Wolfhart Pannenberg on Human Destiny

Kam Ming Wong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351872447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Based on one of the greatest living theologians, Wolfhart Pannenberg, this book is the first comprehensive study of 'human destiny'. Mapping out the movement of humanity over the course of its history to its common destiny from creation through sin and ethics to eschatology, the book also examines the extent to which scholars such as Herder have influenced Pannenberg's work in this important area and shows how Pannenberg's project on ethics is related to human destiny.

Chapter 1
Setting the Scene

The aim of this book is not only to construct a comprehensive theological anthropology with special reference to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s thought, but also to study specifically the movement of humanity over the course of its history to its common destiny, to God. With the objective so formulated, our research thematises the purpose of human creations in the most direct way. Within this dynamic, our focus is on the historicity of humanity that manifests itself in the historical process of human becoming. To that extent, human beings are to be understood as creatures who are called to be on their way to the final consummation of their destiny. Our anthropology, therefore, moves beyond merely empirical description of humanness in order to arrive at an understanding of the Christian God as the Author and Finisher of the human world, which is the theme of God’s economy of salvation from creation to eschatology. For Pannenberg, the doctrine of creation speaks not only of the existence of an independent world “at the outset”, but also of God’s providence over the historical process leading to its eschatological consummation. Only the eschatological future marks the answer to the question of the reality of God, the redemption of the world and the destiny of humanity, for the essence of all things is derived from the future consummation.

With these purposes of our study in mind, the starting point of our discussion in Chapter 2 is human creation. We shall explain first why Pannenberg expresses his dissatisfaction with the classical concepts of humans as created in the image of God and the primordial fall of Adam. Are such ideas inadequate, thus failing to elucidate the distinctively Christian understanding of humanity, as apparently claimed by Pannenberg? In contrast to the Augustinian position, which describes the paradise state as lost in the fall, we are to evaluate Pannenberg’s assertion that the full image of God is realised not from the beginning but only through the destiny of humanity, which lies yet in the future. In so doing, we examine how Pannenberg critiques and makes use of different theological traditions (for example, Irenaeus) in arriving at his own view. In addition, what exactly is the image of God? What does it consist of? What are its attributes? We shall also present Pannenberg’s thought that far from being a matter of one’s private life, the human destiny is a communal concept. The responsibility of the Christian is to assist other persons in their realisation of the human destiny, in their becoming human beings in the full sense of existing in the image of God. When constructing his arguments in relation to human destiny and the image of God, Pannenberg draws heavily on Herder, an eighteenth-century scholar who contributed greatly to the subsequent emergence of philosophical anthropology in Germany. However, we claim that Pannenberg does differentiate himself from Herder in a crucial respect, notwithstanding many similarities between them. This chapter ends with a detailed discussion of the Christological foundation argued by Pannenberg, especially in relation to the role and significance of Jesus Christ and his resurrection in the context of human destiny.

One of Pannenberg’s central anthropological arguments is that there is something which tends towards the realisation of the purpose of creation that exists in the being of the human, namely a disposition pointing to the image of God. In Chapter 3, specific attention will be given to the reasons for the original human state being characterised by openness towards one’s supernatural fulfilment, which is already present as a future destiny, and corresponds to the single saving event of Jesus Christ in history. Here, Pannenberg follows the strand of philosophical anthropology that includes Scheler and Plessner, who founded the concept of “openness to the world” and its equivalent, “exocentricity” respectively in 1928. Perhaps the most hotly debated issue of Pannenberg’s anthropology is whether his concept of human openness effectively constitutes an anthropological argument for the existence of God, regardless of whether or not Pannenberg himself is aware of it. In other words, the question to be investigated is whether his thought concerning human openness leads necessarily to an argument for the existence of God. It is also one of the tasks of this chapter to relate the concept of openness to the world to many different aspects of human life in order to demonstrate its depth, richness and multiplicity as a foundation underpinning our human essence and destiny (for example, openness to the world as the source of human imagination). While it is understandable why Pannenberg appeals to the creation account rather than anything else for direct biblical support of the concept of openness to the world, we shall explore salvation and covenant as possible themes, which also lend themselves readily to the application of the idea of human openness. In modern anthropology, openness to the world cannot simply involve openness to the world. Otherwise, the relation of human beings to the world would not be fundamentally different from that of animals to their environment. Through a series of arguments, Pannenberg builds his case that openness to the world has to mean openness beyond the world to God. Openness to God becomes, for Pannenberg, the bridge out of the poverty of the natural beginning point of humanity into the full realisation of human destiny. As we shall demonstrate, this is an important area where Pannenberg has successfully integrated anthropology and theology.

