Christianity Outside the Church: Pannenberg’s Public Theology in Dialogue with Max Stackhouse 1978715900, 9781978715905

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Christianity Outside the Church

Christianity Outside the Church Pannenberg’s Public Theology in Dialogue with Max Stackhouse Jae Yang

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S / F O RT R E S S A C A D E M I C

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Yang, Jae, 1987– author.   Title: Christianity outside the church : Pannenberg's public theology in dialogue with Max Stackhouse / Jae Yang.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "Jae Yang develops a Pannenbergian public theology by correlating Pannenberg's theological methods (postfoundational, eschatological, and trinitarian) with the aims and methods of public theology. He argues that Pannenberg’s public theology engages not just the academic world, but also the political, economic, familial, religious, and cultural ones”— Provided by publisher.   Identifiers: LCCN 2023050646 (print) | LCCN 2023050647 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978715905 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978715912 (epub)   Subjects: LCSH: Public theology. | Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 1928–2014.  Classification: LCC BT83.63 .Y36 2024  (print) | LCC BT83.63  (ebook) | DDC 230—dc23/eng/20231219  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050646 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050647 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Mom and Dad for your emotional, spiritual, and financial support. Thank you!

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1

Chapter 1: What Is Public Theology?



Chapter 2: The Public Theology of Max Stackhouse in Dialogue with Pannenberg Chapter 3: Public Theology in Pannenberg’s Method

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31

55

Chapter 4: Christianity Outside the Church: Pannenberg’s Public Theology 97 Conclusion

169

Bibliography Index

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187

About the Author



189

vii

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my doctoral advisors at Fuller Theological Seminary who were crucial for the publication of this book. Thank you to Dr. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen for introducing me to Pannenberg and comparative theology. Moreover, your encouragement and pastoral wisdom got me through the dissertation process. Thank you to Dr. Sebastian Kim for your keen insights and expertise on public theology. And thank you to Dr. Hak Joon Lee for introducing me to public theology and Max Stackhouse. I look forward to more hikes up Eaton Canyon in the future. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Dirk J. Smit at Princeton Theological Seminary who provided helpful critical insights as a third reader of my project. I want to thank my colleagues and mentors at Calvin University and the de Vries Institute for Global Faculty Department. Thank you to Dr. Matthew Lundberg for wisdom on integrating faith and teaching and for general insights on being a teacher. Thank you to Dr. Won Lee for helping me adjust to life at Calvin University, the snowy Grand Rapids, and kind exhortations on what it means to be a teaching professional. Thank you to my professors at Baekseok University in Seoul, South Korea, for introducing me to theological studies and the important teaching that “theology is more than just an academic discipline.” Thank you to JSL for your loving presence and support when I finished this book in Pennsylvania. The publication of this book was made possible through a Small Book Grant provided by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.

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NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY This monograph engages critically the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, known for its exact academic and rational argumentation, for its potential for engaging public issues beyond modern science. While Pannenberg’s theology can and has been described as “public theology”1 because of its desire to pursue the truth beyond the traditional spheres of spirituality and the church, it seems to focus more on theological, rational, and methodological concerns rather than on how theology concretely engages issues in the public sphere including economy, politics, and similar, and the role of the ethos in shaping respective spheres. In other words, it appears that Pannenberg’s Trinitarian, postfoundationalist, and eschatological theology2 centered on theological and methodological matters, appears relatively underdeveloped when it comes to the issues in the public sphere at large. Works about Pannenberg commonly refer to his theology as a “public theology.” However, the definition of “public,” possibly reflecting Pannenberg’s own intention, remains generic and universal.3 In fact, according to South African theologian Dirkie Smit, “Both those practicing public theology as well as those criticizing the notion of public theology often seem not to be altogether sure what they are referring to.”4 Robert Jensen, Richard John Neuhaus, and William Lane Craig, among others, all influenced by Pannenberg, offer their own account of theology’s relevance in the public sphere. However, for Jensen and Craig, public is seemingly reduced to science and apologetics; although Neuhaus helpfully identifies public with polis, the polis itself and what institutions, beliefs, and procedures, specifically constitutes it are not.5 Thus, my main resource for understanding Pannenberg’s public theology comes from the noted American public theologian and ethicist Max Stackhouse. I will read the work of Pannenberg through Stackhouse, particularly underscoring the former’s theology proper, ecclesiology, pneumatology, anthropology, and sphere-thinking, as indicative of a more robust public theology. 1

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Introduction

In the process, I will also critique Stackhouse’s relative lack of systematic theology and suggest that Pannenberg’s own theological views strengthen Stackhouse’s public approach, which incorporates a metaphysical and spiritual vision but not necessarily a robust theological one.6 Pannenberg’s corpus repeatedly insists on the relevance of a “Christentum außerhalb der Kirche.”7 In this monograph, I will consider and expand upon this “Christianity outside the Church.” Stackhouse develops his public theology using various spheres: family, politics, communication, economy, and religion, and their associated principalities, powers, energies, and institutions, which forms the ethos of societies, forms loyalties, and offers justifying mechanisms for theology in public. Thus, he provides a conceptual grid by which to organize Pannenberg’s position on the public nature of theology so that all spheres of life (not just the academic) may be accounted for. The study parallels Stackhouse’s understanding of religion-induced religion with Pannenberg’s universal history alongside the role of the church (as a voluntary association transcending family, clan, and tribe) as the first truly public space and the formative role of the Holy Spirit within in. Public theology has many definitions, for example, it works to provide warranted claims of Christian thought in public, discerns the role of Christian faith and convictions in forming society, and finds the hidden Christian roots in public life. Pannenberg is a public theologian, in the broadest definition, because of his view that theology is the queen of the sciences. That is, theology is the universal, primary, and all-encompassing knowledge (science) able to provide a universal framework, which includes and provides meaning for the specialized sciences. Theology is open to the human and natural sciences as providing provisional meanings relative to (and also justifying and warranting) the universal knowledge of theology. However, the weakness of this approach is that the public is seemingly limited to the rational or academic sphere.8 Therefore, his public theology, and secondary works describing his public theology, has primarily been about correlating theological thought with the modern sciences (epistemology) rather than the formative role of spheres, public society, and its institutions in their relationships with theology. In the interaction with public theologians, this monograph will also engage with philosophical discussions on the concept of “public sphere,” as compared to other kinds of spheres, such as suggested by Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and others.

Introduction

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TOWARD AN ASIAN AMERICAN PUBLIC THEOLOGY The monograph draws from these theological and ethical insights for a preliminary Asian American public theology of hybridity and liminality, which critiques the normative use of a White normative public reason in European scholars like Pannenberg and Habermas. That is, the public theology of Pannenberg is the framework for suggesting a “both/and” and “in-beyond” Asian American public theology, one in which the Asian American community provides spiritual, theological, formative, and perhaps even epistemological guidance, which forms how one behaves in public. An Asian American public theology takes place in a liminal space negotiating two spheres (the Asian and the American) closely resembling the particular/universal dialectic through the process of history (Pannenberg). The unity of the particular and the universal can rely on Pannenberg’s historical understanding of retroactivity to draw out the public implications of Asian American religion; thus, Asian American notions of hybridity and liminality take place and are established through concrete history and practice rather than presupposed prior to it. I note Korean concepts such as chi (spirit), jeong (affection), han (sorrow), and especially hyo (filial piety) as parallel notions of Stackhouse’s powers and principalities and utilize the resources of various public theologians and Asian American theologians to provide preliminary suggestions for a concrete Asian American public theology touching Asian American issues such as racism, immigration, and sexism, which, in the liminal space, deconstructs the absolutes of both the model minority myth, the perpetual foreigner syndrome, and the bourgeois public sphere. THE ARGUMENT This monograph argues that Pannenberg’s public theology, like his theology-at-large, is Trinitarian, postfoundational, and eschatological. Therefore, I will use these three frames to analyze Pannenberg’s doctrines of God, ecclesiology, anthropology, pneumatology, and spheres, and draw their implications for public theology. Through this, I will refine and expand Pannenberg’s public theology beyond the sciences and into spheres such as family, economy, politics, and the church, areas constituting civil society as a whole. That is, I’m arguing that the Trinitarian, postfoundational, and eschatological method fit the interests and criteria of public theology such as its desires for inclusiveness, theological claims publicly warranted, and finding the incipient theology already present in the current society.

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Introduction

But the monograph focuses not just on Pannenberg’s method as it applies to the specific spheres of public theology, but also on how such spheres and the ethos form the people, values, and institutions inside it. For this task, Pannenberg’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit is helpful. Similarly, the relationship among various spheres of civil society alongside the ontology of the whole, will be explained. This will parallel Stackhouse’s understanding of globalization as a part/whole dialectic as it interacts with principalities and powers. According to Émile Durkheim, “anomie” exists in the modern West because “the former gods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born.”9 In fact, a pseudo-religion of individualism has taken its place.10 As global society is characterized by polarization and seemingly irreconcilable differences, public theology can contribute toward not only bridging the sacred/secular divide, but form moral, spiritual, and intellectual Christians promoting unity and reconciliation. My contention is that the increasing polarization, and its often forceful and uncompromising rhetoric, reflects insecurity in a postmodern and relativist context. My hope is that my research will rediscover the relevance of Christian ideas and values in the public space and form public Christians who provide the spiritual, moral, and intellectual guidance the global community, needs. PANNENBERG AND MOLTMANN ON PUBLIC THEOLOGY Finally, I want to note Jürgen Moltmann and his “political theology.” As Pannenberg and Moltmann are contemporaries, in age, in theology, and in reputation, Moltmann’s view of faith in public life provides insights and a clarifying of Pannenberg’s own position, which I call a public theology. The term “political theology” can apply to Moltmann who uses theology to correct “the privatization of bourgeois religions,” and challenge “the political status quo.”11 However, public theology gives more weight to a more inclusive civil society, not the political, as the primary site of social change and moral renewal.12 The more conservative Pannenberg is content with a retroactive view in which history, more-or-less, progresses in the way it was destined to, encompassing all of history and society in the process. Pannenberg, it seems to me, wants to discover and find the theology already active (and inevitable) in the public world, whereas Moltmann wants to do theology within it. Interestingly, based on Moltmann’s recent self-identification as a public, not a political, theologian, Scott R. Paeth argues that Moltmann has a broader definition of political theology than simply state action and includes the political, economy, civil society, and family institutions.13 Paeth then analyzes

Introduction

5

and critiques Moltmann’s so-called public theology. First, there is limited analysis of how institutions interrelate with the larger civil society.14 Second, there is no clear definition of public theology.15 Third, public theology is never divorced from political theology because “the question of who rules is fundamental to Moltmann’s conception of Christian responsibility.” In other words, Christian hope insists that Christ rules at every level of society for “our allegiance is fundamentally to Christ’s kingdom, and only provisionally to any earthly reign.”16 The discussion of Moltmann’s political (or public) theology reveals several important characteristics of the kind of public theology I envision for Pannenberg. First, it should concern civil society and its institutions, not just the political. Second, although the roles of spheres and institutions and their interweaving in civil society, and a clear definition of public and public theology, remains undeveloped, there is much in Pannenberg’s magnum opus and his corpus to construct such a system. Third, unlike Moltmann’s practical and action-oriented political theology, Pannenberg, like public theology, is largely apologetic in character, one of the four attributes of public theology Hak Joon Lee describes as a reasonable, dialogical, and non-hegemonic defense of the Christian faith employed for the “betterment of a common life.”17 THE PLAN OF STUDY The monograph begins with chapter 1, which is entitled “What is Public Theology?” The primary purpose is to provide background information on what public sphere and public theology are and how scholars have defined and applied the term. Thus, this information provides an initial framework by which to compare and contrast both Stackhouse and Pannenberg’s notions of public and public theology while noting how the latter two thinkers are influenced by and carry forward the task of public theology. Then some concrete examples of public theology will be discussed. The chapter will also define and engage similar concepts including civil religion, political theology, comparative theology, and liberation theology along with discussion of sociology and secular thinking’s insights on the private/public debate in relation to religion. Chapter 2 is entitled “The Public Theology of Max Stackhouse.” This chapter explicates Stackhouse’s system of public theology, noting especially his sphere-centric view of public society and his particular concern for political-economy, globalization, and covenant. The chapter will also explicate Stackhouse’s theology, including his perspective on the three graces of Christianity and how it provides the metaphysical worldview necessary in his system while critiquing this relatively undeveloped theology

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Introduction

and supplementing it with the theology of Pannenberg and others. Using Stackhouse’s notion of spheres, I also provide some work into how public theology is concretely done within them, both in Stackhouse and by other theologians. The purpose of chapter 3 is to explicate the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg in two senses. The first is discerning Pannenberg’s general theological methodology, Trinitarian, postfoundational, and eschatological, and how they fit the concerns and criteria of public theology. My initial observation on these methods is on, like public theology, their transversal potentialities, that which crosses the boundaries separating the sacred and secular, and past, present, and future. The second is engaging Pannenberg’s doctrines pertaining to the doctrines of God, ecclesiology, pneumatology, and anthropology while offering initial comments, to be more fully explicated in chapter 4, for their use in public theology. Alongside of discerning Pannenberg’s theology, a corollary task will be tracing his intellectual influences, particularly as it relates to the idea of the public sphere. Chapter 4, entitled “Christianity Outside the Church: Pannenberg’s Public Theology” is the heart of the monograph. I begin by explicating how Pannenberg understands the notion of public by looking at his doctrines of revelation, the history of religions, true-infinite, and the Trinity. I then provide concrete examples to argue that Pannenberg engages in public theology as it relates to the history of religions (arguably more important) and modern science. Regarding the former, it can be argued that Pannenberg engages in either a “theology of religions” or a “comparative theology.” Thus, utilizing the methodology and insights of both and demonstrating how it can be public theology, I seek to construct a Pannenbergian notion of public theology as it relates to religions, which is particularly important in the contemporary multicultural world. Regarding the latter, I argue that theology and science engagement is a foundational tenet of public theology and draw on Pannenberg’s own thoughts and examples on the matter. I then draw on subsequent theologians/scientists who expand on Pannenberg and compare and contrast Pannenberg’s theological methodology with the scientific one and apply him to other sciences. It must be noted that more recent scientific study qualifies and often discredits Pannenberg’s use of science. However, as public theology is not just about content, but the act and attempt to find commonalities (both content and method) between the theological and secular disciplines, Pannenberg’s task of public theology needs not be discredited. But this chapter also goes beyond the two senses of Pannenberg’s public theology indicated above and expands it to include public society as a whole. It takes the frame of Stackhouse’s notions of spheres, powers, and principalities, and also globalization and covenant, and fills it in with Pannenberg’s views found

Introduction

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in his corpus, drawing on the notions of natural law, anthropology, mutuality, and equality. Interspersed throughout the monograph, I offer thoughts on “Asian American Public Theology.” I critique Stackhouse and Pannenberg and the White normative use of public in order to develop an Asian American understanding of particularly the family sphere, particularly the notion of filial piety. How would an Asian American understand family and how does the Asian American church form individuals toward these values? I consider the worldviews and philosophes that form Asian Americans (Eastern thoughts such as the communal Confucianism, but also Western thoughts such as individualism) and conclude that Asian American Christians formed in the Asian American church, always negotiating their Western and Eastern impulses, have the potential to be peacemakers in broader society. I will also take a look at concepts of liminality and hybridity in this discussion. After all, the Asian American church is not just a religious institution, but a place where persons are formed for public life. NOTES 1. Theodore James Whapham, The Unity of Theology: The Contribution of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), xviii. 2. Jae Yang, “Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Postfoundational Ecclesiology,” Ecclesiology 16, no. 3 (2020). https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1163​/17455316​-01601006. 3. Helpful is Pannenberg’s discussion on the philosophy of religion and specifically the philosophical concept of the true infinite as a unitive concept. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol 1–3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1997). Hereafter abbreviated as ST. The reference here is ST 1, 63–118. 4. Dirkie Smit, “What Does ‘Public’ Mean?,” in Christian in Public: Aims, Methodologies, and Issues in Public Theology, ed. Len Hansen (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, 2007), 11. 5. Richard John Neuhaus, “Theology for Church and Polis,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 226–38. 6. Philip Ziegler recommends Stackhouse develop a more “robust account of divine identity and divine agency cognizant of the possibilities afforded by the prevenient publicity of the God of the Christian gospel.” Philip Ziegler, “God and Some Recent Public Theologies,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4, no. 2 (2002): 137. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/1463​-1652​.00077. 7. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ethik und Ekklesiologie: Gesammelte Aufsätze. Band 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 188.

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8. Covering only the academic sphere of David Tracy’s three-fold view of identifiable publics: church, academy, and society. David Tracy, “Theology as Public Discourse,” The Christian Century 92 (1975): 280–84. 9. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religions Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), 429. 10. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 427. 11. John de Gruchy, “From Political to Public Theologies: The Role of Theology in Public Life in South Africa,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester, ed. William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Mortin (London: T &T Clark, 2004), 47. 12. Hak Joon Lee, “Public Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, ed. Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 55. 13. Scott R. Paeth, Exodus Church and Civil Society: Public Theology and Social Theory in the Work of Jürgen Moltmann (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 11–12. 14. Paeth, Exodus, 12. 15. Paeth, Exodus, 13. 16. Paeth, Exodus, 15. 17. Lee, “Public Theology,” 49–50.

Chapter 1

What Is Public Theology?

This chapter defines the term “public theology” as developed by specialists in the field. Prior to this task, however, the first sections aim to provide historical background on the development of the public sphere. According to one definition, the public sphere involves an: [E]volved, democratized, interpretation of a modern humanist commitment to the production of self-directed, consciously shaped, futures. Conditioned by the historical appearance of demands for political rights of equal and atomized individuals in a mass society, it is a mode of interaction guided by a learnt conviction that in principle equal, but in fact relatively powerless, individuals can give concrete shape to the hope for an autonomous, self-determining life as a shared project. The public sphere refers, then, to processes of rational consensus-formation whose normativity is tied to a democratic interpretation of the aspiration towards self-shaped futures in an egalitarian and pluralistic age.1

I will look at both secular and theological approaches. POLIS AND OIKOS To trace the development and conceptualization of the public sphere the word “public” requires a definition.2 The most natural place to start is ancient Greece and their understanding of polis. The polis, the common arena of all free citizens, existed alongside oikos or the private affairs of the household. According to Aristotle, there was no distinction between the polis and the res publica, the public and the state. He defines polis, under the heading politike koinonia (Latin: societas civilis), as the “public ethical-political community of free and equal citizens under a legally defined system of rule.” This community is defined not only by laws but also by an ethos of common norms and values that informs both political procedures and forms of life based on virtues and forms of interaction.3 9

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One notices a nascent civil society in ancient Greece, for public life (bios politkos), takes place in the marketplace (agora), involves discussions such as consultation and law (lexis), and facilitates common actions such as war or athletic games (praxis).4 The polis, “The community of communities,” is constituted by various smaller associations as community-minded human beings coalesce around familial, economic, judicial, and military spheres.5 However, the plurality presupposes “a single, homogeneous, organized solidary body of citizens capable of totally unified action.”6 As such, Aristotle: Understood that the free males of Athens could be treated as equal citizens even when they held different understandings of the good life. The public domain of equal citizenship was the place where different understandings of the good life were to be debated and argued about. The public sphere was the forum where a working idea of the common good was to be forged.7

The public in ancient Greece features characteristics found in contemporary public theology. Namely, the public as a society of diverse spheres, and the spheres as ethological and formative habitats. However, Greek society is far from the pluralistic, autonomous, and democratic nature of modern civil societies. On the other hand, the private (oikos) is the natural background of the polis.8 The master’s public status is determined by his total sovereignty and domination over the slaves and women of his household. The private is the realm of obligation and the transitory; the public, one of freedom and permanence.9 The lack of legal status in the private sphere, alongside Aristotle’s identification of the state and civil society, precludes an independent civil society of private persons. The Hellenistic identification of state and public more or less persisted until the late medieval period as the locus of sovereignty pluralized beyond the city-state (polis) to feudal units such as patrimonial rulers, corporate bodies, and towns, and eventually universities, hospitals, guilds, and trading associations.10 These new independent associations added complexity to the earlier, strictly political conception of public.11 According to Habermas, an autonomous, and bourgeois, public sphere emerged with the rise of the modern state. Nevertheless, the “classical” Greek notion of publicity as the organizational principle of the political order continues to be influential today.12 THE DEFINITION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE The German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas casts a large shadow on the conception of the public sphere. This section will summarize and critique his “bourgeois” understanding of the public sphere that idealizes a

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post-Enlightenment period in which the private and public spheres were bifurcated. I will dialogue Habermas with alternatives such as the poststructuralist approach of Nancy Fraser and the theological approaches of Lisa Cahill, Jürgen Moltmann, and Max Stackhouse. Habermas starts Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) with representative publicness present in feudal society. The feudal powers of church, prince, and nobility were the representations of sovereign power, staged in public symbols such as insignias, dress, demeanor, rhetoric, and a noble code of conduct, whose task was not to govern but to embody a sense of status. Their lordship was “not for but ‘before’ the people.”13 The transition from feudal lords to bourgeois citizens was precipitated by the economy, the internationalization of trade, and mass communication as the former powers were unable to regulate or manage the breadth and depth of industrialization. What emerged were the middle-class, the bourgeois, forming a public sphere constituted by the press, coffee shops, literary salons, meeting houses, theaters, and museums conscious about the common good.14 According to Habermas, “The bourgeois public sphere may be considered above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public,” using public reason (öffentliches Räsonnement) to engage in a “debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”15 Habermas’s own summary provides some orientation on the distinction between private and public, civil society and public sphere: The line between state and society, fundamental in our context, divided the public sphere from the private realm. The public sphere was coextensive with public authority, and we consider the court part of it. Included in the private realm was the authentic “public sphere,” for it was a public sphere constituted by private people. Within the realm that was the preserve of private people we therefore distinguish again between private and public spheres. The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labor; imbedded in it was the family with its interior domain.16

That is, the private realm of everyday life is constituted by civil society, the domain of the family, and commodity exchange; the realm of public authority includes the state (and the police) and the courts. The public sphere is a mediating space constituted by individuals discussing and debating matters of public interest.17 I see civil society and the public sphere as interchangeable as I do not exclusively identify government and public authority with the notion of public as Habermas appears to do.18 In fact, the very task of public theology is to

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expand the public beyond the political and the state and into society-at-large. Civil society need not be “private” when contrasted with the public state but can also constitute the Habermasian “public sphere” as a space of public discourse and engagement. I assume that civil society and its institutions, including the family, all constitute a public sphere composed of the free, reasoned, and voluntary participation of individuals relatively free from direct governmental coercion.19 Habermas argues that the subjectivity crucial for the public sphere, a “right to autonomy” of the human being as a moral person, originates in the conjugal family which creates “so to speak, its own public.”20 Like Jean Cohen, who sees civil society as various associations and publics including the family,21 I follow Max Stackhouse who identifies five spheres of civil (public) society: family, polity, culture, economy, and religion22 which go beyond a Habermasian communicative rationality to consider an ethos driven by dynamic “powers,” which: [D]rive the formation of civilizations; each “power” is organized by institutional clusters shaping primary norms and common ends, which we call “spheres.” Each sphere has a distinct role in today’s social and historical life and functions more or less in accord with its own pattern of “best practices”; yet each interacts with every other sphere to form a society guided by a central faith-based worldview and an implicit ethos.23

I also identify with Sebastian Kim’s definition of civil society as one aspect of the broader public sphere, which also includes the state (politics/governments/parliament), the market (economics, banks, business, companies), the media (broadcasting, publications, internet), the academy (higher education, research institutes), civil society (NGOs, interest groups, local communities), and religious communities (institutionalized religions, religious orders).24 COMMUNICATIVE RATIONALITY AND A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE To Habermas, the rational-critical discourse in the public sphere among free people rests on three sets of basic rights. First, the right to engage in rational debate (the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association); second, the right to personal freedom grounded in the intimate sphere of the conjugal family; and third, the right to freely exchange private property and goods in civil society.25 The first right is particularly evident in the communicative rationality, with its warrants, he expounds upon in a later work.26 He inherits Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of instrumental rationality to view persons

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not as a means-to-an-end but as ends in-and-of themselves. This approach of communicative rationality modifies Kant’s universal principle of “respect for others” to underscore, relative to Kant, communication, intersubjectivity, and praxis.27 Despite Habermas’s view of the Christian church as an archaic institution of representative publicness, his notion of communicative rationality in the public sphere and the growing instrumental rationality has contemporary theological relevance.28 For instance, Jürgen Moltmann mourns over the modern technological age, which instrumentalizes and rules over the earth (dominum terrae), resulting in the current ecological crisis and the dehumanization of human beings.29 Moltmann’s diagnosis of “the global marketing of everything”30 shares Adorno, Horkheimer, and Habermas’s pessimism regarding the instrumentalization of contemporary life. But the former’s theology of the imago Dei conceives human relationality, discourse, and openness not on a presupposed Kantian ideal but on the open and communicative Trinitarian and eschatological nature of God. As Paeth suggests, Moltmann “subordinates, but does not repudiate, the Kantian, deontological accent present in Habermas (and Rawls) to an eschatological transformation teleology”31 so that the motif of openness resembles a Habermasian discourse ethic.32 Similarly, Lisa Cahill argues that Habermas abstracts communication, equality, and Western political and philosophical traditions as regulative ideals.33 Her Aristotelean-Thomistic counter begins from the particular, that is, experiences of shared bodily experiences such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, pleasure and pain, and kinship shared by people, especially women, of the majority non-Western world.34 Pannenberg, similarly, underscores the importance of concrete history. His doctrine of revelation denies a static and unchanging abstract truth, but insists on revelation as a historical process in which ideas are debated, discussed, and refined, through critical debate. Furthermore, his anthropology and the constitution of human beings as ego, self, and person discerns relationality within the human, thus, communication is not only interpersonal but intrapersonal.35 As in Moltmann, the Trinity funds the communicative and relational logic including the Holy Spirit as an exocentric power transcending the inherent finitude of human beings and their reasoning. A theological approach to civil society and the public sphere shall be mindful of the communicative logic of Habermas, but ground it in a theology that does not idealize Western rationality. Instead, it shall look to the Trinitarian logic of openness, which bears out in the historical process. The concrete underscores the body and the values and ethos of particular communities that form and shape them, vis-a-vis the Spirit. Theology challenges Habermas’s idealization of human rationality in the bourgeois public sphere—a critique

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first discerned by his advisors Adorno and Horkheimer, and recovers the public nature of religion and theology, which he dualistically privatizes. Habermas, at least in his early work Structural Transformation, sees religion as an authoritarian feudal institution of representative publicness and endorses the post-Enlightenment secularization thesis and the gradual privatization of religion, that is, private religion as contrasted with the public state and even the mediating public sphere.36 Locating the origins of public society in literary salons, the press, meeting houses, and museums, he, unfortunately, misses Max Stackhouse’s keen insight that religion, and Protestant churches in particular, were the earliest covenant-formed and egalitarian public associations going beyond one’s immediate family, ethnic culture, or political territory.37 In other words, religion and its metaphysical worldview, not human rationality, spread and continues to spread democracy, human rights, and globalization in public. A theological approach may in fact be more consistent with Kant who requires a categorical imperative given by a divine law-giver. While the mature Habermas is more receptive of religion in public, his use of religion is highly secularized and rationalized, akin to a moral force, a kind of civil religion that is tolerated to further an otherwise secular telos, rather than a theology responsible to particular communities in the eschaton. Advocating a worldview of “creation,” which does not deny the mechanics of human reasoning and the sciences, Stackhouse writes, “All human sciences ought to be conducted in the service of a truth and righteousness greater than the constructions of the strong or the smart at any given movement of developmental flux.” In fact, denying a metaphysical-moral foundation does damage to biology, the cosmos, and sociocultural development as it fosters an “illiterate scientism” deprived of symbols, art, literature, and poetry.38 FEMINIST AND ASIAN AMERICAN CRITIQUE OF HABERMAS An obvious critique of Habermas (and public theology, which depends on Habermas’s views on public) is on the assumed universal access of the bourgeois public space. Dialogue and public participation are options only for those who have financial and educational privilege to participate in public discussions. For those who lack access, their primary concern may simply be on surviving and existing. Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser recognizes communicative rationality for its potential to seek wider identity descriptions and needs including women’s perspectives.39 However, Habermas separates the lifeworld and system; the informal private realm of women and the public realm of men are

