Numbering Numbers

The Book of Numbers

http://www.bible-history.com/old-testament/bookofnumbers.html

Numbers 14:14 - "And they will tell [it] to the inhabitants of this land: [for] they have heard that thou LORD [art] among this people, that thou LORD art seen face to face, and [that] thy cloud standeth over them, and [that] thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night."

The Old Testament - A Brief Overview

Bible Survery - Numbers

Hebrew Name - Bemidhbar "in the wilderness"

Greek Name - Numbers "numberings"

Author - Moses

Date - From 1490-1451 BC approximately

Theme - The Journey to the Promised Land

Types and Shadows - In Numbers Jesus is the Pillar of Cloud by Day and the Pillar of Fire by Night

Summary of The Book of Numbers

Quick Overview of the Book of Numbers

Chpts 1-4 - The numbering of the Israelites, the organizing of the Israelites into tribes and companies, the offices of the Levites while serving in the Tabernacle.

Chpts 5-10 - The establishing of various civil and ceremonial laws.

Chpts 11-21 - The murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness on their way to Mount Sinai.

Chpts 22-36 - The encampment of the Israelites on the plains of Moab.

The book of Numbers takes its name from the account of the census that happened two times among the congregation of Israel in Numbers 1-4 and Numbers 26. The Greek title was used even though there is really no connection with the "numberings."

The original Hebrew title which means "in the wilderness," is much more accurate, because the book of Numbers is it's really an accurate history of the events that happened during the period of wandering in the wilderness and not necessarily a book about statistics.

The book of Numbers seems to follow naturally after the book of Leviticus in the order of the books of Moses in the Old Testament. After the children of Israel received the laws at Mount Sinai, they began the journey as described in the book of Exodus, and they were ready to march directly into the land of Canaan.

The book of Numbers reveals how the children of Israel became prepared, and went through various trials, and how they were sinful in not trusting the Lord. Their sinful ways resulted in 37 years of wandering through the harsh wilderness.

The book of Numbers concludes with the children of Israel once again at the edge of the land of Canaan, where they received instructions for the conquest of Canaan and the division of the land.

The main divisions in the book of Numbers

Outline of the Book of Numbers

1) The preparation for the departure from Sinai (1:1-10:10). The events described here took place in nineteen days. In this time a census was taken of all men who were over twenty and who could serve in military efforts (1-4). The total obtained was 603,550 (1:46). This would indicate that the total population of the group was probably near three million. The census was followed by the cleansing and blessing of the congregation (5-6), the offering of gifts from the various tribes (7), the consecration of the Levites (8) and the observance of the Passover at Sinai (9:1-14).

2 ) The journey from Sinai to Kadesh-barnea (10:11-14:45). This section includes the account of the coming of the quail (11), the rebellion against Moses by Miriam and Aaron (12), and the fateful mission of the spies (13, 14).

3) The wanderings in the desert wilderness (15-19). As noted above, this covered a period of thirty-seven years, from the end of the second to the beginning of the fortieth year in the wilderness. Ch. 15 includes various laws and a record of capital punishment for Sabbath breaking. The rebellion of Korah (ch. 16) and the budding of Aaron's rod (ch. 17) are also mentioned here.

4 ) The history of the last year, from the second arrival of the Israelites at Kadesh till they reach "the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho" (20-36: 13). Notable sections of this are the story of Balaam (22:2-24:25), the zeal of Phinehas (ch. 25), the second census (26:1-51) , instructions for dividing the land (26:52-27: 11), the appointment of Joshua as Moses' successor (27: 12-23), various laws concerning offerings and vows ( 28-30 ), the war with Midian (ch. 31), the settlement of the tribes east of the Jordan (ch. 32), a review of the locations at which Israel had camped during their wanderings (33: 1-49), more instructions concerning the conquest and division of Canaan (33:50-34:29 ), the appointment of the cities of refuge (ch. 35) and instructions concerning the marriage of land-owning Israelite women (ch. 36).

More About the Book of Numbers

Numbers in the Picture Study Bible

Timeline of the Ancient World

Back to the Old Testament

Back to Bible History Online

Canaan Before Joshua

Moab and Ammon

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continue to -

Numbering Numbers

An Apocalyptic Jesus - Numbering Christian Interpretation, Part 1

An Apocalyptic Jesus - Numbering Christian Interpretation, Part 2

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The Book of Numbers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Book of Numbers (from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi; Hebrew: במדבר‎, Bəmidbar, "In the desert [of]") is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the JewishTorah.[1]

Numbers begins at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites have received their laws and covenant from God and God has taken up residence among them in the sanctuary.[2] The task before them is to take possession of the Promised Land. The people are numbered and preparations are made for resuming their march. The Israelites begin the journey, but they "murmur" at the hardships along the way, and about the authority of Moses and Aaron. For these acts, God destroys approximately 15,000 of them through various means. They arrive at the borders of Canaan and send spies into the land, but upon hearing the spies' fearful report concerning the conditions in Canaan the Israelites refuse to take possession of it, and God condemns them to death in the wilderness until a new generation can grow up and carry out the task. The book ends with the new generation of Israelites in the Plain of Moab ready for the crossing of the Jordan River.[3]

Numbers is the culmination of the story of Israel's exodus from oppression in Egypt and their journey to take possession of the land God promised their fathers. As such it draws to a conclusion the themes introduced in Genesis and played out in Exodus and Leviticus: God has promised the Israelites that they shall become a great (i.e. numerous) nation, that they will have a special relationship with Yahweh their God, and that they shall take possession of the land of Canaan.

Numbers also demonstrates the importance of holiness, faithfulness and trust: despite God's presence and his priests, Israel lacks faith and the possession of the land is left to a new generation. The book has a long and complex history, but its final form is probably due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic original text some time in the early Persian period (5th century BCE).[4]

Structure

Most commentators structure Numbers in three sections based on locale (Mount Sinai, Kadesh-Barnea and the plains of Moab), linked by two travel sections.[5] This view has the advantage of anchoring Numbers to the Pentateuch as a whole.[5]

But an alternative is to see it as structured around the two generations of those condemned to die in the wilderness and the new generation who will enter Canaan, making a theological distinction between the disobedience of the first generation and the obedience of the second.[6]

Priest, Levite, and furnishings of the Tabernacle

Summary

God orders Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, to number those able to bear arms—of all the men "from twenty years old and upward," and to appoint princes over each tribe. 603,550 Israelites are found to be fit for military service. In chapter 26, a generation later and after approximately forty years of wandering the desert, the Lord orders a second census. 601,730 men are counted.

The tribe of Levi is exempted from military service and therefore not included in the census totals. Moses consecrates the Levites for the service of the Tabernacle in the place of the first-born sons, who hitherto had performed that service. The Levites are divided into three families, the Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites, each under a chief, and all headed by one priest, Eleazar, son of Aaron. Preparations are then made for resuming the march to the Promised Land. Various ordinances and laws are decreed.

