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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Religion is again a lively topic not only in practical-political life but also in social and political thought. The latter development is by far more surprising and intriguing than the practical-political relevance. For some time, political theory had ostensibly settled accounts with, or resolved the status of, religious belief: basically churches and religious movements were classified as one type of interest groups (or “input variables”) within a comprehensive liberal-democratic model — a model secular in character but not intolerant, within limits, of religious convictions. On the part of organized (especially Protestant) churches, the settlement was widely accepted as a means for securing both internal church autonomy and some influence in the political arena; the “social gospel” movement in particular saw faith chiefly as a leverage for advancing welfare and progress within secular society. To be sure, the optimism of the liberal settlement was severely challenged, and partly disrupted, by catastrophic events in our century as well as by radical theological criticism — a criticism highlighted in Richard Niebuhr's well-known phrase: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Yet, when carried to an extreme, theological criticism had the paradoxical effect of reinforcing the secular-liberal paradigm. Once religion was radically segregated from politics or the “city of God” from the “earthly city,” the latter was left entirely to its own devices; purged of all religious and millenarian considerations social and political theory could return to business as usual.
1 For an introduction to contemporary “political” or (more broadly) “practical” theology see Davis, Charles, Theology and Political Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Lane, Dermot, Foundations for a Social Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1984)Google Scholar; McCann, Dennis and Strain, Charles R., Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Theology (New York: Winston, 1985)Google Scholar; Metz, Johann Baptist, Faith, History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Browning, Don, ed., Practical Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1983).Google Scholar
2 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. (first German ed. 1983; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985)Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Anthropology.
3 Pannenberg, , Theology and the Kingdom of God, ed. Neuhaus, Richard John (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969).Google Scholar
4 Pannenberg, , Grundzüge der Christologie (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1964)Google Scholar; Jesus—God and Man, trans. Wilkins, Lewis L. and Priebe, Duane A. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968)Google Scholar; The Church, trans. Crim, Keith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983).Google Scholar
5 Pannenberg, , Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. McDonagh, Francis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Human Nature, Election, and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Ethics, trans. Crim, Keith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981).Google Scholar
6 Pannenberg, , Anthropologie in Theologischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), p. 7.Google Scholar
7 Pannenberg, , What Is Man?, trans. Priebe, Duane A. (first German ed. 1962; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar
8 What Is Man?, pp. 3, 10Google Scholar. Regarding philosophical anthropology see especially Scheler, Max, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1927)Google Scholar; Gehlen, Arnold, Der Mensch: Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (1940), 8th ed. (Frankfurt-Main and Bonn: Athenäum, 1966)Google Scholar; Plessner, Helmuth, Conditio Humana (1961; republished, Pfullingen: Neske, 1964)Google Scholar; also my “Social Role and ‘Human Nature’: Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology,” in Beyond Dogma and Despair (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 69–93.Google Scholar
9 Pannenberg, , Anthropology, pp. 12–16Google Scholar. In the above and subsequent citations I have partially altered the translation for purposes of clarity.
10 Anthropology, pp. 15, 19–21.Google Scholar
11 Anthropology, pp. 35–42.Google Scholar
12 Anthropology, pp. 45, 60Google Scholar. The reference is to Herder, John Gottlieb, Essay on the Origin of LanguageGoogle Scholar, in Rousseau, J. J. and Herder, J. G., On the Origin of Language, trans. Moran, J. H. and Gode, A. (New York: Ungar Publ., 1967)Google Scholar; also to Herder, , Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. Churchill, T. (New York: Bergmann Publ., 1966).Google Scholar
13 Pannenberg, , Anthropology, pp. 69, 85.Google Scholar
14 Anthropology, pp. 397–98Google Scholar. The reference is to Rothacker, Erich, Probleme der Kulturanthropologie (1942; second ed., Bonn: Bouvier, 1948).Google Scholar
15 Pannenberg, , Anthropology, pp. 399–414Google Scholar. The functionalist position is identified chiefly with the work of Durkheim, Malinowski and Parsons, while the intentionalist outlook is ascribed to Gehlen and symbolic interactionism.
16 Anthropology, p. 446.Google Scholar
17 Anthropology, pp. 449–50Google Scholar. In these passages, Pannenberg evidently seeks to steer a course between or beyond the orthodox Calvinist position of a corruptio naturae and the Thomistic notion of a wounded but redeemable nature (vulnera naturae).
18 Anthropology, pp. 450–52Google Scholar. Curiously, , AnthropologyGoogle Scholar devotes little or no space to the political conception of Thomas Aquinas. In my view, once Aristotle's stress on contemplation (of the divine) as supreme human telos is taken seriously, the Aristotelian polis does seem to allow for the kind of openness Pannenberg seeks in Christian, especially Augustinian, theology.
19 Anthropology, pp. 452–53, 472Google Scholar. The status of Augustine in the context of political theology, and especially the danger of a dualistic bifurcation of the two cities, are discussed in greater detail and with subtlety in Pannenberg, , Human Nature, Election, and History, pp. 67–71.Google Scholar
20 Anthropology, pp. 473–74.Google Scholar
21 Anthropology, pp. 475–76.Google Scholar
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23 Pannenberg, , Theology and the Kingdom of God, pp. 75, 77–78, 93, 101.Google Scholar
24 Anthropology, p. 483Google Scholar. The reference is to Tillich, Paul, Religionsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962).Google Scholar
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27 See Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (first French ed. 1966; New York: Vintage Books, 1973), pp. 379, 383Google Scholar; Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interpretations, trans. Bouchard, Donald F. and Simon, Sherry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), pp. 38, 42Google Scholar. Compare also my Twilight of Subjectivity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), pp. 21–37.Google Scholar
28 Pannenberg, , Anthropology, p. 350Google Scholar; What Is Man?, p. 20.Google Scholar
29 What Is Man?, p. 56Google Scholar; Anthropology, pp. 164–65, 241.Google Scholar
30 What Is Man?, p. 62Google Scholar; Anthropology, pp. 76, 79.Google Scholar
31 Anthropology, p. 70Google Scholar. The otherness of God and its implications for “prophetic” utterance are recognized even by a “poststructuralist” frequently unsuspected of religious leanings: Jaques Derrida. As he observed in an interview: “I mean that deconstruction is, in itself, a positive response to an alterity which necessarily calls, summons or motivates it. Deconstruction is therefore vocation — a response to a call. … I concede that the style of my questioning as an exodus and dissemination in the desert might produce certain prophetic resonances. It is possible to see deconstruction as being produced in a space where the prophets are not far away.” See Kearney, Richard, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 118–19.Google Scholar
32 Pannenberg, , Anthropology, pp. 528–532.Google Scholar