Without doubt, the destiny of humanity is not seen as something that is always and everywhere already realised. This is, indeed, the reality of sin. To be sure, Pannenberg’s doctrine of sin is of crucial importance to our understanding of his whole enterprise of theological anthropology, for sin, together with the metaphor of the image of God, constitutes the most significant theological issue in this part of his work. The doctrines of the image of God and sin thematise two basic aspects between anthropological phenomena and the reality of God. The aim of Chapter 4 is to show that sin, being the failure to achieve human destiny, destroys human identity and breaks the unity of human reality. In this chapter, we shall first discuss how Pannenberg introduces the Augustinian doctrine of sin, and through this process it is clear that Pannenberg puts himself in the Augustinian trajectory in many respects. In particular, we shall analyse the key Augustinian concepts of concupiscence, self-love and pride. This is to be followed by an examination of Pannenberg’s anthropological concept of sin as self-centredness. Interestingly, there are times when Pannenberg says that the self-centredness of life is not itself sinful. So why, then, is Pannenberg not prepared to condemn all forms of self-centredness? As Pannenberg locates sin in the natural conditions of human existence, one should also feel it legitimate to ask whether this can be taken to mean that human essence is sinful. This potent question inevitably brings us back to the wider issue of responsibility for sin. We shall conclude the chapter by addressing the shortcomings of Pannenberg’s doctrine of sin, with suggestions that continue to relate closely to our overall theme of human destiny, and thereby also human creatureliness.

This brings us onto the final part of our investigation into whether the destiny itself is simply a moral destiny. In other words, can it be reduced to ethics? Our key objective in Chapter 5 is to determine precisely whether it is sufficient to describe Pannenberg’s view as that which says, “human destiny is eschatological rather than ethical, though moral ramifications or consequences are not ruled out.” However, is there anything more to this argumentation? In order to address this issue adequately, we have to analyse the meaning of “eschatological” and “ethical” in turn. We shall first examine the basic functions of eschatology in Pannenberg’s theology. Then, we shall look into the content of human destiny to see if it is eschatological by nature. In other words, what kind of future lies ahead of us? In this chapter, we are to focus on, particularly, the kingdom of God, which seems to be the single most important eschatological theme for Pannenberg, as all the others are subsumed under it. As for ethics, we are not to engage ourselves in specific ethical deliberations in this chapter. Rather, our task is to examine in Pannenberg how ethics should be formulated and what are its bases. What is the significance of Pannenberg’s claim of universal validity for ethics? Is it simply that ethics has an eschatological foundation, which is the kingdom of God? This gives rise to another, albeit similar, question of the relation between ethics and dogmatics within Christian theology: that is, whether ethics should take priority over dogmas, or vice versa. Of particular importance, we shall identify and present the changes of Pannenberg’s standpoints over these matters. We argue that such changes have not been highlighted by either Pannenberg himself or secondary commentators.