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“ideological rationalizations” that are “androcentric and ideological.”40 Fraser proposes, for use in egalitarian democracies, not one normative public sphere as Habermas suggests, but multiple centers of “subaltern counterpublics” where “subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”41 Elsewhere described as “proletarian public spheres,” they blur strict, and gendered, divisions between the private and public to recognize so-called “private” events such as childbearing, factory work, and watching television as public. These are proletarian public spheres opposed to the public sphere of the bourgeois ruling class.42 Following this, Esther McIntosh diagnoses a “hidden crisis in public theology,” for works published as “public theology” are mostly affiliated with White men. She asks, “why female theologians are not referred to or do not refer to themselves as public theologians,” and “why male public theologians appear to be unconcerned by the lack of women’s voices in this field.”43 McIntosh illustrates her own work on the theological legitimizing of domestic violence against women. According to McIntosh, “Domestic violence, and its apparent theological rationalization, is clearly both a theological and a public issue”;44 the canon of public theology is seemingly uninterested in so-called “women’s issues.”45 In this context, it is helpful to consider Carol Hanisch’s well-known statement that “the personal [or private] is political” and thus requires a “public” hearing.46 What are some potential solutions that can dissolve the public/private split and the marginalizing of women to the latter? In a 2014 essay, Nancy Fraser argues that Habermas presupposes a “Westphalian political imaginary,” which assume nations with territories and borders and the two ideas of “normative legitimacy” and “political efficacy.” But this imaginary may no longer be relevant in a globalizing world run by markets and corporations.47 She suggests “transnationalizing the public sphere” because “interlocutors are not fellow members of a political community, with equal rights to participate in political life. And it is hard to associate the notion of efficacious communicative powers with discursive spaces that do not correlate with sovereign states.”48 What would this transnational public sphere look like? One solution is to “redraw publicity’s boundaries by applying the all-affected principle” so that members of a public do not necessarily share citizenship but a “common set of structures and/or institutions that affect their lives.”49 Thus, the civil society of spheres proposed by Stackhouse is helpful for a globalized, or transnational, understanding of public life. McIntosh lauds public theology’s mission to “speak truth to power,” but also notes that justice cannot be achieved through gender-neutrality in a supposedly gender-free public sphere. For example, the Black Lives Matter movement was started by women because “the black liberation movement

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was dominated by black, heterosexual, cis-gender men. . . . Likewise, fighting for the impoverished in the face of a government intent on pursuing an austerity agenda . . . must include a critique of the disproportionate effect that such cuts have on impoverished women.”50 McIntosh notes well-known feminist theologians such as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Jacquelyn Grant, Delores Williams, Mercy Oduoye, and Kwok Pui-Lan as conversation partners not commonly dialoged with in public theology.51 I attribute the paucity to the generally conservative lean of public theology that works within the status quo rather than trying to subvert it. Thus, public theology itself as a genre may need a more radical, creative, pragmatic, and provisional critique when speaking of God in the contemporary context.52 That is, a transnational understanding of public. As it relates to the transnationalizing (and perhaps even “privatizing”) the public sphere, perhaps the Asian diaspora can be underscored. For this diaspora not only shares institutions and structures, but a transnational cultural bonding. The Asian American subaltern counter public is a potential alternative to the White, rationalized, bourgeois, and nationalized, normative space. These spaces provide safe spaces for Asian Americans, caught in the liminal space of being neither White nor Black,53 to find meaning in public discourses appropriate to Asian American contextual and bodily experiences, both private and public, such as family, race, faith, gender, model minority myth, perpetual foreigner syndrome, and community. For Korean Americans, in particular, concepts such as han (sorrow), jeong (affection), and hyo (filial piety) could be utilized. This monograph will selectively engage Asian American themes and its relevance for a public theology. The Asian American church, in particular, as a public space can have public transformative potential for society-at-large. Similarly, Rosemary Radford Ruether speaks of a “transnational feminism” that builds solidarity networks between women of first and third world nations to speak on issues of women’s rights and reproductive agency against the contemporary forces of neo-liberalism and religious fundamentalisms.54 PUBLIC THEOLOGY Public theology shares the same basic commitment of similar methodologies, such as political theology, civil religion, liberation theology, and comparative theology. That is, a desire to communicate Christian beliefs in the public sphere. However, the strongly Anglo-American approach of public theology has three main emphases: civil society, plurality, and overt Christian beliefs. Relative to political theology and liberation theology, which are arguably millenarian (radical transformation of society anticipating God’s

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future Kingdom) and revolutionary (liberation from oppression), the more moderate public theology aims at gradual and moderate transformation and the moral renewal of civilization through social consensus achieved through societal and personal institutions and vocations, a civil society. Whereas the more radical approaches are arguably obstinately confessional, public theology seeks dialogue with secular sciences and worldviews in order to gain warrant and acceptance in the diverse public sphere. Public theology does not regard so-called secular values such as reason, technology, bureaucracy, science, constitutionalism, human rights, and democracy as intrinsically evil, but seeks to harness and guide “them with a proper theological vision and ethical perspective.”55 Public theology seeks gradual transformation with the basic understanding that civil society is distinct from, but can include, the state and the political realm. But unlike civil religion, public theology presupposes overt Christian beliefs rather than a vague religiosity that provides an abstract sense of transcendence. According to Max Stackhouse, the word public is comprehensive and cannot be reduced to mere matters of state and the political realm.56 The next section will trace the origins of public theology and define its goals and methodologies as developed by Duncan Forrester, John de Gruchy, Harold Breitenberg, and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, among others. Chapter 3 will then specifically discuss Stackhouse’s public theology. DEFINING PUBLIC THEOLOGY The first overt use of the term “public theology” is attributed to Martin Marty.57 According to Marty, public theology conceptualizes, interprets, and guides experience and behavior embodied in religious groups and the nation [theology] with “reference to the situation [public].” On the one hand, Edwards, Bushnell, and Rauschenbusch do public theology from the perspective of the church. On the other hand, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson use deistic or theological materials to understand the American social ethos.58 To Stackhouse, the American social ethos includes the “self-evident” truths such as the perversity of sin, and the providential care, truth, and justice of God.59 Public theology, which makes theological sense of the American experience seems to suggest a civil religion. However, to Marty, the American statesmen neither subordinates theology to the social realities like civil religion nor to the political authority like political theology.60 That is, public theology speaks on public and situational issues from an interested and particular religious and theological tradition.

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David Tracy, another pioneer of public theology, adds the academic sphere to the two publics already mentioned, the church and society.61 For Tracy, fundamental theology is appropriate for the academy (using rationality that is universally communicable and considers metaphysical questions and universal human religious experiences), systematic theology is appropriate for the church (interpreting the symbols, doctrines, and texts of a tradition that, although particular, achieve genuine publicness as classics and thus convey meaning and effects personal and social transformation), and practical theology is appropriate for society.62 Linell Cady is critical of Tracy’s multi-public approach. To her, the three publics possess different understandings of both “public” and “reason” that “are not readily assimilable.” She identifies the methodological problems of the spheres, for instance, the false universality of reason in the academic sphere, and the over determination of hermeneutics in the church sphere.63 Therefore, a more adequate public theology recognizes “the necessary and legitimate influence of a particular tradition [systematic theology and the church public] in theological reflection without abandoning the need to criticize and reformulate that tradition in fundamental ways [academic public and fundamental theology].”64 It seems to me that her integrative approach does not recognize the cooperative and dialogical intra-public potential of Tracy. According to Duncan Forrester one does not occupy one public at a time, but is simultaneously present in all three. Moreover, the modes of all three publics (for instance, celebratory mode of “reverence” in the church and a critical mode of “rigor” in the academy) are necessary, to varying degrees, in any specific one of the three.65 Public theology, I argue, strives not for one integrating and universal public, but a singular theological perspective whose theology interacts and dialogues with various publics and their methodologies and basic assumptions rather than synthesize them. Duncan Forrester Established in 1984 at the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) is the world’s first research center on issues pertaining to public theology, theologically discusses public issues such as politics, law and justice, interreligious dialogue, environment, peacebuilding, and the arts.66 On public theology, the founding director of the center, Duncan Forrester, comments: Theology and the problems of the world have tended to drift apart, as theology has sometimes seen the academic world as a refuge from relevance. . . . We clearly need to develop a theology which is neither deductive nor inductive, but

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which grows out of a dialectic between the tradition and the praxis of those who are involved in endeavouring to transformation the situation.67

Public theology, according to Forrester, makes a “modest but truthful, constructive and challenging contribution to public debate, and beyond that, one hopes, to human flourishing in community,” particularly looking for “theological fragments” “where people are hurting, where there is conflict, where there are seeds of vision and of hope.”68 To withdraw from such public debate would seriously impoverish theology.69 Andrew Morton describes Forrester’s approach to public theology as a “seamless robe” dulling the sharp private/public distinction; his is a “full-spectrum evangel.”70 Thus, theologizing is public advocacy in an open forum to persuade others of the gospel.71 The church is public not just because it’s audience is receptive to theological works, but because it is a dialogical forum of differences striving for advocacy and attentiveness.72 Moreover, Forrester identifies two contrasting approaches to public theology, the topdown magisterial approach of the powerful and the bottom-up liberationist approach of the powerless. Recognizing the divide that separates most societies into the powerful and the weak, Forrester’s approach is closer to the second by focusing on fragmented issues of practicality and flashes of knowledge, rather than from a unified methodological approach.73 Heather Walton, who borders upon “distaste for most of what appears under the heading ‘public theology’”74 identifies Forrester’s gendered sequestering of women’s issues to the private sphere. Public theology, according to Forrester, is not the “in-house chatter or domestic housekeeping of a sect concerned with its inner life.” Thus, Forrester is complicit in the Habermasian model and “the dangerous binary it reinscribes.”75 Moreover, the fragments of the Christian narrative can actually be received as “jagged fragments” that are “sharp, wounding and bloody.” That is, the Christian tradition’s legacy of “homophobia, gynophobia, domestic abuse, sectarianism.”76 Therefore, McIntosh’s recommendation is apt. Tracy’s three public spheres can be expanded to include the home and encourage deliberation on issues such as discrimination against women.77 While McIntosh is generally appreciative of public theologians and public theology institutions, she remarks that “if public theologians genuinely seek to reflect on public issues of contemporary importance, they must critically reflect on their own positions of [male] privilege and power.”78 Therefore, it is important to contextualize the following descriptions of de Gruchy, Breitenberg, and Bedford-Strohm with these concerns in mind. That is, heed Walton’s prescription for a destructive, poetic, and transcendent public theology that not only evokes a “discourse that restores memory, speaks voices that have been silenced and which turns to artistic and creative

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mediums,”79 but also an “unmanageable transcendence” that is largely absent in public theology.80 John de Gruchy, Harold Breitenberg, and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm Speaking from the South African context, John deGruchy identifies public theology as “good praxis,” that is, “good theory and practice.”81 He suggests seven theses on public theological praxis, which resonate with the commonly articulated definitions and attributes of public theology.82 First, good public theological praxis underscores values important for the common good. Second, it develops publicly warranted language that is accessible both beyond and within church walls. Third, it fosters informed knowledge of public issues and policies. Fourth, it is interdisciplinary in character and intertwines both content and process. Fifth, it has a prophetic preferential option for victims and survivors and the restoration of justice. Sixth, it requires an actively worshipping church community formed by biblical and theological reflection. Seventh, it requires a vibrant spirituality connected with God, people, and creation. American Harold Breitenberg necessitates, contra civil religion, a “transcendent reference,” then considers three different types of public theology.83 The first type describes particular theologians or clergy as public theologians, for instance, studies on Calvin, Edwards, and Bonhoeffer and their engagement with public issues. But Breitenberg discourages this type as it “bypass[es] descriptive and normative questions about public theologians and public theology per se” and introduces confusion on the boundaries and definitions of public theology.84 Previous studies on Wolfhart Pannenberg’s public theology, which identifies him as a public theologian in a highly generalized sense, can be identified as this first type of public theology. The second type underscores the definition, method, and parameters of public theology itself rather than the biography and ministry of public theologians. Breitenberg argues that “this collection of literature includes some of the best known, most influential, and most often cited works in the field.”85 The third type is identified as “constructive” public theology, a “theologically grounded and informed interpretations of and guidance for institutions, interactions, events, circumstances, policies, and practices, both within and outside the church.”86 That is, constructive public theology is done by public theologians applying the definition and methods of public theology in concrete situations. This monograph on Pannenberg’s public theology is, arguably, this third type of constructive public theology as I develop Pannenberg as a public theologian using definitions of public theology conceptualized elsewhere.

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Regarding a definition of public theology, Breitenberg follows the commonly shared views of de Gruchy, Kim, Forrester, and others that it (1) is religiously informed discourse that is intelligible to adherents and non-adherents; (2) pertains to issues relevant to both the religious community and larger society; and (3) utilizes insights, methods, warrants, and language that is universally accessible. Thus, public theology is “theologically informed public discourse about public issues,” addressed to the religious community and to larger publics, “Argued in ways that can be evaluated and judged by publicly available warrants and criteria.” Public theologians, on the other hand, “Seek to communicate, by means that are intelligible and assayable to all, how Christian beliefs and practices bear, both descriptively and prescriptively, on public life and the common good and in so doing possibly persuade and move to action both Christians and non-Christians.”87 Thus far, the focus has been on the public aspect of public theology. Naturally, the question turns to what the theology looks like. German Lutheran theologian Heinrich Bedford-Strohm describes six aspects of public theology: biblical-theological, bilingual, interdisciplinary, competent political direction, prophetic, and inter-contextual.88 Public theology, Bedford-Strohm argues, must be spiritually grounded in the biblical and confessional traditions of the Christian faith and interpreted by the church community. In fact, the public ethical profile must not come at the cost of the spiritual profile. Ultimately, the Christian biblical and confessional tradition is “not only a resource for spiritual regeneration, but also for public witness in ethical questions concerning everybody.”89 TOPICS IN PUBLIC THEOLOGY The monograph has considered definitions of public theology and the methodologies proposed by select thinkers. I now want to briefly consider specific issues as it relates to the application of public theology: environment (and feminism), social justice (and race), and bioethics. Sebastian Kim’s chapter on eco-theology provides examples on how churches and theologians combat climate change and the ecological crisis. One approach is how churches and ecumenical organizations combat climate change directly, whether through the World Council of Churches and its program “Justice, Diakonia and Responsibility for Creation” or the “Evangelical Call to Action” in which 280 American evangelical leaders drafted a statement on climate change.90 Another approach is “social ecology,” which seeks to liberate creation in a manner similar to liberation theologies by connecting the social, ecological, and theological.91

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Another notable example is eco-feminism which is a crucial area for transnational and feminist interreligious work. According to Ruether, “ecofeminist theology” discerns religion’s complicity in interconnecting the “domination of women and domination of nature [by men] in a mutually re-enforcing relation,” but also draws upon said religious traditions for ecological healing.92 This can “contribute to justice between men and women, between ethnic groups and towards a sustainable relationship between humans and the rest of nature.”93 A similar idea is “eco-spirituality” in which the Holy Spirit is understood as pervading all of creation, not just Christianity and its institutions or its personalist accounts of salvation, in order to dialogue and include the spiritualties of other faiths to “personify and sacralize nature” to help the environment.94 After all, a public theology of eco-theology is important as it “reflects the cosmic vision of the Bible.”95 Another relevant topic in public theology is social justice. Nicholas Sagovsky notices how theology’s role in public has shifted from a public rationale for the later Roman Empire and Christendom, and as a prophetic critique against the autocratic regimes of the twentieth century, to the modern day role to theologically support institutions and states publicly committed to social justice.96 The middle of the twentieth century and the need to establish the contours of public justice following the demise of totalitarian regimes led to the establishment of a public theology with interest in establishing a definition of justice. This includes “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948) and its particular concern for two human rights, “Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion,” and “Freedom of opinion and expression.” Another definition of justice comes from John Rawl’s Theory of Justice, which “concerns what is fair to all and the demands thus made on each individual” through “well-informed, open debate within a ‘deliberative democracy’ and ‘overlapping consensus.’”97 So what is the role of theology in justice to ensure that all peoples have inalienable rights and allowed to participate in democratic dialogue and debate? Sagovsky provides examples of public theologians of justice: John de Gruchy in South Africa and the Kairos Document in which Black South African theologians theologically critiqued apartheid; the Church of England’s support of social justice through incremental change and working with the democratic structure and institutions of the state; Catholic Social Teaching addressing “all men of good will” in public with the key themes of “human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and dialogue, together with a specific concern for the poor.”98 Sagovsky concludes, the task of public theology “demands strenuous, self-critical, intellectual and political engagement in the public sphere in the service of the gospel,” which “echoes precisely the public, missionary task as seen by Paul.”99

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Esther McIntosh addresses “racial, gender, and sexual equalities in public theology” by noticing how the “canon” of public theologians are predominately White men who rely on a Habermasian notion of the public sphere and universal reason, which excludes marginalized groups.100 Thus a public theology of racial, gender, and sexual justice requires “questions of power and authority that are central to feminist and other liberationist theologies” that “takes place outside of official church documents and academic publication.”101 This includes issues such as domestic violence and a “feminist critique of the Christian motif of self-sacrifice, and a focus on black theology and queer theology.”102 Another issue related to justice and public theology is human trafficking, which is estimated to have enslaved between 12.3 million to 27 million people.103 Letitia Campbell and Yvonne Zimmerman remark that human trafficking is commonly and popularly viewed as the sexual exploitation of women and girls. The authors desire that public theology first ask, “What is going on?” prior to any concrete action, understanding “the ways in which trafficking is framed and described—the words used, the images invoked, the stories told or implied . . . in order to make more explicit the moral and theological assumptions at work in public conversation and debate . . . and anti-trafficking advocacy.”104 For viewing human trafficking as “sold sex” “reduces human trafficking to sex-trafficking and, in the process, downplays situations for forced and exploited labor—situations that sometimes involve sexual abuse and exploitation, as well—and simultaneously reinforces a problematic conflation of sexual purity and virtue.”105 Their theological response is to underscore “the common good, mutuality and respect, and accountability” to develop a “contextually based public theological response to human trafficking.”106 Still another topic of public theology is health care and bioethics. Frit de Lange’s article “Public Theology and Health Care” identifies health care as the historical “key domain” where the Christian church was publicly engaged.107 Perhaps the most famous “public theologian” of health care is Albert Schweitzer, but in my own Korean context, I note Horace Allen, the first Protestant missionary in Korea, an American ambassador to Korea, a doctor, and the founder of the first Western hospital (now a part of Yonsei University). Modern hospitals emerged out of a Christian conviction to practice God’s care, but modern-day health care is a secular enterprise dominated by the natural sciences and technologies, which have uprooted themselves from their Christian origins. According to de Lange, Christians should “constantly remind the health care sector—easily colonized by the powers of money and market—at this divine compassionate care, as the original ‘why’ and ‘what for’ of our care for human bodies and minds.”108 Public theology that works with the tools, ideas, and methodologies of secular spaces

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is particularly urgent in health care because medicine is highly specialized and literally a matter of life and death. Therefore, fluency in such matters is necessary.109 Therefore, de Lange notes two contributions public theology can make to health care, asking and answering the questions “what is health?” and “what is good care?”110 Finally, theology can provide philosophical and moral grounding to the theme of bioethics. Lisa Sowle Cahill’s article “Public Theology and Bioethics” is consciously focused on a global public theology of bioethics. Therefore, in addition to ethical and theological questions related to new biotechnologies in the West (such as cloning, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and others), she is inclusive in terms of ethnic, race, class, and gender addressing issues such as climate change, poverty, violence, access to biotechnologies, and economic and political policy.111 For example, Roman Catholic Tina Beattie critiques liberal arguments on abortion for its dependence on the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous and rational individual. This belying the relational, that is, Trinitarian, understanding of the Christian person.112 To Cahill, theological appeals must be sensitive to contexts which necessarily vary, particularly in the Global South. For instance, the Catholic pro-life agenda could be more credible if “attended to a range of interrelated issues, linking abortion with poverty and inadequate family support programs, health care, and education; and with forms of violence like the death penalty and war.”113 Similarly, New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs) can be “Janus-faced.” On the one hand, empowering women to have children without male partners, especially in the West, on the other hand, exploiting women who may sell eggs to afford basic sustenance, especially in the South.114 Rather than seeking to address topics directly or coercively, public theology works within the system in a spirit of dialogue. This will be discussed further in the chapters on Pannenberg’s public theology. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC THEOLOGY Contemporary public theology, as it incorporates much of its understanding on public and the public sphere from Habermas and his understanding of communicative rationality and dialogue, is subject to the same criticisms as those directed at Habermas. That is, the naïve view that the public sphere is entirely neutral and universally accessible. The vision of public theology is rooted in hope, that parties of initial fundamental disagreement are able to communicate. However, hope is a luxury for those privileged with the time, money, and health to have the patience for dialogue. For the marginalized

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whose lives are mere existence and surviving, hope seems to be navel-gazing. As Elaine Graham writes: Many of the same processes that gave birth to modernity’s elevation of public reason, impartial and non-contingent subjectivity, and models of the free, self-actualizing autonomous agent facilitated by the formation of liberal democracy, were not actually neutral or universal; but highly gendered. They rested on binary representations of women and men’s differential nature; and they conceived of differential and gendered division of labor which often precluded women’s claiming full humanity, let alone full and active citizenship.115

Moreover, as Graham remarks, “[Public] theology may not necessarily find expression in academic treatises but in other, more performative styles, such as liturgy, creative writing, drama or music.”116 Indeed, the bulk of public theology is done in academic circles, a sphere that is dominated by White males. Cahill’s focus on the bodily rather than the ideological certainly has potential for a public theology that seriously considers the lifeworld of women. Recovering and constructing public spaces for Asian Americans can involve a sustained focus on Eastern philosophies and the Confucian worldview, which underscores relationships relative to the individualistic ethic of Western Kantianism. Andrew Sung Park’s analysis on the “other side of sin,” the oppressed victims of sins relative to the oppressor, reveals an Asian American public theology focused on the notion of suffering (han), which in turn has application to all marginalized communities. Thus, according to Sebastian Kim, the major limitations and criticism of public theology are: The lack of clear and concrete meaning of “public”; that the issues concerned are too broad and therefore it lacks the necessary expertise and a focused approach; the lack of a consistent theological methodology; the lack of a clear stance on justice for the poor and marginalized; and, as we discussed above, the struggle between the tension of keeping Christian distinctiveness and creating a shared platform for a common conversation.117

These criticisms lead to my conclusion that public theology is more a field of public theologies, an orientation and a movement with methodological criteria to foster study but nimble enough to reflect the diversity and often vague nature of public in-and-of-itself. The task of the next chapter is to specifically discuss the public theology, the public and the theological aspect, of Max Stackhouse, its similarities and differences with the parameters and definition of public theology just established, to provide a concrete point-of-reference and framework to construct Pannenberg’s public theology, particularly as it relates to global civil society.

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NOTES 1. Pauline Johnson, Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1. 2. For an in-depth discussion of civil society see Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). 3. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 84. Also cited in Scott R. Paeth, Exodus Church and Civil Society: Public Theology and Social Theory in the Work of Jürgen Moltmann (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 115. 4. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 3. 5. Paeth, Exodus, 115. 6. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 85. Also cited in Paeth, Exodus, 115. 7. David Hollenbach, The Common Good & Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 11. 8. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 84. 9. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 3–4. 10. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 85. See also Paeth, Exodus, 115. 11. Paeth, Exodus, 115. 12. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 4. 13. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 8. Habermas writes that the feudal lord’s position was not comparable to the private authority of the oikodespotes or the pater familias in the ancient Greek household. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 5. 14. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 3–51. 15. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 27. 16. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 30. 17. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 30. 18. Nancy Fraser discerns two types of public/private separations in Habermas. One is at the system level, between the state or public system and the capitalist economy or private system. The other is at the lifeworld level, between the private space of public opinion, and the public space of political opinion. Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory?,” in Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, ed. Johanna Meehan (New York: Routledge, 1995), 21–56. 19. Contra Hegel who sets the private family apart from civil society and more along the lines of Gramsci who sees the family as one of many institutions of civil society. See Paeth, Exodus, 127–28. 20. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 46. 21. Jean Cohen, “Interpreting the Notion of Civil Society,” in Toward a Global Civil Society, ed. Michael Walzer (New York: Berghahn Books, 1995), 37. 22. Max Stackhouse, God and Globalization, vol. 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007), 41–45. 23. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 41. 24. Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press, 2011), 11–13.

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25. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 83, 26. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). 27. See Lisa Cahill for Kant’s influence on Habermas in relation to discourse ethics and communicative rationality. See Lisa Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 40–45. 28. Hak Joon Lee holds that Habermas’s philosophy of communicative action has Christian parallels. Hak Joon Lee, introduction, in Covenant and Communication: A Christian Moral Conversation with Jürgen Habermas (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 9. 29. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 135. 30. Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 223. 31. Paeth, Exodus, 161. 32. As Paeth notes, Moltmann does not directly engage with Habermas on discourse ethics. But others have, including Hyun-Sook Kim and Gary Simpson. Sources found in Paeth, Exodus, 158. 33. Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics, 41–42. 34. Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics, 57. 35. For full articulation of ego, self, and person see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia: The Wesminster Press, 1985), 191–242. 36. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 11. 37. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 49. 38. Max Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy (Lanham, MD: University Press, 1991), 19–20. 39. See summary of Fraser in Pauline Johnson, Habermas, 154–56. See Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory,” 21–57. 40. Fraser, “What’s Critical,” 31. 41. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 123. 42. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. Peter Labanyi, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Assenka Oksiloff (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), xliii. 43. Esther McIntosh, “Public Theology, Populism and Sexism: The Hidden Crisis in Public Theology,” in Resisting Exclusion: Global Theological Responses to Populism, ed. Simone Sinn and Eva Harasta (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2019), 215. 44. My emphasis. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 215. 45. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 219. 46. Quotation found in McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 215.

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47. Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World,” in Transnationalizing the Public Sphere, ed. Kate Nash (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014), 10. 48. Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere,” 9. 49. Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere,” 9. 50. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 220. 51. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 223. 52. Heather Walton, “You Have to Say You Cannot Speak: Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 21. 53. See Gary Okihiro, Margins & Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). 54. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Feminist Theology: Where Is It Going?,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 17–18. 55. Hak Joon Lee, “Public Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, ed. Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 54–56. 56. Max Stackhouse, “The Pastor as Public Theologian,” in The Pastor as Theologian, ed. Earl E. Shelp and Ronald H. Sunderland (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1988), 113. 57. Max Stackhouse, “Civil Religion, Political Theology and Public Theology: What’s the Difference.” Political Theology 5, no. 3 (2004): 283. 58. Martin E. Marty, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience,” Journal of Religion 54, no. 4 (1974): 333. 59. Stackhouse, “Civil Religion,” 284. 60. Stackhouse, “Civil Religion,” 284. 61. The publics that the theologian addresses are: “the wider society, the academy and the church.” David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 3, 5. 62. Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 31, 132. 63. Linell Cady, “A Model for Public Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 80, no. 2 (1987), 195–96. 64. Cady, Public Theology, 196. 65. Andrew Morton, “Duncan Forrester: A Public Theologian,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Ducan B. Forrester, ed. William Storrar and Andrew Morton (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 32. 66. According to the official website found at https:​//​ctpi​.div​.ed​.ac​.uk​/about​-us/ 67. https:​//​ctpi​.div​.ed​.ac​.uk​/about​-us/ 68. Duncan Forrester, “Working in the Quarry: A Response to the Colloquium,” in Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester, ed. William Storrar and Andrew Morton (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 431–38. 69. Duncan Forrester, On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality (London: SCM Press, 2001), 72–74. 70. Morton, “Forrester,” 26. 71. Morton, “Forrester,” 26. 72. Morton, “Forrester,” 30.

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73. Morton, “Forrester,” 35. 74. Walton, “Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” 22. 75. Walton, “Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” 31. 76. Walton, “Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” 33. 77. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 219. 78. McIntosh, “Public Theology,” 219–220. 79. Walton, “Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” 34–35. 80. Walton, “Feminist Reflections upon Public Theology,” 36. 81. John de Gruchy, “Public Theology as Christian Witness: Exploring the Genre,” International Journal of Public Theology 1, no. 1 (2007): 27. 82. I refer to Minseok Kim’s doctoral dissertation on John Calvin’s public theology in the Korean context, which provides a good outline and summary of the seven theses. Minseok Kim, “John Calvin as Public Theologian? Reading Calvin’s Theology in the Light of Contemporary Discourses in Public Theology with Reference to the Korean Context,” PhD diss. (Stellenbosch University, 2020), 63–65. 83. Harold Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?,”Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23, no. 2 (2003): 58. 84. Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth,” 63. 85. Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth,” 63. Britenberg references David Tracy’s The Analogical Imagination, Ronald Thiemann’s Constructing a Public Theology, Linell Cady’s Religion, Theology, and American Public Life, and Robert Benne’s The Paradoxical Vision as examples. 86. Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth,” 63. 87. Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth,” 66. 88. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, “Engagement Für Die Demokratie,” in Position Beziehen: Perspektiven einer öffentlichen Theologie (München: Claudius Verlag, 2012), 122. Translation provided by Dirkie Smit, “Does It Matter? On Whether There Is Method in the Madness,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 71. 89. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, “Nurturing Reason: The Public Role of Religion in the Liberal State,” in Liberation Theology for a Democratic Society: Essays in Public Theology, ed. Michael Mädler and Andrea Wagner-Pinggéra (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2018), 40. 90. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 58–59. 91. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 62. 92. Ruether, “Feminist Theology,” 20. 93. Ruether, “Feminist Theology,” 19. 94. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 73. 95. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 75. 96. Nicolas Sagovsky, “Public Theology, the Public Sphere and the Struggle for Social Justice,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 251. 97. Sagovsky, “Public Theology,” 260–61. 98. Sagovsky, “Public Theology,” 264–68. 99. Sagovsky, “Public Theology,” 268.