The first journey of the Israelites after the Tabernacle had been constructed is commenced. The people murmur against God and are punished by fire; Moses complains of the stubbornness of the Israelites and is ordered to choose seventy elders to assist him in the government of the people. Miriam and Aaron insult Moses at Hazeroth, which angers God; Miriam is punished with leprosy and is shut out of camp for seven days, at the end of which the Israelites proceed to the desert of Paran. Twelve spies are sent out into Canaan and come back to report to Moses. Joshua and Caleb, two of the spies, tell that the land is abundant and is "flowing with milk and honey"; the other spies say that it is inhabited by giants, and the Israelites refuse to enter the land. Yahweh decrees that the Israelites will be punished for their loss of faith by having to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

With the two hundred fifty censers left after God's destruction of Korah's band for questioning the authority of Moses and Aaron, Moses is ordered by God to make plates to cover the altar. The children of Israel murmur against Moses and Aaron on account of the destruction of Korah's men and are stricken with the plague, with 14,700 perishing.

Aaron and his family are declared by God to be responsible for any iniquity committed in connection with the sanctuary. The Levites are again appointed to help in the keeping of the Tabernacle. The Levites are ordered to surrender to the priests a part of the tithes taken to them.

Miriam dies at Kadesh Barnea and the Israelites set out for Moab, on Canaan's eastern border. The Israelites blame Moses for the lack of water. Moses is ordered by God to speak to a rock but disobeys, and is punished by the announcement that he shall not enter Canaan. The king of Edom refuses permission to the Israelites to pass through his land and they go round it. Aaron dies on Mount Hor. The Israelites are bitten by Fiery flying serpents for speaking against God and Moses. A brazen serpent is made to ward off these serpents.

The Israelites arrive on the plains of Moab. A new census gives the total number of males from twenty years and upward as 601,730, and the number of the Levites from a month old and upward as 23,000. The land shall be divided by lot. The daughters of Zelophehad, their father having no sons, are to share in the allotment. Moses is ordered to appoint Joshua as his successor. Prescriptions for the observance of the feasts, and the offerings for different occasions are enumerated.

Moses orders the Israelites to massacre the people of Midian. The Reubenites and the Gadites request Moses to assign them the land east of the Jordan. Moses grants their request after they promise to help in the conquest of the land west of the Jordan. The land east of the Jordan is divided among the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.

Moses recalls the stations at which the Israelites halted during their forty years' wanderings and instructs the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites and destroy their idols. The boundaries of the land are spelled out; the land is to be divided under the supervision of Eleazar, Joshua, and twelve princes, one of each tribe.

A Plague Inflicted on Israel While Eating the Quail
(illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible)

Composition

The key event in the formation of the Old Testament was the fall of the kingdom of Judah to the Babylonian empire in 586 BCE.[7] The Babylonians destroyed the city and the Temple of Solomon, executed the king's sons in front of him before putting out his eyes, and took him and many others into exile.[8] These events represented a major religious crisis: why had [Yahweh] allowed this to happen [to His people]? What had happened to the promise that the descendants of David would reign forever?[8] The answers were recorded in the works of the prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Second Isaiah, and in the Deuteronomistic history, the collection of historical works from Joshua to Kings: God had not abandoned Israel; Israel had abandoned God, and the Babylonian exile was God's punishment for Israel's lack of faith.[9]

The Babylonian exile lasted approximately 48 years, from 586 to 538 BCE, and ended with the conquest of Babylon in that year by the Persians. The new Persian ruler decided to allow the exiles to return home. According to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah they did so under the joint leadership of a descendant of the last king and the last High Priest, rebuilding the Temple and reconstituting Judah (now called Yehud) as a holy community ruled by priests. It was in this period that the Pentateuch (or Torah, to give the Hebrew name) was composed, by detaching the book of Deuteronomy from the Deuteronomistic history and adding it to the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.[10]

Balaam and the Angel (illustration from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle)

Themes

David A. Clines, in his influential The Themes of the Pentateuch (1978), identified the overarching theme of the five books as the partial fulfilment of a promise made by God to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The promise has three elements:

1 - posterity (i.e., descendants – Abraham is told that his descendants will be as innumerable as the stars),

2 - divine-human relationship (Israel is to be God's chosen people), and

3 - land (the land of Canaan, cursed by Noah immediately after the Deluge).[11]

The theme of the divine-human relationship is expressed, or managed, through a series of covenants (meaning treaties, legally binding agreements) stretching from Genesis to Deuteronomy and beyond.

1 - The first is the covenant between God and Noah immediately after the Deluge in which God agrees never again to destroy the Earth [(the Noahic Covenant)]

2 - The next is between God and Abraham [(the Abrahamic Covenant)], and

3 - the third between God and all Israel at Mount Sinai [(the Mosaic Covenant)].

In this third covenant, unlike the first two, God hands down an elaborate set of laws (scattered through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers), which the Israelites are to observe; they are also to remain faithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel, meaning, among other things, that they must put their trust in his help.[12] [sic, the Noahic Covenant]

The theme of descendants marks the first event in Numbers, the census of Israel's fighting men: the huge number which results (over 600,000) demonstrates the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham of innumerable descendants, as well as serving as God's guarantee of victory in Canaan.[13] [sic, the Abrhamaic Covenant]

As chapters 1–10 progress the theme of God's presence with Israel comes to the fore: these chapters describe how Israel is to be organised around the Sanctuary, God's dwelling-place in their midst, under the charge of the Levites and priests, in preparation for the conquest of the land.[14] [sic, the Mosaic Covenant]

The Israelites then set out to conquer the land, but almost immediately refuse to enter it and Yahweh condemns the whole generation who left Egypt to die in the wilderness. The message is clear: failure was not due to any fault in the preparation, because Yahweh had foreseen everything, but to Israel's sin of unfaithfulness. In the final section the Israelites of the new generation follow Yahweh's instructions as given through Moses and are successful in all they attempt.[14]

The last five chapters are exclusively concerned with land: instructions for the extermination of the Canaanites, the demarcation of the boundaries of the land, how the land is to be divided, holy cities for the Levites and "cities of refuge", the problem of pollution of the land by blood, and regulations for inheritance when a male heir is lacking.[15]

Weekly Torah portions

Main article: Weekly Torah portion

Bemidbar, on Numbers 1–4: First census, priestly duties

Naso, on Numbers 4–7: Priestly duties, the camp, unfaithfulness and the Nazirite, Tabernacle consecration

Behaalotecha, on Numbers 8–12: Levites, journing by cloud and fire, complaints, questioning of Moses

Shlach, on Numbers 13–15: Mixed report of the scouts and Israel's response, libations, bread, idol worship, fringes

Korach, on Numbers 16–18: Korah’s rebellion, plague, Aaron’s staff buds, duties of the Levites

Chukat, on Numbers 19–21: Red heifer, water from a rock, Miriam’s and Aaron’s deaths, victories, serpents

Balak, on Numbers 22–25: Balaam's donkey and blessing

Pinechas, on Numbers 25–29: Phinehas, second census, inheritance, Moses' successor, offerings and holidays

Matot, on Numbers 30–32: Vows, Midian, dividing booty, land for Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh

Masei, on Numbers 33–36: Stations of the Israelites’ journeys, instructions for conquest, cities for Levites

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Numbers 14

English Standard Version (ESV)

God Promises Judgement

6 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land— 37 the men who brought up a bad report of the land - died by plague before the Lord. 38 Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive.

