Wolfhart Pannenberg

Life

Pannenberg was born on October 2, 1928, in Stettin, Germany. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, and Basel. He is known to have been influenced by Karl Barth, the Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad, Edmund Schlink, and the philosopher Hegel, among others. After teaching at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal and the University of Mainz, he taught at the University of Munich. He stood in the Lutheran tradition. He died in Munich on September 4, 2014, at the age of 85.

Work and Contributions

Revelation as History

During his years in Heidelberg, Pannenberg discussed the nature of revelation (God's self-disclosure) with a group of young scholars known as the "Pannenberg Circle." The results were published in 1961 in the short volume Revelation as History. He held that God reveals himself not so much directly as indirectly, through his acts in history, and that this revelation is fully disclosed only in the whole of human history, that is, in universal history. With this position he opposed both the Bultmann school, which grounded faith in the individual's existential decision, and the Barthian school, which placed revelation in a realm distinct from ordinary history.

Resurrection and Christology

In Jesus—God and Man (1964), he argued that historical Jesus research and Christology are inseparable. He also argued that the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be understood as a historical fact. He regarded the resurrection as a "prolepsis," an event in which what is to occur at the end of time takes place in advance, and he located the background of Jesus' words and ministry in Jewish apocalyptic literature.

Theology as a Science

Pannenberg understood theology as one academic discipline among others and engaged extensively with philosophy and anthropology. Building on Anthropology in Theological Perspective (1983), he brought his thought together in the three-volume Systematic Theology (1988–1993). Those who earned doctorates under his supervision include William Lane Craig, Stanley Grenz, and Philip Clayton.

Influence on the Korean Church

Revelation as History was translated into Korean and published by the Christian Literature Society of Korea under the title Revelation Manifested as History. Korean theologians have presented him, alongside Jürgen Moltmann, as a leading representative of an eschatology of hope. Scholarly articles on his eschatology and his understanding of the historical Jesus have appeared steadily. When he died in 2014, the Kukmin Ilbo described him as a "giant of modern theology," and the Christian Daily called him a leading German "theologian of hope." The theologian Kim Young-han published a series of articles summarizing his contributions to modern theology.

Assessment

Pannenberg is credited with playing a major role in the revival of theological interest in the historical Jesus from the 1960s onward by placing the resurrection of Jesus and universal history at the center of theology. He sought to support the certainty of faith through historical research and rational argument. Because this method clashed directly with existentialist theology and with the Barthian understanding of revelation, it provoked controversy from the outset. Theological camps remain divided over whether historical reason can establish the grounds of faith.