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100. Notable exceptions include Nico Koopman, Sebastian Kim, Linell Cady, and Elaine Graham. See Esther McIntosh, “‘I Met God, She’s Black’: Racial, Gender and Sexual Equalities in Public Theology,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 302–3. 101. McIntosh, “I Met God, She’s Black,” 303–4. 102. McIntosh, “I Met God, She’s Black,” 306. 103. Letitia M. Campbell and Yvonne C. Zimmerman, “Forced Labor and the Movement to End Human Trafficking,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 271. 104. Campbell and Zimmerman, “Forced Labor and the Movement to End Human Trafficking,” 272. 105. Campbell and Zimmerman, “Forced Labor and the Movement to End Human Trafficking,” 273. 106. Campbell and Zimmerman, “Forced Labor and the Movement to End Human Trafficking,” 287. 107. Frits de Lange, “Public Theology and Health Care,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 325. 108. de Lange, “Public Theology and Health Care,” 325. 109. de Lange, “Public Theology and Health Care,” 326. 110. de Lange, “Public Theology and Health Care,” 327. 111. Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Public Theology and Bioethics,” in A Companion to Public Theology, ed. Sebastian Kim and Katie Day (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 370. 112. Tina Beattie, “Catholicism, Choice and Consciousness: A Feminist Theological Perspective on Abortion,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 62. 113. Cahill, “Public Theology and Bioethics,” 386. 114. Heather Widdows, “The Janus-Face of New Reproductive Technologies: Escaping the Polarized Debate,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 77–79. 115. Elaine Graham, “What’s Missing? Gender, Reason and the Post-Secular,” Political Theology 13, no. 2 (2012): 234. 116. Graham, “What’s Missing?,” 304. 117. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 25.

Chapter 2

The Public Theology of Max Stackhouse in Dialogue with Pannenberg

This chapter discusses the public theology of Reformed ethicist Max Stackhouse. He shares many similarities with the proposals of the previous figures; thus, this section aims to note similarities where appropriate while underscoring Stackhouse’s unique contribution to the field, namely, his focus on the spheres of society; ethos and powers and principalities; political economy; covenant; and globalization, drawing preliminary parallels to Pannenberg when appropriate. Another way to organize Stackhouse and his public theology is through five themes: (1) “Covenant, Natural Law, and Human Rights”; (2) “Social Pluralism and Social Justice”; (3) “Christian Responsibility for Society”; (4) “Economic and Political Realism” and (5) “Christian Ethics in a Global Era.”1 I will consider Stackhouse’s theology, particularly his understanding of the three graces of Christianity that provide the theology necessary in his ethical system. I will also critique aspects of Stackhouse’s theology I find relatively underdeveloped. For instance, pneumatology in his treatment of powers and principalities, and ethos (and similarly the Spirit as a public, not necessarily private entity) and eschatology2 in discussing globalization by noting similarities with Pannenberg and using the theology to supplement Stackhouse. PUBLIC THEOLOGY ACCORDING TO STACKHOUSE Broadly speaking, Stackhouse understands public theology as ecclesial concern (theology) and global reach (public).3 Therefore, theology provides public guidance not only for Christians, but also acts as a persuasive moral and evaluative framework, a “warranted discourse,” for those holding alternative 31

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“social, philosophical, or religious” presuppositions.4 Public theology identifies universal criteria and warrants to “guide public behavior, influence public policy, or shape public discourse on social and ethical matters.”5 Pannenberg assigns theology a rational and critical function as the “queen of the sciences.” Similarly, Stackhouse sees theology as not just private religion but an evaluative, coherent, and critical tool about divine reality that is warranted and publicly comprehensible due to common grace.6 When religion speaks to society solely on confessional grounds, it risks being reduced to “simply another interest group.” Therefore, religion requires a “graceful intellectual amplitude that allows us to debate the ultimate issues, in public discourse, with those who do not already agree with us.”7 Whereas Pannenberg appears to hold theology as publicly viable insofar as it is an intellectually coherent prolepsis of the eschatological Kingdom of God, Stackhouse appears to see ethics as constitutive, not just demonstrative, of truth. Theology, Stackhouse writes, “Will give guidance to the structures and policies of public life. It is ethical in nature. The truth for which we must argue must imply a viable element of justice, and its adequacy can be tested on that basis.”8 Elsewhere he writes: Theology and ethics are mutually supportive, even necessary to teach other. Still, we must acknowledge the validity of the modern insight that the two are analytically distinct in a way that allows them to correct one another. Thus, we may use ethics to assess the assumptions and implications of every theologically approved and dogmatic claim. We may demand further that valid ethical criteria find ultimate sanction in what is truly universal and enduring. This is one of the characteristics of “public theology,” which works with, but also beyond, confessional and dogmatic theology.9

Pannenberg finds ultimate truth in rational coherence whereas Stackhouse also values ethics and the constitutive role of an ethos within a pluralistic society. The latter is a field Pannenberg relativizes in favor of the more theological conception of the totality of the Kingdom of God. As Pannenberg writes in his own work on Ethics, “An ethos can become binding only out of a total understanding of existence,” and “it is only out of each specific understanding of realty as a whole that the basic features of an ethical attitude emerge.”10 More definitely, Pannenberg underscores the theological basis for ethics and not the ethical foundation for theology, for “theology cannot expect to demonstrate the reality of its subject matter in terms of ethical relevance or of some presupposed ethical standard,” but in fact, “The reality of God and of his revelation must first be firmly established if it is to have any ethical relevance at all.” We love because God loved us first.11

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My impression is that Pannenberg underscores society insofar as it previews the totality of the Kingdom of God, which is guided by theological interests; Stackhouse appears to underscore plurality as a kind of principle contra Pannenberg who says plurality is needed for pragmatic and practical, not ideological, functions.12 This is seen in Stackhouse’s understanding of ethics: the good (deontology), the right (teleology), and the fitting (ethology) and specifically ethology as the “science of interpreting the value systems that are built into the fabric of social life.” While religion plays a critical role in casting a total metaphysical-moral vision, it’s influence is keenly felt in how the various sectors of the common life interact with one another.13 That is, such religion is almost an invisible force (unrecognized by non-Christians) that form and shape (which in turn form and shape people themselves) the ostensibly secular spheres and institutions of society such as government, business, and schools and the codified creeds and laws that emerge from them. In fact, regarding the virtues, Christians learn them not only from the church but also the “multiple sectors of society and their institutions.”14 PUBLIC THEOLOGY AS STEWARDSHIP AND ECONOMICS Stackhouse uses the concept “stewardship” to describe the task of public theology, particularly as it relates to political economy. He does this by drawing an interesting parallel between the English word “stewardship” and the Greek word oikonomia, which he says the West understands in two ways: (1) the entire world and the structures of civilization which are now interdependent in the world, that is, ecumenism; and (2) the rule or management of the household, that is, economics. Tying the two together, Stackhouse defines stewardship as “about the relationship of Word to world, of ecumenical theology to political economics.” Christian stewards who live under the “word” are “trustworthy custodians” tasked with the “office” of responsibly and diligently distributing resources for the well-being of the community.15 As stated earlier, Habermas understands the ancient Greek city-states as having sharply divided the polis (public) from oikos (private), the relatively democratic common area of all free citizens from the authoritarian private affairs of the household. But as Stackhouse states, stewardship (oikonomia) in the modern world is not so much about “home economics,” but about public facing “institutional arrangement” involving “the factory, the industry, the transnational corporation, the global market, the bomb, the computer.”16 So while Habermas understands civil society as “private” when compared with the “public” face of government and public authority, Stackhouse expands the domain of “home economics” (oikonomia in the ancient sense) to the

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institutions of modern public civil society. I’m not convinced with how Stackhouse derives his first definition of stewardship as appropriated in the West, that is, how “the structures of civilization that, under God, have brought a new interdependence of the globe,” and how that connects with his understanding of a “Word” developed through ecumenical theology.17 I myself make the case, borrowing from Habermas, that stewardship in the so-called “private” affairs of institutional civil society is public insofar as it involves the reasoned, voluntary, and free participation of all people, a privilege only afforded to polis-participating citizens in ancient Greece. I am convinced with, however, how Stackhouse applies the notion of Christian stewardship to public life. I suggest stewardship (in the more public sense) is applicable not just to political economy but other spheres of public life as well. THEOLOGY ACCORDING TO STACKHOUSE This section will consider Stackhouse’s understanding of theology including, among others, his position on various theological themes along with the three graces. Faith and Theology Stackhouse’s view on theology can begin with his understanding of “faith,” a binding metaphysical-moral vision that is accepted as basically true and just. This is a comprehensive worldview that both guides beliefs and empowers adherents to transform the world.18 I draw parallels to Pannenberg’s “true infinite,” an anthropological phenomenon of unthematized religiosity that informs and guides peoples of every culture. Indeed, Stackhouse recognizes “prerational and transrational” elements both in faiths and in public institutions such as politics, economics, and technology.19 But for Stackhouse, faith is not just a subjective feeling, but an objective religious system (whether theistic, humanist, or naturalist), organized around a creed, a code, and a cult, which interprets, forms, and guides people.20 He is persuaded that the Christian faith is “the most valid.”21 And the task of Christian theology, going beyond the fideism of creeds and codes, is to rationally and critically investigate how spiritual interests align with the divine.22 Similar to Pannenberg, Christian theology does not merely rationalize a private or particular faith (as seen in denominational confessions) but critically evaluates them according to “its capacity to articulate a reliable and coherent knowledge of divine reality.”23 For both Stackhouse and Pannenberg, the criteria for coherence is found in external contemporary authorities such as science. But the former also values an adequate and “viable element of justice,”24 whereas the latter

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also values an internal coherence in which Christian doctrines are internally consistent with each other.25 Pillars of Authority Stackhouse subscribes to four pillars of authority (quadrilateral) in Christian theology that function as “boundaries of the playing of public theological discussion”: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Although these pillars are not God, they offer guidelines to differentiate “when we are most likely to be speaking about God” and “artifacts of our own imaginations.”26 According to James Cone, sources provide the necessary data for the theological task and the norm determines how the data will be used. In other words, the norm is the hermeneutical lens by which a source is interpreted.27 Stackhouse’s hermeneutical norm appears to be all four fixed and equally interpretive norms when considering a source that varies. For instance, he says this regarding the source of scripture and the norms of the quadrilateral: Many have noted that the devil can prove anything by Scripture, and we cannot avoid the fact that scriptures have to be interpreted. . . . The process of discerning any scripture’s meanings is considerably more complex. In part, we must rely on the other principles of the quadrilateral. [For instance], we have to rely on Tradition—that is, on what the company of the faithful have found in the text over the centuries and how they have utilized these meanings in multiple contexts.28

Pannenberg’s Trinitarian theology is a mutually affirming dialectic of part and whole, and the particular and the universal, which has implications for the relationships between particular sources (scripture, reason, tradition, experience), and the universal norm of Jesus who is the “quintessence of the divine plan for creation and history and of its end-time but already proleptic revelation.”29 As Jesus self-differentiates himself from the Father through his historical actions, his revelation is indirectly revealed through various sources, namely, scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.30 Stackhouse’s norm does not appear to be as robustly Christological (although the content is Christological it is not itself an interpretive norm) because Christ is not one of his nine theological themes of Christian public theology. Theological Themes and the Three Graces Stackhouse outlines nine perennial themes of Christian theology that relate to and can be argued in contemporary society. The church’s responsibility is to “preach, teach, and actualize these ultimate principles of meaning and life

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in social life.”31 These themes are creation, liberation, vocation, covenant, moral law, sin, freedom, ecclesiology, and Trinity. I will summarize several of these theological themes concurrent with Stackhouse’s understanding of the “three graces” of Christian biblical themes and doctrine. I will also explore Pannenberg’s understanding of similar concepts and provide some critique in the process. The first theme is creation. While he opposes the creationism of fundamentalism, Stackhouse nevertheless finds value, a public theological significance, for the fundamentalist challenge against the presuppositions of modern scientism. That is, that the world is an accident disconnected from divine provenance and any changes are from material causes alone; religion is an outmoded mythology, an instrumental and constructive tool used by the powerful to gain dominance over resources.32 For creationists, on the other hand, “nature” becomes secondary to “creation,” by which human beings “discipline our instincts, tame our passions, assess our civilization, guide our patterns of interaction, and structure our lives together.” Human science, seen as the arbiter of truth based on empirical data, instead ought to serve a “truth and righteousness greater than the constructions of the strong or the smart at any given moment of development flux.”33 Without a metaphysical and moral vision, science will become less a search for truth and more a “handmaiden of techniques for manipulation, available on demand to the highest bidder and subject only to the constraints of human imagination.”34 A public theology of creation checks the materialistic reductionism of scientism, which potentially instrumentalizes and exploits both nature and human beings. In Globalization and Grace, Stackhouse identifies creation as the “first grace” (along with the second grace of providence and third grace of salvation) of Christian biblical themes and doctrines.35 The doctrine of creation is public because it has been, and continues to be, incarnated into the ethos of modernizing civilization, which has implications for the formation of a global civil society.36 Stackhouse is not so much interested in the specific mechanics of a theological account of creation (such as which members of the Trinity are involved with which aspect of creation or if creation was a literal seven-day creation) as to draw implications on what nature as creation means for Christian and public ethical issues such as the dignity of human beings as the created image of God, the value of nature, moral and spiritual resources and metaphysical vision, and the debate between existence and essence as it bears on sexual ethics. That is, he primarily engages and challenges the philosophical problems of scientism rather than science itself. I would have welcomed more discussion on how a purely scientific description of nature and its origin can in fact demonstrate a metaphysical (theological) vision. For example, Stackhouse admits on the compatibility of some views of science and theology to suggest that “evolution is how God brought human creatures capable

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of consciousness of their Creator out of the elemental dusts of the earth into a development world already populated by flora and fauna.”37 Dialogue with scientific concepts such as emergence and field theory would have been helpful. Pannenberg on Creation and Trinity Pannenberg’s doctrine of creation and relatedly anthropology (Systematic Theology, chapters 7 and 8) similarly engages the nature versus creation debate, but he does this through both theological (incorporating the Trinity, pneumatology, and eschatology) and scientific discussion. To start, he sees creation as a product of divine origin and action. Thus, it is not necessary (science, and its empirical collecting of data, has to assume this) but contingent.38 Pannenberg argues that God’s action in the world is “not wholly different from the action in his trinitarian life” and becomes the “determinative basis of relations between the Creator and the creatures.”39 That is, as the Son differentiates from the Father in the immanent Trinity, he is the source of creation’s otherness and independence from the Father. The Son mediates creation. The Spirit, on the other hand, acts as a “force” that lifts creation above their finitude to participate in the life of God. In other words, “For the independence and distinction of the creatures relative to God goes back to the self-distinction of the Son, but the Spirit is the element of the fellowship of the creatures with God and their participation in his life, notwithstanding their distinction from him.”40 Thus, the Trinity supports both the unity and diversity of creation. Stackhouse also underscores Trinity as a theological theme, but as I will soon discuss, as a principle of unity and diversity and not on the concrete interrelated work of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Pannenberg also relates creation to eschatology, a topic that is not one of Stackhouse’s theological themes. The section titled “Creation and Eschatology,” shows the former’s “ontological priority of the future” with sentences such as: “Creation’s destiny of being in fellowship with God, in the sense of sharing in the fellowship of the eternal Son with the Father through the Spirit, has not yet found direct fulfillment in the existence of each individual creature.”41 Jesus Christ and his resurrection, as the first fruit of eschatological life, enables creatures to propleptically participate in eschatological life in terms of both unity (participation) and differentiation (independence). Nonetheless, total fulfillment for human beings and relatedly creation in general is reserved for the eschaton. In relation to the sciences, Pannenberg attempts to reconcile the Christian metaphysical vision of nature as God’s creation with scientific accounts which describe the “what” and “how” of nature’s processes. In other words, he finds God in science without bracketing the latter into scientism. For example,

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he rejects the notion of inertia for presupposing a closed universe operating autonomously from God. But his support of contingency and the unique and non-repeatable event of “miracle” is supported by scientific theories such as field theory, emergence, and systems; these are forces present outside of bodies that stimulate a sense of transcendence and change within them.42 Stackhouse and the Second Grace According to Stackhouse, the first grace of creation (protology) confers creational dignities upon human beings (reason, will, and affection) alongside the responsibility to exercise dominion. However, sin emerges when human freedom is misused and the “powers” present in human life (eros, mammon, mars, the muses, and religion) are distorted from the ontological reality of creation.43 But despite sin and its distortions, God provides a “second grace” of providence so that humans “display the fruits of ‘common grace’ and serve God’s principles and purposes in the midst of a distorted world.” Despite sin and distortion, providence “preserves” the gifts of creation, “empowers” human beings to create “communities of reasoned communication” and “sustaining societies” with an ethos of commitment and care, and “provides” persons and communities with well-being.44 In sum, Christians believe that God’s creational intent is maintained through the providence present in historical life, limiting the disorder and evils present in the fallen world.45 Stackhouse discusses four “modes” by which God’s providence is seen: covenant and vocation, wisdom and hope. I will discuss covenant (one of Stackhouse’s nine theological themes), and moral law (which Stackhouse discusses under covenant in Globalization and Grace) alongside Pannenberg’s views. Covenant, Stackhouse explains, is a model of institutionalized ordering, after sin brought destruction, that forms civil societies based on the divine/human relationship.46 As God freely covenants with human beings, covenant is a freely chosen association that bonds persons to mutually accountable responsibilities and obligations. Covenant interweaves “righteousness and power, stability and dynamic change, memory and promise” and forms “a structured accountability” toward people and resources with equity.47 Covenant surpasses the radical communalism of the “herd solidarity of tribalism, racism, and classism,” the radical individualism of “contractual voluntarism with its loss of community,” and the tyrannies of the sexual, economic, political, cultural, or elite when not subject to God’s order.48 Relative to God’s covenant with Israel, Stackhouse identifies three basic elements: the participants of the covenant, moral laws, and purposes. Modern forms of social organization, federations, commonwealths, democratic, and pluralistic civil societies, should be aware of its covenantal and theological origin to ensure its full viability.49 In summary, in a covenant “God sets forth terms

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and limits for our lives together, and that whatever authority we have and however we exercise our wills, we are to be subject to these terms. There are, as it were, objective mandates for living that require fidelity, obedience, and a willingness to live lovingly with those whom we at times cannot stand.”50 Stackhouse identifies moral law (one of the nine themes) as the second element of the covenant. Moral laws are “trans-cultural,” “trans-national,” and “trans-legal” at a universal level even when contextual and local conventions may vary. For example, international agreements on human rights.51 Stackhouse identifies universal moral law as “natural law,” a kind of common grace that is known by human reason.52 While such laws are difficult to codify in a positive sense (and variable depending on the specific conventions and traditions of a particular culture), the negative prohibitions are clear: against murder, rape, torture, stealing, and so forth.53 The third element of covenant is “purpose.” The stipulations, promises, and conditions of the covenant are “future oriented, to actualize things presently unrealized.”54 Obedience or disobedience to the stipulations of the Mosaic (and future) covenant resulted in either future woes or promises. But as following every condition of the covenant was not possible, the people hoped for a promised Messiah sent from God who would “set the world right, renew the covenant again, and point them toward a better civilization.”55 The subsequent section on vocation considers the roles of prophet, priest, and king as vocations of not just ecclesial, but the common life, who sustain and nurture the covenant under God’s divine influence, these are the “deepest roots of a principled and pluralist society.”56 Stackhouse understands Jesus as the fulfiller of the three offices of prophet, priest, and king for not just ecclesial but the common life. Jesus “brings us to the most basic and universal renewal of the covenant, one that is able to include the wisdom of the world, to inaugurate a new era of hope in the human future, and to point all who get the message toward a mission of the whole world.”57 Another key idea of Stackhouse is the continued relevance of covenant (and also the first grace of creation) in a globalizing world for those who acknowledge Christ: They will be, in all their roles Christ-like, in the sense that they will be professionally given to prophetic justice in the society, priestly ministries to their neighbors, and princely ambassadors of wise policies for the world’s true king, forming covenantal relationships in every institution that they can touch. Since Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of God on earth, the prophetic, royal priests who are laity will be God’s agents in a history that is on the path of a redeemed humanity. Until that redemption is complete, the common grace of creation and the sustaining grace of providence will guide us; but we are also caught up in a greater grace that is developing even now.58

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The connecting of prophet, priest, and king to covenant and civil society is particularly interesting because it has relevance to Jesus’s traditional three-fold office. Thus, Stackhouse’s understanding of civil society and the vocations has Christological elements. To Stackhouse, the (Christological) vocations of prophet and priest imply a civil society independent of a political society which is held accountable according to divine laws and the covenantal tradition. As Hak Joon Lee notes, “As the practice of the prophetic and the kingly offices of Jesus Christ, public theology [of Stackhouse] is a genre of theology that mediates the church and the public realm.”59 Pannenberg on Covenant Pannenberg discusses the unique revelation of God to God’s covenant people including the first commandment to worship no other god but Yahweh60 and God’s turning in love to creation displaying the attributes of righteousness, faithfulness, and holiness.61 Covenant history dates back to creation itself, similar to Barth’s assertion that creation is the external basis of the covenant.62 In turn, covenant is the binding basis for the organization and structure of society in history. On the one hand, vis-à-vis society, stands the law of God. On the other hand is God’s covenant with the people in salvation history, which becomes the basis for the law. Thus, the legal order of society does not stand in “direct correspondence with the cosmic order,” but is mediated by the stories of election and the covenant relation in history.63 Pannenberg frames covenant within a theology of history interrelated with election, revelation, mission, and judgment. When God reveals Godself in history, God is revealed as the electing one. In turn, the elected ones are tasked (through covenant) with certain responsibilities (that is, mission) including working for God’s will of justice on Earth and proclaiming the Kingdom of God in order to unite into fellowship all peoples. Judgment is the consequence of ignoring the responsibilities.64 What is the role of Christ? Pannenberg’s doctrine of election, contra Barth, hinges not on the election of Christ, but the eternal Son’s self-differentiation from the Father which in turn leads to the relative autonomy of creation as it develops through the process of history.65 Election and the covenant that it confers is a historical process. Relatedly, the incarnation of the Son in history (culminating in the resurrection) demonstrates and fulfills God’s faithfulness to the covenant as the antithesis of time and eternity is removed leading to the reconciliation of the creator and creature.66 Stackhouse does not propose Christology as one of his theological themes. So rather than a theme, motif, or formal principle, Jesus appears to be understood in the more materialist sense of activity on Earth. That is, Christ’s vocation to fulfill the Mosaic Covenant and model an eschatological life of

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the common good for his followers. Covenant is not overtly tied to eternal election, or speculations on the logos asarkos, but is seen as God’s gracious gift to human beings which includes Jesus. In Christian ethics, God “whom we know in Jesus Christ wants humanity to live in a world where many ‘principles and powers, authorities and dominions’ are at work in our hearts and in our societies . . . in accord with the laws and purposes of God and with the love of Christ.”67 Stackhouse is critical of a Protestantism based on a formal Christocentric rather than Christological theology: Christocentric motifs have become so established in a metaphysic of absolute individuality that it does not seem capable of extricating itself from personalistic concerns even long enough to build institutions to protect persons against rape by an industrialized, atomized, impersonal society. It has successfully disjoined the person from his social political responsibilities and abandoned the community to pragmatic struggles for power. It produces intramural Christological debates that lead in a variety of ways to “sweet Jesus” idolatry, to individualized crisis decision-making, to liberal doctrines of individual character formation, to hidden correlations between God and self, to concepts of the election of the self out of the community, to the deification of the ego in religions of self-fulfillment, to psychiatric existentialism as the new dogma, or to personal idealism as one of the characteristic modern philosophies of the church.68

If something formal can be said about Stackhouse’s Christology, it is within the principle of the Trinity understood as a radical appreciation of transcendence and the human.69 That is, the “inevitable tension between the transcendent and immanent is overcome in principle and in promise in Jesus Christ, and that all who come to know God’s principles and purposes are called to be instruments of that integrative possibility by working for an ethos that honors and actualizes those principles and purposes of God within the worldly spheres of life.”70 I argue that Pannenberg can associate the historical manifestation of the covenant with the eternal Christ because his own theology is not Christocentric but Christological. The eternal Son as the eternal principle of self-differentiation is intimately associated with the equal functions of the Father and the Spirit. The covenant is not the inevitable outworking of eternal election (like Barth), but a historical process whose object alternates between individual and community election alongside the activities of the Father and the Spirit.71 The Third Grace of Stackhouse The third and final grace of Stackhouse’s theology is salvation, which involves God’s gracious gift of Jesus Christ (his birth, life, ministry, death,

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and resurrection) to restore humanity’s broken covenant (and its focus on moral law and stipulations) as manifested in the destructiveness of racism, sexism, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, and others. Christ will restore the fallenness of the first creational grace and sustain the world through the second providential grace. Christ will also “constrain and channel the residual and constructed powers of chaos and destruction and thus begin a new era that points proximately to a more just, loving and merciful reign of God in history, and ultimately toward a new civilization with a new heaven and a new earth.”72 Christ inaugurates the Kingdom of God, thus, through Jesus’s birth and ministry, believers cultivate personal faith. Through Jesus’s crucifixion, believers find a savior who also experiences human sin and pain, through Jesus’s resurrection, the power of sin and evil is principally defeated, believers become agents of the eschatological Kingdom in the spheres and institutions of common society.73 Societies influenced by the special grace of Christ react against the fixed institutions of an established order and see that spheres can be sanctified the “paradigmatic new organization.”74 In other words, “Christ and the Church become access points to cosmopolitan identity and new society organizations that also provide the moral and spiritual criteria for preserving parts of the past and resisting total capitulation to the dominant culture.”75 Stackhouse touches on eschatology in his description of the second grace of providence (specifically on the future-oriented purposes of the covenant). But the focus on eschatology is expanded in the third grace of salvation as it relates to the “failed paradise” of a realized eschatology.76 The Kingdom of God does provisionally reign over present societies, so that, first, a universal moral order constitutes a relative justice for the common life. Second, the reign of Christ in believers brings faith, hope, and love for neighbor, not just a cyclical recurrence of happenings.77 However, still to come is the eschatological Kingdom sustained by universal standards of right and wrong and an operational pluralism of dynamic openness for the common good.78 Jesus is the inaugurator of a Kingdom which spans all of creation not just the church: Christ is Lord of Lords, King of Kings, and thus has to do with all dimensions of life, whether they know it or not. The Kingdom is not fulfilled, but it is growing. As belief in Christ spreads it becomes more operative in people’s lives, but it is also growing in the development of more and more covenantal relationships in human experience, in the spread of principles of universal moral law, in the cultivation of the professions with a sense of calling, and in the expectation of social improvement in all spheres of life.79

Stackhouse indirectly identifies the phenomenon of globalization with the Kingdom. While globalization is not directly identified with the Kingdom

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itself, the former manifests the “effects of Christ’s inauguration” “toward a future of a complex, inclusive cosmopolitan civilization.”80 In my analysis, globalization better describes the complexity of the progressive universal history Pannenberg tries to achieve, particularly because Pannenberg’s universal history tends to underscore knowledge and epistemology over the broader concept of a global society. The term “universal” conjures up abstract (and White) and normative ideas whereas “globalization” suggests a more pluralistic and cooperative society. Critique of Stackhouse and Comparison with Pannenberg Critiquing Stackhouse regarding the third grace of salvation, I’m unclear on how he jumps from Christ as the inaugurator of the Kingdom to the growing plurality of civilization as seen in diverse spheres. According to Stackhouse, those converted to Christ have vocational calling (like Christ) enabling them to become prophets of righteous law; priests of care, leading worship, and sacrificial service; and princes (kings) governing institutions of civil societies to help “form, reform, or sustain many covenantal communities of commitment” and wisely shape the common good. The Christian idea of vocation spurred the formation of the modern professions and the cultivation of new relationships to the biophysical universe and to moral universals.81 To Stackhouse, as Christ’s resurrection defeats the power of sin, liberated Christians realize novel possibilities in civil society. In this instance, civil society seems more an effect and historical consequence of Christian vocation in Christ rather than directly associated with a principle of plurality. Moreover, I’m unclear on how Jesus himself (as prophet, priest, and king) formed new possibilities in civil societies. Pannenberg better associates Christ with plurality because of his Trinitarian theology, particularly the view that Christ is the source of historical differentiation rooted in his differentiation from the Father in eternity. This is not to say that Stackhouse precludes a doctrine of the Trinity, in fact, it is one of his nine theological themes. Similar to Pannenberg, the Trinity is the principle of pluralism and unity in which the inner life of God and God’s relations to the world form a “coherent, integrated diversity” resulting in a “radical appreciation of transcendence and a radical appreciation of the human” which forms a public theology of vocational persons in covenantal communities.82 But Pannenberg clearly associates Christ with the principle of differentiation and plurality, something Stackhouse suggests is a broader Trinitarian notion of diversity which all the divine persons share. According to Stackhouse, the West understands oikonomia as ecumenism in a pluralistic world. Therefore, ecumenical churches are best qualified to propagate a