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Numbers 15

English Standard Version (ESV)

A Sabbathbreaker Executed

32 While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. 33 And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. 34 They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. 35 And the Lord said to Moses,

“The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall

stone him with stones outside the camp.”

36 And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses.

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Numbers 16

English Standard Version (ESV)

Korah's Rebellion

16 Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men.2 And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. 3 They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them,

“You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord

is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?”

4 When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, 5 and he said to Korah and all his company,

“In the morning the Lord will show who is his,[a] and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him. 6 Do this: take censers, Korah and all his company; 7 put fire in them and put incense on them before the Lord tomorrow, and the man whom the Lord chooses shall be the holy one. You have gone too far, sons of Levi!”

8 And Moses said to Korah,

“Hear now, you sons of Levi: 9 is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, 10 and that he has brought you near him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? And would you seek the priesthood also? 11 Therefore it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together. What is Aaron that you grumble against him?”

12 And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and they said,

“We will not come up. 13 Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also make yourself a prince over us? 14 Moreover, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up.”

15 And Moses was very angry and said to the Lord,

“Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them

and I have not harmed one of them.”

16 And Moses said to Korah,

“Be present, you and all your company, before the Lord, you and they, and Aaron, tomorrow. 17 And let every one of you take his censer and put incense on it, and every one of you bring before the Lord his censer, 250 censers; you also, and Aaron, each his censer.”

18 So every man took his censer and put fire in them and laid incense on them and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron. 19 Then Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation.

20 And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,

21 “Separate yourselves from among this congregation,

hat I may consume them in a moment.”

22 And they (Moses and Aaron) fell on their faces and said,

“O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin,

and will you be angry with all the congregation?”

23 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

24 “Say to the congregation, Get away from

the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.”

25 Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. 26 And he spoke to the congregation, saying,

“Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs,

lest you be swept away with all their sins.”

27 So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, together with their wives, their sons, and their little ones. 28 And Moses said,

“Hereby you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. 29 If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. 30 But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.”

31 And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart. 32 And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. 33 So they, and all that belonged to them, went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. 34 And all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said,

“Lest the earth swallow us up!”

35 And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men offering the incense.

36 [b] Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

37 “Tell Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest to take up the censers out of the blaze. Then scatter the fire far and wide, for they have become holy. 38 As for the censers of these men who have sinned at the cost of their lives, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar, for they offered them before the Lord, and they became holy. Thus they shall be a sign to the people of Israel.”

39 So Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers, which those who were burned had offered, and they were hammered out as a covering for the altar, 40 to be a reminder to the people of Israel, so that no outsider, who is not of the descendants of Aaron, should draw near to burn incense before the Lord, lest he become like Korah and his company—as the Lord said to him through Moses.

41 But on the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying,

“You have killed the people of the Lord.”

42 And when the congregation had assembled against Moses and against Aaron, they turned toward the tent of meeting. And behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared. 43 And Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of meeting, 44 and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

45 “Get away from the midst of this congregation,

that I may consume them in a moment.”

And they fell on their faces. 46 And Moses said to Aaron,

“Take your censer, and put fire on it from off the altar and lay incense on it and carry it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone out from the Lord; the plague has begun.”

47 So Aaron took it as Moses said and ran into the midst of the assembly. And behold, the plague had already begun among the people. And he put on the incense and made atonement for the people. 48 And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped. 49 Now those who died in the plague were 14,700, besides those who died in the affair of Korah. 50 And Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting, when the plague was stopped.

Footnotes:

Numbers 16:5 Septuagint The Lord knows those who are his

Numbers 16:36 Ch 17:1 in Hebrew

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Numbers 17

English Standard Version (ESV)

Aaron's Staff Buds

17 [a] The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,

2 “Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers' house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers' houses, twelve staffs. Write each man's name on his staff, 3 and write Aaron's name on the staff of Levi. For there shall be one staff for the head of each fathers' house. 4 Then you shall deposit them in the tent of meeting before the testimony, where I meet with you. 5 And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against you.”

6 Moses spoke to the people of Israel. And all their chiefs gave him staffs, one for each chief, according to their fathers' houses, twelve staffs. And the staff of Aaron was among their staffs. 7 And Moses deposited the staffs before the Lord in the tent of the testimony.

8 On the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony, and behold, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds. 9 Then Moses brought out all the staffs from before the Lord to all the people of Israel. And they looked, and each man took his staff. 10 And the Lord said to Moses,

“Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels,

that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die.”

11 Thus did Moses; as the Lord commanded him, so he did.

12 And the people of Israel said to Moses,

“Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. 13 Everyone who comes near,

who comes near to the tabernacle of the Lord, shall die. Are we all to perish?”

Footnotes:

Numbers 17:1 Ch 17:16 in Hebrew

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Numbers 18

English Standard Version (ESV)

Duties of Priests and Levites

18 So the Lord said to Aaron,

“You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear iniquity connected with the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear iniquity connected with your priesthood. 2 And with you bring your brothers also, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may join you and minister to you while you and your sons with you are before the tent of the testimony. 3 They shall keep guard over you and over the whole tent, but shall not come near to the vessels of the sanctuary or to the altar lest they, and you, die. 4 They shall join you and keep guard over the tent of meeting for all the service of the tent, and no outsider shall come near you.5 And you shall keep guard over the sanctuary and over the altar, that there may never again be wrath on the people of Israel. 6 And behold, I have taken your brothers the Levites from among the people of Israel. They are a gift to you, given to the Lord, to do the service of the tent of meeting. 7 And you and your sons with you shall guard your priesthood for all that concerns the altar and that is within the veil; and you shall serve. I give your priesthood as a gift,[a] and any outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”

8 Then the Lord spoke to Aaron,

“Behold, I have given you charge of the contributions made to me, all the consecrated things of the people of Israel. I have given them to you as a portion and to your sons as a perpetual due....

Michael Root - The Theological Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Paucity of Theological Leadership in the Church Today

Wolfhart Pannenberg

The Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/03/the-achievement-of-wolfhart-pannenberg

by Michael Root

March 2012

Some theologians are mirrors of their time. The mid-twentieth century rises from the pages of Tillich as palpably as Combray rising from Proust’s tea and madeleines. Other theologians have a more conflicted relation with their age: engaged, but cutting against the grain; in their time, but not quite of it. Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the most gifted Protestant theologians of his generation, has never seemed quite to fit his surroundings, which may say more about his surroundings than about him. The German theological world has been far less shaken than the English-speaking world by the changes in academic culture of the last decades: feminism, the hermeneutics of suspicion, the dismissal of truth-claims as disguised assertions of power. Even by German standards, however, Pannenberg’s theology has an oddly old-fashioned air.

