Wolfhart Pannenberg

  Introduction I read my first book by Hegel in 1973, under the guidance of Dr. R. Duane Thompson. Since then, I have returned to Hegel sporadically, reading and keeping his published books and lectures, though largely omitting the writings of the young Hegel. The persistence of my interest in him stems from a personal suspicion of easy answers. I resist having truth nailed down for the last time, in part because truth itself keeps moving. Hegel probes doubt and unsettles certainty. He persistently presses the question of what energizes human life beyond the merely instrumental—beyond money, power, and utility—toward the classical concerns of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, which find expression in the human activities of Art, Religion, and Philosophy. The synthesis Hegel achieved—his speculative philosophy that sought to unite opposites within a system elevated through negation—can fairly be said to be dead. He stands as witness to a reality of modern culture. It resists any attempt ...

Over the years, Friedrich Schleiermacher has become something like a friend. I know him only through his writings, and a little biography, but that has been enough to feel some kindred feeling with him. In Acts 17:28 we read, “In him we live and move and have our being,” a quote from a Greek poet that I think summarizes quite well the sense that Schleiermacher for religion. In this too long essay, I intend to explore On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1800) and The Christian Faith (1830), Sections 1-19. These parts of his writings are influential and controversial. Scholars will make the statement that one can mark the beginning of Protestant liberal theology with Speeches and its end with Barth when he wrote Romans (1922). His The Christian Faith set a pattern for modern theological reflection that continues to influence theologians today. Speeches is one of the classics in Christian theology. Jack Forstman, in a Forward he wrote to a translation of the book, d...