Remembering Wolfhart Pannenberg (Reflections & Articles by Philip Clayton and Others)

Wolfhart Pannenberg in 1983

Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2014/09/07/wolfhart-pannenberg-1928-2014/

by Tony Jones

September 7, 2014

Comments

Wolfhart Pannenberg—In Memoriam

by Philip Clayton

Claremont School of Theology

Wolfhart Pannenberg has often been called the greatest theologians of the second half of the 20th century. With his death Friday, September 5, 2014, the world has lost a brilliant interpreter of Christianity, and I have lost the mentor who molded me as a scholar, theologian, and person.

In the 1950s, when Pannenberg was a doctoral student in Heidelberg, Karl Barth dominated the theological stage. In order to counteract Barth’s overemphasis on salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), Pannenberg redefined revelation as “universal history” (Universalgeschichte). A few years later he published a major Christology (Jesus—God and Man) that established him as the world’s leading defender of “theology from below.”

Over the next 30 years, Pannenberg extended this program to philosophy, the religion/science debate, the dialogue across the world religions, and to every corner of theology. He had the most encyclopedic mind I have ever encountered. You need only to read around a bit in his multi-volume Basic Questions in Theology to be stunned by the range and depth of his scholarship. John Cobb once quipped,

“I saw that Pannenberg was able to encompass the entire range of knowledge within

his own mind. Realizing that I could never match this achievement, I decided it would

take a lifetime of working with my doctoral students to cover as many topics.”

Pannenberg’s staunch defense of the historicity of the resurrection made him a champion among American evangelicals. His extensive involvement in the ecumenical movement and his unsurpassed knowledge of the history of theology were crucial to the most important ecumenical breakthroughs in the World Council of Churches. Taken together, Pannenberg’s extensive writings, including his three-volume systematic theology, offer a theological program unrivaled its comprehensiveness, depth, and rigor.

Yet Pannenberg’s influence extended far beyond the evangelical and ecumenical worlds. His early statement that “in a restricted but important sense, God does not yet exist”caught the attention of process theologians and involved him in a multi-year dialogue with John Cobb (who studied with Pannenberg in Mainz in 1963), Lewis Ford, and others. He met regularly with scientists, stressing contingency and natural law as openings for constructive engagement between science and theology. Pannenberg traveled widely around the world, was a guest professor at Harvard and Claremont, and hosted many professors and doctoral students from the United States and elsewhere during his decades of teaching at the University of Munich.

I was one of those students. While still at Fuller Seminary, I met Pannenberg (at Claremont, ironically) and asked him for his permission to begin my doctorate work under his guidance. A two-year scholarship from DAAD funded [my] stay in Munich, and I wrote the first 200 pages of [my] dissertation under his direction. Although I completed my doctoral studies at Yale, I always considered Pannenberg the true mentor of the dissertation. From him I learned the importance of Gründlichkeit, rigorousness — a virtue that I have sought to impart to my classes and doctoral students throughout my career.

Thanks to Fulbright and Humboldt professorships, I returned for two further years of study under him; our relationship, and his influence on me, deepened in those years. I remember, for example, a birthday celebration at our small apartment that lasted (in good old-German fashion) for five hours of eating and conversation. As all who knew him will attest, Pannenberg’s success had much to do with his indomitable wife, who guided his days and decisions better than any executive coach you’ve ever met. I have watched her disperse a group of intensely debating professors as if they were bowling pins: “Excuse me, you must all go home now. My husband needs some rest; he has a busy day tomorrow.”

Pannenberg set unimaginable standards for himself and others. Each workday he would write from 5-10 am. On Tuesdays and Fridays he would catch the commuter train to the University of Munich and present the new material in that day’s lecture. If you asked him a question on virtually any theological topic, you would be treated to an extemporaneous five-minute answer, running from biblical texts to biblical theology to Patristics, Scholastics, Reformation thinkers, and modern theology, with detailed treatments of what secular philosophers, historians, and scientists had written on the subject. Once, when he was writing his anthropology, I asked him why he looked so tired. “Herr Clayton,” he said, “the literature on this topic is uferlos, unbounded. I have been reading 500 pages-a-day, now I have switched to reading 1000 pages-a-day in order to master all of it.”

What many people don’t realize is that Pannenberg modified his “theology from below” stance early in his career. By the time of the “Afterword” to Jesus—God and Man (1970), he had already developed a method that combined theology from below and theology from above. The brilliant debates on the nature of the Trinity in the 1970s—especially the back-and-forths with Jürgen Moltmann—show this method in action. Miroslav Volf and I were both studying in Germany in the 1980s, he under Moltmann in Tübingen and I under Pannenberg in München. We and our wives would meet multiple times each year, taking long walks in the forest and debating the merits of our respective Doktorväter until late into the night. (It is no coincidence that in the German system your dissertation advisor is your “doctor-father”; the relationship is close, life-long, and affects every fiber of your being.)

