Chapter 6
In
Chapter 6, Pannenberg discusses the unity and attributes of the divine essence,
continuing his theological concern of identifying God as Christians understand
God. At the close of this discussion, I will have a brief reference to his use of
one of his other books. Karl Barth discusses the reality of God in Church Dogmatics Chapter 6, Volume II.I.
He will also discuss what it means for God to act, to act freely, and to act
freely as one who loves. After discussing the perfections of God, he will
discuss the perfections of divine loving in contrasting terms: grace and
holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom. He will also discuss
perfections of the divine freedom in contrasting terms: unity and omnipresence,
constancy and omnipotence, eternity and glory. Paul Tillich discusses the
reality of God in Volume I of his Systematic
Theology. He will discuss God as ultimate concern. He will discuss the
actuality of God as Being itself, as living, as creating in originating,
sustaining, and directing creativity, and God as related to the creature in
holiness, power, and love.
In
Section 1, Pannenberg discusses the majesty of God and the task of
rational discussion of talk about God. The inconceivable majesty of God means
our attempts to identify God will never fully capture who God is. God is
already near to those who ask and seek, as we see in Deuteronomy 4:29, Jeremiah
29:13-14 and Matthew 7:7. The end of history will reveal the unity of the
hidden and revealed God, for the course of history will always be ambiguous in
this regard. The unity of the Trinitarian God is the central theological
problem. He agrees with Aquinas that the undivided simplicity of the divine
being that results from the notion of Infinity, and therefore one can ascribe
to God the multiplicity of divine attributes only in the mode of undivided
unity. God is incomprehensible because of the notion of Infinite in relation to
God. The question for Christianity is whether such a statement is still true in
the context of its Trinitarian statements.
In Section 2,
Pannenberg discusses the distinction between the essence and existence of God.
He discusses John of Damascus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Aquinas. His particular
concern is that Aquinas appealed to the notion of God as “first cause” as a
proof for the existence of God. Gregory and Duns Scotus would focus on God as
Infinite rather than as first cause, and Pannenberg wants to follow them rather
than Aquinas. Descartes in his third meditation shows that the thought of the I
rests on an intuition of the Infinite. For this reason, he does not follow the
common assumption in the history of modern philosophy that he is the source of
modern subjectivism. He sees Locke and Kant as that source. The mistake
Descartes made was that he attempted to make this intuition a clear and
distinct idea of God. Rather, all he had done was demonstrate that an
unthematic awareness of the Infinite precedes all representations of the
finite. The intuition is a witness to the original presence of God with all
human beings and therefore to divine existence. In the tradition of John
Wesley, one might refer to it as prevenient grace. He disagrees with Paul
Tillich and John Macquarrie in avoiding the notion of divine existence and
throwing out the idea of God as “a being.” I should say that Peter Hodgson modifies
Tillich here, focusing on God as the power of Being, which becomes the power by
which finite things are. Every finite thing participates in this creative
power. When he discusses this power of Being as primal energy, it reads much
like what Pannenberg will say about his notion of field theory and the divine
energy. Hodgson also relates his vision of the divine to that of Teilhard de
Chardin. This will mean creation “out of the future,” the actualization of
possibilities. His point is that if God is this power of Being, then God is the
one who calls us forward into being and new possibilities of being. Yet,
admittedly at stake here is the personal language about God, which Hodgson
thinks is imprecise and likely wrong. Yet, God is “in some sense personal,” but
not a person. The power of God is the constitutive power of personhood.[1]
What Pannenberg will want to show is that God is an active presence in the
world as well as a power that transcends the world. He will rely on Hegel in
saying that essence (bringing us back to the theme of this chapter) must
appear. Yet, appearance in this time and place points to a reality that
transcends that only the future will fully disclose. Thus, in Jesus we have the
appearance of the future rule of God. Essence appears in time, becoming a
moment of the existence of God. The essence of God transcends finite things and
their world. He uses field theory in science to provide a way of understanding
this. The unlimited (infinite) field is identical to the nonthematic presence
of the Trinitarian God in creation. The Son reveals the Father. The Son reveals
the divine essence as love. The Spirit effects the communion of Father and Son
and is a gift to the people of God. He sees an analogy in how the self shows
itself in the I and in how the essence of the Trinity has its existence in the
persons of the Trinity. The field of the Infinite to which the human mind is
open does not yet have its definition as God, but of course, in the Christian
view, it will be identical with the Trinitarian God.
