Wolfhart Pannenberg, An Introduction to Systematic Theology
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 1991, pgs. 69
Summary: Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014) was an Enlightenment theologian who worked to preserve much of the language of traditional theology while attempting to provide an academically acceptable explanation of Christian doctrine.
An Introduction to Systematic Theology is a part of the M. Eugene Osterhaven Lectureship at Western Theological Seminary—a broadly evangelical school.
Pannenberg establishes that Jesus is a historical person who is also in some sense the Son of God. And he defines the task of systematic theology as presenting a coherent explanation of the truth of Christianity: “Whatever is true must finally be consistent with all other truth, so that truth is only one, but all-embracing, closely related to the concept of the one God” (6).
The issue is that while “the task [of systematic theology] is always the same, and the truth that systematic theology tries to reformulate should recognizably be the same truth that had been intended under different forms of language and thought in the great theological systems of the past and in the teaching of the church throughout the ages” (7). Yet, “the distinction has to be made between what is historically relative in the traditional teaching and what is the abiding core” (Ibid.).
One such “historically relative . . .traditional teaching” is the belief that the Bible is true in all that it affirms. Thus, the author of the text identified as 2 Peter 1:16 words, “we did not follow cleverly devised myths,” makes a historically relative statement that is strictly speaking not true.
Pannenberg finds myths affirmed as true. And thus, “the classical doctrine as well as the biblical reports of creation of the world remained dependent on the mythical form of explaining the world: Everything was imagined as having been established in the origin of time” (41).
We, being moderns and Pannenberg’s readers, know that the Bible has mythological portions, because of two aspects of modernity. Modernity is “a complete program of purely secular interpretation of reality at large and of human life and history” (13-14) and “the modern criticism of all forms of arguing by recourse to authority” (14).
A bait and switch occurs here, because at least Enlightenment thought establishes science as an authority. Or perhaps better, the modern program is the authority (cf. review of Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution).
Pannenberg submits to the modern program, but attempts to create the intellectual room for faith in portions of the Christian program. So much so that Pannenberg excitedly informs us:
When modern biochemist describe the phenomenon of life as autocatalytic exploitation of an energy gradient, such a description yields the same idea of life as an ecstatic phenomenon which is surprisingly close to the Christian idea of faith as described in the theology of the Reformation; an existence outside oneself, realized in the act of trust in God (45).
He can produce such rubbish only by overhauling the doctrine of God and then stuffing the traditional term faith into his definition of God. “The concept of God which was developed by medieval and early modern theology in close contact with classical metaphysics is in need of rather radical revision” (23).
According to Pannenberg, the Bible with its mythological assertions about Jesus and creation, does not support the what Pannenberg perceives as the classical definition of God as mind. The person who brought the world’s attention to this problem was Spinoza (cf. The Problem of Literalism: Spinoza). “Spinoza rejected the image of God as mind which operates by interaction of intellect and will” (34). Mind as formulated by Spinoza and accepted by Pannenberg is “the distinction and interaction of intellect and will [as] bound to the finitude of the human situation.”
Pannenberg cures this problem by “admitting this criticism” yet, “the ideas of a divine will and of God as spirit need not be surrendered, but they have to be reconstructed on a new basis” (35).
The new basis that the author offers is God as spirit:
In the biblical story the spirit is simply the dynamic principle of life, and the soul is the creature which is alive and yet remains dependent on the spirit as the transcendent origin of life (43).
He notes that this was rejected by the early church because of the Stoic articulation of spirit as matter. And adds, “Origen’s criticism was successful because of the apparent absurdities such a conception would cause in the concept of God. . .In fact, however the Stoic conception of pneuma as a most subtle element like air was much to the biblical language. . .” (43-45).
Pannenberg then plops this into modern energy field theory:
The Spirit of God can be understood as the supreme field of power that pervades all of creation. Each finite event or being is to be considered as a special manifestation of that field, and their movements are responsive to its forces (46). . .The field theories of science, then, can be considered as approximations to the metaphysical reality of the all-pervading spiritual field of God’s creative presence in the universe (47).
The “spirit” as God allows the Son to distinguish “himself from the Father in order to subordinate himself to his kingdom. . . The eternal act of the Son’s self-differentiation from the Father would then contain the possibility of the separate existence of creatures. As the self-distinction of the Son from the Father is to be regarded as an act of freedom, so the contingency in the production of creatures would be in continuity with such freedom” (42).
Pannenberg has accepted Spinoza’s deity but has trintitized it by making the Son freely contingent on the Father (cf. John Cooper, Panentheism, 259ff.). Jesus as freely dependent on the Father can with the Holy Spirit pass on his freedom to creation.
The freedom the Son passes on to man is essentially the self-consciousness of humanity (51). We, like the Son, can distinguish ourselves from God. Adam’s sin was not merely distinguishing himself from God; he “actually separated from God” (61). Yet “in the second Adam, the Son of God, human beings accept their differences from God and subordinate themselves to him as the Son does. Like the Son himself, in their voluntary subordination to God they will enjoy communion with God and consequently participate in his eternal life beyond their own finitude and death” (61).
Benefits/Detriments: The enthusiastic undergraduate within me cries, “Damn, that’s clever!” Libertarian free will, evolution, quantum physics, monotheism, a reasonably divine Jesus, and salvation. And the only cost is dropping the Bible as an authority and accepting the authority of the scientific program and Pannenberg’s cleverness.
And please let’s be clear, Pannenberg’s system allows him to arbitrate which portions of the Bible are mythological and which true. He might argue that the Jesus Seminar is his authority, but it’s moot. Without the Bible, there is no revealed Jesus in history, without Jesus there is no Trinity, and without the Trinity, Pannenberg’s system collapses back into Spinoza’s simple panentheism. Pannenberg’s system depends on an authoritative revelation of the Son of God, and he rejects the possibility of that authority.
Further, I am befuddled by Pannenberg’s insistence on developing theological positions based on at best theoretical descriptions of background physical phenomena like field theory and quantum events. The shelf-date on such positions is likely less than Twinkies or string theory. The scientific program cannot provide a stable foundation for theology because it changes.
Lastly, Pannenberg has not escaped the absurdities of making God an energy field any more than the Stoics by making God subtle matter.
The curmudgeonly theologian within me mutters, “Clever, damnably clever.” It’s damnably clever because it was anticipated by Paul as the systematic theology “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). The trouble with clever is that nobody saved by it. And there’s very little difference between clever and crafty (Gen. 3:1).
Recommended for folks pursuing academic degrees in theology.