Pannenberg’s conservativism on political and social issues—for example, on feminism and gay rights—set him at odds with many theologians. He wrote a demanding and uncompromising form of theology in the very years when pastors and the public began to prefer more informal, journalistic, and experience-based theologies.Pannenberg was no popularist.

Yet without question he has had a profound influence on some of the greatest theological minds of our generation: John Cobb and Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson in the early years, the famous fiery debates with Moltmann and Jüngel, the religion-and-science discussions with John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke and others, and my fellow students in Munich, such as Stan Grenz and Roger Olson and E. Frank Tupper and TedPeters. In the dozens and dozens of lectures in the United States over some 40 years, Pannenberg engaged in intense exchanges with virtually every great intellectual personality of our age. In this fiery furnace— or in direct opposition to it!—many of the greatest theological breakthroughs of the last decades were forged.

Two hundred years from now, historians of theology will describe the work of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg as the two theological giants of the mid-20thcentury. But I want to make sure that the record also includes Pannenberg’s warmth as a person—his quick smile, the way his eyes sparkled when he told a joke, his enduring friendships, and his deep commitment to mentoring and supporting his students.

Pannenberg has been called a rationalist. Before you accept this epitaph, you should read his theological autobiography in the American Festschrift that Carl Braaten and I co-edited,The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques. In fact, his theology grew out of a dramatic conversion experience and a continual sense of the real presence of God’s Spirit.

For all his wrestling with philosophy and science, Pannenberg was in the end a man of deep, abiding faith. He believed that the richness and immensity of God call for the most profound study and reflection that our minds are capable of

…that theology should meet and exceed the highest standards that philosophers set for themselves

…and that we never need to compromise as we wrestle to understand as much of the divine nature as we can grasp through every source available to us.

---

Philip Clayton studied under Wolfhart Pannenberg for four years and continued to work with him for most of his career. Clayton is Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology. He has held visiting professorships at Harvard, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Munich, and has written or edited 25 books and some 250 articles in theology, philosophy, religion-and-science, and comparative religious thought.

Here also is a new Homebrewed Christianity episode in which Philip talks about Pannenberg with Tripp Fuller.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Wolfhart Pannenberg, 1928-2014

Remembering Wolfhart Pannenberg

(A Roundup of Reflections and Articles)

http://moltmanniac.com/remembering-wolfhart-pannenberg/

by Ben

September 9, 2014

COMMENTS

Wolfhart Pannenberg has died. He truly was one of the greatest theological minds of his generation, and has been fast becoming one of my favorite theologians.

A number of people who know a thing or two about him (or even knew him personally!) have shared some excellent reflections in the days since his passing. Here is a roundup of articles and media on Pannenberg in remembrance. I’ll try to add more to this post as I become aware of them:

• Patrick Oden: Pannenberg (1928-2014)
• Fred Sanders: Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014), Theological Outflanker
• Philip Clayton (via Tony Jones): Wolfhart Pannenberg – In Memoriam (Also posted over at Homebrewed Christianity with additional comments from Tripp Fuller)
• Roger Olson: Wolfhart Pannenberg R.I.P. (Olson also shared some other stories about Pannenberg in a post earlier this year)
• Craig Adams: R.I.P. Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014)
• Thomas Jay Oord: Pannenberg Dies; An Interview
• Derek Maris: On Remembering Wolfhart Pannenberg and the Future of His Theology
• Derrick Peterson: The Maranatha Coastline: My Tribute to Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014)
• John McClean: Wolfhart Pannenberg and What It Means to Tell the Truth About God
• Leona Foxx: Pannenberg’s Passing
• Homebrewed Christianity: The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg with Philip Clayton (Podcast)
• Dan Brockway: The Truth About Wolfhart Pannenberg

Here are some other older articles / blog posts that have been shared in the last few days:

• Michael Root: The Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg
• Stanley Grenz: Pannenberg’s Quest for Ultimate Truth (Excellent introduction!)
• Darren Sumner: A Preliminary Response to the Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg
• An interview with Wolfhart Pannenberg from when he visited Calvin College in 2001.
• The PostBarthian: Wolfhart Pannenberg on rejecting the Virgin Birth and affirming the Apostles Creed (Moltmann has some very similar things to say on this topic)
• The PostBarthian: Wolfhart Pannenberg on the History of Christology
• Tim Hull: Pannenberg Part 1 (theology of revelation as history), and Pannenberg Part 2 (christology)

There have also been a few Pannenberg-related posts here on the Moltmanniac in the last few months:

• Karl Barth’s Letter to Wolfhart Pannenberg
• Pannenberg on Why Christology “From Above” Is Not Feasible for Us
• Wolfhart Pannenberg Audio Lectures
• Pannenberg Responds to Moltmann’s Critique of Christology “From Below”
• Can E.T. Be Saved? (Pannenberg, Redemption…and Aliens)
• Jürgen Moltmann on Wolfhart Pannenberg, his “dear friend and opponent”

Philip Clayton's talks about Process Theology

"No one gets to capture the flag around here... "

 - Anon

What can God be doing now?!?