In Section 3,
Pannenberg will discuss the essence and attributes of God and the link between
them in action. He has already stressed that divine power is essential to
religious belief. The distinctiveness of the divine essence will need to show
itself in the works of God. The revelation of the name, the revelation that the
Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
the revelation of covenant righteousness, the revelation of God as eternal,
almighty, and holy, are qualities of the works of God. He will want to ponder
how this plurality relates to the unity of the divine essence. He goes to Hegel
for aid here in pondering the relation of essence and attributes. His point
will be that divine essence shows itself in the attributes. He wrestles with
the idea that the traditional distinction between the multiplicity of the
qualities of God and the multiplicity of the outward relations of the divine
led to the inner contradiction of God being separate from the attributes. For
him, this inner contradiction will form the basis of the projection hypothesis
of Feuerbach. Kant had already pointed to the anthropomorphic problem in
theology. Schleiermacher understood divine qualities as derived from human
experience. The notion of God as first cause is the culprit here. Theology
separated the essence of God from the causal relation of God to the world. His
point, however, is that all the qualities (infinite, eternal, omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, mercy, righteous, and love) are such only in relation
to the world, and not simply unrelated and transcendent. Hegel will stress that
the concept of essence is always in relation to something else. With the
introduction of relation into the concept of essence, Pannenberg wants to
revise the traditional notion of God. Peter Hodgson would seem to agree. God is
personal and communal in the sense that God is the one true and perfect person,
whose acts of love and freedom constitute divine personhood in three modes of
being or existence. Such modes are moments of relating, modes of being, and
shapes of acting. His point is that the absolute quality of God includes
relation, where the Father (I), Son (You), and Spirit (We as the
intersubjective social matrix of relation within God) form the Trinity. He
likens this notion to the dialectic in Hegel of identity (unity), difference
(separation), and mediation (reunification) that God includes within divine
life. The “play of love with itself” that occurs within divine life would be
non-serious did it not include the serious relation to the world and its
suffering. The world becomes an element of divine life and thus becomes the
“body” of God. The Spirit becomes the “power of Being” that creates and redeems
the world.[2]
For Pannenberg, while this notion raises problems, it offers opportunities to
solve other problems traditional theological notions raised. It allows for a
new discussion of the relation between the persons of the Trinity and between
divine essence and the Trinity. He appeals to Hermann Cremer and his discussion
of divine action. He focused on allowing the historical revelation of God in
Israel and in Jesus to teach us the identity of God. By choosing the end or
purpose of an action, one identifies with that end. The problem Pannenberg sees
here is that even the choice of love as shown in Jesus may be too
anthropomorphic.
Therefore, in
Section 4, Pannenberg will discuss the spirituality, knowledge, and will of
God. Common sense tells us that if God exists, God is a self-consciously acting
and personal being. Yet, such anthropomorphic notions received criticism from
Spinoza, Hume, Fichte, and Feuerbach. This led modern theologians to avoid such
language. He traces the movement of the biblical notion of God as Spirit to the
early Christian notion of God as mind (nous).
It led to an anthropomorphic view of God. Anselm would use psychological
analogies to explain the Trinity. The use of Aristotle in the middle ages made
it possible to think of God as supreme reason. All of this led to the
contradiction implied in choosing a goal, that God lacked something and
therefore needed to act with a goal in mind that would fill up the lack.
Further, the notion of a personal God seemed to place finitude in God. Such
criticism arose from the left-wing Hegelian pupils. For Pannenberg, Hegel did
have a balance of the transcending relations of the Trinity as the playing of
love with itself in relation to a world that has its independence and rights.
Creation is an act of freedom in Hegel. He also thinks Hegel promoted
personality in God, for the Absolute is person and subject. Hegel laid down the
condition for the freedom and subjectivity of the Absolute. Hegel viewed the
concept, that is, the true, infinite universal, as creative power that is
constantly realizing itself. He refers to the anticipatory nature of the
Hegelian logical categories, which opens the door for freedom and the
significance of the future. Such reflections can help us explain Trinitarian
relations, but they do not help us describe the unity of Trinitarian action
toward the world. He refers to the limits of applying human emergence of the
self from the Trinitarian relations, pointing to how human beings always
distinguish between I and the self and our self-consciousness. We are on the
way to our identity, but never fully possess it. In contrast, we can assume
that the relation of the persons of the Trinity mediates the fullness of their
identity. He grants Spinoza the point that to refer to divine intellect is as
metaphorical as referring to God as rock, light, or to the Word of God. The
knowledge of God means nothing in creation has escaped the attention of God.
