Wolfhart Pannenberg

            Everything reflects the glory of God at some level. Everything bears the image of God. A trace of the divine is present in the world, including nature and human civilization.             Yet, everything is also moving toward completion of what God intended. This means the fullness of creation, and the fullness of human life, lies ahead of us. We cannot look backward to some perfect time humanity fell from or an ideal to recover. We look forward to the new world toward which God leads us. It may well be that, as Leslie Weatherhead said in This is the Victory (1941, p. 40), the hope of the world is that God develops the plot of the human story, in which each person can play a part that could make this world happier while at the same time points to a further plan on another stage. In terms of the Christian understanding of this story, God has entered human li...

                We have the ability to shape our lives.             The way we use imagination to envision a possible future influences our future. It influences how we invest time, spend money, use talents, and value relationships.             Such images are life metaphors. Life is a puzzle; life is a journey; life is a minefield; life is a party; life is a game; life is a battle; life is a race.             One helpful exercise of the imagination is to reflect upon one's life, consider the pattern one has weaved with one's life, and consider what obvious subtle metaphors have already shaped one's life. We often have family metaphors that shape our lives in tacit ways. Too often, the metaphors by which we have lived our lives have deeply e...

                 This life is not all there is.             I want to be quite clear. God values this life. The process of evolution is long. It took a great deal of time to reach this moment of history. In terms of our individual lives, this biological entity has never existed before and will never exist again. Even if they could exist again, that biological entity would have a different set of experiences that would set it apart. This world is our home. We have a treasure, a unique gift, to share with others. If we follow God's plan, we will love this world in the way that God loves it; we will invest our lives in it the way God has invested in it.             Yet, we must not grasp or cling to this home as if it alone is our home. Our temporality suggests the eternal, out of which we carv...

                We need to uncover what motivates our behavior. Yet, we hear many voices. I want to mention just a few.               From a biological perspective, what drives us is the need for individual genes to reproduce themselves. At least, that is what Richard Dawkins tells us in The Selfish Gene (1976). Yet, genes must also cooperate with other genes in order to reproduce, in that they must survive in the same chromosome and cooperate for the survival of this unique body. We have a drive to preserve ourselves, while at the same time recognize that our survival depends upon our ability to cooperate with other people. We have a drive to select sexual partners that will provide a good home for our genes in the lives of children. Women have a drive toward males who invest in the care of their children. Males will have a drive to spread their gen...