Scientia Dei (Final): Openness and Contingency
Examples of
this from Pannenberg’s dealings with the Human Sciences and the Natural
Sciences will help give this method concreteness. We will deal with two themes in order to
limit the discussion: human exocentricity or “openness to the world,” and the
concept of contingency and natural law.
We saw that at least a partial characteristic of Barth’s theology was a
reaction and attempted answer to the charge of Feuerbach that religion was
essentially the projection of man’s own thoughts onto an infinite screen, so to
speak. We are already familiar with
Barth’s answer in the form of the absolute priority of the revealing God,
because Barth wished to avoid any sense that theology was being based upon
anthropology. Yet Pannenberg is quite
incredulous to this:
[Dialectical theology] disdained to take a position
on the terrain of anthropology and argue there that the religious thematic [of
humanity] is unavoidable. As a result,
it was defenseless against the suspicion that its faith was something
arbitrarily legislated by human beings.
As a result, its very rejection
of anthropology was a form of dependence
on anthropological suppositions. That
is, when Barth, instead of justifying his position, simply decided to begin
with God himself, he unwittingly adopted the most extreme form of theological
subjectivism.[i]
Instead
Pannenberg wants to use anthropological research in order to being to answer
the question whether
Man, in the exercise of his existence, assume a
reality beyond himself and everything finite, sustaining him in the very act of
his freedom, and alone making him free, a reality a reality to which everything
that is said about God refers? Or does the
freedom of man exclude the existence of God, so that with Nietzsche, Nicolai
Hartmann, and Sartre we must postulate the non-existence of God…for the sake of
human freedom? And a decision on this
question is an indispensable basic condition, though not completely sufficient
condition in itself, for any justification of our speaking about God. This statement means that the first and
fundamental choice between theology and atheism in fact lies in the
understanding of man, in anthropology.[ii]
Pannenberg
begins to find an answer in the concept of human “openness to the world.” We spoke already of the necessity to
postulate a unity to the world, even if this unity is not explicitly reflected
upon. Openness to the world is the
anthropological correlate to this, in that it implies that man has a basic
drive to move beyond the immediate environment, and indeed that this drive
infinitely exceeds any given situation.[iii] Man is not limited to his environment for a
particular experience and behavior but is characterized by a responsive
freedom. “Man has been irreversibly
confronted by the experience that he is always able to ask beyond every horizon
that opens to him.”[iv] Thus “openness to the world,” is not merely
to “the world,” as a given entity but also is an openness “beyond the world…if
our destiny did not press us beyond the world, then we would not constantly
search further, as we do even when there are no concrete incentives.”[v] Indeed even the basic formation of our ego
from infancy into adulthood presupposes a unity of a higher order beyond the multiplicity
of the world, which unifies the world into an order that we can internalize
into our own identities as a stable ego.
Because, contra Kant, the ego is not a set-order in itself but is mediated to itself through the world.[vi] Man’s openness is thus difficult to describe
in the terms of Feuerbach as self-creating power, since it seems in actual
reality once the assumption of German idealism is discarded, namely the set
constitution of the ego, and replaced with the psychological formation of the ego
through interaction with the world, the relationship is reversed and
goal-directed action characteristic of freedom is dependent on openness, and thus dependent on a presupposed higher
order of unity.[vii]
In this
infinite dependence on some higher order of unity man presupposes in the very
positive constitution of his being an actual infinite in which he or she is in
correspondence with, even if they do not know what to call it or are not
explicitly reflecting on its nature.[viii] Pannenberg in this movement is thus not
arguing that the Christian God is
this infinite; what has been established is rather that some concept of the
Infinite and all-determining reality is necessary, and invites us to ask “why
man’s being constituted in relation to God and why he is characterized by being
religious are so neglected by modern non-Christian anthropology.” We are however as Christians also bound to
realize that these forms of anthropology are still dealing de facto with man whose being is constituted in relation to God.[ix] The task of Christian theology is to make
this theme explicit, and to argue that the Christian vision of the world and of
man, encapsulated in Christ, is the explanatory framework within which these
anthropological phenomena are completed and find fulfillment in Christ: to
repeat a quote above, “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.”[x]
This is not
a proof of God, per se, it cannot by itself validate the claim that God is real.