The notion of the will of God derives from the human experience of a reality
that presses upon us with power. The orientation of this will is as creative
and life-giving Spirit. Pannenberg does not discuss the notion that we find in
classical and process theology of the will of God as primordial (what God wills
eternally) and the will of God as consequent (what God wills in light of
certain contingencies after creation).[3]
In Section 5,
Pannenberg discusses the concept of divine action and the structure of the
doctrine of the divine attributes. While the notion of action suggests a
singular subject, how can one apply the notion to the Trinitarian God? He
thinks he has shown that the Trinitarian persons are centers of action of the
one movement of the divine Spirit that embraces and permeates them. We need to
recall here his discussion of field theory. He wrestles with the nature of
divine action at this point. The divine action of creation has had the result
of intense suffering. The divine action of the history of salvation is also
full of suffering. Of course, for him, the clarification of divine action will
not occur until the end of history, in which we will find the revelation of the
deity of God as the Creator of the world. With divine action, the eternity of
God is present at all times. The goal of divine action incorporates the
creatures of God into the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. The goal is nearer
to God than its commencement. He points to the proclamation by Jesus of the
imminent rule of God as an example. This notion suggests the power of the
future as it impinges upon the present and provides the unity that past and
present do not have. His point is that the goal is already present in the rule
of God as proclaimed in Jesus. We can speak of divine self-actualization
because the identity of God is present in the spiritual and loving relations of
the Trinity, while we cannot legitimately speak of human self-realization
because human beings are always on the way to their self.
In Section 6,
Pannenberg will discuss the Infinity of God in holiness, eternity, omnipotence,
and omnipresence. What he is doing is replacing the traditional notion of God
as first cause, derived from Aristotle and promoted by Aquinas, with the notion
of the unthematic awareness of God to which he has pointed, based upon his
examination of Descartes and Schleiermacher. I should add that Gregory of Nyssa
based his notion of the incomprehensibility of God on the notion of infinity,
and Duns Scotus followed him in this. Robert W. Jensen discusses the Being of
God. He acknowledges that Christian theology developed at a time when Greek
philosophy discussed “Being” as a way to satisfy the longing of the mind for
absolute assurance and the transcendence of the surprises of time. He argues
that Christian theology needs to devise a Trinitarian concept of being,
pointing to Gregory of Nyssa as a mentor. For him, God refers to the mutual
action of the divine energies of the identities, and therefore to the
perichoretic triune life. Since all divine action is the singular mutual work
of Father, Son, and Spirit, there is only one such life and therefore only one
subject of the predicate “God.” The divine nature or Being is infinite, by
which he meant temporal infinity. The Bible would refer to this as the eternity
of God, which it also saw as the faithfulness of God. For Jensen, the Being of
God is the future of God. The Spirit brings the arrival of the future, but what
the Spirit brings is love.[4]
Thus, the modern philosophical notion in Descartes and Schleiermacher has
Christian connections. The point of Pannenberg here is that consideration of
the philosophical notion of the Infinite through the lens of Hegel can help us
understand certain biblical attributes of God. Thus, our first thought of the
Infinite is that it is in contrast to the finite. Through Hegel, we learn that
if all we do is contrast the Infinite and the finite, we place a limit on the
Infinite, which would be a contradiction. We can resolve the contradiction in a
Hegelian way by understanding that the true Infinite embraces the finite. He
then considers the biblical attributes of God as this philosophical notion of
the Infinite might enlighten. What he is doing is suggesting that this
non-thematic awareness of the Infinite can gain in clarity as we engage in
theological reflection. Let us consider the attributes of God that Pannenberg
thinks connect with the philosophical notion of the Infinite. As we do so, I
cannot help but mention that John Wesley (On the Omnipresence of God [Sermon
111] and On the Unity of God [Sermon 114]) draws this close connection between
the Infinite and Eternal and the attributes Pannenberg will discuss here. I
would especially point out that Wesley connects the holiness of God at this
point rather than a reflection of the “moral” attributes of God. One,
considering the Infinite as embracing the finite (Hegel), divine holiness is
separate from the profane, but also embraces it and brings it into fellowship
with the holy God. Two, the eternity of God opposes the frailty of the finite,
but is more than just endless time; it becomes the basis for our experience of
time. The path to the goal is time, suggesting again the primacy of the future
in our understanding of time. Boethius describes eternity as the perfect
possession of life. Eternity has a positive and embracing relation to time. I
would add that John Wesley (On Eternity, Sermon 54) seems to argue in the same
vein. He admits that it is not easy to determine what time is, even though we
use the word so much. Yet, time appears to be a fragment of eternity, broken
off at both ends, measured by the revolution of the sun and planets. Time is
between that which was before it and that which is to come. In the “end,”
brought by God, time will be no more, for it will sink into the ocean of
eternity. Wesley says the Creator has made us partakers in the Eternal, referring
to an ancient writer who referred to the human soul as a picture of divine
eternity. Of course, Wesley applies such thoughts in a practical way, saying
that the natural condition of human beings is to focus on the temporal rather
than the eternal. He refers to it as folly and madness to prefer present things
to the eternal. Our minds focus only on the portion of space and time that is
immediate, rather than recognizing their context as the Infinite and Eternal.