Pannenberg is not a man who follows fads. Postmodernity seems to have passed him by. Jean-François Lyotard famously characterized postmodernity as incredulity toward metanarratives, the comprehensive stories ”Marxist, Enlightenment liberal, religious” that make us confident that we have the Big Picture. Pannenberg is convinced that without a metanarrative, we are lost. Until you have the Big Picture, your understanding of the details will always be deficient. He seems to have self-consciously rejected postmodernism as a style of reflection. He has sought, in notable contrast to the majority of his theological peers, to address universal human reason.

Politically, Pannenberg has also stood apart. He does not belong to the academically fashionable left. He studied Marx as a philosophy student in the late 1940s in Berlin and found him wanting. He was disturbed by the sympathy for totalitarian dictators shown by fellow theologians during the 1970s and 1980s, and he made his concerns public. Though for years he was a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, he was sharply critical of the liberationist turn in the World Council as a whole.

In recent years, he has been outspoken in his opposition within the Evangelical Church in Germany to any approval of homosexual relations. He said that a church that approved homosexual relations had by that act ceased to be a true church. In 1997, he created a public stir when he returned his Federal Order of Merit after the order was bestowed on a lesbian activist. He argued that the constitution of the Federal Republic committed the state to uphold marriage and family and that by honoring a lesbian activist, the state was acting in contradiction to its own basis. This action did not increase his popularity in academic circles.

He has also stood apart ecumenically. When German Protestants were increasingly worried about an alleged loss of a distinct Protestant identity, he promoted an ecumenical opening to Catholicism. While on occasion he wrote as a Lutheran on Lutheran topics, he has never been attracted to what George Hunsinger has called “enclave theology,” theology done within strictly defined confessional limits, in which those limits are taken as given. For Pannenberg, it does not follow that because a proposition is authentically Lutheran it is therefore correct.

He was one of the most prominent academic defenders in Germany of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the 1999 agreement on the doctrine of justification between the Catholic Church and the churches of the Lutheran World Federation that was violently attacked by a significant portion of his colleagues. More disturbing to many, especially in the difficult ecumenical situation in Germany, where the shrinking number of Christians is almost evenly divided between Protestant and Catholic, he has said that the unity of the church perhaps requires a papacy and that quite possibly the only churches that will survive far into the third millennium are Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical rather than mainline Protestant.

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All of this may make Pannenberg attractive to readers of First Things. His close friendship with Richard John Neuhaus, who wrote an introduction to one of Pannenberg’s first books translated into English, led to his writings appearing regularly in these pages. There is much to commend in Pannenberg’s theology, but there are also some warnings and object lessons in his work, both in his difference from and in his similarity to his immediate predecessors and colleagues.

Pannenberg was born in 1928, in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), the son of a German civil servant. Religion played no role in his upbringing, but in autobiographical sketches, he recounts a decisive moment in his early life, an epiphany that in fact occurred on Epiphany. “On January 6, 1945, on my way home from music lessons, a long walk from one town to another, I had a visionary experience of a great light not only surrounding me, but absorbing me for an indefinite time. I did not hear any words, but it was a metaphysical awakening that prompted me to search for its meaning regarding my life during the following years.”

In this brief description can be found two foci of Pannenberg’s lifelong outlook: on the one hand, an openness to the miraculous, the supernatural, to what a reductivist natural science would dismiss, and on the other, a deep desire to understand revelation, and to understand it rationally, even “metaphysically.” The late William Placher entitled a review of the first volume of Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology “Revealed to Reason,” and that title catches the deep structure of an outlook already visible in this account of his teenage experience. As with most of the Protestant theologians who came before him, “revelation” was a central category of his theology, but unlike them, he did not share in the rejection of a rational metaphysics that so shaped (and skewed) their work.

He was drafted into the German army in the last days of World War II and was briefly a British prisoner of war. Following the war, he studied philosophy and theology at German universities, including a brief time with Karl Barth at Basel (not a happy encounter: “I learned . . . that Barth did not like criticism from his students”). His studies did not follow the standard paths trod by Protestant students. His doctoral dissertation was on Duns Scotus on predestination and his habilitation (the second dissertation required to teach in the German universities) addressed the concept of analogy from the ancient Greeks through the medieval period. Under his doctoral adviser at Heidelberg, Edmund Schlink, who had been a Protestant observer at Vatican II, he imbibed an orientation to ecumenism that was to characterize his theological work.

More immediately important for his development were the lectures at Heidelberg by the Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad, who emphasized how for the Old Testament God is revealed in his acts in history: the Exodus, the reception of the Promised Land, the return from exile in Babylon. God might speak to Elijah in a “still, small voice” heard only interiorly, but the great promise is that God will act publicly so that the “nations” will “know that I am the Lord.”

A group of graduate students met regularly to discuss the broader theological significance of von Rad’s approach, and in 1961 they produced a small volume of essays with the provocative title Revelation as History, with Pannenberg as the editor and the author of the systematic essay that summarized their understanding. He insists that he had no idea the book would create waves. German Protestant theology had been dominated since the early 1920s by various theologies that had stressed and interwoven the concepts of revelation as foundational to theology and of the Word of God as a concrete address calling for a radical decision of faith or unfaith, with varying emphasis on whatever the address might actually say. That Word was not open to rational investigation, and classical apologetics was not just useless, it was a betrayal of the sovereignty of the Word which allows no space for such reflection. The post-World War II struggles between the followers of Barth and of Rudolf Bultmann took place on territory marked out by these concepts.

Revelation as History questioned the tight correlation of revelation with the concept “Word.” The writers insisted that God’s Word is about something and what it is most immediately about is a historical event: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the inbreaking of the kingdom he inaugurates. We may need God’s Word to understand the event, but the event is fundamental, for it reveals the agent who performs it.

But what event could definitively reveal the one God who is Lord of all? The only possibility is an event that sums up and gives meaning to all events. And that is what we find in Jesus as the one who is the final Kingdom he brings. He is himself the End, the eschaton, the event in whose light all events are rightly seen. Jesus may be a great teacher, and he may atone for our sins, but his teaching and suffering are of decisive significance only because he is the Lord who comes “to unite all things, . . . things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10). As such, he is the revelation both of God and of the meaning of history.

Such an event cannot be private; it does not have its primary home in human interiority, but “all flesh shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5). That full publicity will only be realized when Jesus returns, but in the “between times” after the resurrection and before the return, those who receive Jesus have the key to reality. That key is not private; if it is the key to truth, it is not removed into its own sphere, immunized from rational investigation and critique. Pannenberg insisted that even the resurrection is open to historical inquiry and that the open-minded historian should conclude that the resurrection is at least plausible and perhaps probable.