Notwithstanding the significance of the idea of human destiny, Pannenberg himself has not devoted any single piece of work specifically to this topic. His major anthropological work, Anthropology in Theological Perspective,¹ is markedly different from our project in both its approach and, as a result, its scope. Perhaps due to Pannenberg’s own agenda of apologetics and passionate interest to interact with other intellectual disciplines at the time, his Anthropology has a heavy presence of social and psychological theories. Stewart comments aptly, “Pannenberg can be distinguished from other major theologians of the second half of the twentieth century by the intellectual seriousness with which he treats the natural and social sciences.”² Here, as well as in many other aspects of his thought, Pannenberg makes a deliberate and clear break with Barth, whom he criticises as arbitrary and subjectivist, for Barth rejects secular anthropology and builds theological anthropology on a purely biblical and Christocentric basis. By contrast, Pannenberg sees theological anthropology as a demonstration of the coherence of secular knowledge with knowledge of humanity that is primarily theologically given. His task is to move theology out of isolation and dogmatism, and his mission is to make Christianity open to other intellectual disciplines and secular disciplines open to Christianity. Worthing points out, “Pannenberg contends that since the 19^th century there has been no choice for theologians but to begin with and base their argumentation upon anthropology … [He] makes the secular or profane anthropologies the deliberate starting point for his theological anthropology.”³ However, we argue that the truth of the matter is that Pannenberg remains at that starting point throughout his theological anthropology. As a result, the end-product of Anthropology is not the kind of theological anthropology that most systematic theologians would come to expect, and has consequently failed to generate much theological resonance.

To be sure, it is not Pannenberg’s intention to offer a theological anthropology in the form of a dogmatic anthropology. Instead, “the studies undertaken here may be summarily described as a fundamental–theological anthropology. This anthropology does not argue from dogmatic data and presuppositions. Rather, it turns its attention directly to the phenomena of human existence as investigated in human biology, psychology, cultural anthropology, or sociology and examines the findings of these disciplines with an eye to implications that may be relevant to religion and theology.”⁴ In other words, Pannenberg confronts the major issue of what the sciences tell us about humanity itself. In Anthropology, Pannenberg brackets out virtually all the Christian doctrines, with the only major exceptions being the doctrines of the image of God and sin. Even so, it is not an exhaustive account of sin. The absence of any discussion of sin in the context of human creatureliness is a case in point. The inclusion of those two doctrines in his anthropological work is understandable. For they can easily be put into dialogue with the anthropological data, primarily via openness to the world and self-centredness respectively. However, we would argue that given the way the concepts of human destiny and the image of God are defined by Pannenberg, the inclusion of his Christological and soteriological justifications is inescapable, as are his thought of eschatology and the question of the relevance of ethics. While Pannenberg’s statement in one of his earliest essays is too abstract to be of much help,⁵ what Pannenberg says in his more recent Systematic Theology is closer to the mark: “A full theological anthropology would have to include as well the actualising of this destiny, which is the theme of God’s redeeming work, its appropriation to and by us, and its goal in the eschatological consummation.”⁶ Nonetheless, our study is not meant to be a complete theological anthropology in any general sense, but, as we shall see, one with a focus sharpened and driven by the theme of human destiny.

Before commencing discussion on our main subject matter, it should be useful at the beginning of our research to highlight certain characteristics of the methodology employed in Pannenberg’s theology, for they will recur throughout the subsequent chapters. This is certainly not a critical evaluation, nor even an exhaustive account, of Pannenberg’s theological methods, but merely a brief overview in broad strokes. While admitting that we would run the risk of oversimplifying the issues involved, the complexity of which can be gauged by the huge volume of both primary and secondary research that the topic has managed to generate over the years, on balance it would do more harm than good if we were to simply ignore it altogether in this present study. We cannot over-emphasise how crucial methodology is for Pannenberg’s entire enterprise. As Worthing rightly observes, “Pannenberg has focused more attention on questions of theological method than most contemporary theologians.”⁷ In addition, it should be noted that some of the doctrines or themes may, and indeed do, exhibit the application of more than one aspect of Pannenberg’s methodology.

Perhaps of the most central importance for Pannenberg is his belief that God is the ground of truth, and thus all truth ultimately comes together in God. For Pannenberg, the truth question has always to be answered upon theological reflection and reconstruction. As such, he strongly asserts that theological affirmatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Setting the Scene
• 2 Image of God as both Fount and Destiny of Humanity
• 3 Openness of Humanity
• 4 Sin as an Antithesis to Human Destiny
• 5 Eschatology and Ethics in Human Destiny
• 6 Theological Anthropology: Destiny-centred, History-focused
• Bibliography
• Index