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public theology. These churches carry their message to the population and is “filtered through the consciences of the people in reasonable dialogue and as it encounters the inevitable demands of complex civilizational life.”83 This parallels Pannenberg’s call for Christian churches to first be ecumenical prior to a more comprehensive public theology in the world-at-large. How does Stackhouse compare to Pannenberg regarding eschatology. The latter critiques the liberal ethical interpretation of eschatology as too temporal. Moltmann, on the other hand, sponsors a more transcendent and actualistic arrival of the future on the present. Pannenberg affirms a “retroactive ontology” of both contingency and eternity. Associating eschatology with creation, he says the present world is “constituted” by the future of God.84 Stackhouse appears to follow Moltmann’s suggestion that the Kingdom is promise and “still coming.” For Stackhouse, the expectation of the Kingdom that breaks into time “proleptically presses toward the overcoming of meaninglessness, death, temporality, and entropic creation.”85 We live in anticipation, but future promises are still found in present experience. Creational and providential grace “approximate” the Kingdom. The world can be renewed and reformed because of creational and providential grace. In Christ “by the power of the Kingdom and for the sake of all nations who shall be welcomed into the New Jerusalem they can approximate holy living.”86 Pannenberg says the current Kingdom is “probably” and “already” the Kingdom of God, it has not yet been confirmed by the future. I think there is a relative marginalization of history and eschatology in Stackhouse. Pannenberg’s Trinitarian understanding of creation and eschatology more firmly ties and affirms creation while also affirming a contingent sense of the eschaton.87 Stackhouse’s understanding of eschatology may be strengthened with a more comprehensive understanding of the Holy Spirit. He refers to salvation, globalization, and formation of the church in the spheres of society as an empowering act of the Spirit without further elaboration.88 His understanding of the powers and principalities present in each sphere of society appear to be impersonal spiritual powers rather than the Holy Spirit itself, the relationship between the Spirit and spirits remains undeveloped aside from a broad understanding of a metaphysical vision which regulates the powers. How can we understand powers such as eros or mammon alongside the Holy Spirit? Stackhouse’s understanding of the Spirit’s role in the oikos would also have been helpful. In the next section I will discuss God and Globalization, volume 2, which discusses the Holy Spirit and compares it to Pannenberg’s Trinitarian understanding of the Spirit, which is a unifying person, principle, field, and means of exocentricity which works alongside the differentiating ministry of the second person. To what extent does the ethos of civil

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society and its spheres relates to the force field of the Spirit Pannenberg is famous for? SPHERES OF SOCIETY I have discussed Stackhouse’s general understanding of public theology followed by some investigation into his theology of the three graces and nine theological themes. I will now concretely consider his understanding of the public of public theology, that is, the spheres of society and the role of the Christian moral vision therein.89 Dynamic “powers” drive civilizations and are “organized by institutional clusters sharing primary norms and common ends.” These clusters, or spheres, interact with other spheres to form a society guided by a metaphysical worldview and an ethos.90 Stackhouse describes three sets of dynamic powers—“principalities,” “authorities,” and “dominions”91—which are present in respective spheres. Following Walter Wink’s analysis, these powers are “spiritual energies,” that is, “Psycho-spiritual and socio-moral potentialities that claim people’s loyalties and respect in various societies.92 Stackhouse identifies five “principal” (archai) powers operating in five spheres: eros which drives family institutions, mammon which drives economic institutions, muses which drive cultural institutions, mars which drives political institutions, and religion which drives religious institutions. For any civil society to function, the powers in each sphere must be managed and regulated appropriately. This is the role of religion, a “regulative set of beliefs and practices that routinize the reigning metaphysical and moral vision of a social unit and relate it to profound sensibilities that at transcendent realm provides the precedents and expectations by which the whole is to be guided.”93 Words of note are “regulative,” “beliefs,” “practices,” and “routinize” to underscore the institution of religion and the religious sphere relative to the “dominion” of religion which I will consider later. When religion loses authority, the powers are unbound and “freed from conventional fetters that prevent their creative functioning.” As a result, these powers sometimes become “ends or idols in themselves. Persons suffer, essentially because institutions begin to fall apart and a community becomes unable to defend itself against stronger societies that are more cohesively organized.”94 A second set of spiritual and moral energies are “authorities.” These authorities are dependent on the principalities basic to every society but nonetheless independent “professions.” The authorities exercise authority in additional spheres of complex civilizations and include the professions of education, law, medicine, science (technology), and nature. Authorities are also symbolic personalities (Gandhi, Tutu, and Mandela) who have influence in NGOs

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not associated with principalities or professional authorities. The authorities, when unchecked, pose some danger to traditional religions, morality, and principalities. As Stackhouse remarks, the authorities “displaced Religion as the central moral-spiritual force that guides, integrates, and regulates society. For some, these authorities have either relegated Religion to the optional inner convictions of individuals, or displaced Religion even there.” These often leads to great “intellectual, moral, and spiritual confusion, and people feel both a considerable alienation and a new sense of possibility.”95 Thus, Stackhouse’s project challenges the increasing secularism and independence of the authorities and recovers their dependence on a religious moral and ethical foundation. The third set of powers, the “dominions,” are metaphysical-moral visions that “provide frames of reference for whole societies and organize the relationship between the powers and spheres of the first two sets in distinctive ways.”96 Broader and more abstract than the principality of religion which speaks more of institutionalized religion, dominions include the worldviews of Christian, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, and Islamic societies among others. These visions exercise sovereignty and “bend the principalities and authorities in distinctive directions” “over social, familial, economic, political, and often professional powers” in order to shape the ethos of a society.97 No society has endured and developed without a sovereign religion at its core; it is unlikely that globalized civil societies will creatively develop without it.98 As Emile Durkheim argues, religion, like society, is a “reality sui generis; it has its own characteristics that are either not found in the rest of the universe or are not found there in the same form.”99 In the modern West, “The former gods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born,” and a state of “anomie” and the pseudo-religion of individualism has appeared, breaking the traditional bonds of community and solidarity which are necessary for civil society.100 According to Stackhouse, a society’s dominant religion greatly impacts the values and dispositions of its constituents as well as how it dialogues with other traditions. For Christians in a globalizing world, Stackhouse asks, “How can we develop a faithful theological ethic to interpret and guide the common life in a situation in which we must interpret and assess, embrace or resist, what other religions assume, imply, advocate, or demand in regard to the ordering of the principalities and authorities?”101 Stackhouse on the Spirits In Stackhouse, much like Rousseau and Durkheim, the spiritual energy which pervades the various spheres of society appears to be more an impersonal and immanent force rather than the third person of the Trinity. That is not to say Stackhouse does not use the word “spirit” to describe the phenomenon. He

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says the ethical processes of spheres is driven by a distinctive “spirit.”102 But he uses descriptors such as the “spirituality and the corporation”103 and the oikoumene as “a spiritual network of persons one in Christ who form a social-institutional center.”104 Thus, the spirit comes off as a metaphysical force, an espirit de corps, rather than the personal Holy Spirit of the Trinity. These are “material forces” which have a kind of independence and autonomy.105 How does Stackhouse view the Holy Spirit? The unity of the one God is held by the Trinitarian persons in relationship with each other and with the world. The Holy Spirit, in particular, is mobile and can show up in many places, including non-Christian cultures and religions.106 Then how does the Holy Spirit appear in non-Christian cultures possessing immanent spirits such as mammon and eros? The most direct association of Spirit with spirit appears to be found in the final chapter of Globalization and Grace: The spirit, mentality, or ethos of a community “can be transformed and renewed by the agency of those who have a calling and work with others covenantally, by coming to know Christ personally and by the influence of the Holy Spirit in communities of commitment that reach toward holiness.”107 According to Stackhouse, as authorities and regencies increased in power, they developed a “confidence in their own genius and worth, an espirit de corps among those engaged in the activities of their sphere, and systemic resistance to the influence of normative principles or purposes derived from external or transcendent sources.”108 But the reign of God in the Kingdom is empowered and inspired by the Holy Spirit with the ultimate eschatological destiny (the grace of salvation) of covenantal reconciliation,109 seen in the church and gradually in society and its spheres as signs of the coming Kingdom.110 Abraham Kuyper distinguishes between a common grace immanently present in every “square inch” of Christ’s reign and a special grace which has an eternal telos. Similarly, Stackhouse formulates three graces, with the third grace of “salvation” appearing to be of the “special” redemptive kind. However, the saving grace of salvation and redemption through Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ does not appear to be completely separate from the sphere of common grace. That is, “The body, the visible world, politics, and social action.”111 In fact, the saving special grace of Christ has influenced society’s turn toward a “less patriarchal family structure, a postimperial political order, a constitutional fabric of law that defends religious freedom and human rights, an open economy that is productive in a way that brings affluence to more and more of the world’s population and a culture that allows great creativity and diversity.”112 Christians await and anticipate the fulfillment of special grace. But Christians are not passive, the Kingdom of God already inaugurated by Jesus Christ engages personal faith and “the ethical arrangement of the institutions of the increasingly common life to

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contain the evils and enhance the goods of life.”113 Thus, what I observe in Stackhouse is a division between the Spirit and spirit.114 The Spirit positively influences and regulates how individuals and communities interact with the given spirits of society as society progresses toward the Kingdom of God. Stackhouse, like Kuyper, can imply the Holy Spirit’s work in common grace. But it appears to be an external grace and not immanent in the way of the powers, principalities, and authorities. Pannenberg on the Spirits In his article “Spirits of the Political: Theological Engagement in the Public Sphere,” Sebastian Kim says the public sphere is infiltrated by interacting spirits such as “ideas, concepts, opinions, ideologies and philosophies.” The Holy Spirit of Christian theology “enters the spirit world as one of many spirits negotiating, encountering other spirits in public conversation among equals.” The Holy Spirit is a benign “helper” and “provider” and provides a discerning gift among the spirits of the political.115 The panentheistic Pannenberg provides a direct association between the spirits of society and the Holy Spirit. Like Stackhouse, Pannenberg rejects the Holy Spirit as an esprit de corps similar to the force that binds the members of other forms of human fellowship.116 But he also rejects Paul Tillich’s “essentialization” project, for the historical process is determinative as a constitutive part of the greater whole.117 Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not an eschatological gift that invades the present time that has already been autonomously operating through a kind of espirit de corps, but the personal third person of the Trinity who has been present and working throughout creation and history. It seems to me that an espirit de corps can be an Espirit de corps. This is Pannenberg’s well-known conception of the Spirit as a force field which fills creation and provides it with life and an impulse toward exocentricity. To Pannenberg, the Spirit is a “mysteriously invisible natural force,” “Like the wind that blows where it wills,” an incalculable and creative force that is the origin of all life present everywhere in creation118 akin to the field theories of modern physics which are independent of matter but exercise influence over them.119 The force which influences creation is not a field which is impersonally abstract but may be the personal Holy Spirit itself for “the Spirit is the force field of God’s mighty presence” (notice the capitalization of the Spirit).120 Regarding the personal identity of the Spirit he writes: As Jesus glorifies the Father and not himself, and precisely in so doing shows himself to be the Son of the Father, so the Spirit glorifies not himself but the Son, and in him the Father. Precisely by not speaking of himself (John 16:13) but bearing witness to Jesus (15:26) and reminding us of his teaching (14:26),

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he shows himself to be the Spirit of truth (16:13). Distinct from the Father and the Son, he thus belongs to both.121

Pannenberg is admittedly vague on what forms the Spirit takes as it pervades creation as a force field. Pannenberg’s pneumatology appears to lean closer to a “unitive approach” which marginalizes or ignores other powers, spirits, and energies.122 But he also refers to angels as “powers and principalities” and discusses their relation to the “absolute Spirit, the Spirit of God,” arguing that angels are “ephemeral manifestations of this unitary movement,” the Kingdom of heaven is a “dynamic field that finds specific manifestations in the angels.” The forces serving God’s lordship over creation may become “autonomous centers of powers whose attraction believers may well find to be threatening.” But nonetheless, “All these powers are set under the dominion of the exalted Christ.”123 Stackhouse is helpful in identifying and expanding specific powers and principalities in society. But if we follow Pannenberg’s position, we can surmise that the spirits are not autonomous forces that the Spirit debates, converts, or interacts with almost as an equal partner, but more directly identified with the Spirit and used by God toward the pluralistic eschatological Kingdom. Similarly, the spirits of evil, oppression, secularity, domination, and monopoly124 may simply be the sins of excessive autonomy not in line with the unity-in-distinction of proper Trinitarian life. In chapter 4, I will concretely suggest how the powers and principalities of Stackhouse (mammon, mars, eros, muses, and religion), apply to Pannenberg’s understanding of spheres such as politics and family and how the Holy Spirit as force field interacts with the respective spirits operating inside of them. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON STACKHOUSE The purpose of this chapter was two-fold. First, I discussed how Stackhouse understands the task of public theology particularly as it relates to the relevance and warrantedness of theology in the public square. I also discussed his understanding of powers and principalities and how they operate and empower the ethos of various spheres of life. Second, I discussed Stackhouse’s theology, that is, the three graces of creation, providence, and salvation along with his understanding of nine theological themes. Regarding the second task of the chapter, I compared Stackhouse with Pannenberg as it relates to the Trinity, pneumatology, and eschatology. Having made the comparative analysis, in the next chapter I will begin my analysis of Pannenberg’s public theology, with the focus on how his eschatological, Trinitarian, and postfoundational method of theology, alongside the doctrine of God,

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ecclesiology, pneumatology, anthropology, and sphere-thinking fit the aims and purposes of theology. NOTES 1. Deirdre King Hainworth and Scott R. Paeth, introduction, in Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max Stackhouse, ed. Deirdre King Hainworth and Scott R. Paeth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), Loc. 40–148, Kindle edition. 2. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 1–5. 3. Hainworth and Paeth, introduction, Loc. 40. 4. Max Stackhouse, Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 7. 5. Max Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy (Lanham, MD: University Press, 1991), xi. 6. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xi. 7. Max Stackhouse, “Liberalism Revisited: From Social Gospel to Public Theology,” in Being Christian Today: An American Conversation, ed. Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel (Washington DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1992), 42. 8. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xi. 9. Max Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” in God and Globalization, vol. 1: Religion and the Powers of the Common Life, ed. Max L. Stackhouse and Peter J. Paris (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 7. 10. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1981), 66–67. 11. Pannenberg, Ethics, 67 12. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christliche Rechtsüberzeugungen im Kontext einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft,” in Beiträge zur Ethik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 56–57. Here Pannenberg understands the pluralism of society as designating the “factual plurality of ideological positions” and critiques the idea of a principled pluralism as a contradiction. Instead, he necessitates the need for a “common cultural tradition” as fostering a “unity of the social value consensus.” See also Pannenberg’s response to Gerhard Ebeling regarding the priority of the ethical. “What is involved here is the practical priority for action, not the argument that an ethical phenomenon can be isolated in a theoretical analysis.” Pannenberg, Ethics, 76. 13. Stackhouse, Covenant and Commitments, 6–7. 14. Scott Paeth and E. Harold Breitenberg Jr., introduction, in Shaping Public Theology: Selections from the Writings of Max Stackhouse, ed. Scott R. Paeth, E. Harold Breitenberg Jr., and Hak Joon Lee (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), xxii. 15. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xiii. 16. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xiii–xiv. 17. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xiii.

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18. Max Stackhouse, God and Globalization, vol. 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007), 7. 19. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xi. 20. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 7. 21. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 7. 22. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 81. 23. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xi. 24. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xi. 25. F. LeRon Shults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). 26. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 4–5. 27. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 37. 28. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 6. 29. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol 1–3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1997). This reference from ST 1, 257. 30. Jae Yang, “Pannenberg’s Trinitarian Theology and the Use of Theological Sources,” The Evangelical Review of Theology and Politics 8 (2020): A1–A12. 31. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 6. 32. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 6. 33. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 20. 34. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 21 35. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 120. 36. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 120. 37. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 123. 38. ST 2, 1. 39. ST 2, 5. 40. ST 2, 32. 41. ST 2, 138. 42. ST 2, 79–81. 43. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 160–61. 44. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 160. 45. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 160. 46. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 163. 47. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 163. 48. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 163. 49. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 164. 50. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 27. 51. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 171–72. 52. See Max Stackhouse, “Reflection on Moral Absolutes,” Journal of Law and Religion 14, no. 1 (1999–2000): 97–117. 53. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 28. 54. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 173. 55. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 174. 56. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 188.

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57. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 188. 58. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 193. 59. Hak Joon Lee, “Conclusion: The Lasting Significance of Max Stackhouse,” in Shaping Public Theology, 306. 60. ST 1, 190. 61. ST 1, 436. 62. ST 2, 23. 63. ST 1, 292. 64. Stanley J. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 241. 65. ST 2, 23. 66. ST 1, 446. 67. Max Stackhouse, “The Tasks of Theological Ethics,” in Shaping Public Theology, 93. 68. Max Stackhouse, “Christianity in New Formation,” in Shaping Public Theology, 36. 69. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 33. 70. Stackhouse, “The Tasks of Theological Ethics,” 94. 71. See ST 3, chapter 14. 72. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 196–97. 73. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 199. 74. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 200. 75. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 201. 76. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 215. 77. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 220. 78. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 226. 79. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 226. 80. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 228. 81. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 198. 82. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 32–33. 83. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 33. 84. ST 3, 527–55. 85. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 220. 86. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 228. 87. I note Pannenberg’s understanding of creation and eschatology relative to the phenomenon of secularization. Pannenberg does not sharply contrast creation from eschatology as does Hans Blumberg. Pannenberg affirms the Christian (and God’s) origins of historical progress (Karl Löwith). Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 1–5. 88. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 107. 89. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 167–70. 90. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 41. 91. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 41.

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92. Max Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” in God and Globalization, vol. 1: Religion and the Powers of the Common Life, ed. Max L. Stackhouse and Peter J. Paris (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 32. 93. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 43. 94. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 43. 95. Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” 45–50. 96. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 41. 97. Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” 51. 98. Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” 52. 99. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religions Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), 15. 100. Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 429. 101. Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” 52. 102. Stackhouse, “General Introduction,” 49. 103. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 113. 104. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 125. 105. Max L. Stackhouse, Ethics and the Urban Ethos: An Essay in Social Theory and Theological Reconstruction (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 81. 106. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 229–30. 107. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 233–34. 108. Max Stackhouse, introduction, in God and Globalization, vol. 2: The Spirit and the Modern Authorities, ed. Max L. Stackhouse and Don S. Browning (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), 2. 109. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 75. 110. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 197. 111. This is Hans Boersma’s critique of Abraham Kuyper’s theology of common grace. According to Boersma, the dualistic nature of Kuyper is apparent in that the immanent world of common grace has an immanent telos, with the redemptive work of Christ’s special grace separate from the immanent. Hans Boersma, “Review of The Spirit in Public Theology, by Vincent E. Bacote,” Calvin Theological Journal 40, no. 2 (2005): 341–44. 112. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 197–98. 113. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 198–99. 114. Paul Tillich distinguishes between the human spirit and the divine Spirit. See Max Stackhouse, “Humanism after Tillich,” First Things 72 (1997): 24–48. Also see “What Tillich Meant to Me,” in Shaping Public Theology, 47–53. 115. Sebastian Kim, “Spirits of the Political: Theological Engagement in the Public Sphere,” in Interdisciplinary and Religio-Cultural Discourses on a Spirit-Filled World, ed. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Kirsteen Kim, and Amos Yong (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 127. 116. ST 3, 19. 117. According to Pannenberg, Tillich, influenced by Schelling, sees death as the end of essentialization, as the Spirit completes the essence of a person’s earthly life. Grenz, Reason to Hope, 270. 118. ST I, 373.

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119. ST I, 382. 120. ST I, 382. 121. ST I, 315. 122. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen identifies a “unitive pneumatology” that speaks only of one Spirit and a “plural” pneumatology of other sprits that oppose the Spirit of God. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Spirit(s) in Contemporary Theology: An Interim Report of the Unbinding of Pneumatology” in Interdisciplinary and Religio-Cultural Discourses on a Spirit-Filled World, 29–30. 123. ST 2, 104–5. 124. This is Sebastian Kim’s description of evil spirits of society. Kim, “Spirits of the Political,” 128–32.

Chapter 3

Public Theology in Pannenberg’s Method

This chapter will analyze three aspects of Pannenberg’s theological methods using the concept of public theology. That is, a public theology which, following Breitenberg, is a religiously informed discourse that is intelligible to adherents and non-adherents, pertains to issues relevant to both the religious community and larger society, and utilizes insights, methods, warrants, and language that is universally accessible. I am arguing that Pannenberg’s postfoundational, eschatological, and Trinitarian methods fit the aims, methodologies, and interests of public theology. Pannenberg’s similarity with public theology considers the epistemological (postfoundational), temporal (eschatological), and theological (Trinitarian). Another way to look is through Tracy’s three public spheres: academy (postfoundational), society (eschatological), and church (Trinitarian) that provide a “relative adequacy” on the role of theology in public.1 As Breitenberg reminds us, public theology is “theologically informed public discourse about public issues,” addressed to the religious community and to larger publics “argued in ways that can be evaluated and judged by publicly available warrants and criteria.”2 Moreover, this chapter will also briefly consider Pannenberg’s position on select doctrines: relationship between science and theology, Christology, ecclesiology, and anthropology and how they function as a public theology. POSTFOUNDATIONAL METHOD AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY There is no consensus concerning Pannenberg’s theological methodology and underlying assumptions. Some deem his Grundprinzip to be either reason, history, or prolepsis; others, like Stanley Grenz hold both reason and hope as key. It seems to me that reason underscores an epistemology 55

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of foundationalism, history of nonfoundationalism, and prolepsis, which underscores both contingency and universality, of postfoundationalism. Pannenberg’s epistemology is arguably postfoundational because reason and history, universality and contingency are equally affirmed, in addition to the focus on prolepsis and the retroactive power of the eschatological Kingdom of God in present time. Then what is postfoundationalism and how is Pannenberg a postfoundationalist? And how does postfoundationalism compare to public theology which ostensibly focuses on universally communicable and enduring warranted discourse? In other words, is there room for contingency in public theology? Perhaps the best known theologian, and interpreter of Pannenberg, advocating for postfoundationalism is J. Wentzel van Huyssteen who speaks of a “transversal” not “transgressive” model of rationality of interdisciplinary conversation. Simply put, his model dialogues and discerns between the universal objectivity of foundationalism and the social plurality of nonfoundationalism.3 The postfoundationalist model is an “interactionist model” that moves “beyond objectivism and relativism . . . the stark alternatives of foundationalism and nonfoundationalism.”4 As Shults describes, postfoundationalism accommodates both foundationalism and nonfoundationalism, committing to both “intersubjective, transcommunal theological argumentation for the truth of Christian faith and recognizing the provisionality of our historically embedded understandings and culturally conditioned explanations of the Christian tradition and religious experience.”5 Postfoundationalism as Public Theology Elaine Graham describes the present age as “post-Enlightenment” and “post-secular,” for there is a “unique juxtaposition of . . . Enlightenment secularism . . . and signs of persistent and enduring demonstrations of public, global faith.”6 Thus, public theology walks between the “rock” of religious resurgence and the “hard place” of secularism.7 In other words, public theology balances strategy (sharing the logic and communicative dialogue of secularity in order to collaboratively build a civil society toward justice and the common good) and practicality (a pastoral attempt to transform rather than propositionally teach).8 Postfoundational theology is appropriate in the post-Enlightenment age. But is Pannenberg a postfoundationalist thinker? The best evidence is his self-identification as such.9 But his theology demonstrates a postfoundational epistemology in the dialectical tension between experience (nonfoundational) and belief (foundational).10 Thus, religious experiences are grounded in their “self-evidence,” however, such experiences are not self-evident in isolation but by their “reference to the whole current experience of existence.”11 My

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purpose, presupposing that Pannenberg is a postfoundational thinker, is showing that postfoundationalism is consonant with the purposes and aims of public theology, in particular, as it relates to the relationship between science and theology and Christology. The debate between theology and science is particularly keen in public theology for theology communicated in “scientific” terms is considered more publicly warranted, universal, and accepted. Specifically, van Huyssteen argues that epistemology, similar to physical attributes, is evolutionary and associates postfoundational rationality with the processes of evolutionary epistemology which assumes that human beings, like all other living creatures, “Result from evolutionary processes and that, consequently, our mental capacities are constrained and shaped by the mechanisms of biological evolution.”12 As philosopher Nicholas Rescher clarifies, intelligence results from the evolutionary process to survive; rationality is fundamentally Darwinian.13 Postfoundationalism reconceptualizes rationality as an intersubjective and communicative act while underscoring the person of flesh and blood who is “consciously embedded in the concrete, living traditions or our various cultural domains.”14 Thus, rationality is interpreted experience, not exclusively dependent on disembodied abstract beliefs but as agents interact with their community. Postfoundational rationality is an evolutionary epistemic skill analogous to physical ones.15 A postfoundational rational judgment evaluates a situation and assesses the evidence to “come to a responsible and reasonable decision without following any present, modernist rules.”16 Thus science demonstrates the evolutionary nature of human epistemology, that is, the way humans think in local communicative contexts, not necessarily what we think. And theology communicated in public can be as much a “rational” science as supposedly secular disciplines. Van Huyssteen, recognizing the different methodologies, scopes, and ultimate aims of the sciences, finds an overlap between theology and science because rationality focuses on “good reasons” and “appropriate reasons.” It is “not just a matter of having the best or strongest reasons . . . but having the best or strongest reasons available to support the comparative rationality of one’s beliefs within a concrete sociohistorical context.”17 Theological reflection is a publicly useful hermeneutical and epistemic skill requiring “cognitive, evaluative, and pragmatic resources of rationality,” and the goal of understanding the complex world, reality, and morality through an ongoing process of “progressive problem solving.”18 Thus, van Huyssteen advocates that Christian theology, for philosophical, theological, and scientific reasons, claims a “democratic presence” in interdisciplinary conversation. Theology’s public voice is heard by relocating theology within this broader context of interdisciplinary reflection.19 That

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is, a “Post-Normal Science” that recognizes the contextual and social influence of science.20 It is not entirely clear on what aspect of public (society, academy, church) van Huyssteen refers to. He does claim, however, that theology in the academic public, as both an “affective and cognitive commitment” of “human feelings and parochial visions” is a “perfectly legitimate form of disciplined scholarly consideration, even within the secular university.”21 But as theologian Delwin Brown critiques, van Huyssteen presupposes academia as a democratic public square where all ideas are equally analyzed, discussed, and vetted rather than as a specialized space with “traditions of research with their own proximate and tentative agreements on practices such as proposing judgments of fact and the criteria whereby they are to be evaluated and alternatives adjudicated.”22 Brown suggests that theology is public in the academic public if it sheds a postfoundational “transmutation” of universals and follows the criteria of secular universities.23 Brown’s critique may express doubts on confessional theology’s status as a secular and academic discipline, but he does imply that other aspects of the public, society-at-large and the church, can be informed and influenced by a postfoundational (similar to Pannenberg’s) understanding of theology and faith commitments. Van Huyssteen’s perspective on the public sphere is not entirely of the academic sort. He himself acknowledges the inter-contextual and cross-disciplinary process present in the “cultural domains” of morality, art, religion, and science.24 In the article, “Public Theology and Ethical Judgement,”25 Max Stackhouse investigates Western modern, premodern, hypermodern, and postmodern forms of thinking and suggests that a solution to the epistemological crisis may be a covenantal “public theology,” which recognizes the enduring norms which have influenced a particular culture while concurrently having an “enlarged conversation,” which adopts and modifies the philosophies, laws, and cultures of other societies in a globalizing world.26 Covenant is not an exclusively Western organizing scheme but has “given spiritual stability, moral form, and social focus to possibilities already present in other cultural traditions.”27 In sum, transversal forms of thinking, whether affixed to terms such as postfoundational or arguably covenant, is and has been present across cultures and potentially a viable form of public thinking in a globalizing world. Critique of Postfoundationalism as a Publicly Warranted Method In another critique, Josh Reeves argues that van Huyssteen’s postfoundational method fails to adjudicate the rationality and warrentedness of theological claims in public.28 Reeves is unconvinced of the link made between modernity

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and foundationalism and nonfoundationalism and relativism.29 This critique is fair, but associating foundationalism or nonfoundationalism with a specific time period is not the crux of van Huyssteen’s argument, whose main point is on whether postfoundationalism works as a rational epistemology in public space. The irreconcilability between accounts of rationality is the focus of Reeves’s second criticism. That is, in some places van Huyssteen respects the “fluidity of human rationality,” while in other places he offers the strong criteria of research traditions for making reasoned choices.30 Reeves is especially critical of van Huyssteen’s use of criteria such as “experiential adequacy” and “superior problem solving ability” because they are not “timeless categories” and “were radically reconfigured during the seventeen century.”31 Once again, Reeves misses van Huyssteen’s main argument. The categories that the latter uses are not offered as timeless categories but ones that provide satisfactory epistemological warrant in that particular time period or research tradition. The reviewer underscores the categories that van Huyssteen employs rather than the broader argument that epistemological warrant is developed using the best available tools at that time. Moreover, the reviewer seems to equate postfoundational method itself with the categories of “experiential adequacy” and “superior problem-solving skills.” In fact, postfoundational method is less about the criteria for warrant and more about the posture of openness to warrant, and contingency and universality that may use such categories if necessary to develop public warrant. Pannenberg’s Scientific Method, Postfoundationalism, and Public Theology Pannenberg does not see theology as an equal partner in a democratic process of multiple dialoguing subjects. If anything, his view of theology is “more equal” than others under sub ratione Dei, as seen, for example, by the unitive and all-encompassing force field of the Spirit whose purpose is to unify the world under the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, a postfoundationalist methodology operates in Pannenberg’s position on the relationship between theology and science. To begin, he asserts that the doctrine of God, to be publicly credible, must consider how the natural sciences understand the origins of the universe.32 Pannenberg’s scientific method is “asymmetrical.” Theology, compared to science, is not just one “aspect” of truth, but a “version” which reveals more of reality. Nevertheless, information gleaned through the scientific method is necessary, albeit provisional, as reality progresses and is interrelated through revelational history ultimately fulfilled by the Kingdom of God.33 In fact, noting the (overly) rationalistic approach of analytic philosophy (logical positivism and critical rationalism), he rejects the categories