Pannenberg carried this youthful commitment to both revelation and reason into his mature theology. Revelation as History vaulted him into prominence. Professorships followed at Wuppertal, Mainz, and then, for the longest span of his career, beginning in 1968 and ending with his retirement in 1994, at Munich. A constant stream of essays was punctuated by large studies of Christology (Jesus—God and Man , 1964), theology and science ( Theology and the Philosophy of Science , 1973), theological anthropology ( Anthropology in Theological Perspective, 1983), and the three volumes of hisSystematic Theology (1988 to 1993).

[Pannenberg's] Systematic Theology is certainly his crowning achievement, bringing together his staggering learning, theological and otherwise, in a unified vision of the meaning of the faith. Pannenberg has remained remarkably consistent over the years. Systematic Theology can be read as a much fuller account of the vision first put forward in Revelation as History twenty-five years before: Eschatology remains the key theological locus; Jesus continues to be understood as the anticipatory realization of the final reign of God over all things; Christianity is rational, though this claim is somewhat chastened. New perhaps is the emphasis on ecclesiology. The church is the foretaste of the future unity of humanity and of all things, the place where the future impinges visibly, sacramentally, on the present. (And hence, [why] the division of the church is so scandalous [to Pannenberg]; [his] ecumenical commitments are [on a pace] with his theology.)

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New and more determinative for his later theology is its thoroughgoing trinitarian character. In a way similar to some other recent theologians—most notably, in their different ways, Karl Rahner and Karl Barth—Pannenberg does not begin with a discussion of God as one and of the divine attributes, both understood without reference to God as triune, but begins with God as Trinity and allows that understanding to frame both the presentation of God’s unity and the elaboration of the divine attributes. Against that background, God’s act of creation is presented as analogous to the differentiation of the Son from the Father (hence, creation is through the Word) and salvation is participation in the life of the Trinity (an idea more familiar to Catholic than to modern Protestant theology).

In most of these themes—the centrality of eschatology, a renewed interest in the church as theological locus, Trinity as determinative for all that is said about God, salvation as participation—Pannenberg is in line with much recent theology. The way he elaborates them is at times idiosyncratic (for example, his understanding of the divinity that the persons of the Trinity share as analogous to a force field), but he shares these themes with many other theologians.

Distinctive in his theology is the commitment to the claim that the Christian metanarrative, the all-encompassing, eschatologically focused story, is the key to the meaning of each and every thing. Theology backs up that claim by presenting a comprehensive, systematic account of reality in which all other knowledge can find a home. Pannenberg’s project required that his works culminate in a systematic theology. The revelation of God in Christ is either the one truth in relation to which all things makes sense, or it is false. If that revelation is true, then “[e]very single reality should prove incomprehensible (at least in its depth) without recourse to God.” The theologian’s task is to make that truth evident by showing, at least illustratively, the explanatory power of the Christian perspective.

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Pannenberg’s project is breathtaking in its audacity. The theologian must stand ready, at least in principle, to discuss every topic. “A doctrine of God touches upon everything else. Therefore, it is necessary to explore every field of knowledge in order to speak of God reasonably.” Theology so understood seems to require a universal genius, a Leibniz or a Newton. Pannenberg’s range of knowledge is so extensive, one is tempted to believe the job possible. As Placher noted, “It’s hard to think of anything he doesn’t know.” But does the project succeed?

Doubts inevitably creep in. Perhaps because he views history as the final context of all meaning, Pannenberg tends to begin any topic in the Systematic Theology with a brief history of its discussion. These histories are a monument of learning, but even Pannenberg cannot be an expert on everything and the specialist scholar spots mistakes, small and sometimes not so small.

The greater limitation in Pannenberg’s work is its continuing orientation to the German philosophical and cultural context. When Pannenberg began his career, the German dominance of Protestant theology, dating back to Friedrich Schleiermacher at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was still firmly established. That dominance has since faded. Pannenberg has been far more open than most of his generation of German theologians to the wider world, but he engages that world from the perspective of a German tradition increasingly foreign to American readers. Pannenberg’s relation to that German Protestant tradition tells us much about how his theology does and does not point toward new possibilities.

The succession of German Protestant theology that runs from Kant through Schleiermacher and Hegel, Ritschl and Harnack, Barth and Bultmann represents a great intellectual achievement. Pannenberg seems to stand at the end of this tradition; no figures from the generation following him in Germany seem to be working at the same level. Pannenberg has not simply continued this tradition, however; he has also called it into question. His ambiguous relation to this tradition tells us much and ironically links him to his least favorite teacher, Karl Barth.

A driving force in this tradition has been the philosophical “turn to the subject,” a shift of focus from the thing known to the knower who knows it. Kant set the problem with his argument against any knowledge of the Ding an sich, the thing in itself, and Schleiermacher represents the first great attempt to accept that turn and still talk about God in a meaningful way. For Schleiermacher, theology is not directly about God, but about us, and most immediately about our faith. Faith (or, precisely, feeling) is the point where God dwells in the self, and so, it is claimed, by speaking about faith, we can in fact speak about God. In varying ways, most liberal Protestant theology after Schleiermacher followed his lead. The anthropology changed, but the path through humanity to God remained constant. The danger of a reduction of God to an aspect of humanity and its religiosity has always lurked in the background, however, and all too often taken over the foreground.

Pannenberg, like Barth, challenges the dominance of the “turn to the subject” [as established by Schleiermacher]. This challenge became explicit in a revealing interchange that occurred in 1989 between Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel of Tübingen, his most ponderable German Protestant contemporary. Jüngel wrote an extended essay-review of the first volume of Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology in which, while praising his achievement, he raised some fundamental objections to his program. The title of his essay points to his most basic question: “Nihil divinitatis, ubi non fides: Is Christian Dogmatics in a Purely Theoretical Perspective Possible?” (the Latin phrase, which translates as “Nothing of God where there is no faith,” is a quotation from Luther). Jüngel’s question is about the relation between the content of faith, that which is believed, and the act of faith. He agrees with Pannenberg that the content of faith is foundational for the act of faith, and not vice versa; what we believe is more important than our act of believing it.

But Jüngel also insists that in explicating the content of faith, the theologian must make clear that the content of faith can only be the content of faith (Jüngel uses just this pattern of italics). The gospel, revelation, God in Christ, are not just there for the knowing. There is a theoretical knowledge of the content of faith, but it is inseparable from a practical knowledge, a transformation of the knowing self in the very act of knowing. There can be no true knowledge of God without a radically altered human self-understanding. [This] new knowledge of God and the new knowledge of the self are, he insists, “co-original.” Quoting Luther’s commentary on Galatians, he writes that “God and faith belong together so inseparably that one cannot avoid saying: ‘Outside faith God loses his righteousness, glory, abundance, etc, and there is nothing of majesty, of divinity where there is no faith.’” It is [in] this existential dimension of the content of faith that [Jüngel] misses in Pannenberg’s dogmatics.