 

Part of developing this blog/journal during the past year has been to revitalize a Christianity that has become boring, static, mundane, inconsequential, and unimportant to our postmodern day lives of the 21st Century. The old orthodoxies with their set definitions of God and faith, church and worship, have basically turned off many "outsiders" to the Christian faith. That same faith seems unremarkable and unrelated to what's happening in the world with its sufferings, injustices, and unfeeling regard for humanity's basic liberties and freedoms. We have inhumanized practically everything that we have touched. Creating a world that is more mechanistic than human; more dead than alive; more concerned with self, than with people beyond ourselves; more concerned with our Western cultures than with the wider pluralisms of the many non-Christian cultures around us. In essence, we have made God out to be all of these things that we basically are ourselves, calling these things "God" when in actuality they resemble our own idols of "God." So that if this is the kind of God the church is offering than no one wants this kind of God. Least of all myself.

Our favorite ideas of God
are changing...

Of course I am being unfair here and dumping all the old cynicisms and cliches that we've heard about the church and Christianity since time immemorial... but there is a large part of this that can be true when the church refuses to loosen up its dogmas and restrictive thinking to simply sit itself down upon past creedal faiths and closed theologies to plaintively cry "the sky is falling" like chicken little. With postmodernism coming-of-age we now have the opportunity to rethink, in radically newer terms, the church's ideas of "God," "faith," and "religion," in very organic ways. Not by simply creating an "edgy" style of worship, or "closer-knit" faith communities, or more "holistic" ministry practices that are street-wise and pedestrian. No, it has to go deeper than this. It has to go all the way down into our very theologies itself. A theology that must be re-created in deeply radical terms that lets go of the past and opens itself up to a whole new array of thinking about God, ourselves, and our world.

Our favorite dogmas are broken...

Consequently, over this past year we have been looking at a branch of theology called "Process Theology" and trying to understand what it is, why it is, and where it would have us go.... And for us older theologs and bible students, we have been trying to discern just what to keep, and what to let go, within this newer branch of ontology, metaphysics and economic order. For myself I have been advocating a halfway house... a place somewhere between Classical Theism and Process Theism that I have been calling Relational Theism (see links immediately below). Not "Relational-Process Theology," but "Relational Theism" that rejects Process' panentheistic (and perhaps too liberal) basis but reaches out to take all the cool relational stuff about God, us, and religion, that is transportable  from process theology; but also from classical theism's very austere, and implacable, ideas about God, His rule, and His conduct towards creation and mankind. So then, a synthesis, if you will, between the two varying positions.

Why? Because I am attracted to a God who is relational. Who is deeply involved in the process of re-creation - even within His own Being that is too often claimed impassive and stoic. Who changes like I do with every passing day, adapting to the world of men and creation, as each changes, and forms, and reforms, and breaks apart, and reforms again. Something which is dynamic, reactive, and intrinsically organic. But is also deeply connected to the past as much as to the future. Which binds all together as one as a living, breathing, process - and not a cold, impersonal, intemperate rule of governance according to a heartless plan or cold ideology.
 

Seeking a Postmodern Re-definition of Classic Theism -

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-and-what-of-process-theology.html

Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/process-theology-terence-fretheim.html

Open Theism & Process Theology, Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/theism-panentheism-open-theism-process.html

Fear of change is in the church...

Of course this leaves open a lot of questions about what kind of omnipotence and foreknowledge God bears (or wields) which is where my old timey Classical Theism kicks in and begins to question my inherited classical tradition - asking questions that requires of it a fuller evaluation of its deficiencies and/or sufficiencies, with a better approbation of where it can, or cannot, lead when asking these more fundamental postmodern questions.  For instance, perhaps it is in God's ethical being that His divine Personage remains immutable and unchanging - for how can pure Love be anything less that itself? And perhaps when we were created in God's image and given free will God necessarily "limited" Himself (a word I no longer like by the way b/c God isn't necessarily "limited" unless only by a relationship's self-limiting boundaries, so let's substitute this idea for the word "relates" Himself) in his predestination / omnipotency through an infinitely evolving relationship that is dynamic, open, and malleable (changing). This then would affect God's foreknowledge for which a newer branch of theology has arisen called Open Theology which might provide some help in light of these newer, postmodern, ideas. Or might not (but I'm hoping it will!). And the list can go on and on... but a list that we must explore should we wish to find reasonable answers... and if not answers, than much better questions.... Which I personally would be quite content with anyway being an old "Lostie" (the popular TV show from a couple of years ago) at heart, whose viewership sought for better questions rather than straight-forward answers to each character's quantum-like time splices of lived lives.