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of “explanation (the natural sciences)” and “understanding (human sciences)” found in Dilthey in favor of an approach in which the parts presuppose the eschatological whole.34 Both van Huyssteen and Nancey Murphy identify Pannenberg as a Kuhnian who underscores paradigms relative to Karl Popper’s empiricist method of falsifiability.35 Thus, van Huyssteen finds problematic and inconsistent Pannenberg’s ambivalence toward the God hypothesis because it requires a falsifiability principle.36 Murphy sees Pannenberg’s scientific method as two concentric circles of hermeneutical paradigms (one theological circle centered around Christ’s resurrection, another scientific circle centered on the anthropological phenomenon of hope).37 Murphy proposes an alternative Lakatosian model for Pannenberg,38 which is arguably both Kuhnian and Popperian, because it presupposes an interpretive hermeneutic (core theory) but also an auxiliary hypothesis which varies based on new data.39 Pannenberg’s response to Murphy is to overtly identify himself as Lakatosian, which is “closer to my view of the task of theology than the image of concentric circles which she attributes to me.”40 Theologian George Newlands makes a helpful direct comparison between postfoundationalism and public theology. He identifies three basic strands. First, “A reasoned approach to open and engaged dialogue.” Second, “A fresh hermeneutical retrieval of the classical Christian tradition.” Third, “Commitment to the expression of Christian commitment in rational engagement with major issues in social ethics.”41 Thus, postfoundationalism is a public enterprise negotiating between, according to Murphy, universality and contingency in a dialectic of “fallibilism and commitment.”42 To Pannenberg, theology as a research project is publicly viable because the universal and the provisional, the presupposed hermeneutical foundation of sub ratione Dei and the discoverable and variable non-foundations of science postfoundationally interrelate. To quote van Huyssteen, we must “reflect critically on the epistemic and nonepistemic values that shape the rationality of our reflection. Especially in theology, this implies, first of all, a challenge to transcend the intellectual coma of fideism and foundationalism.”43 Pannenberg’s Christology, Postfoundationalism, and Public Theology Drawing on George Newlands, who discusses a postfoundational Christology to rationally engage theological commitment with human rights, I will discuss Pannenberg’s postfoundational Christology and its potential for a theologically informed and publicly viable social ethic. Newlands recognizes the paleoanthropological need for transcendence and divine mystery, but also the fundamentalism that can accompany such

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ontological authority.44 As fundamentalism is often destructive to human rights, ethics and civil society, he suggests a postfoundational approach around the eschatological redemption of Christ, as witnessed in scripture; there is need to thaw the “fundamentalist grid.”45 Thus, Christ’s redemption may be emancipatory in the present against our “faithfulness to the past.”46 And the Spirit of the crucified and resurrected Christ, the spirit of Christlikeness, continually inspires the community against injustice and toward a “Christomorphic shape in history, social, political, and personal.”47 Just as Christology is not just abstract (“from above”) language but also incarnated (“from below”) in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and his acts of love, human rights language should avoid abstract rules and regulations (“from above”) but be practiced in Christ-like love (“from below”).48 Thus, in terms of a “Christology for human rights”49 framed in postfoundational terms, there is a dialectic between the universal: [T]here is in the understanding of Christ a considerable measure of agreement on the norms of Christology, on the central strands of what constitutes the character of the love of God through Christ. . . . At the same time a Christian belief, still unfortunately widespread, that God coerces obedience to his will in ways which violate rights, individual and social, can be seen to be contrary to the central strands of the New Testament narratives and contrary to the faithful articulation of the gospel in history.50

and the contingent: [T]he apprehension of the central structuring elements of faith is affected by local theological cultures and concepts. Individual people and communities should be free to contribute in their own ways, and no single approach should be understood as “the” authorized way, whether from the traditionally liberal or traditionally conservative wings of the churches.51

Pannenberg’s Christology has implications for a postfoundational public theology sensitive to the contingent and universal and social issues. A natural place to start is his early career monograph Jesus—God and Man, a “tour-de-force” arguing for the historicity and public viability of Jesus’s resurrection.52 He critiques the historical-critical method of analogy (as advanced by Ernst Troeltsch) which a priori rejects unique and unexpected phenomenon (such as the resurrection) on grounds of being unrepeatable and disanalogous with past events. Pannenberg demonstrates the resurrection’s historicity via two complementary traditions, the appearance tradition and the empty tomb tradition.53 A third argument for the resurrection is the anthropological phenomenon of hope. Christ’s resurrection is a “completely unknown destiny,” which takes in the old body but also transcends it.54 The

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anthropological phenomenon of hope “belongs to the essence of conscious human existence to hope beyond death,” expressed by the concept of Weltoffenheit (openness in relation to the world) and Umweltfreiheit (freedom in relation to the environment).55 Here, Pannenberg argues that the resurrection is a phenomenon of hope parallel to what modern anthropology deems natural to the human condition. In Systematic Theology, Pannenberg argues that Christological kerygma is interpretation of Jesus’s historical reality.56 Through the resurrection, the crucified attained “to the dignity of the Kyrios.”57 Thus, “revelation as history” means that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is public and open to historical and rational scrutiny. Jürgen Moltmann famously sees Christ’s resurrection as analogous to his other miracles. If that is true, and supposing that miracles are simply advanced phenomena that current science lacks the tools to describe, analogy can be useful to explain the resurrection. However, the operating word to underscore is a priori, that is, the inherent prejudices and biases that boxes public rationality to foundationalist methods such as analogy or scientific laws rather than a postfoundational approach that is transversal and utilizes not just analogy but other forms of reasoning, such as the appearance and empty tomb traditions. On Creative Love Helpful for Pannenberg’s postfoundational public Christology is Christ as the mediator of church fellowship and the resulting practices of faith, hope, and love. The Son is the principle of differentiation in both the immanent and economic trinities, who in turn, establishes the unique distinctiveness of creatures.58 The church community as the body of Christ exists as a fellowship of different and unique believers.59 If Christ is the differentiating, and thus contextual, aspect in a postfoundational framework, the Spirit promotes unity and fellowship in the community. After all, Jesus’s openness and dedication to the Father is not alien to, but constitutes humanity’s distinction from all creatures,60 and the Spirit lifts individuals above their own particularity to participate in Christ and with other believers.61 This differentiation and unity, in the immanent Trinity and the economic church community, parallels the dialectical postfoundational approach. In terms of human rights in the public sphere, I find postfoundational potential in Pannenberg’s discussion of the three church virtues: faith, hope, and love. According to Pannenberg, modern human rights developed from the “idea of Christian liberty, or freedom from sin as the result of faith in Christ.”62 But the critical-historical tools of modernity have severed Christian faith’s connection with history and science. Christianity has responded with a radical or conservative pietism which either diminishes the importance of

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history or values the experience of faith itself in se, respectively.63 Pannenberg rehabilitates faith’s connection extra se to history itself: “Christian theology must insist that Christian faith has as its basis and presupposition in God’s historical revelation. Thus knowledge (notitia) of the facts of history in which God revealed himself and assent (assensus) to these are essential presuppositions of Christian trust (fiducia).”64 Hope on the other hand “makes explicit what is implicit in trust . . . Pannenberg’s conception of hope reflects a tension between continuity and discontinuity with the structures of life.”65 In other words, faith requires assent and trust to past historical revelation; hope is future based. Here we see a postfoundational relationality in which neither present nor future is absolutized, which can result in either world-affirming or world-denying fundamentalisms. A similar postfoundational tension is found in Pannenberg’s discussion of justice and love. The laws of contemporary society attain to some level of justice. However, law alone cannot achieve full justice because the source of the right is love. That is, “Society’s desire for the recognition of others in their individuality (and to that extent in love) may be seen particularly clearly in the supplementing of the law by epieikeia and then by grace. Love as the source of lasting fellowship is the basis of what is right, and it alone perfects it.”66 In sum, eschatological love, proleptically present in the church, consummates and perfects the provisional justice that is natural to secular society. Similar to Newlands who sees human rights violations as a fundamentalist act of blind faith and favors a historical (past, present, and future affirming) Christomorphic shape to justice, Pannenberg affirms the Christian acts of faith, hope, and love (as postfoundational) as appropriate virtues in the Christian community. Newlands’s perspective on the flow of history is instructive for Christians seeking to relate their faith to human rights: History as part of the human sciences is also decisive for the tradition of common Christian experience . . . if we do not strive for the best available historical perspectives, we necessarily delude ourselves about the nature of that common experience, in its good and in its bad expressions. This is especially relevant to Christianity and human rights. . . . The tradition of the gospel goes beyond the interpretation of the biblical texts. It includes a history of prayer, worship, and Christian social action. It includes the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, through which faith has understood God to be inviting human beings to participate in a mysterious relationship, a generous communion of hospitality. This too is part of the tradition of experience which is part of the warrant for the construction of the critical rationality of faith. . . . It points to reconciliation, justice, liberation. As such it suggests a critical rationality of human rights, in which the rational is not simply the intelligible but the just and fair. To be unjust and unfair

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is ultimately to be unscientific, if unconditional love is the ultimate ground and goal of the way things are. All else is a distortion in the sight of God.67

What is the relationship between the church public space, and it’s faith, hope, and love, and the public space of society-at-large? Perhaps Pannenberg’s most influential insight is that the church, much like the relationship between secular justice and transcendent love, is a provisional “sign” of the eschatological (and public or universal) Kingdom of God and that “Christians are already translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son by the Spirit of the Father.”68 As such, the church is “a sign of reconciliation for a future unity of a renewed humanity in the kingdom of God” and empowered to practice their virtues in the world-at-large.69 But the signified Kingdom itself, relative to the principle of human rights, requires emphasis. In the article “The Moral Foundations of Modern Society and the Church,”70 Pannenberg observes that the principle of human rights has replaced religion as a unifying creed of the modern West. However, such human rights language has reduced to the free development of the personality which is a decline in the true idea of human rights. Such “pluralistic emptying” of freedom reduces ethical norms to “emotionally justified valuations.” In sum, Christian capacity for human rights are free acts possible through faith and union with Christ; Christ’s self-emptying provides a model of Christian freedom to become servants of other people. Christian freedom is not an “unrestricted” self-autonomy but is grounded in the common good, God, faith in Jesus Christ, and the church.71 ESCHATOLOGICAL METHOD AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY Phillip Clayton remarks that Pannenberg’s “central systematic principle” is “anticipation,” a reciprocal relationship between history and the eschatological message of Jesus and his resurrection.72 An ontological priority of future underlies Pannenberg’s theological project.73 Similarly, Eberhard Jüngel sees prolepsis as the key concept of Pannenberg’s system.74 But Grenz insightfully observes that Pannenberg is neither too immanent (Bloch) nor too transcendent (Moltmann).75 This section understands the public and societal significance of Pannenberg’s eschatological method. What are the public theological implications of Pannenberg’s views on past, present, and future? In that sense, I will focus on the role (Christian) time has played in the development of the modern consciousness and concretely analyze how Pannenberg’s eschatological ecclesiology has implications for public theology, particularly as it relates to the present public society-at-large.

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Pannenberg’s Eschatology Pannenberg’s “theme of Eschatology” incorporates hope and human longing for transcendence, God’s Kingdom, resurrection, Lordship, and present/ future dialectic: The eschatological salvation at which Christian hope is directed fulfills the deepest longing of humans and all creation even if there is not always a full awareness of the object of this longing. Yet like the reality of God himself it transcends all our concepts. The future of God’s kingdom for whose coming Christians pray in the words of Jesus (Matt. 6:10) is the epitome of Christian hope. All else that is related to it, including the resurrection of the dead and the last judgement, is a consequence of God’s own coming to consummate his rule over his creation.76

Pannenberg draws on Jewish, not Greek, apocalyptic and eschatological expectations, to interrelate both individual and corporate eschatology and the past (creation), present (the church), and future (eschatological Kingdom of God). The Spirit mediates and empowers such connections.77 The interrelation between the past, present, and future, and individuals and the community, resembles Stackhouse, whose first grace of creation, second grace of providence, and third grace of salvation are interrelated. But the role of the Spirit in Stackhouse is closer to an external force than something already internal to the creation. Implications of Eschatology for Public Theology Pannenberg’s eschatology, by means of the Spirit, attempts to overcome the dualisms introduced by modernity, between past, present, and future, private and public, and individual and community which has implications for Christianity’s relevance in the public sphere. And as Gunther Wenz observes, the “internal dynamic” of the church shapes the “relation between Christendom and public order.”78 According to Pannenberg: The Christian faith, like any religion that takes itself seriously, has to claim recognition and influence as a normative basis on which to shape every sphere of human life, not just individual conduct, but life in society as well, including matters of law and politics. But in the process the influence of Christianity on the shaping of the political and social order will always have to be related to a distinction between what is provisional and what is definitive, between what is secular and what is spiritual.79

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In fact, “The secular order needs a religious or quasi-religious basis and justification in the faith of the citizens that will precede all manipulation by rulers,” and “the thesis that the state is totally free as regards religion is thus an Illusion.”80 As public theology speaks of individual’s working together for the good of the common good, and the relevance and presuppositions of theology in the public realm, Pannenberg’s theology and ecclesiology is also publicly relevant because of its proleptical tension. First, I will compare Pannenberg with Edward Schillebeeckx’s eschatology and the implications the latter’s (existential) “justification of faith” has for Pannenberg’s eschatological public theology,81 for Schillebeeckx, much like Pannenberg, emphasizes the “primacy for the future.”82 To start, Martin Heidegger argues that death, and eschatology, fulfills existence. That is, through awareness of our death (in present life) we find meaning (totality): Only a being that is essentially futural in its being so that it can let itself be thrown back upon its factical there, free for its death and shattering itself on it, that is, only a being that, as futural, is equiprimordially having-been, can hand down to itself its inherited possibility, take over its own thrownness and be in the Moment for “its time.” Only authentic temporality that is at the same time finite makes something like fate, that is, authentic historicity, possible.83

Death is powerful as a starting point for a potential public theology as the public’s experiential and deep (anthropological) needs for self-understanding, confronting pain, suffering, and death, may be met by Christian redemption and eschatological hopes.84 As Graham Ward remarks, theology interprets “culture’s own dreaming,” so that the culture better understands its own “aspiration and limitations, the hope for which it longs and the depths of fallenness into which it continually commits itself.”85 The communication of theology with the public-at-large is a dialogical process presupposing a “fallible outcome” in the communication process.86 Similarly, Schillebeeckx details three universal (and thus, public) human experiences which account for “an honest justification of faith.” First, there are universal experiences all people share with one another. Second, these experiences are fundamental experiences which affect people deeply but which do not necessarily call for a religious interpretation. Third, the understanding of these experiences can be greatly enhanced by the word “God.”87 God cedes power to enable these authentic experiences of human freedom. On the one hand, freedom confronts the “face of the other person as an ethical challenge to my free subjectivity.”88 On the other hand, there is “no guarantee that evil—violence and injustice, torture and death—will not have the last word.”89 One option out of this dilemma is to find transcendent meaning, hope, and purpose in God who eschatologically brings such experiences

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of ethical challenges and suffering to an end.90 Schillebeeckx describes the Christian eschatological fulfillment in the autonomous secular sphere as a “critical negativity,” “a positive power which continues to exert constant pressure in order to bring about a better world, without humanity itself being sacrificed in the process.”91 According to Christoph Hübenthal, drawing from Schillebeeckx’s eschatological perspective, public theology makes a “substantial contribution to the self-enlightenment of the secular public.” The Christian eschatological message directs human freedom and its dilemmas toward its final directedness in God.92 Pannenberg on Heidegger and Death Schillebeeckx understands death, following Heidegger’s influence, as an autonomous and independent ethical challenge, and perhaps natural aspect of existence which nonetheless God’s eschatological Kingdom provides (secular and immanent?) meaning for. Pannenberg also sees death as an ethical and moral challenge. However, he critiques Heidegger’s naturalization of death because he sees death as the unnatural result of sinful human egocentricity and drive for infinitude. Pannenberg observes that many Roman Catholic theologians, including Karl Rahner (and perhaps Schillebeeckx), adopt Heidegger’s view that death completes existence for the sinner (in self-exclusion from God) and the saint (in openness to God through Christ, whose death is a free-act of self-offering to God).93 In contrast, following Sartre on the meaninglessness of death, Pannenberg says death is separation from God who remembers the dead no more.94 Sartre’s view that freedom (and natural death) is the “basis of our own finitude” and not, in fact, a Heideggerian self-transcendence,95 might be critiquing Schillebeeckx. For Pannenberg, death results from humans who reject their finitude; the solution is the resurrection which overcomes death: Since finitude goes with our creatureliness and is not to be seen as simply related to sin and its consequences, it seems the same must be true of death as well. Yet is finitude always linked to mortality and death? If it is, then the incorruptible life of the risen Christ should have devoured and outdated the finitude of human existence . . . the church confesses that even the risen Christ, too, remained a man, and therefore a finite being distinct from God, even though he will never die again. Thus the Christian hope is the same for believers who will in the future share in the new life of the risen Lord. It follows, then, that we must distinguish between finitude and mortality.96

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In other words, for Pannenberg, eschatology (and the resurrection) does not overcome the “natural” dilemma of death in the modern consciousness, but restores and consummates the initial creation that had been death-free while awaiting a future further consummation. Thus, “The new law of Christ restores the natural law which is seen as the moral law of love.”97 Pannenberg’s public theology, relative to death, attempts to overcome the demarcation between past (death-free) with the present (filled with sin-caused death) and the future (resurrection of the dead and a new resurrected body). It is a better public theology, I argue, because the dilemma of modern views of death and suffering does not rely on a “transcendent” (and unnatural?) power to overcome it; it simply restores creation to what it was originally meant to be (if the resurrection is entirely demonstrable by science, see my section on postfoundationalism). Thus, theology is very much a part of the “regular” public space, and correspondingly, Christian actions in public need not be sectarian: We do not have to switch to another system when we are concerned with the actual demands of our historical circumstances and the decisions to be made within them. The difficulty of Christian ethics today is that apparently we have to act on two quite distinct levels, and must jump from that of Christian faith onto that appropriate to the actual situation. . . . The reason for that kind of transition disappears once we have understood the inner association of revelation and history.98

In sum, Pannenberg’s eschatology, through the Spirit, attempts to overcome the dualisms introduced by modernity, between past, present, and future, private and public, and individual and community, which has implications for Christianity’s relevance in the ostensibly secular and autonomous public sphere. Eschatology has a special relation to the Spirit, ecstatically at work in individuals and society. “The consummating work of the Spirit integrates these two aspects” to overcome “the antagonisms between individuals and society that holds sway in the present world.”99 The next section considers the public relevance of Pannenberg’s eschatology in-so-far-as the concept of (Christian) time (and its fulfilled meaning through eschatology) influences modern notions of time. The Concept of Time in Modern Consciousness Pannenberg’s collection of essays entitled Faith and Reality discusses the confrontation between the (eschatological) faith of Christian tradition and the reality of contemporary life as experienced. But against the “irrationally subjective” but widespread idea faith originates in the “decision of faith,” he avers that faith is grounded in historic experience.100 The biblical

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understanding of reality as all-embracing “enables us to see the whole of being as a great interconnected unity . . . a term for individual things and events insofar as these belong to and have an effect on the whole.101 In a word, the biblical understanding of reality is “history.”102 Yahweh is not the “hidden background” as the Greeks speculate, but revealed to Israel through historical revelation pointing to “unforeseeable possibilities . . . in the light of the ultimate future or the end of time.”103 Thus, Christian “faith” (as the whole) is relevant in the historical and temporal process of “reality” (the part). For example, Karl Löwith says modern and secular history secularizes the Christian theology of history and eschatology; human progress and historical development has replaced divine providence. He attacks the historical view of time, even in its secularized form, for presupposing a Christian understanding of time and advocates a return to the static and unchanging ontology of Greek philosophy.104 Pannenberg supports Löwith, not for the latter’s retrieval of Greek ontology, but for his position opposing the view that Christian eschatology and progress are “heterogeneous conceptions.” After all, eschatology is the future of historical reality, an idea emerging from the Old Testament.105 So for Pannenberg, while the word “secular” can denote the holy’s disappearance in the world, it can also indicate a world continuously linked to its Christian roots despite ostensible emancipation.106 Public theology rediscovers the Christian roots of modern society. Even human freedom (in the secular sense) is seen as Christian in origin. Pannenberg counters Hans Blumberg’s assertion that secularization was human affirmation against the “theological absolutism” of the late Middle Ages. The medieval doctrine of predestination was comparably freer than Augustine’s premodern view and “theologians like Duns Scotus and William of Occam were equally interested in the freedom of God and human freedom.”107 In sum, the modern history of time and freedom is the “process of the realization of Christianity itself in the world.”108 Pannenberg’s Individual/Communal Framework and Public Theology How does one experience the moment-by-moment instances of time and how does Pannenberg’s doctrine of the church fit those individual needs (and the problem of death) while concurrently providing a unitive sense of meaning? What is the significance for an eschatological public theology? To that effect, Pannenberg’s ecclesiology balances both the individual and the communal as it progresses toward the Kingdom of God. After discussing the relationship between the individual (and the sense of the true-infinite) and the community, I will concretely consider Pannenberg’s ecclesiology, particularly, church

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offices, and its significance for a public theology that underscores both a strong central leader and egalitarian pluralism. Pannenberg maintains a tension between individual believers and the church community. The Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost was given both to individual believers and the “fellowship of believers.”109 The fellowship of believers is not second to the individual reception of salvation for individual Christians share in the body of Christ himself through the church community. However, the church’s mediation leads to individual Christian immediacy to Jesus Christ110 and possibly a privileging of the individual over the communal. After all, Jesus’s earthly proclamations were generally directed toward individuals and not the community.111 Then perhaps the church is more associated with the Pentecost than with Jesus.112 After all, to Pannenberg, the second person represents self-differentiation, a kind of healthy individualism. Even without the mediation of Christ who provides a more structured, consummated, and communal understanding, Pannenberg speaks of the universal (and public) sense of the sensus divinitatis. Anthropology, and related disciplines such as phenomenology and psychology, reveal human being’s innate sense of the “true-infinite.”113 Humans hope beyond death, expressed as openness in relation to the world (Weltoffenheit) and environmental freedom (Umweltfreiheit).114 Related to “true-infinite,” Rudolph Otto describes a “wholly other” and “unnamed Something.” The essence of all religions is that this “wholly other” lives “as the real innermost core.”115 Otto uses mysterium, tremendum, and fascinans to describe the transcendent numinous that evokes fear and awe. Pannenberg prefers to describe the infinite as unitive and not terrifying. It seems that two functions of Pannenberg’s theological method (exocentrism and basic trust) coincide with Otto’s description of mysterium as an unthematized and pre-relational “wholly other.” But my cursory look at phenomenology (via Schillebeeckx) in the previous section described the vulnerability, fear, dread, and potentially death that arises when the finite ego faces both others and the Other (Levinas). Alternatively, Pannenberg sees the infinite Other as that which imbues diverse particularity (the others) with meaning as the temporal progressively participates in the totality. One’s relationship to others, both in society and at church, and to the Other, need not be dreadful or terrifying. In other words, theology can have a public, edifying, and emotionally positive function in public building. As Pannenberg notes, sin is humans’ attempt to overcome insecurity and uncertainty by claiming and asserting infinity. That is, not healthy individualism participating both in the self-differentiating Jesus and his Spirit of unity and exocentric power, but an unnatural state of amour propre.116 Rousseau describes the natural state as “free of intrigue, suspicion, and doubt,” and the unnatural state as the powerful putting “new fetters to the weak” in order

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to be “richer, more honored, more powerful” to mitigate their sense of finitude.117 Consequently, death and violence emerge, not only from the powerful but the disenfranchised whose feelings of ressentiment periodically disrupt society.118 Pannenberg’s solution to the unnatural state is the resurrection. Founded on the anthropological insight of exocentric hoping beyond death, resurrection restores but also consummates natural creation which has been corrupted. The proleptical preview of the eschatological Kingdom of God is not “in isolation,” but open, selfless, and ecstatic.119 The ecstatic fellowship with Jesus Christ, and his resurrection, lifts Christians above themselves. This fellowship of believers is a “sign of our future fellowship in God’s kingdom.”120 Pannenberg assumes a common reference point for both theological eschatology and secular futurology.121 The Christian eschatological consciousness underlies both “what is new in the existential moment and also in the otherness of God and of his revelation in contrast to all that is human and worldly.”122 But following Teilhard de Chardin who stresses a final Omega Point while still maintaining a beginning teleological tendency (orthogenesis), Pannenberg strikes a middle way (via the notion of promise and love and the incarnation of Christ) between secular futurologists who extrapolate from the present and Christian theologians who overemphasize eternity.123 The possible correspondence between theological and secular approaches has public theological implications: Futurological extrapolation of trends observed in the present and theological confrontation between the present and God’s future are not mutually exclusive. It is especially the case that the models which futurologists have developed to combat the threat to human life which may be anticipated from current tendencies can correspond in a significant way to theological anticipations of the future of mankind and the world in the sense of promise and hope.124

Pannenberg on Church Leadership In The Church, Pannenberg underscores apostolicity as a key mark for Christian church identity. The church’s vita apostolica, derived from the eschatological consciousness of the apostles, appeals to apostolic authority on matters of doctrine and on the pastoral office, its structure and its use of liturgy.125 The eschatological consciousness sees the apostolic office partaking in “the spirit and mission of the apostles, and that in spite of the unrepeatable nature of the apostolate and the apostolic age it continues this mission through history.”126 The dialectical relationship of laypeople, the community, and clergy in an apostolic church is apparent in Pannenberg’s ecclesiology and the role the

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community of faith has in mediating individuals’ relationship to Christ and to one another and the implications this has for the rest of society. A central motif of biblical eschatological hope is resolving the antagonism between individual freedom and society and the Spirit’s reconciliatory role in the ensuing anticipation of the future of God’s Kingdom.127 This section will show how the individual/communal bridging process has implications for public theology, particularly as it relates to church leadership. Pannenberg’s position on church leadership uniquely affirms and denies a strong central hierarchy (like Roman Catholicism) and egalitarianism (like free churches). Pannenberg lays the necessary groundwork to break the “iron curtain” separating modern society from the church. In sum, the Spirit unites creation, current society, the church, and the consummated eschatological Kingdom of God: The presence of the divine Spirit in the gospel and by its proclamation, which shines out from the liturgical life of the church and his believers . . . is a pledge of the promise that the life which derives everywhere from the creative work of the Spirit will finally triumph over death, which is the price paid for the autonomy of creatures in their exorbitant clinging to their existence, in spite of its finite, and over against its divine origin.128

Pannenberg attempts to blur distinctions between individuals and the messianic community. He mediates between the extreme Protestant low-church traditions and Vatican I era views of the church institution as the “mystical body of Christ.” To start, he affirms the organizational and unifying significance, in its nature and in its function, of church leadership: Each church normally must have ministers to proclaim the gospel and to lead in praise of God at liturgical recollection of the event of salvation that is its basis. For all the variations in the institutional order of the churches, then, the ministry of a church that has charge of the public teaching of the gospel must bear final responsibility for the form of worship and for other congregational affairs.129

Pannenberg associates (without identifying) the unifying Fatherhood of God in the immanent Trinity to church leadership on earth. As he remarks, “The various offices or ministries of church have as their presupposition and basis the one common office or ministry of the church. This common calling of all Christians is to continue the mission of Jesus Christ in witness to the lordship of God.”130 Pannenberg even suggests a “Protestant Pope” as a proleptical symbol of functional unity and the Father’s Kingdom.131 In this sense, Pannenberg differs from Jürgen Moltmann whose opposition to “monarchial monotheism” leads to the Trinity as an egalitarian community of Father, Son, and the Spirit “whose unity is constituted by mutual

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indwelling and reciprocal relational interpenetration.”132 Correspondingly, the church community is led not by an ecclesiastical hierarchy but a “democratic community of a free people.”133 Pannenberg repeatedly asserts that the current church is a provisional sign and symbol, implicitly exhorting churches to not absolutize themselves. Moreover, his egalitarianism appears in his understanding of the priesthood of all believers. The distinction between laypeople and the clergy lies not in spiritual authority or representing Christ, but in the public nature of the clergy as a visible sign of unity particularly present in the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.134 The balance between individual calling and the church community represented by the unifying ministry of the clergy is seen in the following quote: Common fulfillment has to be observed at celebration of the Eucharist as well as in witness to their faith. . . . It is always a given for the plurality of church members, but it has also to be posited for the plurality of their individual contributions to the life of the community in order to integrate these into the unity of witness of Christ. An authority that has this function is referred on the one hand to the common faith consciousness of church members but represents to them on the other hand the unity of the commission of Jesus Christ in which that consciousness is itself grounded and from which it must be continually renewed.135

