RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Introduction to Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
A fantastic read, but ended in a let down. Pannenberg rightly suggests that a lot of our categories for doing systematic theology are perhaps at odds with the Hebrew narrative. Our understanding of God, for example, owes more to the quasi-heretic Origen's definition of God-as-mind (that is how Origen glossed "pneuma" in John 4:24ff), which raises problems when we discuss God's immutability, infinity, and other doctrines. Interestingly, and some EO guys won't like this, but John of Damascus and essentially everyone else in the ancient world followed Origen on this point. Glossing pneuma as spirit in the Hebraic sense offers new solutions.
Pannenberg follows some physicists in seeing spirit (human spirit anyway) as analogous to a field of force.
The Christology section was a let down. He did a great job emphasing the Hebraic-ness of Jesus but conceded to much to neo-Protestantism and didn't deal with the potential tensions in Chalcedonian ontology.
A fantastic read, but ended in a let down. Pannenberg rightly suggests that a lot of our categories for doing systematic theology are perhaps at odds with the Hebrew narrative. Our understanding of God, for example, owes more to the quasi-heretic Origen's definition of God-as-mind (that is how Origen glossed "pneuma" in John 4:24ff), which raises problems when we discuss God's immutability, infinity, and other doctrines. Interestingly, and some EO guys won't like this, but John of Damascus and essentially everyone else in the ancient world followed Origen on this point. Glossing pneuma as spirit in the Hebraic sense offers new solutions.
Pannenberg follows some physicists in seeing spirit (human spirit anyway) as analogous to a field of force.
The Christology section was a let down. He did a great job emphasing the Hebraic-ness of Jesus but conceded to much to neo-Protestantism and didn't deal with the potential tensions in Chalcedonian ontology.
