity of God has to be conceived in terms of
being transcendent as well as immanent in the reality of the world…The
Christian Trinitarian doctrine can be considered as determining the question of
how these forms of God’s presence in the world are related to his transcendent
existence.”[xvi] We begin to see that the unity of the world
provided by God is not some abstract or nebulous concept, but given concrete
shape in the form of the incarnate son:
Because
Jesus' resurrection confirmed his earthly claim to authority by the fulfillment
of the eschatological future in his own person, he no longer just anticipated
the judgment of Him with whom the eschatological reality begins as he did in
his earthly activity, but he himself has now become in person the reality of
the future eschatological salvation...Differently expressed, through the
resurrection, the revealer of God's
eschatological will became the incarnation of the eschatological reality itself;
the ultimate realization of God's will for humanity and for the whole of
creation could therefore be expected from Him.[xvii]
Remembering
that the truth of God can be spoken of only in relation to the whole of
reality, Pannenberg adduces from this conception of the eschatological
in-breaking of the end, an ontological conception of reality seen through the
figure of Christ. As the proleptic
occurance of the end of the world “it is possible to find in the history of
Jesus an answer to the question of how ‘the whole,’ of reality and its meaning
can be conceived without compromising the provisionality and historical
relativity of all thought.”[xviii] In this way, much akin to Torrance, the
Trinity is the “ground and grammar” of our concept of a unified world. Through this Christological idea of the
proleptic, provisional occurrence of the end, Pannenberg demonstrates that the
fundamental “questionability,” of God is not due to a weakness or limitation in
God, that is, due to an imposition alien to Him, but is based in God’s own
being and decision. Pannenberg’s concept, stated in various ways throughout his
career,[xix]
states in its most epigrammatic form: “God’s deity is His rule.”[xx] That is, God’s deity is linked to His necessary rule over the world. Creation was not necessary to the
self-sufficient Trinity in eternity, but
now that the world has been made, its existence is not compatible with God’s
deity apart from God being Lord over this creation.[xxi]
Ted Peters calls this “a startling
argument,”[xxii]
and Roger Olson has labeled this as the “Pannenberg Principle.”[xxiii]
God has bound Himself to this world in the Son:
In the handing over of lordship from the Father to
the Son, and its handing back from the Son to the Father [Mt. 11:27], we see a mutuality in their relationship…By
handing over lordship to the son the Father makes his kingship dependent on
whether the Son glorifies Him and fulfils his lordship by fulfilling his
mission…his own deity is now dependent
upon the Son. The rule of the kingdom of
the Father is not so external to his deity that he might be God without his
kingdom.[xxiv]
With
this principle, Pannenberg notes that in the crucifixion of Christ, not only
the deity of Christ, but also the deity of the Father He proclaimed are in question. Thus both the shape and meaning of history,
and the inner connection of the principle of God’s questionability with God’s
own being and power, find their locus Christologically. This is why Pannenberg emphasizes the
historical demonstrability of the resurrection,[xxv]
which, given its meaning, provides an “empirical correlate” (of a certain sort)
to the ideas of Trinity and Incarnation.
We
have seen the hypothetical character of God in a scientific theology can
clearly be grounded in God’s own being, and that the hypothetical elaboration
of God should have implications for all of reality. So how does this theme of a scientific
theology sub ratione Dei relate in
actual practice to other fields of discipline?
Pannenberg deals with the relation of theology both to the human
sciences,[xxvi]
and more recently to the natural sciences.[xxvii] The complexity of the relation between
theology and science cannot be adequately summarized as “reciprocity.” Nor, however, does theology or the sciences
“foundationally,” control one or the other.[xxviii] And Pannenberg does not treat theology and
the sciences as two discrete disciplines that are only correlated with each
other subsequent to the unfolding of
the material content of their respective fields.[xxix] This would lead to a purely external and
superficial correlation between the
two. Moreover Pannenberg’s demand that
reality at varying levels would be unintelligible
without God omits this as a possibility.
Pannenberg explicitly rejects having to find this sort of “point of
contact,” between otherwise discrete realms, as if, e.g. anthropology “stands
over against theology as something different from the latter, and theology,
which in turn stands over against anthropology as something different from it,
and is suppose to establish contact with this very different thing.”[xxx] If this were the case, says Pannenberg, then
the data of anthropology would not be being critically transformed by the theologian. “The only conclusions theologians should draw
from [anthropology] is that they may not indiscriminately accept the data
provided by a nontheological anthropology and make these the basis for their
work, but rather must appropriate them in
a critical way.”[xxxi] Mutatis
mutandis the same would go for the natural sciences.