The clergy helps believers achieve independence relative to the unifying substance of scripture.136 Diversity, on the other hand, appears in the distribution of the gifts of the Spirit and the offices and ministries corresponding therein.137 In sum, Pannenberg underscores unity and diversity in church leadership and government as well as the important constitutive significance of lay believers in the church community. Pannenberg’s View of Church Leadership and Its Significance for Public Theology What are the public implications of Pannenberg’s understanding of church leadership and organizing structure in its united/differentiated form relative to the rest of the congregation? After all, church life is not merely religious and cultic, but relevant to what happens outside the church “in all aspects of its common social life as a nation.”138 On the one hand, Christians are citizens of the heavenly politeuma that no “this-worldly political order” can comprehend.139 Christians are discouraged from identifying with one model of political order.140 However, like any religion that takes itself seriously, Christian faith shapes societies and individuals, including law and politics.141 Pannenberg proposes that “the people of God” (church fellowship as a dialectical relationship between the functional head and laypeople but also

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an ecumenical focus on the universal church) dialogue, communication, and exert public influence in a social and ethos-related manner, in ways consistent with what Stackhouse calls the civil society: The thesis that the state is totally free as regards religion is thus an illusion . . . Christian awareness is now on the point of outgrowing the antagonisms of the denominational age and hence the historical reasons for making religion a private matter. A renewal of the social sense of Christians as the “people of God” beyond all confessional differences . . . might well initiate a new epoch in shaping the relation between Christianity and the public order . . . a situation in which we can no longer take for granted without pause or question that most people in European and American societies stand in relation to the Christian tradition.142

The “people of God” are not ends in-and-of-themselves but “essentially missionary”143 as both the “called-out people of God” and prophets, priests, and kings into the world.144 Pannenberg exhorts the “people of God” to maintain a posture of openness and dialogue relative to specific government forms; although, as I will argue in the next section, covenant and unity/diversity suggests democracy. The notion of the “people of God” underscore God’s election of a people in history and the church as a historical fellowship progressively revealing the eschatological community of justice; election is not a simple “abstract individualism” that detaches so-called elect individuals from society.145 Pannenberg, Covenant, and Democracy Pannenberg espouses a unifying leader, but also egalitarian and diverse voices. This parallells modern democratic forms of governance. And democratic ideas are a “fruitful extension” of Christian beginnings; freedom is dignity and equality before God, not individualistic self-will. However, inequalities are “naturally-conditioned” and require distinctive social roles ordered in complementary way.146 As covenant is concept which has played a formative role in modern democratic societies, I will not apply covenant to Pannenberg. How can covenant illustrate the public significance of Pannenberg’s view of church structure and the people of God? Although Pannenberg discusses a strong leader and egalitarian structures, he limits the discussion to church matters, belying his more universal and public intention. How the church governing structure concretely looks like in contemporary society is wanting other than general statements on the consummating work of the church relative to society-at-large. As an act of public theology, I link Pannenberg’s

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ecclesiology and modern covenantal, democratic forms of government that are arguably Christian in origin. The various layers of church ruling authorities parallels the separation of powers in democratic societies. Although Pannenberg refuses to identify Christians with any one model of political order, including modern Western democracies, Christian fellowship is found in the modern West. For instance, in the essay “Secularization of Christianity and the Origin of the Modern West,”147 Pannenberg suggests that the political freedom and self-government of the early Israelite community was the beginnings of modern democratic constitutionalism.148 The Spirit’s outpouring on the seventy elders suggests a pluralistic and power-sharing democracy as the link between theocracy and democracy is mediated through the Spirit reigning in the hearts of Christians.149 Furthermore, modern democracies must be reminded of their religious origins and the people of God exercise self-rule and democracy because Christians share in both Christ’s kingship and priesthood; democratic freedom springs from the Spirit.150 Christianity reveals to democratic society the conditions required to prevent societal collapse and the maintenance of justice and plurality. That is, the theological roots of modern democracy.151 The clergy serve as the functional and symbolic head of the people of God, with higher church authorities serving larger jurisdictions. This power-sharing appears similar to the power sharing between mayors, governors, and presidents. During the Reformation, “the local pastor was seen as the prototype of the ecclesial office holder.” However, regional and supraregional leadership offices were also “valued as functionally commanded.”152 According to Pannenberg, “The difference between the ministry of bishops and that of presbyters (acting as local pastors) became the difference between local and regional leadership.”153 Thus, the distinction between the regional and supraregional offices was not sacramental but juridical.154 Pannenberg does not directly connect local and regional pastors with political leaders, but he comes close: The Christian element in the origin of democratic principle . . . is the positive precondition for egalitarian thinking in the adaptability of political organization to social change. This accords with the dynamics of modern history and especially the world-openness of man, and also the ultimately effective tendencies of democratic societies to assimilate nations and unite them in supra-national institutions. In regard to attempts progressively to limit and constitutionally check any exercise of power, whether economic or political (claimed in the name of the majority), the democratic social order is probably closer than any other currently feasible to a form of life which is provisional and therefore alterable and only partially valid.155

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Pannenberg underscores the Christian tradition as formative in democratic notions of freedom, justice, plurality, and equal representation and the power sharing governing structure that supports it; Christians share a common priesthood but also a common kingship (that is, right to rule). In contrast, “monarchy with its fundamental distinction between ruler and people, is not wholly compatible with Christianity.”156 Therefore, “religious or quasi-religious convictions for present day governments is much greater than the thesis of the neutrality of the state in matters of religion will allow.”157 In terms of a public theology, local ecclesial authorities are what Stackhouse calls the religious public. However, they can also be political institutions (as a symbol of the future Kingdom of God) symbolized by the principality “Mars” and organized to ensure law and order.158 Pannenberg’s notion of the people of God and its relationship with covenant explicates relationships inside the church. According to Stackhouse, “The primal relationship of God to humanity is covenantal.”159 Moreover, there is “the presence of covenant-like possibilities in many, perhaps all, cultures.” I have paralleled Pannenberg’s ecclesiology with modern democratic governments in terms of the division of power. I will now look at the covenantal intra-relationship among people inside a respective congregation and its parallels with the public civil society similarly covenantally organized. Stanley Grenz identifies four concepts constituting Pannenberg’s theology of history and election: revelation, covenant, mission, and judgment.160 In Human Nature, Election, and History, Pannenberg defines covenant (God-to-human) alongside its social implications (human-to-human): On the basis of the notion of election, as of a foundational act of God in history, the order of social existence . . . is conceived in historical terms as a covenant offered to the people at a particular moment in history in connection with their election by God. The covenant comprises all those conditions which the people pledge themselves to observe in committing themselves to serve the God who chose them to exist as his people. . . . The final vindication of God in history will be the advent of his Kingdom which will bring about the full realization of God’s purposes as outlined in the scheme of his covenant.161

I do not get the sense that covenant (as a relationship between God and the people of God) is directly and overtly linked to the (covenantal) relationships people may have with each other. Moreover, covenant is tied to election so that the former is not necessarily conceived of as a relationship of mutual obligations among equal persons under God, but a sense of chosenness vis-à-vis God. Pannenberg writes in “Christian Legal Convictions in the Context of a Pluralistic Society,”162 that God’s covenant with the people of Israel resulted in legal norms governing the people’s relationship with God

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and with each other.163 God’s covenant results in legal norms but covenant itself is not overtly connected with the people-to-people relationships. Furthermore, Pannenberg critiques the association of covenant with (national) election as a “secular distortion of its original biblical content”: The immigrants to America regarded their move as a new exodus to a new promised land, where the Puritans founded a new society on the basis of the theocratic constitution, a divine covenant. The typological identification of America as a new Israel helped to establish American national identity and right up to the 20th century formed the core of American civil religion . . . the American sense of national mission, too, has been so greatly secularized that it no longer relates to the restoration of the unity of Christianity but is regarded as a purely cultural and political mission.164

What are the conditions and stipulations of the covenant? According to Pannenberg: Materially there is an implied obligation on the recipient to maintain the relation of fellowship that is established in this way. . . . The observance of the demands of the law of God may be a condition of his own keeping to his covenant promise (Deut. 7:12; cf. 5:3). Keeping the covenant itself (Exod. 19:5) may be a condition of the people still belonging (as a possession) to the God who brought it up out of Egypt.165

The people are the possession of God called to be a “holy people” in fellowship with God and separated from the nations. This involves shunning other gods and keeping God’s statutes.166 But what would covenant look in relationships among the people of God. As an act of public theology, how can that serve as a model for the types of relationships in the rest of society? For Pannenberg, fellowship with God necessarily involves fellowship with other members of the faith community. The church, through Christ, mediates fellowship alongside the covenantal obligations including a sense of mission. According to Grenz, covenant holds the elected one responsible to the electing God and to God’s will to do justice. This leads to the mission of proclaiming the gospel and to bring all peoples into kingdom fellowship.167 While the earliest American colonists were guilty of a false and distorted sense of national chosenness, the legacy of covenant in the United States is not just, to use Pannenberg’s words, a secularization of election, but a relationship structure of mutual accountability and participation under God conductive to the individual/communal and particular/universal relationships Pannenberg endorses. The political scientist Daniel Elazar provides a working definition of covenant in contrast to, on one end, a “conquest model” marked by hierarchy and

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oppressive power, and on the other, an “organic model” marked by cut-throat competition: A morally informed agreement or pact based upon voluntary consent, established by mutual oaths or promises, involving or witnessed by some transcendent higher authority, between peoples or parties having independent status, equal in connection with the purposes of the pact, that provides for joint action or obligation to achieved defined ends (limited or comprehensive) under conditions of mutual respect, which protect the individual integrities of all the parties to it.168

Pannenberg’s ecclesiological (but also public) model strives to include both authority and equality, formal leadership but also laypeople. As he says in Ethics, pluralism and tolerance supplies Christian truth with a new credibility while avoiding the charge of authoritarianism. The people exercise self-rule because they share in Christ’s kingship and priesthood,169 and are filled by the ecstatic Spirit who unites members toward a common cause.170 According to Jürgen Moltmann, “There is no Christian identity without public relevance, and no public relevance without theology’s Christian identity.” Christianity “refuses to fall into the modern trap of pluralism, where it is supposed to be reduced to its particular sphere and limited to its own religious society.”171 Thus, Duplessis Mornay uses the theological notion of covenant as justification for the public right of resistance following a theology of the “double covenant”: God himself makes the first covenant with the people of Israel on Sinai. The law of this covenant is the Decalogue. . . . The people make the second covenant with the king “before God” and transfer their sovereignty to him according to this contract of rule. If a ruler breaks this covenant, sovereignty reverts to the people. The king is then a tyrant whom the people must resist. But if the ruler breaks God’s own covenant with the people, he is a blasphemer, whom the people are bound to resist in the interests of God’s will.172

Moltmann sees this as “popular sovereignty,” a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Therefore, “The people make kings, not kings the people . . . if the contract is not fulfilled [the people] are, without more ado, freed of every obligation.”173 In terms of covenant’s role in interpersonal relationships, Heinrich Bullinger, Caspar Olevian, and Johann Althusius all argue that citizens of Christ’s Kingdom are members of the covenant.174 The covenant between human beings is “safeguarded by God’s covenant with those same human beings,” so that “from this trust on God’s part follows the trust of human beings in their mutual capability for covenant.”175 Federalist covenant

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thinking and the covenant community of the “free and equal” infiltrated the American “church covenant of free congregations and the social covenant of the settlers’ co-operatives.”176 Moltmann argues that even the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) “is the agreement of citizens ‘before God’ which every government has to observe and which puts every citizen under an obligation to resist any exercise of power that is illegal, illegitimate, and that transgresses human rights. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and the ultimate crisis and test of democracy.”177 On the other hand, Pannenberg argues that human beings are unequal in judgmental capacity and social function. Moreover the democratic ideology is “inchoate, immature and problematic condition to this day” because of an “abstract notion of equality” which is “associated with a non-historical, technical understanding of the ideal state of human society.”178 True “community is possible only between unequal though complementary partners.”179 Christianity does not regard human distinctions as nonessential. Human beings are not equal in who they already are, but before faith in God: Equality in the Christian sense means that everyone is to be raised to share in the highest human possibilities. This quality has constantly to be created; it never just exists. The power which creates it is that of brotherhood, fraternity [or covenant] . . . the power of creative love, which alone can unite diversity into community and, with community, produce an equality which didn’t exist before.180

On the “German Basic Law,” Pannenberg consistently avers that the Law’s protection of individual human rights does not serve absolute freedom but is limited by the rights of others, the moral law, and the religious cultural tradition. But in reality, the secular and pluralizing world is losing its unifying religious and theological foundation and absolute individual self-determination is ascending.181 Pannenberg’s church (and political) authority as a functional head and check against individualism betrays an inherent “inequality,” one that may be necessary for the publics to function. That is, in the “double covenant” I mentioned earlier, the mutual equality and accountability of persons was guaranteed by God. In Pannenberg’s version, however, the role of “God,” as a functional head, might also be assigned to a human person in the covenants made between people, at least this side of the eschaton. John de Gruchy distinguishes the democratic system (“constitutional principles and procedures, symbols, and convictions”) and the democratic vision (“that hope for a society in which all people are truly equal and yet where difference is respected; a society in which all people are truly free, yet where social responsibility rather than individual self-interests prevails”).182 He rejects a democratic system that is merely formal and procedural but supports a vision which speaks to ethos, vision, and responsibility, where people are

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respected as ends, and not as means. Democracy has become a “causality of the contradictions of modernity.”183 The rediscovery of the Christian vision brings messianic hope for society and God’s shalom.184 The Trinitarian vision views individual rights and the common good as complementary. The Trinity enables theological reflection on how the Christian ekklesia impacts issues related to democratic politics, gender and cultural differences, economic justice, freedom and responsibility, and human identity, among others.185 De Gruchy discerns the historical provenance of Christianity in forming societies informed by a vision of democracy. Pannenberg’s understanding of Trinity, unity-in diversity, diversification of power, inequality, and exocentricity and Christian vision shares de Gruchy’s position. As the world is losing its civic cooperativeness, heavily based on an abstract notion of individualized human rights, Pannenberg calls for the recovery of Christian roots. Although Pannenberg says the church, and its relationships, previews the eschatological society-at-large, he does not concretely discuss how the current church has already formed modern democratic nations. In general terms, Pannenberg speaks of openness and exocentricity that has relevance to the civil communication (covenant) that is consonant with democratic forms of government. The type of communication he envisions is relationally Trinitarian, similar to Moltmann, in a manner that Habermas (with his abstract Kantian ideals) is unable to achieve. Perhaps Pannenberg’s vision of both a functional head and laypeople better fit modern democratic notions which are not pure democracies but representative republics. Pannenberg’s program is not strictly speaking a “political theology,” for its catalyzing agents are neither from the top (Carl Schmitt) nor from the bottom (Gustavo Gutiérrez). Pannenberg, following his view of the Trinity, wants both the top and the bottom so as to avoid abuses of the head on individuals, but to avoid too much “abstract” diversity and individualism. The blending of the individual and the community is Pannenberg’s unique contribution to public theology, which has implications for blurring the strict divisions between the secular and the holy, between the sacred and holy space. TRINITARIAN METHOD AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY I have discussed Pannenberg’s doctrine of the Trinity, particularly, the role of Christ as the source of differentiation and the Spirit as the empowering agent of unity and the relational implications of the eternal Father, Son, and Spirit on human relationships and ruling (ecclesial and political) structures. In terms of Tracy’s three publics (the academy, the church, and society), the Trinitarian method appears most overtly tied to the church public, for the Trinity is

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arguably the most distinctive aspect of the Christian religion (at least among the Abrahamic religions). Tracy takes a Christological approach to the church public. The discipline of “systematic theology” uses the critical methods of literary-critical, historical-critical, social-scientific, and ideology critique in developing a Christology in the public space of the church. Although the confessional nature of Christ may not be “publicly” warranted in the secular space, it is still rational (fides quaerens intellectum) at church.186 The classic words, sacraments, and actions representing Christ’s presence in the community serve as “Christian classics” of warrantedness.187 The systematic theologian, using an analogical imagination, articulates second-order language to interpret the “contemporary situation and the classic event of Jesus in (analogical) conversation with not only the negative method of the dialectical imagination but interpretations with different theological focal meanings and even secular views.”188 Tracy exhorts systematic theologian to use critical methods in Christology. But as Sanks argues, this is “not a fully developed contemporary Christology,” only a method.189 The next section will discuss Pannenberg’s “theological focal point,” that is, the Trinity and its relationship with the public. The Christian “classic” based on the “starting point”190 of Jesus’s proclamation of the Father’s Lordship has Trinitarian implications relative to history, reality, and the public. Pannenberg’s Trinitarian Approach The primary methodological concern of early Pannenberg is scientific anthropology,191 perhaps more interested in demonstrating the scientific rationality of theology in the secular public. The mature Pannenberg is thoroughly Trinitarian, perhaps more confessionally inclined, underscoring the Trinity as the starting point or unity of theology. Anthropology ultimately leads to a theology “oriented to the primacy of God and his revelation.”192 Therefore, the Trinity, as the “central illustration of the linking of historical and philosophical elements in Christian theology,”193 transcends while preserving, and reconciles, the difference between creator and creature, and anthropology and theology.194 I indicated that the Christian classic involves the classical event of Jesus. But Elizabeth Johnson suggests that the more Pannenberg explored (the Trinitarian) God through the history of Jesus: The more deeply he . . . moved into the doctrine of the Trinity . . . rooted in the historical relationship of Jesus to the Father. The doctrine of the Trinity, in contrast to all unitary monotheism, expresses the essence of the Christian idea

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of God. . . . In particular this must be maintained of God’s relation to the suffering of Jesus: God participates in that suffering, not as something extrinsic to or supplementary to deity, but precisely as the way of revealing the particularity of what it means to be God.195

The Trinity is not an abstract eternal Trinity disconnected from reality, but one that is actively involved in history (via the “two hands of the Father” which are the Son and the Spirit), and has public significance. As Johnson puts it, “Creation is grounded on the Son and lives through the Spirit—hence all reality is already seized by the Trinitarian life revealed by God in Jesus.”196 The Trinity is a recurring motif throughout the three volumes of Pannenberg’s systematic theology. In fact, discussion of the Trinity, different from tradition and even contemporary theology, precedes that of the unity. To Pannenberg, history reveals God in three-fold form (thus Trinity helps explain reality). Moreover, Threeness is not interpreted as metaphysical Oneness (the Cappadocian belief in the Father as the source of divinity, Hegel’s view that God is simply Spirit, or Barth’s view of God as subject of self-revelation).197 The Christian view of reality (the Christian classic) is the Trinity: Jesus who announces and is obedient to the Father’s Lordship, and the Spirit who draws believers to Christ’s relationship has with the Father.198 Trinity and Implications for Public Theology How does the three-fold form of God’s revelation publicly appear in the world? How does a Christian Trinitarian theology reveal to the world its inherent structure? This section will consider the publicly relevant topics of force field and feminism and their compatibility with Pannenberg’s Trinitarian structure. At first glance, Pannenberg’s notion of the force field speaks more of a unity rather than a tri-unity. As he writes, a force field is an “absolute and omnipresent transcendence”199 of “God’s mighty presence.”200 The force field is a kind of singular divine essence that dynamically “unites the three persons as proceeding from the Father, received by the Son, and common to both.”201 However, the unifying force field permeates all three persons so that the particularity of the three persons and the universality (the one divine essence of the spiritual force common to all persons) are maintained. The Spirit is not only an impersonal field that is common to both the Father and the Son, but a concrete person who stands over against the Father and Son with its own center of action.202 Simply put, intuition of the “true-infinite” reveals the divine spiritual essence in inchoate form. And the divine essence is fully revealed by the “existence” of the fellowship of the three persons revealed in history.203 Thus,

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the impersonal essence of divinity and force field, which lacks subjectivity, requires the activity and agency of the three persons (subjects) for “only the three persons are the direct subjects of the divine action.”204 Subsequently, God’s attributes and the common divine essence are revealed, including philosophical notions such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence but also ones directly revealed by God’s action on Earth: gracious, merciful, patient, and of great kindness.205 How is this understanding of God’s essence as field and existence as three persons consonant with scientific field theories and the manner in which contingent event after event is released into finite existence? For Pannenberg, the Spirit is a universal life breath pervading not just ecclesial contexts but all of creation and time and space as a “creative and life-giving dynamic.”206 Post-Newtonian physics describes the physical universe using energy and field theories, similar to the divine essence as similarly dynamic, life-giving, and a force field.207 Thus, the Spirit is not a Platonic, Aristotelean, or Stoic (bodily) nous that is corporeal reality, but a breath or wind similar to Michael Faraday’s idea of a universal force field “independent of matter and defined only by their relations to space or space-time.”208 According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, force field is not a worldview of necessarily determined causal processes like the law of inertia, but probabilistic. Thus, the Spirit can enable the phenomenon of “emergence,” in which an ecological environment lifts individuals toward a (seemingly spontaneous) self-transcendence to spur progress and development. Pannenberg understands emergence as the integration of contingent (discrete) moments and events. Contingent individual events are constituted by the “possibility field of the future” spurred by the creative dynamic of the Spirit.209 The role of the environmental force field in emergence is evident in studies on the environment, DNA, complexity theory, behavioral genetics, and more.210 The spirit may exist extra nos, but it is still “permanently united with it as a ‘spiritual body.’”211 The bodies (paralleling the Trinitarian persons) must have genuine agency, independence, and contingency as subjects alongside the gravitational fields.212 Thus, the theological doctrine of resurrection needs not be a supernatural act of an immortal “soul,” but can display the earthly and bodily (and public) phenomenon of emergence. The spiritual force field as an environment within creation can be said to spur an exocentric process of bodily resurrection. The resurrection does not require a radical difference from present life, but rather a transformation enabling participation in the divine glory.213 The resurrected body is basically identical and simply the restoration of the previous body.214 As to the spiritual field, even though it is autonomous and independent of bodies, the bodies are still important as autonomous subjects. The divine essence when conceived of as a force field has scientific applicability

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that can relate the theology of the Trinity (and the Trinitarian structure of particularity and universality) with scientific accounts of the environmental field and emergence. Pannenberg’s Trintarian approach also has public theological implications relative to feminism. As Nicola Slee remarks, rather than a universal and non-specific “global speak,” a “theology that seeks to be public has more chance of being heard . . . [when] speaking with the dialects, inflections and rhythms of our unmistakable voices,” including feminist and related contextual theologies.215 This is “not despite but precisely because of their particularity and contextuality.”216 If the public is organized under an egalitarian Trinitarianism, what are the implications for the marginalized, specifically women? Moltmann’s critique of “monarchial monotheism” leads to an egalitarianism that may betray a principle of pluralism which lacks a functional (or public and symbolic) unity. Thus, I consider Elizabeth Johnson’s feminist perspective on the Trinity and perhaps a Pannenbergian influence in her thought. Johnson’s essay “The Ongoing Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg” identifies Jesus “from below” as the starting point for the doctrine of the Trinity, noticing the dependence of the earthly Jesus on the Father: “Creation is grounded on the Son and lives through the Spirit—hence all reality is already seized by the Trinitarian life revealed by God in Jesus.”217 How might this (Pannenbergian) structure of dependence appear in Johnson’s renaming of the Trinity to deconstruct the patriarchal names and reflect female imagery of the Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia? First, Johnson challenges “the idolatry of maleness in classic language about God” to rediscover divine mystery and the dignity of women created in the image of God. After all, language used to describe God is neither peripheral to theological speech nor ecclesial and social praxis.218 Patriarchy assumes that the conversion experience is divesting oneself from the temptations of pride, self-assertion, and exploitation. But for women already at the margins, the temptation is not to self-assertion but to the lack of it and the “overdependence on others for self-identity, drifting, and fear of recognizing one’s own competence.” Thus, conversion is “empowerment toward discovery of self and affirmation of one’s strength, giftedness, and responsibility.”219 Pannenberg is relatively silent on feminist issues and conceives of sin as pride, self-assertion, and too much autonomy, and that Jesus’s identity is formed in dependence on the Father. But he also sees Christ as the primary agent of self-differentiation and the source of a healthy autonomy which can, theoretically, be empowering for women. Considering the univocal implications of male images, Johnson reconceives the Trinity using feminine terms. Much like Pannenberg, I sense that the second person is “dependent” on the first person through the empowerment of the

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third, but rather than connotations of power and exploitation that terms such as “obedience” or “dependence” might conjure, the Trinity of Johnson: SpiritSophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia is caring, relational, and empathic while still maintaining a kind of “originate” in the form of a mother. Thus, dependence is not so much a Father’s exploitation, but more like a mother’s weaning of a dependent child. Relative to Spirit-Sophia, the Spirit’s functions hint at speaking about God “in analogy with women’s historical realities” in “creating new life, working to sustain it in myriad ways, renewing what has been damages grieving over destruction, teaching people to be wise, and inspiring critique and enthusiasm, all of which have engaged the energies of women.”220 Moreover, the Bible consistently depicts Wisdom as female: “sister, mother, female beloved, chef and hostess, preacher, judge, liberator, establisher of justice, and a myriad of other female roles wherein she symbolizes transcendent power ordering and delighting in the world.”221 Relative to Jesus-Sophia, Johnson argues that women are made in the image of Christ (imago Christi) and are “icons of Christ,” suggesting the female Christ, a “Christalogical” rather than a “Christological approach.” This does not replicate the biological sexual features of the male Jesus but participates in his life through communion in the Spirit. Christ is a corporate personality, a relational reality. Thus redeemed humanity participates in Jesus’ compassionate and liberating love.”222 Jesus is Sophia incarnate; the Messiah anointed by the Spirit. And Christ’s earthly life is “profoundly good news for persons who are poor denigrated, oppressed, struggling, victimized, and questing for life and the fullness of life, the majority of whom are women with their dependent children.”223 When Jesus says “abba,” it is not patriarchal, but directed toward God the mother as the “God of the oppressed.”224 Relative to Mother-Sophia, she is the “unoriginate origin.” Women “bear, nourish, and deliver new persons into life and, as society is traditionally structured, are most often charged with the responsibility to nurture and raise them into maturity.” Therefore, “Language about God as mother carries a unique power to express human relationship to the mystery who generates and cares for everything.”225 Johnson critiques the Aristotelian notion of the active and public male and the restriction of motherhood and femininity to the private sphere. She posits God the mother who “mothers the universe” in public history, the “unoriginate, living source of all that exists. This unimaginable livingness generates the life of all creatures, being herself, in the beginning and continuously, the power of being within all being.”226 In Johnson, I do not detect a direct link between the Trinity and church ruling structures (like Pannenberg does) so that clergy are conceived as kinds of public and symbolic ruling mothers, especially because she critiques Moltmann for being “too sanguine about the liberating character of the triune symbol, for history shows how easily patriarchy in church and society

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has coexisted with trinitarian belief.”227 It seems though that Johnson would more approve Moltmann’s social Trinitarianism than Pannenberg’s hierarchical view of church ruling structures.228 But an argument can be made for the latter, considering Johnson, like Pannenberg, follows Rahner’s rule. Could the immanent Trinity of the Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia directly influence church ecclesial structure? That is, a matriarchy defined by care and agency rather than a patriarchy defined by rule and subject/object dualism. On the other hand, how would a “women church,” as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza states, constitute a “discipleship of equals” with public significance?229 That is, how would a “women church” (theology) “speak truth to power” through concrete acts of justice from below which publicly and globally counters “all forms of kyriarchal oppression and to create just, inclusive communities on the Earth which respect and honour the bodies of the poor, the marginalized and the silenced, including the fragile body of the Earth.”230 Fiorenza envisions “safe, free spaces within which wo/men can claim agency, act as subjects of their own lives, make political decisions about their lives, explore their differences, articulate a vision of justice and freedom and empower each other to live into this vision.”231 For example, Ada María Isasi-Díaz proposes a mujerista theory of justice elaborated from below, “The everyday struggles of grassroots people.”232 That is, a “reconciliatory praxis of care and tenderness” fighting the oppressive and individualistic reigning concept of justice: “liberty impartiality, equity, merit, rights” resulting in fissures, fractures, divisions, and violence among persons and institutions233 resulting in a “spiritual communion.”234 CONCLUDING REMARKS ON PANNENBERG’S METHOD The purpose of chapter 3 was to relate Pannenberg’s theological methodologies with the aims and purposes of public theology. For my purposes, I focused on three methods commonly attributed to Pannenberg: the postfoundational, eschatological, and Trinitarian. Drawing on David Tracy’s concept of three publics of the academy, society, and the church, I proceeded to parallel a respective theological method with a respective public sphere while, following Breitenberg’s taxonomy, identified it as a religious informed discourse that is nonetheless applicable to non-adherents on issues of universal concern utilizing warrants, insights, methods, and language that is similarly universally accessible. First, I related the postfoundational method with the academic sphere, arguing that Pannenberg’s epistemology is postfoundational because the

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particular and the universal interrelate in a manner consistent with the web metaphor. I also argued that a postfoundational approach is potentially a public theology because religious truths (or theology), in order to be publicly viable, need not be based on unchanging and “non-miraculous” foundations (as in a kind of logical positivism) but also on contextual, contingent, and particular truths as accepted by a community. I then outlined some public implications of Pannenberg’s theological approach to Christology, finding postfoundational potential in his discussion of the three virtues of faith, hope, and love as well as discussing his postfoundational approach to theology and scientific method. Pannenberg also takes a foundational approach to this theology, utilizing both the natural and human sciences to make publicly credible his theology (such as the rationality of the resurrection). Ultimately, however, the strengths of a postfoundational approach, unlike the foundational one, is that fideistic elements need not automatically be disqualified as publicly viable evidence, but affirmed to be as “rational” a phenomenon of particular and contingent human experiences as the so-called universal “scientific” approach. A transversal model of interdisciplinary conversation fosters greater dialogue and open-mindedness. Moreover, postfoundationalism may be a public theology because it not only reconciles the modernistic division of epistemology, but also between secular and sacred spaces, and past, present, and future. That is, the secular space can be holy, and the holy space can be temporal. Second, I related Pannenberg’s eschatological method with the public sphere, drawing societal and public implications from Pannenberg’s focus on the future through the eschatological Kingdom of God (which is also provisionally and proleptically present now through the church). I began with a brief introduction to Pannenberg’s eschatology and then related it to public concerns at both the individual and community levels. Relative to the former, I considered Schillebeeckx’s existential eschatology and related it to Pannenberg’s position on death to conclude that Pannenberg has an arguably stronger public theology because his position on death as unnatural means that its overcoming does not necessarily rely on a “transcendent” and potentially unnatural power to overcome it; it simply restores creation to its originally intended telos. Relative to the communal level, I considered Pannenberg’s views on an individual/communal church organization and structure (along with the need for a symbolic and public head) with the division of authorities and covenantal nature of modern democracies. I made the case that relative to Moltmann’s arguably radically egalitarian approach, Pannenberg’s upholding of both leadership and the common people in the church, as arguably seen in modern democracies, is a stronger public theology. While Pannenberg does not use the term covenant as a way to understand the relationship between

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the people of God (as is done by many Reformed theologians), I made the connection. Finally, I related Pannenberg’s Trinitarian method with the church sphere drawing on Tracy’s understanding of the Christ-centered nature of the Christian “classic” but reconceptualizing it with Pannenberg’s Trinitarian approach. That is, the Christian understanding of the Trinity is a codified, canonized, and systemized understanding of revelation which initially appears to be more of a “true-infinite” or sense of the divine. The Christological nature of the “classic” immediately draws comparison to the postliberal method as seen in Hauerwas’s preference for the peace ethic of Jesus as the regulating “grammar” of the church or Ronald Thiemann, another Yale School theologian, whose public theology is primarily accountable to the Christian public and engages the world only on an “ad hoc” basis. Pannenberg, by contrast, does church theology for the world in a prophetic manner, and his view is that the public world itself is best understood in a Trinitarian manner, whether the world knows it or not. So in this chapter, I discussed the manner in which this Trinitarian revelation is seen, for instance, the field of force and feminism. Tracy’s church public is arguably the least public of the three, however, in Pannenberg’s conception, the church might in fact be the most public because it is a preview of the eschatological Kingdom of God. NOTES 1. David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 22–23. 2. Harold Breitenberg Jr., “To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?,”Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23, no. 2 (2003): 66. 3. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 133–34. 4. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 130. 5. F. LeRon Shults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), xii. 6. Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (London: SCM Press, 2013), 65. 7. Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, xxvii. 8. Stephan van Erp, “God Becoming Present in the World: Sacramental Foundations of a Theology of Public Life,” in Grace, Governance, and Globalization, ed. Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom, and Lieven Boeve (London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), 17. 9. “I feel rather sympathetic with the position . . . describe[d] as postfoundationalist.” See Wolfhart Pannenberg, foreword, in Shults, Postfoundationalist Task, ix. 10. Shults, Postfoundationalist Task, 43.

