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History and Eschatology in the Thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg

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History and Eschatology in the Thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg History and Eschatology in the Thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg Introduction The purpose of this essay is to explain Wolfhart Pannenberg’s understanding of history and eschatology and the way in which these ideas affect his conception of human freedom and activity. I will also discuss his approach to the problem of world peace as a means of showing the contributions of his theology to a contemporary concrete problem. My argument, briefly stated, is that Pannenberg’s theology of history contains significant resources that Christians may profitably use as they wrestle with the intellectual task of understanding our world and with the practical task of changing our world. Understanding Pannenberg’s theology can be a daunting experience. His thought ranges widely over several disciplines, including philosophy, science and hermeneutics. Accordingly, a few introductory words may be helpful in order to provide some orientation to his theology and the concerns that motivate it. It seems axiomatic that history has an importance for the Christian faith that it does not have for other religions. I am not to claiming that history is unimportant for other religions. Judaism has a prominent role for history in the form of tradition; Islam is founded upon some pivotal historical events. But the Christian faith relates to history in a more extensive way because of its eschatology. Christianity arose from the apocalyptic strand of first century Judaism and has never completely lost the sense that history is God’s doing and that it moves in a direction determined by God. As a result, philosophical reflection on history has found a welcome home among Christians to a greater extent than it has among adherents of other religions. Systems of thought such as those of Augustine, Joachim of Fiore and G.W.F. Hegel all testify to the vital role that the concept of history plays in Christian thought. The fact that Christians have never come to complete agreement on how best to interpret history does not detract from this judgment. This disagreement is only an index of the extent to which Christians take history seriously and feel the need to understand it in the light of Christian theology. However, the rise of historical criticism in the eighteenth century and of modern historiographical methods has not been completely kind to theologians in their attempt at thinking about history in a Christian way. To be sure, modern historical research has yielded impressive benefits for theology, from the discovery of ancient documents to a greater knowledge of the Bible’s historical background. But along with the benefits came certain liabilities. Historical criticism cast doubt on some long held assumptions about the authorship and dating of Biblical books. It excelled at showing that the Bible is an ancient book, thereby throwing into clear relief the difference in worldview between the Bible and modern, scientifically oriented people. In short, it tended to show both the Bible and Christianity to be historical phenomena, thoroughly embedded in their intellectual milieux. This result, in turn, tended to subject the Christian faith to the relativities of history, making it difficult for theologians to make absolute claims to truth. It is not surprising, then, that theologians worried about the corrosive effects of modern historical study and acknowledged the need to come to terms with it. Some did so by ignoring the results of historical criticism and by trusting in the absolute, trans-historical character of the Bible. This was the path taken by Fundamentalism. Others came to the conviction that the Christian faith must be brought into conformity with the modern historical outlook, even if doing so meant a substantial trimming of some traditional Christian doctrines. This was the path taken by liberal theologians such as Ernst Troeltsch. At length a third option became popular, namely to grant the validity of historical criticism and of modern historical thinking but also to insulate the Christian faith from the corrosive effects of historical thought. This insulation was accomplished by declaring that the Christian faith is based, not on Jesus as reconstructed by historical investigation, but on Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament and as proclaimed by the church. This displacing of theology from the Jesus of history to the Christ of faith safeguarded the Christian faith from historical criticism by affirming the trans-historical nature of revelation. Revelation, in this view, comes to be separated from world history. Biblical eschatology is shorn of its apocalyptic framework. Rudolf Bultmann exemplifies this third option, but it was also adopted by theologians as diverse as Martin Kaehler and Karl Barth. Pannenberg has developed his theology of history against this background and with these problems in mind. His thought on this subject may be summarized in four points. First, he fully accepts the methods and results of Biblical criticism. While his theology has not taken advantage of the most recent developments in Biblical studies (for example, canonical criticism and narrative analysis), his thinking has been thoroughly shaped by the modern historical outlook and his theology presupposes the results of modern Biblical study. Consequently, he stands firmly outside the Fundamentalist tradition. Second, he has set himself against Rudolf Bultmann and others of his generation who regarded the apocalyptic stream of the Bible as an aberration, a detour from the more authentic prophetic tradition. Pannenberg believes that apocalypticism represents the culmination of the Biblical tradition, for in apocalyptic thought the Bible breaks the provincial boundaries of the Israelite nation and regards God as the lord of the whole world and of all history. For this reason he emphasizes the apocalyptic tendencies of the New Testament, seeing in them a continuation of the Old Testament’s central tendency. Third, and as a result of his emphasis on Biblical apocalypticism, he understands revelation to be equivalent to history in its totality. That is, universal history, in its entire scope, from beginning to end, constitutes the revelation of God. There is an essential connection between history and the God of the Bible. But the history in question is not the history of a particular people such as Israel; it is not even Christian history. It is instead the history of world as a whole. This history is revelation because this history is, in a fundamental sense, the act of God. History in its totality and in its particulars is a result of God’s creative activity. As a result, it reveals God. Who and what God is will stand forth with clarity and assurance only at the end of history and as a result of what transpires in history. With these affirmations Pannenberg rejects the early twentieth century tendency to depict revelation as something trans-historical. Fourth, Pannenberg asserts that the concept of history applies not only to the realm of human events but also to nature. Pannenberg has led the way among theologians in the latter half of the twentieth century in calling for a theology of nature. Moreover, his approach to the theology of nature is distinctive, for he wishes to reverse our customary ways of viewing natural events and organisms. We should, he argues, see even things in nature as thoroughly historical. Natural events and beings are not instances of deterministic universal laws but are instead contingent, just as events in human history are contingent. Consequently, we must regard history as a fundamental metaphysical category. All finite events and beings have a historical and contingent character. They have this character because they arise from the creative activity of the Biblical God, who is the lord of history. In summary, Pannenberg has provided Christian intellectuals today with a powerful and needed corrective to the narrowly existential focus that characterized much of Protestant theology in the first half of the twentieth century. His main theses, although not above improvement here and there, point the way forward for any Christian who wishes to understand history on the basis of the Christian faith and who wishes, as a Christian, to engage contemporary academic disciplines in the study of the world. The first step toward comprehension of Pannenberg’s theology of history is to note his recovery of Biblical apocalypticism. Eschatology Although eschatology was an important theme for early twentieth century Protestant theologians, Pannenberg takes issue with the way in which they handled it. In particular, he is critical of Rudolf Bultmann’s understanding of history and eschatology. Bultmann interpreted the eschatological language of the New Testament existentially and understood it to designate the crisis of human existence as it stands between the old age of sin and the new age of the Spirit. Bultmann acknowledged the radically historical character of human existence and of the Biblical text; however, his theology had no place for a consummation of history. Although revelation occurs in history, history as such is not revelation. Pannenberg is especially impatient with Bultmann’s argument that the New Testament tends to divorce itself from an apocalyptic understanding of history.1 Pannenberg, on the contrary, focuses his attention on the apocalyptic tradition of the Bible, with its emphasis on the whole sweep of world history and with its images of the eventual consummation of that history. From his study of the apocalyptic writings he draws the following conclusion: A specific understanding of reality corresponds to the God of the Bible. From the standpoint of God, all reality is referred to the future and is experienced as eschatologically oriented. He has left his impression on the experience of the world and of the situation of man as the God of the promises, as the God who leads history into a new future, and as the God of the coming kingdom.2 Two aspects of this understanding of reality deserve attention.
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