Thus what
is this relationship of “critical appropriation,” and “transformation”? In his illuminating study on Pannenberg’s
methodology, LeRon Shults notes “our analysis…has shown that while Pannenberg
does refer to the reciprocity [between science and theology] as involving
‘sublation’ this term does not capture all of the nuances of the relationality
[sic], which includes a
differentiated bipolarity, a clear asymmetry, and an actual relational unity [in his theology].”[xxxii] What do these terms imply? Asymmetry implies that scientific findings
used as a “fundamental theology,” and the systematic theological movement do
not have equal control on one another.
In fact Pannenberg allows a “marginal control,” of the systematic
theological movement on science. This is
what Pannenberg means by “critical,” appropriation: systematic theological
ideas have the power to recontextualize and so transform material scientific
research. But scientific research can
also nuance material theological conclusions.
Here we see a stark contrast to Torrance, for whom science could only
give methodological clarity to
theology, while the positive contribution of the sciences to material
theological understanding would always be limited for Torrance to the
elaboration upon themes already established in orthodox doctrine such as the
vast intelligibility of the world.
Bipolar and unity seem paradoxical in relation to one another. But what Shults appears to mean is that
science and theology are not two fundamentally discrete movements or separate
spheres, but they are nonetheless distinguishable from one another in the
course of argument. So to speak,
scientific findings, far from a secularized realm of knowledge, already contain
latent theological themes which need to be taken up, accounted for, and
expanded in the systematic theological presentation. Shults compares the whole movement to
Escher’s Möbius Strip: it differs
from much of Escher’s work because it is not an optical illusion but an actual
topographical space, where, if one traces the path of the band, what appear to
be two sides are really one single course.[xxxiii] Yet nonetheless the two sides are clearly
distinct in the overall unity. It is a
very useful illustration even if like most analogies it is imperfect. Keeping the phrase "asymetric bipolar unity," however is difficult due to its abstraction; In the next section we will analyze two specific examples from Pannenberg's work in order to give this methodology a concreteness and hopefully to also solidify the actual course of its method.
[i] The term “heuristics,”
should not here implicate an anti-realist interpretation of theory. This will be explained more in a moment.
[ii] Grenz, Reason for Hope p.8.
[iii] Pannenberg, ST 2:xiv.
[iv] Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology vol.2 p.2.
[v] Buller, Unity of Nature and History p.13.
[vi] Pannenberg, ST 1:56.
[vii] Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science
p.330
[ix] Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology p.16.
[x] Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective
p.485ff.
[xi] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1:335.
[xiii] Shults Postfoundationalist Task of Theology p.99.
[xiv] Pannenberg Systematic Theology 1:397
[xv] Philip Clayton, “The God of
History and the Presence of the Future.” The
Journal of Religion 65 no.1 (June 1985): pp.98-108. Quote at p.105.
[xvi] Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The
Christian Vision of God: The New Discussion on the Trinitarian Doctrine,” Asbury Theological Journal 46, no.2
(Fall 1991): 35.
[xvii] Pannenberg Jesus: God and Man p.367.
[xviii] Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology vol.1 p.181.
[xix] E.g. Trinity and the Kingdom of God pp.55-56.
[xxi] Pannenberg Systematic Theology 1:313
[xxii] Ted Peters God as Trinity: Relationality and
Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993)
p.136.
[xxiii] Olson, “Pannenberg’s
Doctrine of the Trinity,” p.199.
[xxv] Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man.
[xxvi] Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective;
c.f. also Wolfhart Pannenberg What is
Man? Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective trans. Duane. A.
Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970)
[xxvii] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Towards a Theology of Nature: Essays on
Science and Faith ed. Ted Peters (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press,
1993); Wolfhart Pannenberg, The
Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science & Theology ed. Niels Henrik
Gregersen.
[xxviii] This is why I disagree with
Buller that the “Divine love,” is the “foundational,” theme of his theology
(Buller, Unity of Nature and History
p.21) This would appear to itself put
Pannenberg in the fideist camp if
divine love was truly foundational
(i.e. an axiomatic assumption controlling all other auxiliary hypotheses). Certainly this is a major theme, but
Pannenberg does not unequivocally “start” with the Divine Love.
[xxix] Thus one must disagree with
Jüngel when he accuses Pannenberg of analyzing humanity “remoto Deo,” or “apart from God” (Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World p.viii). Though to be fair, Jüngel’s observation was
slightly more justifiable at the time of writing, when the overall relation of
the scope of Pannenberg’s thought was really not that clear. It should also be noted that Jüngel clearly
appreciates that Pannenberg is not trying to “prove” God as in evidentialist
apologetics.
[xxx] Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective
p.19.
[xxxii] Shults, Postfoundationalist Task of Theology p.206.
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