ABSTRACT
Wolfhart Pannenberg (b. 1928) develops a theological position in which hope and reason function conjointly to give an account of the fullness of reality. Nothing less would be adequate for public theology. The theologian’s task includes counteracting the privatization of theology that has resulted from theologians operating with a subjective, irrational mentality. As a science, theology is subject to the same canons of intelligibility as are the other sciences, admitting assertions only to the extent that they are treated as problematic and requiring their claims to be tested.1 Søren Kierkegaard’s project, grounded as it was in lifting up subjectivity and individuality while downplaying the ability of reason to harness reality, has been met expectedly by Pannenberg with some suspicion. Because of his commitment to the public nature of theology, Pannenberg has restricted his engagement with Kierkegaard’s thinking essentially to one area. In particular, the Dane’s writings on anthropology have fascinated him. He has continued to go back to them as a source of insight into the human condition even as he time and again finds them wanting in explaining the human’s fall into sin. What follows in the first part of the article is an overview of Pannenberg as a public theologian whose deliberations are guided by reasoning hope.2 The article’s second and third parts respectively identify the relatively few
1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973, p. 367. (English translation: Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. by Francis McDonagh, London: Darton, Longman & Todd 1976, p. 364.) 2 This overview has drawn especially on the following writings: Wolfhart Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology, vol. 43, no. 2, 2006, pp. 184-90; Niels Henrik Gregersen, “Introduction: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Contributions to Theology and Science,” in Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Templeton Foundation Press 2008, pp. vii-xxiv; Carl E. Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1968 (New Directions in Theology Today, vol. 2); Wolfhart Pannenberg, “An Autobiographical Sketch,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, with an Autobiographical Essay and Response, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1988, pp. 11-18; Richard John Neuhaus,
interpretation of this limited use.