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11. Shults, Postfoundationalist Task, 114. 12. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 4. 13. Nicholas Rescher, A System of Pragmatic Idealism, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3f. 14. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 154. 15. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 144. 16. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 143. 17. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 129. 18. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 180–81. 19. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, “Pluralism and Interdisciplinarity: In Search of Theology’s Public Voice,” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2001): 82–83. 20. Referenced in Katrin Gülden Le Maire, “More Than a Promise: Theology on the Basic of Philosophy,” in Theology for the Future: The Enduring Promise of Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed. Andrew Hollingsworth (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/ Fortress Academic, 2021), 20. 21. van Huyssteen, “Pluralism and Interdisciplinarity,” 82. 22. Delwin Brown, “Public Theology, Academic Theology: Wentzel Van Huyssteen and the Nature of Theological Rationality,” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2001): 97. 23. Brown, “Public Theology,” 97–98. 24. van Huyssteen, “Pluralism and Interdisciplinarity,” 84. 25. Max Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Ethical Judgement,” in Theology Today 54, no. 2 (1997): 165–79. 26. Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Ethical Judgement,” 178. 27. Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Ethical Judgement,” 179. 28. Josh Reeves, “Problems for Postfoundationalists: Evaluating J. Wentzel van Huyssteen’s Interdisciplinary Theory of Rationality,” The Journal of Religion 93, no. 2 (2013): 132. 29. Reeves, “Problems for Postfoundationalists,” 141–45. 30. Reeves, “Problems for Postfoundationalists,” 146. 31. Reeves, “Problems for Postfoundationalists,” 147–48. 32. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Doctrine of Creation and Modern Science,” Zygon 23, no. 1 (1988): 3f. 33. Joel Haugen, introduction, in Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed. Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 5–6. 34. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976), 26–27. 35. Nancey Murphy, “A Lakatosian Reconstruction of Pannenberg’s Position,” in Beginning with the End, 409–22. 36. See van Huyssteen, “Truth and Commitment,” in Beginning with the End, 364–65. 37. Murphy, “A Lakatosian Reconstruction,” 412.

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38. Nancey Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). 39. Jae Yang, “Pannenberg’s Doctrine of Resurrection as Science,” Open Theology 5 (2019): 470. 40. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Theological Appropriation of Scientific Understandings: Responses to Hefner, Wicken, Eaves, and Tipler,” in Beginning with the End, 431 41. George Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” in The Evolution of Rationality: Interdisciplinary Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, ed. F. Leron Shults (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 394. 42. Murphy, “A Lakatosian Reconstruction,” 419. 43. van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality, 111. 44. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 396. 45. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 397–99. 46. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 400. 47. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 401. 48. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 403. 49. Contra the abstract language of a Christology of human rights. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 405. 50. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 404–5. 51. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 404. 52. Timothy Bradshaw, Pannenberg: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 1. 53. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, 2nd edn., trans. Lewis L. Witkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), 88–106. 54. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, 74–75. 55. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, 85. 56. ST 3, 280. 57. ST 3, 293. 58. ST 2, 292. 59. ST 2, 292. 60. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, 344. 61. ST 3, 130. 62. Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Church, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1983), 1. 63. Stanley Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 217. 64. ST 3, 150. 65. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 219. 66. ST 3, 94. 67. Newlands, “Public Theology in Postfoundational Tradition,” 414–15. 68. ST 3, 37. 69. ST 3, 44. 70. English-language translation of “Die moralischen Grundlagen der modernen Gesellschaft und die Kirche.”

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71. English-language summary of Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Die moralischen Grundlagen der modernen Gesellschaft und die Kirche Pannenberg,” in Beiträge zur Ethik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 177–78. 72. Reference found in Shults, The Postfoundationalist Task, 87–89. 73. Phillip Clayton, “The God of History and the Presence of the Future,” The Journal of Religion 65, no. 1 (1985): 103–6. 74. Observations on Jüngel and references found in Shults, The Postfoundationalist Task, 91. 75. Stanley Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 219, n. 39. 76. ST 3, 527. 77. ST 3, 546–52. 78. Gunther Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 204. 79. ST 3, 182. 80. ST 3, 182. 81. Christoph Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive? Schillebeeckx’s Eschatology and Public Theology,” in Grace, Governance and Globalization, ed. Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom, and Lieven Boeve (London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), 143–58. 82. Edward Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, Collected Works, vol. 3, trans. N. D. Smith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 103 [172]. References found in Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive.” 83. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010), 366. Reference found in Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 143. 84. Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 145. 85. Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 58–59. As quoted in Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 145. 86. Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 146. 87. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, Collected Works, vol. 10, trans. J. Bowden (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 82 [84]. References found in Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 145–52. 88. Schillebeeckx, Church, 93 [95] 89. Schillebeeckx, Church, 93 [95]. 90. Schillebeeckx, Church, 93 [95]. 91. Edward Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 116 [191]. Referenced in Frederiek Depoortere, “Schillebeeckx’s Eschatology and Public Theology,” in Grace, Governance and Globalization, 181. 92. Hübenthal, “Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive,” 152. 93. ST 3, 557. 94. ST 3, 558. 95. ST 3, 558. 96. ST 3, 560.

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97. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Gesetz und Evangelium,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 190. 98. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, trans. John Maxwell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 89. 99. ST 3, 551–52. 100. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, trans. John Maxwell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), vii. 101. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 8. 102. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 10. 103. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 10. 104. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 5. 105. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, 6–7. 106. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, viii. 107. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, 7–8. 108. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, viii. 109. ST 3, 13. 110. ST 3, 237. 111. ST 3, 27. 112. ST 3, 13. 113. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985), 163. 114. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, 85. 115. Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 6. 116. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 138. 117. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 87. 118. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 119. 119. ST 3, 522. 120. ST 3, 370. 121. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1981), 175. 122. Pannenberg, Ethics, 176. 123. Pannenberg, Ethics, 176–77. 124. Pannenberg, Ethics, 177–78. 125. Pannenberg, The Church, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 45. 126. Pannenberg, The Church, 48. 127. ST 3, 130. 128. ST 3, 2. 129. ST 3, 371. 130. ST 3, 372. 131. ST 3, 428–31.

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132. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), viii. 133. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, viii. 134. Pannenberg, The Church, 109–10. 135. ST 3, 195. 136. ST 3, 127. 137. ST 3, 478. 138. ST 3, 478. 139. ST 3, 478. 140. ST 3, 482. 141. ST 3, 482. 142. ST 3, 482–83. 143. ST 3, 45–46. 144. ST 3, 45. 145. ST 3, 442. 146. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 101. 147. Engllish-language translation of “Säkularisation des Christentums und Ursprung der Moderne.” 148. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Säkularisation des Christentums und Ursprung der Moderne,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 124. 149. English-language summary of original German text found in Pannenberg, “Säkularisation des Christentums,” 124. 150. Pannenberg, Ethics, 20. 151. Pannenberg, Ethics, 20. 152. Summary of Pannenberg’s view of regional and supraregional church structures found in Gunther Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, 198. 153. ST 3, 416. 154. Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, 198. 155. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 102. 156. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 110. 157. Pannenberg, Ethics, 15. 158. Max Stackhouse, God and Globalization, vol. 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007), 42. 159. Max Stackhouse, Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 150. 160. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 241. 161. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 94. 162. English-language translation of “Christliche Rechtsüberzeugungen im Kontext einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft.” 163. English-language summary of Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christliche Rechtsüberzeugungen im Kontext einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 55. 164. ST 3, 521.

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165. ST 3, 491. 166. ST 3, 491. 167. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 241. 168. Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations and Jewish Expressions (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 22–23. 169. Pannenberg, Ethics, 20. 170. ST 3, 133–34. 171. Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 1. 172. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 28. 173. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 28–29. 174. Moltmann in God for a Secular Society, 30. 175. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 30. 176. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 30–31. 177. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 31. 178. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 101. 179. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 102. 180. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 112–113. 181. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Säkularisation des Christentums and Urspring der Moderne,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 121–35. 182. John W. de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy: A Theology for a Just World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 7. 183. de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 12. 184. de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 7. 185. de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 12. 186. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 237. 187. Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 163. 188. Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 421. 189. Howland Sanks, “David Tracy’s Theological Project: An Overview and Some Implications,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 716. 190. Title of chapter 5, section 3, of Pannenberg’s ST 1. 191. For anthropology is the presupposition of post-Renaissance philosophy. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976), 368. 192. ST 1, 128. 193. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Eine philosophisch-historische Hermeneutik des Christentums,” in Verantwortung für den Glauben: Beiträge zür fundamentaltheologie und Ökumenik, eds. P. Neuner and H. Wagner (Freiburg: Herder, 1992), 43; quote translated by Shults, Postfoundational Task, 164. 194. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Problems of a Trinitarian Doctrine of God,” Dialog 26 (1987): 256. Emphasis and translation in Shults, Postfoundationalist Task, 104. 195. Elizabeth Johnson, “The Ongoing Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Horizons 9, no. 2 (1982): 249. 196. Johnson, “The Ongoing Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 249.

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197. ST 1, 296. 198. ST 1, 259–70. 199. ST 1, 145. 200. ST 1, 382. 201. ST 1, 383. 202. ST 1, 384. 203. ST 1, 390. 204. ST 1, 384. 205. ST 1, 392. 206. ST 1, 382. 207. ST 1, 88, 413–14. 208. ST 1, 382–83. 209. ST 2, 102. 210. For example, biochemist Jeffrey Wicken says evolution is the result of an interaction between physical bodies and a higher transcendent spiritual field. See Jeffrey Wicken, “Toward an Evolutionary Ecology of Meaning,” in Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed. Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 261–65. 211. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Theological Questions to Scientists,” in Beginning with the End, 45. 212. ST 2, 105. 213. Pannenberg, “Theological Questions to Scientists,” in Beginning with the End, 45. 214. ST 3, 573–74. 215. Nicola Slee, “Inflections and Rhythms of Our Own Unmistakable Voices: Feminist Theology as Public Theology,” in Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (London: Routledge, 2015), 16. 216. Slee, “Inflections and Rhythms,” 16. 217. Elizabeth Johnson, “The Ongoing Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Horizons 9, no. 2 (1982): 249. 218. Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discussion, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2002), 47. 219. Johnson, She Who Is, 66. 220. Johnson, She Who Is, 86. 221. Johnson, She Who Is, 90. 222. Johnson, She Who Is, 75. 223. Johnson, She Who Is, 159–60. 224. Johnson, She Who Is, 82–86, 166. 225. Johnson, She Who Is, 181. 226. Johnson, She Who Is, 189. 227. Johnson, She Who Is, 220. 228. After all she says, “The liberating possibility of the social model of the Trinity points in the right direction.” Johnson, She Who Is, 220.

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229. See summary in Mary Hunt, “Women-Church: Feminist Concepts, Religious Commitment, Women’s Movement,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25, no. 1 (2009): 86. 230. Slee, “Inflections and Rhythms,” 17. 231. Explained by Slee, “Inflections and Rhythms,” 17. 232. Ada María Isasi-Díaz, “Justice as Reconciliatory Praxis: A Decolonial Mujerista Move,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 37. 233. Isasi-Díaz, “Justice as Reconciliatory Praxis,” 40–41. 234. Isasi-Díaz, “Justice as Reconciliatory Praxis,” 39.

Chapter 4

Christianity Outside the Church Pannenberg’s Public Theology

Many argue that Pannenberg’s understanding of the church’s role in the public world is “underdeveloped” or “inadequate” especially when confronting social injustice or oppression,1 which may be attributed to his formal separation, contra Barth or Bonhoeffer, of dogmatics and ethics.2 But as Ken Eilers argues, Pannenberg’s position, particularly after ST 1, “Appears to have changed, and he seems to have closed the gap” between the two.3 Indeed, Pannenberg’s “missionary impulse to propagate the faith” establishes shalom in the world and glorifies God. The church is merely a “sign” and “tool” of God’s rule and agency in establishing the Kingdom. Nonetheless, the church as a provisional representation has “revolutionary implications”4 as it claims “recognition and influence as a normative basis on which to shape every sphere of human life,”5 including: “Public institutions (or subsystems) of society like the state, the law, the economy, educational institutions, the promotion of the arts, and systems of information and discourse.”6 In terms of the more apologetic (and arguably passive) public theology which discerns theology in public rather than necessarily fighting for it, the second part of Pannenberg’s Ethik und Ekklesiologie senses a “Christianity outside the church” in which society and culture are “permeated in a general way by Christianity. Even the new, religiously neutral public realm still ha[s] to base its legitimacy on Christian principles.”7 For instance, tolerance and religious and civil liberties have provenance in the Christian (Reformation) idea. Moreover, modern human rights reflects a theology of Christian freedom from sin and the imago Dei.8 All societies, not just Christian ones, require some sort of religious principle of unity to legitimatize the institutions of society, establish universal moral norms and laws, and provide “a meaningful focus of commitment.”9 As Pannenberg writes, Christians and their familiarity with the outside contemporary world, are closer to the “true catholicity” of Christianity than those who “confuse a narrow denominational 97

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outlook with the total truth of Christianity.”10 Nevertheless, for Christians who are consciously aware of theology’s influence in public, there are two ways in which the public, that is, “Christianity outside the church,” is dependent on the church proper. First, the institutional church publicly exposits and transmits the doctrines and theology that are instructive for Christian faith; denominational churches are best suited for preserving Christian identity.11 This includes the consensus doctrines developed through ecumenism for only in overcoming divisions can the church be a sign of unity for the world.12 Second, Christianity outside the church needs a community to develop.13 In other words: The fellowship of each individual Christian with Christ becomes the basis for the solidarity of all Christians with one another. Moreover, our unity with Christ demands and provides the basis for a solidarity with all men and women because the God of Jesus is the one God for us all. For this reason the Christian church has, since its origin, understood itself as a community which in its life together already represents for all persons that life in the spirit of love, peace, and justice, which contains within it the promise of the consummation of human community.14

Public theology is an interested Christian discipline which upholds the presupposition of theology in public conversations. When Pannenberg remarks that Christianity’s impact and success in the public and its social order depends on whether it has “full basis” in a society’s understanding of itself,15 he suggests that theology in the public sphere is also an interested Christian discipline which empowers Christian theology. That is, “In situations in which Christians are no longer just a tolerated minority the church also has to bear responsibility for shaping public order, and indeed for renewing it by the Christian spirit.”16 And in the Christian West, despite its growing secularity, Christianity continues as a unifying cultural root for it is difficult to imagine the modern European culture without a Christian background.17 That said, while noting the constructive public potential of theology in cultures where Christian roots still linger, in reality, these societies are no longer overtly Christian,18 thus, the apologetic approach to public theology may be more conducive. Indeed, Pannenberg’s public theology may be constructive, descriptive, and prescriptive. Clement Wen helpfully identifies three stances Pannenberg’s Christianity has with the public: a responsible and constructive (under the Kingdom of God) “Constantinianism” when Christians are in a position of strength; an open and tolerant (and apologetic) posture that reminds Western society of its Christian roots when Christians are neither in a position of strength or weakness (that is, modern liberal society); and a “contrast society” when Christians are in a position of weakness.19 This can

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parallel Tracy’s three publics (constructive in society, apologetic in academia, and explicitly Trinitarian in a contrast society) and Breitenberg who identifies three kinds of public theology: identifying a theologian (Pannenberg) as a public theologian; developing a method and definition of public theology (Christianity outside the church and the church as preview of the future Kingdom of God); and constructing a public theology to actually do theology in public (application of Christian ideas of justice, love, and equality). Following Stackhouse who engages in both a constructive and apologetic public theology,20 this chapter will consider Pannenberg’s own constructive and apologetic public theology (and the dialectic between them), done by self-consciously Christian public theologians following Pannenberg’s instructions: the world outside the church (the public or a “Christianity outside the Church”) is dependent on the institutional church (theology) not only for its systematized theology (which can act as guidelines for public life) but also as a kind of model for a provisionally eschatological society of fellowship. As Pannenberg indicates, the church is a “double movement as the called-out people of God on the one hand and the prophetic, priestly, and kingly people sent out into the world on the other.”21 I will explore Pannenberg’s understanding of public through the doctrine of revelation (and also philosophical theology, interreligious dialogue, and comparative theology and the orders of preservation). I will then utilize Stackhouse’s understanding of the five spheres of society (religion, politics, economy, family, and culture) as a framework in Pannenberg’s position relative to those spheres. Although the pluralistic sense of the energies, powers, and principalities of Stackhouse seems to be reduced to a singular spiritual force in Pannenberg, the effect appears to be similar, a functioning society comprised of parts and the whole, the particular and the universal. Generally speaking, the specialized field of Christian Ethics relative to Systematic Theology, is more practical in orientation. But if Pannenberg increasingly identified his theology with his ethics, it is natural to assume that his theology (Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, the debate between theology and science) and his theological method (postfoundational, eschatological, Trinitarian) have public relevance. Simply put, a “Christentum außerhalb der Kirche,” is also a “Christentum innerhalb der Kirche,” a Christianity outside the church is a Christianity inside the church. In other words, Christianity must wrestle with “the shared world of human beings.”22 WHAT IS PUBLIC ABOUT REVELATIONAL HISTORY? Pannenberg’s first major work, Revelation as History, argues for the public nature of revelation anticipated in the teaching and history of

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Jesus.23 Critiquing Barth’s definition of revelation as “God’s self-revelation,” Pannenberg states that “to reveal” does not “have God as an unqualified object” for “God continually reveals ‘something’ or ‘someone,’ never precisely ‘himself.’” For instance, God’s giving of the name Yahweh in Exodus 3 is not full self-disclosure of God’s essence but given so that human beings “can appeal to God by means of this name.” In the New Testament, particularly Luke–Acts, the Word of God is the truth of the apostolic kerygma not God himself.24 Rather than direct self-revelation, the proof of God’s divinity exists through indirect self-revelation through history. “The totality of his speech and activity, the history brought about by God, shows who he is in an indirect way.”25 Indirect communication considers meaning “from another perspective.” Thus, every act of God says something about God, but is not God directly.26 Indeed, “If God is one then that means everything that happens [is] his revelation.”27 For the purposes of public theology and the intersubjective communication required therein, Pannenberg’s comments on reflection and interpretation are notable: “Though the primary content of the event is still presupposed, there is simply a reflection on the event first perceived, and the stimulus to this derives from the event itself, or from the Word fulfilled in it, announcing the event as the act of Jahweh.”28 In other words, God prefers for creatures to engage in communication and second order discourse rather than communicating truths through first order direct revelation. This has ostensible similarities to Habermas and his theory of communicative rationality in public (although as I will argue, Pannenberg is not clear on how such dialogue takes place). Of course, we keep in mind that Habermas operates under an idealized and abstract Kantian notion of communication whereas Pannenberg would base communication on the nature of God’s indirect revelation and the relational nature of the Trinity. For Pannenberg, theology is the theology of God, sub Ratione Dei, and God is known and discovered through history and everything inside it. Perhaps, in Pannenberg, unlike Habermas, the focus is on the content itself and not its communicators. I will now ask and answer two questions on Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation. First, what is the role of Christ? Second, does revelation require additional supernatural inspiration or is it universally open to everyone? According to Barth, revelation is God’s self-disclosure through the particular and unique medium of Christ; Pannenberg understands this in the strictest sense, contra those who see a “multiplicity of revelation” or “manifestation through diverse means.”29 Pannenberg’s view on revelation also requires Christ. But considering that the second person of the Trinity is the source of differentiation in the world, Christ is the means not the medium by which a “multiplicity of revelations,” the multiple and complex manifestations of the one God, can transpire through history. Multiple manifestations which can

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include a direct display of divine power through a medium that is distinct from God or indirect self-authentication of God through historical acts.30 Christ is the self-disclosure of God, but contra Barth, Christ’s negotiation with history, including the resurrection, establishes revelation, at least, epistemologically. As Thesis 4 in the article “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation” states, “The universal revelation of the deity of God is not yet realized in the history of Israel, but first in the fate of Jesus of Nazareth, insofar as the end of all events is anticipated in his fate,”31 and Thesis 5 states, “The Christ event does not reveal the deity of God of Israel as an isolated event, but rather insofar as it is a part of the history of God with Israel.”32 Related to the later “Christianity outside the church” idea, Pannenberg’s Thesis 3 states, “In distinction from special manifestations of the deity, the historical revelation is open to anyone who has eyes to see. It has a universal character.”33 “Christianity outside the church” is more properly universal than the Christian presupposition of the early theses themselves. But even early on, Pannenberg argues that denying the supernatural and direct knowledge of revelation does not preclude the power of God.34 That is, the apostolic kerygma, this side of the eschaton in which truth is still broken and contestable, provides knowledge which grounds faith and that the kerygma is not Spirit-less but already Spirit-filled.35 PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY If God and God’s truth is revealed indirectly through publicly available history, what tools are employed to mine that truth? Who is a “competent spokesperson” able to read, evaluate, discern, and interpret revelation.36 How does one become, so to speak, a historian? Does Pannenberg elevate the historian over the theologian? One may start, following Pannenberg’s own starting point in Systematic Theology, with the publicly accessible tool of philosophy as means for comparative religion which develops public and universal doctrines for the existence, essence, and attributes of God. After all, if one sphere of the “public” in public theology is the church, then should it not also focus on the religious plurality of public civil society? This section thus engages in a study of comparative religion, and/or comparative theology as an aspect of Pannenberg’s public theology. Volume 1, chapter 2, of Systematic Theology uses philosophical tools (such as metaphysics) to establish a publicly warranted, universal, and acceptable concept of the infinite in order to eventually establish (the consummated) Christian theology and the Christian deity. This “whole” in turn provides the explanation for not just religious questions but for knowledge in general (including the relationship between theology and science and the role of the

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Christian faith in public). Theology and philosophy overlap in their concern for universal truth and supplement and complement one another; thus a theology of revelation uses philosophy for the comparative study of religions.37 The contemporary secular public tends to reject the term “god” as the “final foundations of social and cosmic order and to the courts which guarantee them, to which due honor, attention and address are to be paid.”38 But Pannenberg suggests that if “god” is conceived not just as a “name” (for instance, the personal Yahweh which is a theological concept) but also a designation (for instance, Elohim as a metaphysical concept of unity)39 one may find a “pre-Christian” and “extra Christian” use of the word which may be publicly warranted. Pannenberg focuses on the Greek metaphysical designation of god as the unity of the cosmos,40 a cosmological anchor to the anthropological starting point of intuiting the infinite which is present across all cultures,41 which through sustained philosophical reflection provides minimum criterion for God-talk. Pannenberg also discusses the unity and attributes of the divine essence which is revealed in four attributes: holiness, eternity, omnipotence, and omnipresence.42 Subsequently, revealed theology (Christianity) thematizes the intuitions and their reflections found in the philosophical starting points in a manner that best explains reality. Could, then, a focus on the “designation” of God as the infinite one (intuited across cultures) who provides unity to the cosmos provide a publicly warranted starting point for God-talk in the world? In Metaphysics and the Idea of God, Pannenberg asks this very question, “Can the metaphysical ascent toward the concept of the One fully grasp the reality of the absolute on the basis of independent philosophical reflection, and can it sufficiently establish its connection?”43 The answer is yes. Metaphysics does not demonstrably prove that God exists as person and therefore as ‘“God” at all.44 Nonetheless, such philosophical reflection functions as a “critical corrective in the images of the divine within the religious traditions,”45 and “the formulation of criteria for presenting the understanding of God within a religious tradition.”46 To excise any supernatural baggage that the word “God” may denote (especially for those vociferously anti-religion), perhaps “God” can be replaced with “highest principle” or even “Omega Point.” Wenz uses the term “personal deficit” for Pannenberg is “convinced of the superiority of the Hegelian description of the religious relationship, as opposed to a phenomenology” which only expresses human behavior and accepts the “metaphysical idea of absolute infinity as the condition for all experience of the finite.”47 If Stephen Hawking teaches us anything, a unifying and meaning-laden “theory of everything” has broad and wide appeal.