Returning to Pannenberg, all of this will oppose Heidegger and Sartre, both of
whom reflect on time while dropping its connection with the eternal. His point
is that we experience life with an anticipation of its wholeness. He uses the
example of hearing a melody, which has a sequence of notes, but we hear the
whole. Speech is a sequence of syllables, but we hear it as a whole. Three,
with the notions of the omnipresence and omnipotence, we can see the Infinite
as the presence and power of God as comprehending all things. The Trinity makes
the transcendence and immanence of God compatible. To turn aside from the
source of life is to fall into nothingness, while the omnipotence of God shows
that God can save the creature from the nothingness the creature chooses.
In Section 7,
Pannenberg will deal with the love of God. He shifts from the philosophical
notion of the Infinite and what it might say about the attributes of God to the
biblical witness to the revelation of the divine essence as love in Jesus. In
terms of love and the Trinity (a), he points to John 3:16, Romans 5:5ff, and
Romans 8:31-39. He also refers to Hosea 11:1ff, 14:8, Jeremiah 31:3,
Deuteronomy 7:8, 10:15. Further, in I John 4:8, 16, God is love. God and love
are identical ontologically. Love is the power or spirit that animates the relations
of the Trinity. If “spirit” is like the scientific description of field theory,
the divine Spirit is the power and fire of love glowing through the divine
persons, uniting them and radiating from them. The divine Spirit fulfills
itself as love. He makes the point that reflection on the relation of the
persons of the Trinity led to a relational understanding of the human being as
person. Of course, in the human arena, persons remain separate from each other
and the human I and the human self are different. Next, (b) Pannenberg
discusses the attributes of divine love, summarized in Exodus 34:6, Psalm
103:8, and 145:8. He discusses goodness and mercy, righteousness, faithfulness
(leaving room for becoming in God because time matters), patience (in moving
creation toward the saving purpose of God), and wisdom in divine governance of
the world (which is always in question due to the unreconciled nature of the
history). Next, (c) Pannenberg discusses the unity of God. The difficulty he
finds in believing Sections 6 and 7 is that the world and humanity do not in
fact correspond to the living will of the creator. The consummation of the
world in the rule of God will mean that divine love has reached its goal. On
the way to the goal of history, atheism remains a live option. Robert W. Jensen
will discuss our place in God by stressing that to have being is to be
knowable. He agrees with classical philosophy and theology that knowability
means participation. The transcendental concepts of unity, truth, goodness, and
beauty participate in all that “is.” Therefore, all that “is,” are true, good,
and beautiful. God is roomy, in a sense, in accommodating unity, truth,
goodness, and beauty to the reality of the creatures God has made. God has a
body in Jesus of Nazareth, in the church, and in the sacraments, and in that
sense, God accommodates us by becoming an object. In fact, human beings know
God only in this giving.[5]
Throughout Chapter
6, Pannenberg will refer to Chapters 4 and 5 of his Anthropology from a Theological Perspective. He refers to it in
order to show the similarity and the contrast between the growth of human
identity in the self and the identity of the Trinitarian God.