“But neither do [these claims of exocentricity and basic trust, etc…]
inhabit a realm of purely imaginary possibilities, since they are concerned
with the implications of a
fundamental phenomenon in human behavior.
They show that the theme of ‘God’ is inseperable from the living of
human life.”[xi] It proves, if not the reality of God, the
reality of the inescapable constitutive link between humanity and the
“religious thematic,” which is the relationship between how finite objects gain
meaning only against a totality or infinite backdrop of the wholeness of life
only received from elsewhere, but which is presupposed in every individual
finite act.[xii]
Thus our goal should be the realization of the hypothetical stance that
theological statements will be better able to explain anthropological
phenomenon than anthropological hypotheses by themselves. Indeed a particularly key area of this is the
explanation of sin, brokenness, and the human need for salvation, which falter
under reductionism without Christian interpretation. Thus
“Theologians cannot, without prejudicing their own subject, simply
attach themselves to this or that methodological approach…conceived for secular
use. The secular understanding and
method must be subjected to scrutiny in relation to the (usually omitted)
religious dimension of the realm of phenomena under discussion…”[xiii]
It behooves
us to note at this juncture the salient point of the difference between this
strategy of argumentation and any apologetic “God of the gaps,” enterprise,
like much of Intelligent Design. God is
not here found in the aporias of a mechanism, rather the mechanisms themselves
admit or implicate higher levels of explanation gradients in their very mode of
operation. For example Pannenberg argues
our language is connected to “the divine mystery,” insofar “as there is a link
in the idea of the indeterminate totality of meaning…implicitly present in any
spoken word, above and beyond its linguistic context,” which means “if every
human word owes its existence in the final analysis to an non-thematic, hidden
presence of God in the depth dimension of linguistic consciousness…it is
possible…that human speech is somehow inspired to the extent that it is open to
this depth dimension. But even if this
is so, the speech remains human speech…”[xiv]
(emphasis mine). Thus unlike gap-theory explanation “God” is not a hypothesis
competing on the same level as other efficient-cause mechanisms. The human, in
the very acts of the multiple levels of existence is constituted in a relation
to God. To put it in Aquinas’ terms
there is no competition between primary and secondary causes, nature has its
own full integrity while nonetheless also pointing beyond itself. Thus this is not the search for an
explanatory stopgap which would replace a naturalistic mechanism (i.e. design
in the face of supposed irreducible complexity) but preserves the phenomena by examining its higher level implications. It is, so to speak, remembering Heraclitus’
words: “You could not discover the limits of the soul, not even if you traveled
down every road. Such is the depth of
its form.”[xv]
Another
unique area of resonance between Pannenberg and Torrance is their mutual
emphasis on the theme of “contingency”[xvi]
within the ambit of Christian theology.
As we saw with Torrance, he emphasized that contingency, and contingent
intelligibility of the universe, are in the history of ideas distinctly
Christian concepts. Pannenberg is in
fundamental agreement with this genealogy,[xvii]
but also applies it further in order to not only question some current
scientific understandings of natural law, but also to put forward the concept
of the “historicity of nature.”
Contingency, as we saw with Torrance, has to do with the fundamental
uniqueness of the universe and the fact that its existence is not self-evident
nor is it necessary, a concept historically brought to light by the
Judeo-Christian concept of God, and the concept of Incarnation. However despite Torrance’s claims that the
contingency of the universe led to the rise of a posteriori science, another roadblock emerges barring a straight
path between theological concepts of contingency and natural science in the
natural scientific concepts of laws of nature:
Virtually all theoretical attention is given to the regularity of these
laws and their mathematical and observational demonstrability.