Pannenberg’s response, entitled “To Grasp and Understand Faith in Itself: An Answer,” grants Jüngel’s point that true knowledge of God is impossible apart from faith, but counters that when Jüngel makes knowledge of God and a new self-understanding “co-original,” he endangers the priority of God to the human response of faith, the priority of the content of faith to the act of faith.

Behind this somewhat obscure dispute lie basic questions about the character of theology.

Theology is about God, but God is not an object of investigation and knowledge simply there for human scrutiny. How does theology reflect God’s sovereignty even in being known? In the 1960s the Protestant theologian Otto Hermann Pesch characterized the theological styles of Luther and Aquinas as “existential” and “sapiential.” Luther’s theology seeks to stay close to the perspective of the self addressed by God’s words of judgment and promise; Aquinas’ theology seeks to view all things as much as possible from the viewpoint of God’s all-encompassing wisdom, in which the human mind is allowed to participate. Much German Protestant theology since the early twentieth century has, in this sense, been programmatically “existential.” [That is,] the turn to the subject influences the way theology speaks.

Since the early twentieth century, German Protestant theology has sought forms in which first-person confession and second-person address, or, in other words, witness and proclamation, can shape the exposition of Christian theology. In this way, theology can talk about God while its form of discourse shows that God is known only as he gives himself to be known by faith. Theology must not only say that, it must show it by the way it speaks. Thus, for example, the quasi-homiletical rhetoric of Barth’s Church Dogmaticsis not “mere style” but a sign of the inseparability of theology from witness and proclamation.

The “existential dimension” is what Jüngel cannot find in Pannenberg’s theology. And he is right. Pannenberg’s theology is more sapiential than existential. In turning away from the “existential” mode, however, Pannenberg has done more than choose a different style of language. His turn to a public history and a shared reason oriented to that history is the most significant attempt in his generation of German Protestant theology to break with the turn to the subject that has been so determinative for over two hundred years. He represents a sort of new objectivity. In this regard, his turn to history shares much, at least in intention, with Barth’s turn to a Word of God who creates its own conditions of being known. Barth and Pannenberg represent the two figures in the German Protestant tradition over the last century who point beyond the focus on the human that has proven so inadequate.

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This objectivity, this strong sense that theology is about God first and foremost and only then, because of what God does, about us and our religiosity, sets Pannenberg apart from much theology as done among mainline Protestants, both in Europe and North America. This objectivity gives Pannenberg’s writing, especially his Systematic Theology, a scholastic tone, in the best sense of the word, the slightly old-fashioned air I referred to at the outset. He analyzes issues, makes distinctions, discusses the options, entertains objections. One senses that the subject matter at hand is determinative. This quality makes Pannenberg’s work attractive as a conversation partner for Catholic and Evangelical theologians.

But a certain ambiguity haunts Pannenberg’s work. While he calls the recent German Protestant tradition into question in some respects, he stands firmly within it in others. A curse of recent theology has been the cult of the virtuoso theologian, the creative mind who recasts the field, the Schleiermachers and Barths of the discipline, Promethean figures who blaze the path others are to follow. Much academic work in modern theology seems less the study of God or of the Christian message about God, and more the study of the creativity of great theologians.

When Pannenberg broke onto the scene in the 1960s, he was treated as the new candidate for these laurels, the latest thing from Germany, the land of giants. His program of a thoroughgoing interpretation of the Christian message under the rubrics of history and eschatology looked like another interpretive tour de force, another exercise in killing the Oedipal father (or fathers, in the form of Barth and Bultmann) so that the children are free to pursue their own projects. The actual shape of Pannenberg’s achievement has been somewhat different. The quasi-scholastic tone points at least to a different intent, a more humble subjection to the subject matter.

Nevertheless, the manner of the virtuoso has never quite disappeared, no more than it disappeared from the work of Barth. The unique interpretive vision rooted in eschatology continues to color all that is said. As a friend has noted, what Pannenberg will not do is outline the tradition on a theological topic and then simply conclude that the tradition got it right and move on. The subject needs to be reshaped by the unique perspective of the system, like the pianist who insists that somehow, somewhere, his/her own unique interpretation must shine through.

Are great theologians always good things? Should we bemoan that there are no giants of the field around today? Certainly, mediocrity is not to be celebrated. Theology must be more than simply cataloging the answers provided by our forebears. But the enterprise of systematic theology is inherently dubious. It necessarily elevates the theologian to systematizer, to master of a subject matter that should not be mastered.

This critique is not new. Barth himself insisted that “systematic theology” is an oxymoron on a par with “wooden iron.” More searching questions need to be asked. What are the historical, institutional, and ecclesial factors that foster the cult of the great theologian? What is the connection between the rise within Protestantism of the idea of the heroic theologian over the last two hundred years and the decline within Protestantism of a stable doctrinal tradition that could guide thought and practice? Are the unique and comprehensive perspectives of a Pannenberg or a Barth (or a Schleiermacher or a Luther) called upon to perform a function that should be performed by a normative communal sense of the faith?

What is theology called to do in the life of the Church? The vocation of the theologian does not exist in a vacuum. The needs, the strengths and deficiencies of the concrete church being served, will shape that vocation, and the individual theologian can break out of the resultant mold only with difficulty. (The Protestant theologian who broke out of the mold most thoroughly, Kierkegaard, is proof of the difficulty and the cost.) A critique of the sort of theology that fits the cult of the great theologian must inevitably be a critique of the ecclesial life that produces the cult. Theology can accomplish much, but it cannot make up for essential deficits in the life of the church it serves.

Wolfhart Pannenberg has produced an impressive range of work that is learned, intelligent, and faithful. His ambiguous relation to his time is itself instructive. It should make us think about what theology is, what it is called to do, and how theology and church inevitably reflect one another.

Pannenberg is now well into his eighties and we can expect that his theological work is complete. From the beginning of his career, he has employed his formidable intelligence and scholarship in the service of careful thought and writing about the God present in Christ and the Spirit. Lives and talents so spent are blessings.

*Michael Root is professor of theology at the Catholic University of America.

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Wikipedia's List of Authorial Writings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfhart_Pannenberg

Books by Pannenberg in English

1968. Revelation As History (edited volume). New York: The Macmillan Company.

1968. Jesus: God and Man. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
1969. Basic Questions in Theology. Westminster Press
1969. Theology and the Kingdom of God. Westminster Press.
1970. What Is Man? Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
1972. The Apostles' Creed in Light of Today's Questions. Westminster Press.
1976. Theology and the Philosophy of Science. Westminster Press.
1977. Faith and Reality. Westminster Press.
1985. Anthropology in Theological Perspective. T&T Clark
1988–1994. Systematic Theology. T & T Clark
1996. "Theologie und Philosophie. Ihr Verhältnis im Lichte ihrer gemeinsamen Geschichte". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Online writings

"God of the Philosophers," First Things, June/July 2007.
"Letter from Germany," First Things, March 2003.
"Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries," First Things, August/September 2002.
"Review of Robert W. Jenson's Systematic Theology: Volumes I & II," First Things, May 2000.
"When Everything is Permitted," First Things, February 1998.
"The Pope in Germany," First Things, December 1996.
"How to Think About Secularism," First Things, June/July 1996.
"Christianity and the West: Ambiguous Past, Uncertain Future," First Things, December 1994.
"The Present and Future Church," First Things, November 1991.
"God's Presence in History," Christian Century (11 March 1981): 260–63.

