# Wolfhart Pannenberg's Christology?



## RamistThomist (Mar 24, 2013)

Pannenberg supposedly rejected Chalcedon's two-natures Christology. Does anyone know where in his corpus he did this?


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## rbcbob (Mar 24, 2013)

Pannenberg would seem to value the temporal deeds of Jesus and dismiss his proclamations. Carl FH Henry writes:



> "The nontemporal is considered unreal. Ever since Hegel, modern theologians have been prone to consider even deity as essentially dynamic and in process, and numerous recent writers of differing schools (e.g., Oscar Cullmann, Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Shubert M Ogden) reject the supertemporality of God." (GRA I:138)





> "In wholly emptying the reality of divine revelation into history, Pannenberg deliberately overleaps the ideas and words of the Bible. ... Pannenerg's own theory forces him to the notion that 'only the eschaton will ultimately disclose what really happened in Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Until then we must speak favorably in ... metaphorical and symbolic form about Jesus' resurrection and the significance inherent it it'" (GRA II: 299-300)



This last quote Henry cites from Pannengerg's Jesus- GOD AND MAN p.397


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## DMcFadden (Mar 24, 2013)

Pannenberg is an odd duck. A staunch defender of the resurrection, he adopts the more typical modern nervousness toward the virgin birth, calling it an “aetiological legend.” 
[Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), p. 146].

If you are willing to listen to Donald Bloesch's judgment on the topic, 



> In our day Wolfhart Pannenberg tends to deny or radically qualify the two–nature doctrine. He prefers to speak, of the “revelatory presence of God in Jesus” and the “revelatory identity of Jesus with God” rather than of a divine and a human nature in one person. Because the old Logos christology is tied to an outmoded philosophy, we are obliged to draw upon modern evolutionary philosophy—Hegel, Teilhard, Bergson—in order to communicate the mysteries of divine revelation. Our point of departure should be not the preexistent Logos who assumes human flesh but “the new eschatological man,” the Jesus of history, whose unity with God can be discerned only in the light of the revelatory event of the resurrection. For Pannenberg Jesus was a real man who lived completely in and for the future—that is, in and for God. Jesus is both functionally one with God in his will and mystically united with God in the depths of his being. He represents the fulfillment of humanity in complete openness to God. Pannenberg contrasts this christology “from below” with one “from above.” He begins with the humanity of Jesus or the history of Jesus as man and then tries to relate this to divinity Jesus’ messianic identity is fulfilled in his resurrection, an event open to reason. The knowledge of revelation is not supernatural but humanly rational.
> 
> Although Pannenberg appeals to the catholic tradition of the church and is especially appreciative, though not uncritical, of the patristic fathers, the influence of the Enlightenment and of Hegel is very pronounced in his theological reflection. One critic complains that Jesus’ nature proves to be the Hegelian one of finite spirit participating in infinite Spirit but unable to represent the latter until the course of history “incarnates” Absolute Spirit in its full series of manifestations (Kenneth Hamilton). The incarnation becomes the self–actualizing of God in human history. In the eschatological history of Jesus we see the anticipatory revelation of God, though the whole revelation is still ahead of us. In fairness to Pannenberg, he does recognize the dangers of a too heavy reliance on philosophy in order to explicate theological truth, and he rightly reminds us that every bona fide theology needs to be in dialogue with the great minds of the age if the truth of redemption is to be correlated with the truth of creation.


Donald G. Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior & Lord (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 68-69.


In times like these, my theologically educated wife has one word: "Pinheads!"


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## RamistThomist (Mar 24, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> Pannenberg is an odd duck. A staunch defender of the resurrection, he adopts the more typical modern nervousness toward the virgin birth, calling it an “aetiological legend.”
> [Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), p. 146].
> 
> If you are willing to listen to Donald Bloesch's judgment on the topic,
> ...



I am wondering if his hesitancy towards said doctrine has to do with a reticence to substance ontologies in general, with which I can understand. The reformed scholar Bruce McCormack noted that Chalcedon presupposed both a substance ontology and viewed the human nature of Christ instrumentally, as all deification soteriologies would.


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## ChristianTrader (Mar 25, 2013)

Cameronian said:


> DMcFadden said:
> 
> 
> > Pannenberg is an odd duck. A staunch defender of the resurrection, he adopts the more typical modern nervousness toward the virgin birth, calling it an “aetiological legend.”
> ...



Barth guys like McCormack make me nervous, no matter the subject.


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