Pannenberg discusses
subjectivity and society. He points out that William James proposed his concept
of the social self, influenced by the ego psychology of Freud and influencing
the social psychology G. H. Mead. He wants to ponder whether the social world
is the place where the exocentric destiny of individuals becomes a reality and
where they establish their identity. He wants to explain the process of the
development of the ego or subjectivity as this takes place in the field of
social relations. The tension present in such studies is that while human
beings create the cultural world, they have an orientation to culture and
achieve their identity in cultural environments. He sees a tension between the
centrality and subjectivity on the one hand with the exocentric nature of human
behavior. He sees the tension between the destiny of individuals in the image
of God and the egocentricity that marks the living of their empirical lives.
While Marx painted an alienating relation between the individual and culture,
and Hobbes said human beings surrender their freedom to gain security, Locke
said people enter society to preserve their freedom. Kant thought human beings
had a natural inclination toward society. He views G. H. Meade as the starting
point of any nuanced discussion that the relation to the Thou constitutes the
ego.[6]
Pannenberg
explores the problem of identity. In the process, he discusses the ego and the
process of identity formation according to psychoanalysis. Historically,
classical psychology was analysis of conscious acts. In depth psychology,
unconscious impulses and specific motives affect human behavior. It did so with
the philosophical background of Nietzsche and Feuerbach and in concert with
behaviorism and existential philosophy. He focuses upon Freud, G. H. Mead, and
Erik H. Erikson. The portion of Freud that is important to him is that the ego
undergoes a process of development or formation marked by its processing of the
social environment. In Erikson, the development of the ego becomes a process of
identity formation in which at each new stage of integration of all vital
factors in an ego synthesis occurs. However, Pannenberg thinks we need a better
way to reflect upon the relation between ego and self. He grants that
initially, the process of identity formation takes the sameness of the self as
its point of departure. Only through this identity does the life of the
individual acquire constancy and stability. This identity makes possible the
formation of a stable ego that can only be the subject of behavior and a
subject of deeds. Identity makes possible reliability and accountability.
Identity formation is the process where the self and the ego form. The ego
remains a censoring agency. The cohesion and unity of the individual have their
basis in the self, not the ego.[7]
Pannenberg
discusses the personality and its religious dimension. Self-identification
occurs as we modify our social identity and integrate it into our projects that
will become our identity. Our identity is something we create and define in the
course of social interaction. He agrees with Erik H Erikson on the importance
of basic trust as something we must carry with us in life, even as it has its
source in our relation to the mother. Such basic trust opens us to the world.
Self-identification involves us in trustful self-opening to the world.
Identifying oneself always requires courage, appealing to Tillich’s notion of
the courage to be. We do not make a decision to have basic trust; basic trust
emerges from a process, the opposite of which is mistrust and anxiety that will
lead to deformation of identity. In relation to God, however, the element of
decision gains in its influence. Basic trust directs itself toward the
wholeness of the self. Such wholeness is the goal of our development. He refers
to Heidegger and Sartre in his consideration. The wholeness of the self finds
its present manifestation as personality. Person signifies this wholeness.
Boethius defined person as rationality, which set the stage for
self-consciousness as constituting the person. He wants to define personality
as the presence of the self in the ego. He finds it important that we consider
the temporal structure of wholeness. Heidegger would say that we could
anticipate wholeness by awareness of death through the call of conscience, even
though the actualization of such wholeness remains obscure. For Sartre, human
beings surpass the given in the direction of their totality. Each of us is an
ego at every moment of our existence. We are still becoming ourselves. Yet, we
also are ourselves now. Person establishes a relation between the mystery of
the still incomplete individual life history that is on the way to the special
destiny of the ego. Freedom is the real possibility of being myself, and thus
freedom and personhood belong together. He stresses the social conditioning of
personhood. Personality arises out of the relation to the Thou and to the
social world. The relation to the Thou and to the social world determines
personality. In a similar way, the self arises out of the mirror of the
appraisals and expectations of others. The reference to God arises out of the
theme of the wholeness of the self, as it shifts attention to that which
transcends the individual. Because of this relation, persons are free in the
face of their social situation. This relation frees us to be critically
independent to any given social relation. The self-assertion of the individual
against others and society may be the expression of a call to a more perfect
fulfillment of the human destination to community. The dignity of the person
suggests their divine destiny, a destiny that is the basis for the
inviolability of the person. The person is not at the disposition of others.[8]
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