We tell God we can't
and then try to patch things up...

At least that is how I am understanding it at this point.  But to do this we must be better acquainted with Process Theology, and more willing to adapt our old-line orthodoxies, and ingrained church traditionalisms into a more radical rethinking of basic church doctrines and ideas of God. And to not behave like the story of Humpty-Dumpty who fell off the King's wall with all his pet ideologies smashing about to then be repaired by all the king's horses in an impossible task of frivolity and nonsense. No. But to push on in re-imagining a theology that can be beheld in the footlights of post-modernism's constant glare and brighter promises.

And as if on cue, God has provided us with a new form of church movement that we've been studying called post-evangelic or Emergent Christianity, which seems to be the perfect vehicle to do this type of thinking as we look at the many newer conceptualizations and ideologies of the Bible in fundamentally altering ways releasing us from bondage of older church epistemologies into fresher postmodern perspectives of what our faith can be and become. Living, real, affective, dynamic, relational, and meaningful! At least that is my hope and expectation for Emergent Christianity.

We are left either with really good
French Toast...

Not that our faith was less meaningful in eras past, because back then it simply had adapted itself to live-and-breathe within those era's philosophical besetting boundaries and epistemologies. For within those past centuries many eons ago the church's faith was as organic and real then as what we would wish it to be now. But the church's faith of yesteryear is not going to live-and-breathe the same now as it did then in our newer, postmodernistic, and scientific era. Much like Jesus' new wine of the gospel that needed newer wineskins lest it burst, so will the faith of a newly emerging, post-evangelic church require a newer, more postmodern, gospel wineskin - one that might look more like that of a Relational Theology bearing within its bones an Open Theology of the future full of expectations and zeal. But to get there we must first understand its newer cousin, Process Theology, and from there we will be freer to synthesize our older, classical, faith into something more relevant for today. By discovering what works - and what doesn't work - in this newer postmodern wineskin we call Emergent, or post-evangelic, Christianity, while leaving the task of unscrambling broken eggs to our infinitely wise God within a nursery of fomenting ideas brimming with possibilities, hatching uncertainties, incredibilities, impossibilities, hope, and nurture. Now wouldn't that be grand!

R.E. Slater

February 8, 2012
revised October 25, 2013

Or a nursery full of new ideas and growing possibilities!
Stayed tuned....

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Doug Pagitt Radio | Philip Clayton Pt. 1 of 2

Doug Pagitt Radio | Philip Clayton Pt. 2 of 2

A Rough Outline of 
Doug Pagitt – Philip Clayton's Discussion
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/emergentvillage/2012/01/emergent-village-process-theology-conversation-preview/

January 22, 2012

A Definition of Process Theology (PT)

1.       Alfred North Whiteheadian…  John Cobb...

       Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology

2. Any theology that recognizes that thought about God is always in process

What Does This Mean?

"God's own experience of the world is progressing with us. He is being as affected as we our affected by creation, mankind and each other.

"Interaction with mankind changes God as much as He changes us. Our relationship with one another is like a marriage partnership that is not static but dynamic."

"God is unchangeable in his ethical being but that is a different from his changeable relationship to man."

"God’s eternal nature vs. God’s experiential nature is constantly developing or responding to the world and to every living thing on this planet whether animate or inanimate (including the universe). Therefore we have an evolving God."

• Many professional theologians preach a static God
• Many traditional or creedal believers preach a time-bound bible with static proof texts

Process Theology says that God is One who responds to people in genuine interaction with humanity

PT gets interesting when it meets the emergent church. Why? Emergent Christians are much more willing to update their theology; to radically rethink the church in new terms that break the old restrictive rules about God; to think in postmodern terms of dynamic understanding of ourselves, our cultures and our thought.

PT loosens up orthodoxy

To simply have newer church practices, newer worship, or newer communities is not enough... the church needs a newer theology from the current one that simply stays the same day after day; that doesn't evolve with an evolving creation.

We need radically newer ways of doing church but we need even more radically newer ways of thinking about God

God constantly engages His creation

Traditional churches with traditional theologies are not as attractive anymore; people don’t want the old orthodoxies nor do they want any new orthodoxies that were the same dress but in a different style. People don't want an institutional religion but a completely new style of faith that is liberating.

We have a saying, "No one gets to capture the flag around here…." [(not liberals, not evangelics, not even progressives.)]