Pannenberg
observes that even in ancient Israel there was often seen a tension between the
contingent acts of God in history and the regularities of the normal courses of
events.[xviii] Pannenberg is not satisfied, however, to let
Christian theology simply set in antithesis descriptive observations in terms
of the nomothetic regularities of natural law, and the field of personal
experience in the open process of history.[xix] This basic unresolved antithesis in the
history of Christian thought has in fact done enormous amounts of harm with the
rise of the Cartesian doctrine of inertia eventually implemented in its present
scientific form by Isaac Newton.[xx] The idea of the ability of bodies to maintain
inertial force without the active agency of God led many like Laplace to
suppose the hypothesis of immediate agency, and thus the hypothesis of God as
that agent, were no longer needed.[xxi]
The inertial displacement of God rested of course on certain inappropriate
formulations on God as the efficient
cause of the motion of bodies,[xxii]
yet nonetheless the concept of the universe as an enclosed inertial system
became exaggerated to the point that God could no longer act in this
“container,” universe except by breaking the laws of nature, which many such as
Hume objected to vehemently as a gross affront to normal scientific operations.[xxiii]
Pannenberg
suggests, however, that contingency applies to all events, and therefore to the
cosmos as a whole.[xxiv] This means that we must view even the
emergence of regularities and uniform processes expressed in laws, as
themselves contingent.[xxv] That is, as laws are dependent on initial and
marginal conditions in which the “stuff,” whose operations and regularities
which are described by these laws, emerged.
Laws are based on contingency, rather than contingency being seen as an
exception to law. Pannenberg writes,
“modern cosmology teaches that the areas in which most natural laws apply (e.g.
classical mechanics) arose in advanced phases of the expansion of the
universe. But when there is no area of
application, it makes no sense to speak
of a law of nature.”[xxvi] This accords also with the basic thesis of
the irreversibility of time. All events
are essentially unique and unrepeatable—thus nature itself is, so to speak,
“historical.” This aspect of contingency
opens up a view of the universe, much akin to Torrance’s conclusions, which is
eminently more amenable to the Christian view of God’s interactions with the
world that is not limited to supernatural corruption of regularity. In fact, in stark contrast to Intelligent
Design theorists, Pannenberg indicates that the contingency of the universe, far more than design, indicates the
inherent freedom of the Creator. Each
moment of the universe in the sequences of its natural operations—and not
merely in moments which lie beyond our current capacity to explain—speak of
God.
Conclusion
This has
been a very complex investigation, and so in some sense any negotiation between
Pannenberg and Torrance will itself be complex.
Both have key areas of disagreement—Torrance does not believe in making
the question of God itself problematic, while Pannenberg views this as a key
aspect of a scientific inquiry into theology; they have fundamentally different
concepts of revelation, and so their doctrines of God vary accordingly;
Pannenberg allows a reciprocal, if asymmetrical, questioning between science
and theology, while Torrance, situating natural theology completely within the
ambit of revealed theology, sees science as at most providing a methodological
correction to theology but never a material one. Science will only ever elaborate the fundamental
details of orthodox doctrine in ever new and complex ways, but will never
“question back,” as it were, at its founding theological presuppositions.
[i] Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective
p.16.
[ii] Pannenberg, The Idea of God and Human Freedom p.106.
[iii] Pannenberg, What is Man? p.3.
[vi] Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God p.58ff.
[vii] e.g. Anthropology in Theological Perspective p.232ff.
[viii] Pannenberg, What is Man? p.10.
[ix] Shults, Postfoundationalist Task of Theology p.190.
[x] Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology vol.1 p.181.
[xi] Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective
p.233.
[xv] As quoted in David Berlinski
The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its
Scientific Pretensions (New York: Crown Publishing, 2008) p.158.
[xvi] For example see, Pannenberg,
“Contingency and Natural Law,” in Towards
a Theology of Nature p.72-122.
[xvii] In fact regarding the concept
of scientific and theological contingency is one of the remarkably few times
Pannenberg cites Torrance (ST
2:69n.171).
[xviii] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 2:68.
[xx] Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature p.44.
[xxii] Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from
the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University
press, 1986); Michael Buckley, S.J. At
the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
[xxiii] Pannenberg, Historicity of Nature p.45. Thus in
Victorian England, a view of the universe as a closed mechanistic system meant
that the full weight for the evidence of God fell to teleological and
teleonomic design inferences in the created order. This of course was famously provided by
William Paley, and subsequently erased as a plausible form of argument in the
popular consciousness by rise of Darwinian evolutionism which appeared to
conflict with that certain idea of apparent design by the slow culmination of
probabilistic processes. Thus certain
deficient views of God and his relation to creation, along with a lagging
scientific consciousness of theologians, led to an apparent conflict between
Darwinism and theistic belief. This for Pannenberg stresses even further the
need for active dialogue in order to stave off inappropriate formulations on
both sides.
[xxiv] Pannenberg, ST 2:69.
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