Further reading

Bradshaw, Timothy, 1988. Trinity and ontology: a comparative study of the theologies of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books.

Case, Jonathan P (2004), "The Death of Jesus and the Truth of the Triune God in Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel", Journal for Christian Theological Research 9: 1–13.

Fukai, Tomoaki, 1996, Paradox und Prolepsis: Geschichtstheologie bei Reinhold Niebuhr und Wolfhart Pannenberg (in German), Marburg.

Grenz, Stanley J (1990), Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, New York: Oxford.

——— (30 September 1987), "Pannenberg on Marxism: Insights and Generalizations", The Christian Century (Religion online): 824–26.

——— (14–21 September 1988), "Wolfhart Pannenberg's Quest for Ultimate Truth", The Christian Century (Religion online): 795–98.

Lischer, Richard, "An Old/New Theology of History," The Christian Century (13 March 1974): 288–90.

Don H. Olive, 1973. Wolfhart Pannenberg-Makers of the Modern Mind. Word Incorporated, Waco, Texas.

Page, James S., 2003, "Critical Realism and the Theological Science of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Exploring the Commonalities," Bridges: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Theology, History and Science 10(1/2): 71–84.

Schwarz, Hans, 2012. 'Wolfhart Pannenberg' in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity J.B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett (eds.) Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Shults, F. LeRon, 1999. The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Tipler, Frank J (1989), "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists", Zygon 24: 217–53. Followed by Pannenberg's comments, 255–71.

——— (1994), The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, New York: Doubleday.

——— (2007), The Physics of Christianity, New York: Doubleday.

Tupper, E. F., 1973. The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg. Philadelphia: Westminster press.

Woo, B. Hoon (2012). "Pannenberg’s Understanding of the Natural Law". Studies in Christian Ethics 25 (3): 346–66. doi:10.1177/0953946812444686.

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Wolfhart Pannenberg in 1983

Wikipedia Biography of Wolfhart Pannenberg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfhart_Pannenberg

Wolfhart Pannenberg (2 October 1928 – 4 September 2014)[1] was a German theologian. He has made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the Resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.

Life and views

Pannenberg was born on 2 October 1928 in Stettin, Germany, now Szczecin, Poland. He was baptized as an infant into the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, but otherwise had virtually no contact with the church in his early years. At about the age of sixteen, however, he had an intensely religious experience he later called his "light experience." Seeking to understand this experience, he began to search through the works of great philosophers and religious thinkers. A high school literature teacher who had been a part of the Confessing Church during World War II encouraged him to take a hard look at Christianity, which resulted in Pannenberg's "intellectual conversion," in which he concluded that Christianity was the best available religious option. This propelled him into his vocation as a theologian.

Pannenberg studied in Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg and Basel. In Basel, Pannenberg studied under Karl Barth. His doctoral thesis at Heidelberg was on Edmund Schlink's views on predestination in the works of Duns Scotus, which he submitted in 1953 and published a year later. His Habilitationsschrift in 1955 dealt with the relationship between analogy and revelation, especially the concept of analogy in the teaching of God's knowledge.

Pannenberg's epistemology, explained clearly in his shorter essays, is crucial to his theological project. It is heavily influenced by Schlink, who proposed a distinction between analogical truth, i.e. a descriptive truth or model, and doxological truth, or truth as immanent in worship. In this way of thinking, theology tries to express doxological truth. As such it is a response to God's self-revelation. Schlink was also instrumental in shaping Pannenberg's approach to theology as an ecumenical enterprise – an emphasis which has remained constant throughout his career.

Pannenberg's understanding of revelation is strongly conditioned by his reading of Karl Barth and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as well as by a sympathetic reading of Christian and Jewish apocalyptic literature. The Hegelian concept of history as an unfolding process in which Spirit and freedom are revealed combines with a Barthian notion of revelation occurring "vertically from above". While Pannenberg adopts a Hegelian understanding of History itself as God's self-revelation, he strongly asserts the Resurrection of Christ as a proleptic revelation of what history is unfolding. Despite its obvious Barthian reference, this approach met with a mainly hostile response from both neo-Orthodox and liberal, Bultmannian theologians in the 1960s, a response which Pannenberg claims surprised him and his associates.[2] A more nuanced, mainly implied, critique came from Jürgen Moltmann, whose philosophical roots lay in the Left Hegelians, Karl Marx and Ernst Bloch, and who proposed and elaborated a Theology of Hope, rather than of prolepsis, as a distinctively Christian response to History.

As disciple of Karl Löwith, Pannenberg has continued the debate against Hans Blumenberg in the so-called 'theorem of secularization'.[3] "Blumenberg targets Löwith's argument that progress is the secularization of Hebrew and Christian beliefs and argues to the contrary that the modern age, including its belief in progress, grew out of a new secular self-affirmation of culture against the Christian tradition."[4]

Pannenberg is perhaps best known for Jesus: God and Man in which he constructs a Christology "from below," deriving his dogmatic claims from a critical examination of the life and particularly the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This is his programmatic statement of the notion of "History as Revelation". He rejects traditional Chalcedonian "two-natures" Christology, preferring to view the person of Christ dynamically in light of the resurrection. This focus on the resurrection as the key to Christ's identity has led Pannenberg to defend its historicity, stressing the experience of the risen Christ in the history of the early Church rather than the empty tomb.

Central to Pannenberg's theological career was his defence of theology as a rigorous academic discipline, one capable of critical interaction with philosophy, history, and most of all, the natural sciences. Pannenberg has also defended the theology of American mathematical physicist Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory[5][6][7].

Pannenberg was an outspoken critic of the approval of homosexual relations by the Evangelical Church in Germany, going so far as to say that a church which approves of homosexual practice is no longer a true church. He returned his Federal Order of Merit after the decoration was awarded to a lesbian activist.[8]

Pannenberg speaking at a CDUconference in Bonn, 1983

Career

Pannenberg was a professor on the faculties of several universities consistently, after 1958. Between the years of 1958 and 1961 he was the Professor of Systematic Theology at theKirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal. Between 1961 and 1968 he was a professor in Mainz. He has had several visiting professorships at the University of Chicago (1963), Harvard (1966), and at the Claremont School of Theology (1967), and since 1968 had been Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Munich.[9] He retired in 1993, and died at age 85 in 2014.[10]

Throughout his career Pannenberg remained a prolific writer. As of December 2008, his "publication page" on the University of Munich's website lists 645 academic publications to his name.^[11]

References

Date of Death: http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/glaube-geschichte-und-vernunft-1.18380264

Pannenberg, Wolfhart (11 March 1981), "God’s Presence in History", The Christian Century: 260–63.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1973) [1968]. "Christianity as the Legitimacy of the Modern Age". The Idea of God and Human Freedom 3. London: Westminster Press. pp. 178–91. ISBN 978-06-6420-971-1.

