Wolfhart Pannenberg

  Heidegger’s Confession, Ryan Coyne, 2015 This was a difficult read but also a rewarding one. It brought back some good memories of my early reading in philosophy. Glenn, your friend was right in identifying the book as a difficult read. I was not aware of the interest in either Paul or Augustine.    When I first read Heidegger, I thought of how much of his philosophy could be put into theological terms. What I now realize is that my thought would have been re-theologizing of Heidegger. If he is thinking of his version of existential philosophy as de-theologizing philosophy, I do not think he was successful. The notion of being thrown into existence contrasts with creation in the image of God and being-toward-death contrasts with the notion of eternity with God. His notion of the fallenness of Dasein through the temptation of inauthentic existence toward They, evidenced in everydayness, contrasts with the fallenness of humanity through the temptation to richer life in di...

¶ 1 First, I would like to consider the important role of existentialism as theology considers the nature of humanity. The issue in the Barth-Bultmann debate is whether Barth was right in saying that the role of existentialism in Bultmann is similar to that of a full-blown natural theology. His concern is that such an approach so heightens the thoughts and observations of human beings that it devalues our reliance upon revelation for knowledge of God. Congdon will say that Barth is quite wrong, and I would tend to agree. This debate has led me to re-visit existentialism. As important as philosophy has been to the history of theology, theology needs to be sure its engagement is a critical one. I will explore the way Bultmann, Barth, and Pannenberg make use of Heidegger and see what we can learn of a proper theological use of a philosophical perspective. The tie that Bultmann developed with existentialism was the reason Pannenberg thought Bultmann eclipsed Barth in the theologi...