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Pannenberg on the Resurrection and Historical Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

G. E. Michalson Jr.
G. E. Michalson Jr.
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio 44074
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Extract

Even the most casual observer of the contemporary theological scene knows that Wolfhart Pannenberg's theology relies heavily on the resurrection of Jesus as a genuinely historical event. The peculiarity of this is that a theologian who has accurately been called a ‘rationalist’ should so forthrightly embrace a claim that the entire thrust of post-Enlightenment theology has seemingly undermined. But Pannenberg himself contends that his reliance on the resurrection is not legitimated by the subterfuge of an existential ‘moment’ or ‘leap of faith’; instead, he argues for the acceptance of the resurrection on purely historical grounds. This argument implicitly rests on Pannenberg's conviction that ‘the truth is one’ and that the theologian's worst mistake is to cut the ties between theology and secular disciplines and modes of inquiry, a conviction that has recently received its most forceful statement in Pannenberg's Theology and the Philosophy of Science. This means that, insofar as belief in the resurrection of Jesus entails a claim about a past event, the standard methods by which we normally adjudicate claims about the past must be brought into play. Accordingly, the resurrection of Jesus is for Pannenberg not a ‘faith claim’, for ‘faith cannot ascertain anything certain about events of the past that would perhaps be inaccessible to the historian’. Instead, the resurrection of Jesus must be understood as the best historical explanation accounting for the New Testament witness and the rise of Christianity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , August 1980 , pp. 345 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1980

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References

page 345 note 1 Cobb, John B. Jr., ‘Wolfhart Pannenberg's “Jesus: God and Man’”, Journal of Religion XLIX (1969), p. 193.Google Scholar

page 345 note 2 Theology and the Philosophy of Science, translated by McDonagh, Francis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976).Google Scholar

page 345 note 3 Pannenberg, , Jesus: God and Man, translated by Wilkens, Lewis L. and Priebe, Duane (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), p. 109Google Scholar. Hereafter referred to as Jesus.

page 345 note 4 ibid., pp. 88–106.

page 346 note 1 Moule, C. F. D., ‘Introduction’, in Moule, (ed.), The Significance of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press, 1968), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 346 note 2 Pannenberg, , ‘The Revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth’, in Robinson, James M. and Cobb, John B. Jr., (eds.), New Frontiers in Theology, Vol. III (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 128Google Scholar, my emphasis. Jesus, p. 28.

page 346 note 3 ‘The Revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth’, p. 128.

page 346 note 4 Jesus, pp. 106ff.

page 347 note 1 ‘The Revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth’, p. 116.

page 348 note 1 Pannenberg, , ‘Redemptive Event and History’, in Basic Questions in Theology, Vol. I, translated by Kehm, George H. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), p.43.Google Scholar

page 348 note 2 Harvey, , The Historian and the Believer (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

page 349 note 1 Quoted by Pannenberg in ‘Redemptive Event and History’, p. 44.

page 349 note 2 Harvey, op. cit., p. 5.

page 350 note 1 Pannenberg is consistently critical of the Kantian element in most modern Protestant theology that underwrites such distinctions as ‘fact’-‘value’, ‘fact’-‘meaning’, or ‘objective’-‘subjective’. This attack on Kantianism and Pannenberg's explicit move toward a more Hegelian philosophical orientation help to account for the intimate and positive relationship between theology and historical inquiry in his thinking. See, e.g., Pannenberg, , ‘Kerygma and History’, in Basic Questions in Theology, Vol. I, pp. 81–95, esp. pp. 85–6Google Scholar. For further discussion, see Nicol, Iain G., ‘Facts and Meanings: Wolfhart Pannenberg's Theology as History and the Role of the Historical-Critical Method’, Religious Studies 12 (1976), pp. 129–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 350 note 2 ‘Redemptive Event and History’, p. 46.

page 350 note 3 ibid., p. 45.

page 350 note 4 ibid., p. 49n.

page 351 note 1 ibid., pp. 48–9.

page 351 note 2 ibid., p. 45.

page 351 note 3 Jesus, pp. 88–106.

page 351 note 4 ‘Redemptive Event and History’, pp. 46–8.

page 352 note 1 Jesus, p. 109; ‘Redemptive Event and History’, p. 50.

page 352 note 2 Peters, , ‘The Use of Analogy in Historical Method’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 35 (1973). pp. 475–482.Google Scholar

page 352 note 3 ibid., p. 480.

page 352 note 4 Pannenberg, ‘Response to the Discussion’, in Robinson and Cobb (eds.), op. cit., p. 264, n. 75. Quoted by Peters, op. cit., p. 481.

page 353 note 1 Peters, op. cit., p. 481.

page 353 note 2 For an interesting application of this familiar point to Pannenberg's theory of historical method, see Burhenn, Herbert, ‘Pannenberg's Argument for the Historicity of the Resurrection’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion XL (1972), pp. 368–379, esp. pp. 375–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 353 note 3 Joynt, Carey B. and Rescher, Nicholas, ‘The Problem of Uniqueness in Historical Inquiry’, History and Theory I (1961), pp. 150–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 353 note 4 Jesus, ch. 3, pp. 53–114.

page 354 note 1 ibid., pp. 97, 109, my emphasis.

page 355 note 1 ibid., p. 96.

page 355 note 2 ibid., p. 98, my emphasis.

page 356 note 1 ibid., p. 74.

page 356 note 2 ibid., pp. 74, 75.

page 356 note 3 ibid., p. 75.

page 356 note 4 ibid., p. 77.

page 357 note 1 ibid.

page 357 note 2 Strawson, , The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen and Company, 1966), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 358 note 1 Jesus, p. 73.