Buller, Cornelius A (1996). The Unity of Nature and History in Pannenberg's Theology. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 95. ISBN 978-08-2263-055-5.

Tipler 1989.

Tipler 1994.

Tipler 2007.

Root, Michael (March 2012). "The Achievement of Wolfhart Pannenberg".First Things.

Brief biography (in German), University of Munich.

Roger Olson, The Journey of Modern Theology, 479

Pannenberg, Publications, University of Munich.

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Calvinism (Still) Isn't Beautiful. It Sings for Divine Power not for Divine Weakness, Suffering, and Sacrifice

“Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed” a Year Later:

Calvinism (Still) Isn’t Beautiful

Source Link

A Guest Post by Austin Fischer

by Roger Olson

February 2, 2015

Comments

“They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.”[1]

-John Piper

One of the more persistent myths regarding art (broadly defined) is that the artist understands what he or she is creating. It is, as it were, a half-truth. You understand parts of it, catch glimpses of its deeper meaning, shape it toward certain ends. But you certainly do not understand all of it. As Madeline L’Engle says,

“The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver…each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. enflesh me. Give birth to me.’”[2]

Two years ago, I started writing. I didn’t intend to write a book so much as [to] document a journey I had taken in and out of Calvinism, with the hope it could help people in my own church who were treading similar paths. It ended up becoming a book and has helped people, and for that I am grateful.

But as I look back—now two years removed from when I started writing and a year removed from its publication—I feel as though I only now understand the deepest intention of the book. Bear with me if this seems indulgent....

 Back when I was a Calvinist, I came across the above quote from John Piper: “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.” And while I didn’t fully understand it at the time, I knew what it was about. I embraced Calvinism, not just because I found its exegesis and inner logic compelling, but because it made my heart sing. It was true, but also (and perhaps more importantly) good and beautiful.

Christians believe that truth (sic, "being grounded in God") is not only, well, true, but also good and beautiful. Beauty is “a measure of what theology may call true.”[3] Because God is infinitely good and beautiful, theology must be good and beautiful or else it’s not true. When properly understood, the truth invites not only the mind’s assent but the heart’s affection. The truth should make your heart sing.

This notion of the truth’s beauty is not an invention of secular humanism or some other boogey-man, but belongs to the deepest intuition of biblical Christian sensibilities. As the various psalmists never tire of telling us,

“Great is the Lord and highly to be praised,

and his greatness is unsearchable…

The Lord is gracious and merciful;

slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.

The Lord is good to all,

and his mercies are over all his works.”

- Psalm 145:3, 8-9

God is infinite power but also infinite grace, so beauty “qualifies theology’s understanding of divine glory: it shows that glory to be not only holy, powerful, immense, and righteous, but also good and desirable, a gift graciously shared.”[4]

John Piper understands this better than most, and his brilliant attention to the aesthetics of Calvinism (channeling Jonathan Edwards) is one of the (if not the) primary reasons for the tremendous surge of Calvinism among young evangelicals. Simply put, plenty of people have argued Calvinism is true. Piper’s particular genius has been in arguing that Calvinism is also beautiful.

Many young evangelicals have been convinced and their hearts sing for Calvinism. My exodus from Calvinism was set in motion when I came to believe Calvinism was not beautiful—indeed, when I realized that Calvinism (consistent Calvinism at least) was, at best, cold and brutally enigmatic (which is, perhaps, why many cannot be consistent Calvinists).

This realization then forced me to further reconsider its veracity. The heart of the book, then, was a challenge to the aesthetic of the New Calvinism. The New Calvinists attempt to paint a ravishing picture of the manifold excellencies of the self-glorifying, all-determining God of Calvinism, expressed primarily through the doctrines of grace.

• I say that picture is a false veneer that only works when you ignore the reprobate.

• I say that picture cannot contain, as its central image, a crucified God who would rather die for sinners than give them what they deserve.

Using the Bible as my measure of beauty, I say Calvinism isn’t beautiful. People have asked if I could ever see myself “going back” to Calvinism—a little less young, a little less restless, and reformed again, perhaps?

It’s a question I occasionally ponder. Depending on my mood, I can still find some of the exegesis and inner rationale for Calvinism compelling. As I’ve stated numerous times, I think Calvinism is one way to make sense of the teachings of the Bible (though as I also always state and many of my Calvinist friends have a hard time hearing, I think there is a better way to make sense of the Bible’s teachings that has far deeper ecumenical and historical roots).

And yet while I suppose I could again entertain the possibility that Calvinism is true, I don’t think I could ever again believe that Calvinism is beautiful. To my mind, calling Calvinism beautiful is to subject the very concept of beauty to so ruthless an equivocation that it loses any intelligible meaning.

So I agree with Piper: theology needs to make our hearts sing. That’s not a “strategic” statement about how to make Christianity more persuasive in its use of pathos. It’s a statement about truth. In terms of a quick (and perhaps overly simplistic) syllogism, I submit:

1 - Christian truth is (by biblical, theological and rational necessity) good and beautiful

     (as measured by the Bible).

2- Calvinism is not beautiful.

3- Calvinism is not true.

I’d imagine my Calvinist friends would accept premise one (unless they adhere to an extreme voluntarism and absolute equivocation between God’s aesthetic and/or moral sensibilities and ours) and reject premise two, arguing that Calvinism is indeed beautiful, but sin has crippled our aesthetic sensibilities to the point that we wouldn’t know beauty if we saw it. And of course I agree.

That’s precisely what Isaiah says in his cryptic words about the suffering servant: the beauty of God is not something we naturally appreciate (53:1-3). We’re far too intoxicated with power and status to appreciate the unforeseen majesty of deity suffering and despised.

But it is the very measure of beauty given us by the Bible (gratuitously aggressive and kenotic, self-giving love) that threatens to burst the wineskins of Calvinism. The good news of God’s beauty is too good and beautiful for Calvinism to contain. And it is the very intoxication with raw power that blinds us to God’s true beauty that fits so snugly within the Calvinist vision of God.

So instead of retreating to shopworn quips (“Well if you just trusted the Bible more than your ‘feelings’ and ‘aesthetic sensibilities’ then none of this would be a problem”), I hope more of the New Calvinists will allow themselves to grasp the gravity of the dilemma Calvinism faces when it comes to biblical, Christian aesthetics. It is not a blemish of the surface, but a chilling abyss at the very heart of God.

[1] http://www.latentdesign.com/pdf/young_reformed.pdf

[2] Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water, 18.

[3] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 3.

[4] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 17.