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ORDERS OF CREATION AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Martin Luther famously outlines the “ordinances of creation,” the spiritual, economic, and political spheres which include the institutions of church, marriage and family, and the state respectively.48 This is similar to Max Stackhouse’s understanding of the four spheres of society (five if religion is included): political, economic, familial, and cultural. But interestingly, Luther does not see family as its own distinctive sphere but as part of the economic sphere, locating the family as the center of economic production (fitting Luther’s medieval context). Habermas locates the family, along with commodity exchange, as part of a “private” civil society contrasting the public, more political, realm. Pannenberg underscores a natural law as the general “conditions of origin” of the “plurality of events.”49 However, he critiques those who posit natural law as the ontological ground for the orders of creation: the “unhistorical notion that the structures of inter-human relations remain essentially the same . . . occasions the most serious theological objection to the conception of orders of creation.”50 He rejects “orders of creation” for its static and unchanging laws and prefers Bonhoeffer’s terminology of “orders of preservation,” which, similar to Luther’s three uses of the law, presupposes and guards against human sin, and is properly understood only through the consummating grace and redemption of Jesus.51 Thus, the individual/communal dialectic and mutuality of a church fellowship practicing creative love is underscored. As Pannenberg explains, “The action of love that is mutually acknowledging and establishes community is indispensable” because “love produces positive law” which “is not some ideal order with a claim to timeless validity (and thus, in this sense, it is not natural law) but the specific, concrete solutions of concrete problems.” That is, “Love discovers possibilities for promoting understanding, for the life together of those who are apparently hopelessly estranged, and possibilities for reintegrating even lawbreakers in society.”52 Human beings are sinners, therefore, the “orders of preservation” were given by God, presupposing sin, to protect humanity from sin’s destructive consequences,53 and creative love cultivated in church begins to transform the temporary orders of preservation into the permanent Kingdom of God. Pannenberg rejects unchanging orders as principles but endorses the relational characteristics of recognition, benevolence, and mutuality for human conduct and the importance of history, and eschatology, where God reveals the orders of the natural world.54 Fitting public theology’s concern for a civil society of voluntary associations united by a common cause, Pannenberg advocates for an almost federalist approach in which individuals come

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together not by force but through a sense of common interest as mediated by certain social institutions. “It will only come about as an association of a number of large groups which in turn consist of unions of smaller groups. The development and encouragement of a sense of common identity wherever a basis for it exists is the only way to build larger political units.” That is, “The development of supra-national institutions also ought to start with limited groups, and build on common elements in history and culture, and shared political and economic tasks.”55 At first glance, Pannenberg’s Anthropology in Theological Perspective is public theology par excellence, rigorously engaging the secular science of anthropology in order to make theological claims not only on human nature but also societies that humans build. One reviewer labels the monograph a Bildungsroman, a “romantic novel of the liberal arts curriculum” because it “draws together staggering amounts of learning and disparate material from both the theological disciplines and secular fields of inquiry.”56 Pannenberg argues that “the unity of a culture is based on a communal consciousness of meaning which establishes the social world as an orderly place,” represented by communal play and communicated with meaning through language.57 In other words, a mythical consciousness of meaning grounds the social order; it is a “shared world” made concrete in various “institutions” that “regulate the communal life of individuals.”58 He then identifies the social institutions of “property, work, and economy,” “sexuality, marriage, and family,” “political order, justice, and religion,” and “religion in the cultural system,” which ostensibly correspond to Stackhouse’s four spheres (economy, family, politics, and religion). After discussing how psychology differentiates between a “changeless” ego and a socially determined self, Pannenberg argues for the mutability of both the ego and the self, conceiving the relationship as a difference between the part (ego) and whole (self). Therefore the “ego . . . is a temporal manifestation of the self . . . and only gains continuity insofar as it is seen to be identical with the self. We should also note here that the self/ ego relationship structurally corresponds to the exocentric/egocentric tension.”59 The development and wholeness of the “person” not only depends on a basic trust on the “constancy and reliability of that in which one places trust”60 but also on mediating social institutions which display the “fragmentariness” of “reality-at-hand” right now.61 The institution of culture is missing in Pannenberg who locates it as prior to and more basic than the institutions themselves. The cultural world is “shared by individuals and, somewhat like the cosmic order, is experienced as a given prior to individual behavior.”62 Culture is a field by which emerge not only social institutions but also “convictions, attitudes, types of knowledge, and values as well modes of behavior, habits, and customs; in addition, language and tradition, skills such as the use of tools, specific types of dwellings and

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clothing; and, finally, art and other products of humanity activity.”63 Culture is not only a mythic unity and source of meaning, but also a product. There is no denying that social institution systems outlast and antecede individuals. However, “Individuals and their behaviors are not mere functions of society.”64 Creative human beings help shape and revise the cultural world, to “apprehend and represent facts that can be apprehended and represented only in this medium.”65 In other words, the unity of culture is not just myth and religion alone, but rather the “tension” between the claims of the mythical and religious tradition and the changing experiences of individuals and their community “that provides the field in which the life-style of culture is formed and renewed.”66 Cultural products emerge in this tension as “the importance of the human creative subjectivity for the process whereby cultures come into existence and change must be maintained, but in such a way that the mythical self-understanding of the agents of that culture is not simply rejected as a false consciousness.”67 Regarding the balance between the city of God and the city of humanity, political theorist Fred Dallmayr appraises Pannenberg’s thought as “milestone in the ongoing rapprochement of the two cities . . . without eradicating the difference between the two cities, the gospel penetrates into the world, providing politics with its hidden sense or meaning—a sense illumining the present in light of a future promise.”68 Pannenberg distinguishes institutions which emphasize shared meaning and the community, or “mutuality,” (family, nation, polity, and church) and ones that emphasize individual goals, or “particularism” (economic production and legal relations).69 What then do the institutions do? Pannenberg answers that they are not directly tied to basic needs such as food, sex, and union. Institutions are to regulate relations among individuals.70 The church, in turn, is to be a witness and model for the public spheres marred by sin on what genuine mutuality, unity, unity-in-distinction, separation of powers, and benevolence will look like under the guidance of grace, love, and Christ, which has a telos. That is, under the Christian culture. The remainder of the chapter will look at Pannenberg’s consideration of such public spheres: religion, politics, economy, family, and culture and the role of religion therein assuming “neither a simple ‘politicizing’ of theology nor a ‘theologizing’ of politics but rather an effort to grasp the peculiar interpenetration of the ‘two cities.’”71 Stackhouse identifies “powers” which drive the respective spheres: mammon, eros, mars, and muses. Similarly, in the final pages of Anthropology in Theological Perspective, Pannenberg remarks that the spirit brings “about a community that will transcend and overcome the isolation of a community.” He identifies the “spirit of a family, or a school or a team, but also a spirit of period, an age, or a culture.” The spirits of the respective institutions are “unique manifestation of the spirit of God that is at work in all living things but that can also, as in human individuals, be cut off from its relation to God

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and become demonic.”72 I close with an extended quote from Pannenberg connecting the gospel with the various public spheres of society. That is, between the public and theology: The distinction between the spiritual and the secular, and hence also the secularity of the political order and of the cultural shaping of life in the present world, has its basis, then, in the eschatological awareness of Christianity. There could hardly be any sense of it apart from this basis. Comparison with the relation between religion and the political order in other cultures, e.g., Islamic or even Judaic, is not the only thing that shows this. Already for easily discernible reasons of principle the question what makes us human cannot be left solely to the caprice of human lifestyles, for public institutions (or subsystems) of society like the state, the law, the economy, educational institutions, the promotion of the arts, and systems of information and discourse, so far as their concrete form is concerned, need a validation that, if not religious, can be achieved only by means of assumptions about human nature and its natural needs. The secularism of modern industrial societies has certainly arisen out of the distinction between the ultimate and the penultimate, between the church and secular culture, that is typical of cultural development under Christian influence, but it rests also on a radical transformation of this its origin. The distinction between the ultimate and the penultimate rests totally on the way the Christian faith understands reality, and this applies also to the secularity of constitutional orders and of all other spheres of life in this world. In comparison with the secularity of these spheres in the traditional Christian understanding, the understanding of society in modern secularism, which has more or less definitely emancipated itself from its Christian origins (and therefore from the differentiation and interrelating of the spiritual and the secular), is totally ideological. The ideological character of modern secularism rests on certain supposedly self-evident assumptions about human nature that regard the religious theme in life as in any case secondary. Christianity must set itself in a new and basically critical relation to this ideologically characterized secularism.73

THE RELIGIOUS SPHERE: PANNENBERG’S VIEW ON RELIGIONS AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION Following Stackhouse’s view of the religious sphere and dominions which provide the metaphysical worldview organizing societies, this section engages Pannenberg and his theology of religion. Eschewing the world religions assumes that Christian theology’s relevance in the public sphere deals exclusively with secularity (notably the academic public). But, in fact, the world is growing in its sense of religiosity, not shrinking; many assert that the secularization thesis is false. And perhaps the viability of the Christian faith in the contemporary public is not exclusive to its secular compatibility but its

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resonance and engagement with other religions, especially if we consider Christianity as a global religion and not just a Western one. Thus, philosophical theology is a good starting point for establishing basic starting points for God-talk across the religions. Pannenberg considers “The Reality of God and the Gods in the Experience of the Religions.”74 The universal phenomenon of religion, not necessarily confessional Christian theology (such as the scripture principle and doctrine of inspiration of scripture which critical scholarship refutes), is the theological basis of modern Protestant theology. Thus, some assess that Christianity is the “most essential” religion.75 In the modern age, following the dissolution of the doctrine of inspiration, religion (that is anthropological, subjective, and practical) has become the basis of a knowledge of God.76 Then how can theology make the “primacy of God and his revelation in Jesus Christ intelligible, and validate its truth claim, in an age when all talk about God is reduced to subjectivity, as may be seen from the social history of the time and the modern fate of the proofs of God and philosophical theology?”77 Confronting subjectivity but also the plurality of “positive” religions that challenge the absoluteness of Christian faith, Pannenberg concedes that “religious phenomena, and specifically ideas of God, are manifold and varied.” Nonetheless, there is a unity “which transcends the phenomena on the side of divine reality.” The unity of divine reality is introduced indirectly through the various and multifaceted phenomenon of religion which the academic study of religion expounds upon.78 The plurality of religious convictions are “the battleground for truth claims” relative to their ability to explain and express the unity of the world79 and bring to light the infinite in the finite.80 Thus the dialogue, debate, and conversation among religions are crucial in Pannenberg’s understanding of public theology and the revelation of truth. The Religions as a Sphere of Public Theology Pannenberg provides a general theory and rationale for comparative religion but is vague on how such interreligious dialogue concretely takes place in public. In other words, he does not concretely compare overt Christian doctrines such as the resurrection (as he does with the natural sciences) with world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or even Confucian and Eastern philosophy. Neither does he discuss the nature and power dynamics of such conversations and the participants accepted therein. Are the conversations strictly about conveying knowledge among specialized experts? What about ethos, values, and the affections? What about issues of power imbalance in the public sphere of dialogue? He famously conceives knowledge as akin to a proposition or hypothesis requiring proof to demonstrate the reality of God. Christian Dogmatics, by

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way of assertion and hypothesis, proves its reality of truth.81 Truth is derived from the coherent part/whole unity of knowledge (including the doctrines of other religions in-so-far as they fit with the Christian one), or “the mutual agreement of all that is true,” not consensus, which Pannenberg sees as mere conventions.82 But while he provides a rationale and general methodology for interreligious dialogue, he does not actually do the work of comparative theology. There is no indication on how a Muslim view of the Holy Spirit can “fit” with a Christian one, or how a Buddhist understanding of Krishna coheres with Christ. That is not to say he does not engage in interreligious engagement altogether. He does say that Jewish monotheism is an advancement in religion because it overcomes the tension found in polytheistic religions of multiple gods in the world, and Christianity’s eschatological perspective toward ultimate unity is another advancement.83 Also, the different understandings of human nature among Christianity, Islam, and Judaism impact the formation of their political orders. The eschatological awareness of Christianity contributes to the “distinction between the spiritual and the secular, and hence also the secularity of the political order” in Western societies.84 But ultimately, the content of what is being debated is not sufficiently concrete. This deficit is pronounced considering Pannenberg’s care on the compatibility between Christianity and the natural and social science. Moreover, I would not classify the dialogue among religions as an equal conversation in Habermasian “ideal speech situation” terms. Pannenberg’s view of the church’s “critical potential” to overthrow and restructure,85 and the use of the Hegelian Aufhebung in a Christian-formed society, suggests a privileged position in which there is not necessarily a “respect for the other” on the other’s own terms, but the other as merely a “means to an end” toward an ultimate Christian destiny. While comparative and public theology presupposes the Christian perspective and seeks to understand and defend itself through other religions (or the secular worldview), it does not ultimately seek to subsume the particular into the universal but leaves the other to be the other as Christianity clarifies itself. Pannenberg (similar to Fraser) aptly critiques Habermas’s consensus theory of truth (and its intersubjective conversations taking into account certain “instinctual energies”) because consensus can “express mere conventionality among the members of a group, society, or culture.”86 As he writes in Theology and the Philosophy of Science, “The question arises whether the formal condition of dialogue without domination is alone enough to give the pre-existing ‘instinctual energies’ a chance of satisfaction without the additional presence of the internal ‘value’ which guarantees their satisfaction.”87 This suggests that certain privileged groups possess a disproportionate amount of dominating power to form and control what is truth. This is an apt criticism, but Pannenberg himself is blind to think that the “reason” which funds his coherentist system is free from the hermeneutics of

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a social location. The ones who make a “competent judgement”88 on matters of coherence are also privileged; reason is neither axiomatic nor universal. Stackhouse, on the other hand, engages in a demonstrative approach when identifying and reflecting on transcultural moral laws which are said to exist naturally independent of social conventions.89 Pannenberg also underscores a content-based nature of interreligious conversations, his focus on a particular type of truth (propositional content) and whether it makes sense as a unifying reality relativizes the formative effect of affectional, volitional, or even spiritual (doxological) truths. As anthropologist Asif Agha notes, utterances and discourses “exercise real effects upon our senses, mind, and modes of social organization.”90 Graham Ward catalogues both the cognitive and affectional discourses of a religion: liturgies, teachings, scriptures, sermons, catechism, architecture and material culture, and official and unofficial conversations among church members which involves the biases of economic, political, ethical, and geographical context and conclusions.91 The reduction of truth to propositional content applies to Pannenberg’s broader understanding of culture. According to sociologist Margaret Archer, culture includes the “cultural system” (propositional ideas, beliefs, and meanings which are testable hypotheses) and “sociocultural integration” (symbolisms reflecting socially influenced likes, preferences, patriotism, and their opposites and the interaction between different social groups holding these views).92 To Jacqui Stewart, “Pannenberg does not separate the ideas and meaning of a culture from the social interactions which transmit, modify and express them. What Pannenberg wishes to establish is the necessity and epistemological legitimacy of background of meaning for society, which is not merely generated but is independently valid.”93 The communicative rationality of Habermas underscores communication, intersubjectivity, and praxis. According to Pannenberg, Habermas emphasizes that social systems are based on “rules of evaluation” developed in a “pragmatically examined” “decision-making procedure” in which ideological elements such as “instinctual energies” are purified.94 Social systems are assessed on how well preexisting instincts are assimilated or satisfied. Pannenberg critiques Habermas’s approach for prioritizing naturalistic instinctual energies and their “corresponding ‘needs’ over ‘cultural values.’” As a result, “interests” mediated by the social environment (consensus) become more important than knowledge itself or truth.95 Knowledge becomes “experience admitted into structured complexes of action” and interests are “action-instrumental, communicative and emancipatory action.”96 I contend that dialogue with world religions should concretely consider their “instinctual energies” and not just an abstract sense of intuitions of the infinite, a field of force, or “knowledge itself.” Stackhouse’s strength is his understanding of ethos, virtues, and powers and principalities, not just facts, and how the

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“psycho-spiritual realities” of religious life shapes and drives civilizations, particularly how the Christian ethos has shaped the five spheres of public life. As I will later demonstrate, the role of ethos in forming moral individuals is more pronounced in Pannenberg’s understanding of the church relative to the political, economic, familial, and cultural spheres. Feminist and Asian American Critique I previously argued that Pannenberg’s dialogue partners in the act of public inquiry presupposes the Christian worldview and knowledge over the affections. Thus, the Christian, the thinker, the expert, and the systematizer are underscored relative to more proletarian and non-prosaic interests. Moreover, in the intersubjective relationship between two parties, the assumption of equality is blind to the fact that true equality is impossible, a perspective Pannenberg continually enforces. This challenges Habermas’s own abstract and idealized notion of a Kantian equality. Habermas, to his credit, champions equal conversations among peers, but the peer aspect is doubtable, for his understanding of “bourgeois” precludes the non-bourgeois or the marginalized. Similarly, Pannenberg’s partners in public debate (whether on matters of religion or other things) are privileged with power, education, and the assumption that their voices will be heard. In both Habermas and Pannenberg, White male normativity is apparent. For instance, Pannenberg describes sin as a “structural element of the human form of life and its behavior, which is marked by a tension between the centralist organization which human beings share with all animal life and especially with its more highly organized forms, and the exocentric character which is peculiar to human beings.”97 However, he locates original sin not so much as a matter of social inheritance,98 but as individual responsibility. Sin is “a natural biological datum,” the “distortion of the subjectivity that underlies all action” linked with the ego’s becoming.99 As a result, Elizabeth Johnson identifies an “implicitly androcentric” assumption in Pannenberg that “women, like men, sin primordially through arrogance and excessive self-esteem.”100 Then how can we approach public theology (and the dialogue therein) from the perspective of marginalized voices suffering from structural sin with alternative methods of (non-discursive and informal) communication? That is, the voices of women and, pertinent to my background, the Asian American. Nancy Fraser criticizes Habermas’s androcentric separating of the lifeworld and system for associating men with the public world and women with the private one to herself propose multiple centers of “subaltern counterpublics.” Also described as “proletarian public spheres,” these publics also consider “private” matters such as childbearing, factory work, and watching television. It seems to me that traditional public theology operates in male spaces

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of public. The focus is on “winning,” “defending,” “proving,” and “demonstrating,” rather than “feeling,” “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “pathos.” As religious discourse is not just the propositional but also the expressive, the doctrine of sin, or more specifically, the sinned against, can display a more inclusive, empathetic, and non-discursive public theology. I start with feminist theologian Valerie Saiving’s view on “women’s sin”: For the temptations of woman as woman  are not the same as the temptations of man as man, and the specifically feminine forms of sin—“feminine” not because they are confined to women or because women are incapable of sinning in other ways but because they are outgrowths of the basic feminine character structure—have a quality which can never be encompassed by such terms as “pride” and “will-to-power.” They are better suggested by such items as triviality, distractibility, and diffuseness; lack of an organizing center or focus; dependence on others for one’s own self-definition; tolerance at the expense of standards of excellence; inability to respect the boundaries of privacy; sentimentality, gossipy sociability, and mistrust of reason—in short, underdevelopment or negation of the self.101

Saiving challenges Reinhold Niebuhr’s view that sin is pride and excessive will-to-power stemming from human anxiety about freedom and the state of finitude. Similarly, Pannenberg’s doctrine of sin discusses humankind’s misplaced drive for infinitude bred from anxiety, which subsequently challenges and discards the infinity and authority of the Father. In both instances, Saiving’s insight shows a male-centric approach ignoring the marginalized who may lack full access to resources, discourses, and spaces in which the sin of pride are even possibilities. Andrew Sung Park’s project, The Wounded Heart of God, discusses the marginalized experiences of being sinned against by the male-centric notions of pride. He uses the Korean concept of han to describe such experiences: The ineffable experience of deep bitterness and helplessness . . . Han can be defined as the critical wound of the heart generated by unjust psychosomatic repression, as well as by social, political, economic, and cultural oppression. It is entrenched in the hearts of the victims of sin and violence, and is expressed through such diverse reactions as sadness, helpless, hopelessness, resentment.102

According to Kevin Considine, han, in concert with Schillebeeckx’s mystical-political praxis, “Offers a vision of salvation that is intelligible in an enlarged-globalized public sphere . . . a possibility for resolving han through mystical-political praxis, that is, the interconnected practices of spirituality and social action.”103 In other words, the dialogical spaces of public theology involve not only the intellect but also spirituality and action via intercultural

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hermeneutics that (a) has a semiotic, rather than a conceptual and discursive, understanding of culture; (b) names the “relative incommensurability of cultures” and asymmetry of power; (c) outlines four possible communication paradigms: insider/outsider and speaker/hearer.104 Similarly, Park applies the experiences of han to interreligious dialogue, recognizing the universal presence of such experiences of oppression. He also argues for the “dynamic dialectic of interreligious orthodoxy and interreligious orthopraxis”105 Public theology can include not only the intercultural and interreligious, but also the intersubjective and the interspherical (that is, the private holy spaces and the public secular ones) when considering issues of oppression, social justice, and marginalization. From an Asian (Korean) American perspective, the indigenously Korean notion of han is applicable living as “perpetual foreigners” in the margins of a White American society who are selectively instrumentalized as “model minorities” to further White normativity vis-à-vis blackness. A public theology that is sensitive to the marginalized is able not only to communicate or apologize Christian truths but effectively disclose the largess of Christian faith in terms of the “heart” of God in order to transform (going beyond Park who primarily describes the experiences of oppression) sadness into joy and helplessness into hope. For instance, the cross, initially a symbolic sign of abjection by oppressors is “doubled-edged in that as the function of the symbolic/Law of the Fathers, it displays the horrors of its power while simultaneously undermining its powers of horrors by the presence of the subverting semiotic.”106 The cross, symbolically used by oppressors to oppress (feelings of han) is subverted by the oppressed who bear the cross not in passive suffering but practices of radical love (semiotic jeong) by “way of the cross”107 as Jesus is the moral exemplar of subversive cross bearing which empowers other cross bearers.108 Pannenberg, in turn, uses the atonement metaphors of substitution and recapitulation, but, as far as I can tell, the postcolonial concept of mimicry has not been used as an explanatory tool. According to Pannenberg, although Jesus was crucified as a blasphemer of the Jewish Law, the resurrection vindicated Jesus so that the ones accusing Jesus (and all of humanity) were the real blasphemers. As a result, Jesus ended up dying not for his own breaking of the Law but for all blasphemers of God deserving of death. Moreover, the resurrection confirmed Jesus’s teaching that love fulfills and supersedes the Law. Thus, although the cross was a symbolic sign of abjection on Jesus, the cross, in fact, was subverted into an act of semiotic love dying for the blasphemers and fulfilling the Law as love.109 This approach to the cross, I contend, can function as a kind of Pannenbergian subaltern public theology sensitive to the experiences of the oppressed.

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THE POLITICAL SPHERE: PANNENBERG’S VIEW ON POLITICS AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY According to Max Stackhouse, the principality of mars drives the political sphere and its institutions in order to “insure order and law . . . provide defense and to do for all what cannot be accomplished by people alone or by groups voluntarily—all of which requires the disciplined use of coercive means.” Negatively, this principality can degenerate into idolatrous statism, dictatorship, or militarism that celebrates violence.110 Pannenberg’s theology is “political” because its ultimate referent is the Kingdom of God. So then, how is public theology’s approach to the political sphere different from a strict political theology? Political theology, as Daniel M. Bell remarks, is about change and the eschatological church’s “critical freedom” to challenge the status quo.111 Meanwhile, Marsha Aileen Hewitt claims that public theology lacks a critical impact as it privileges Christian sensibility and political values in political life.112 Hewitt’s critique of public theology conflates public theology with political theology, an identification Sebastian Kim rejects because public theology does not necessarily privilege Christianity in public life but sees it as complementary to other perspectives.113 That is, public theologians engage the “public issues with various conversation partners in the public sphere.” This is a reforming rather than revolutionary approach which works with secular partners to seek “shared solutions so that theological insights will not be excluded in public conversations.”114 Relative to the political sphere, public theology offers a theological vision of public political institutions in conversation with secular partners in a spirit of cooperation, dialogue, democracy, and gradual reform. This section will discuss Pannenberg’s theological vision for the political sphere and how it interacts with the (secular) public and its methodologies and ideologies.115 Pannenberg steers a middle course between a functionalist Aristotelian notion that humans are in essence political beings who find fulfillment in polity, and the ancient Sophist view that the state is merely the convention and construction of self-seeking individuals on a contractual basis.116 According to Pannenberg, human nature: is not social or political in the sense that the individual possesses no independence in relation to society and its institutional structures, whether family or state. On the other hand, the independence of individuals vis-à-vis family and state is not based on a complete neutrality toward all forms of human community. Rather, their independence is due to the fact that institutional structure of human community has itself a religious foundation to which individuals can appeal even against the concrete forms of their shared world. Only at this level

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is it possible to resolve the antagonism between individual and institutional social order.117

In Pannenberg’s European context, Christianity and its balance between Christian freedom and the body of Christ made possible the full development of the relationships between individuals, social order, and religion.118 I will now consider the following themes: Pannenberg’s understanding of law and gospel (including the two kingdoms and the difference between love and justice), the political (and the public facing thrust) of the church’s liturgical life (along with natural law theory), and Pannenberg’s view on liberation theology and Marxism (and political theology). Law and Gospel Pannenberg’s views on the political sphere relative to theology requires an overview on his understanding of law (a kind of politics of the state) and gospel (theology in the church) and the strong correlation between law and ethics. In fact, the political legal order is theologically significant because such laws (or sense of justice) play an important role relative to the gospel (or love) of Christ. This developed through discussion of law (the Jewish law and also relatedly the legal order of modern states) and its correlation with the gospel. Jesus’s work, history, and death (that is, the gospel) finds its “inner telos” in the future reconciliation of the entire world. The proclamation of the cross of Christ is the “movement from anticipation to actualization”119 for “only in the form of anticipation can we say that the reconciliation of the world has already taken place in the cross of Jesus.”120 The process of reconciliation with God begins with church fellowship as believers are drawn into a “new immediacy” to God leading to acceptance of a finite existence but also an ecstatic orientation which has significance for what happens both in the church community and outside it.121 Formally following Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms,122 on the one hand, the gospel is separate from the world and its laws. Because the gospel concerns eschatological reconciliation, it is not correlate to a “general concept of the Word of God” found in the Jewish law.123 The gospel is not a lex nova, but a new epoch of salvation history that has replaced the old era of the supposedly static Jewish law.124 But on the other hand, the gospel proclaims the “inbreaking of the rule of God” in the world.125 The gospel completes, fulfills, and “takes up” the world and its laws. “Insofar as they are still tied to this perishing world, as citizens of secular societies, peoples, and states they are also subject to their laws.” These are “the forms of the provisional order of human life in society, the state, and law.”126 After all, without identifying gospel as a new law, “Impulses toward a new and better form of law may constantly flow from it.”127 But this “new

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law,” if we can call it that, is identical with “love that is the fulfilling of the law without itself having to be a form of obedience to law.”128 This is a posture neither of flight away from the world nor a fight on behalf of the world. In fact, church fellowship impacts the existing political legal order.129 Believers who receive the gospel form a fellowship (church) constituting “a sign and a provisional form of the humanity that is reconciled in the Kingdom of God—the humanity that is the goal of the event of reconciliation in the expiatory death of Jesus Christ.”130 The church’s difference with the state “helps to humanize the political order itself in its relation to individual citizens, because the church’s existence unceasingly reminds the state of the difference between its own order and the definitive actualizing of our social destiny, thereby limit its claims on individuals.”131 The church and society’s provisional legal order (the state) is the distinction between gospel and law. The gospel emancipates “Christian eschatological awareness from the Jewish form of relating law and religion.”132 Therefore: The difference between law and gospel . . . between church and state, is thus a matter of Christian disengagement from the nationalistic solidification and formalization of divine law in the Jewish Torah. Jesus’ own message about the dawning of eschatological salvation and the Kingdom of God in his own person and history grounds Christian belief that the Good News abrogates all historically conditioned legal tradition. The gospel represents an entirely new epoch in salvation history.133

Political institutions help human beings achieve salvation, grounded in “human nature.” However, “nature” does not mean “naturalistic fact and certainly not a primeval condition exempt from sin but rather the receptacle of a promise or the stage of divine redemption.”134 What about Christian justice in the world? Christians do justice not necessarily through direct political activism, state power, or adherence to codified laws which create mere formal peace, but through a spiritually filled and grace-infused “creative love” through Jesus Christ who himself is the end of the law. After all, “As the ethic of the new epoch in human history, love cannot be the object of any formal command.”135 According to Pannenberg, love is superior to and consummates any human notion of legal justice: Love’s imagination can create new forms that aptly meet new situations in their uniqueness even if as a rule they have to move within given forms of social life. The law binds one to a specific form of conduct. Love has the power to give new life to what is right by developing in extraordinary circumstances, and without disrupting the nexus of social life, new solutions and modes of action that do better justice to the situation. Love with its many creative possibilities thus stands in contrast to a legal form of life that is regulated in the same way for

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each case. It is thus at work also where the law leaves gaps and where those who are oriented to law ignore situations that they do not find in the law’s precepts, just as the priest and Levite passed by the one who had fallen victim to robbers, whereas the Samaritan, even though he had not known the man before, became a neighbor to him in this situation.136

Implications for Public Theology If philosophical discussion around the concept of deity provides minimum criterion for God-talk in order to create space for interreligious dialogue, what are the minimum criterion uniting the political order and the church for a common goal? After all, public theology concerns not just what the church unilaterally does in public (that would be more a political theology), but how the church works with the public with mutually shared language. What could be the common language, or the common cause, which engenders dialogue between the church and the state. The issue is injustice, or in Pannenberg’s words, the exploitative “rule of some over others.”137 Injustice stems from self-centered sin which disintegrates society, but justice is “the creative establishment of justice which is constantly new.”138 And God’s future as the source of justice is “ontologically of extremely great significance.”139 Despite the Enlightenment’s chastened understanding of the natural law as self-fulfillment and individual freedom, and the growing dominance of a secularized hermeneutic, ultimate norms still apply in both secular and holy spaces, especially as it concerns the church’s responsibility for justice in the world.140 After all, natural law is “a timeless universal structure” and a “theoretical system of order”141 that is a signification condition of human coexistence.142 Moreover, just as the gospel overcomes the formality of the law in order to liberate persons for creative love, the church reminds the political order of its provisional existence as a “guardian” (Galatians 3:24). Modern political laws are necessary for sinners still living on this side of the eschaton. Secular laws provide, for those who lack noetic awareness of the gospel, a kind of common grace that provides some semblance of justice in a world still filled with injustice (perhaps in a manner similar to Luther’s three uses of the law). Christians and their creative love (with freedom), and the political order with its justice (with certain restrictions), perhaps belong to this same language group. Both are under God’s Kingdom even when political leaders lack explicit noetic awareness of it.143 According to Pannenberg, “The political ‘nature’ of human beings . . . is part of the human destiny, which, like creation as a whole, will be fulfilled only in the future and will only then be definitely known.”144 Thus, “The political order of society, not just the church, stands in constitutive relation to the theme of God’s lordship and the future of his

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kingdom” which is “established by the task of achieving an order of justice and peace in social life.”145 The special fellowship found inside the church “demonstrates the ongoing brokenness of every actualization of our social destiny in the form of an order of the state.”146 According to German legal philosopher Ernst-Joachim Lampe’s genetic legal theory, “Every past, present, or future law must arrange its norms on the essential characteristics of human beings.”147 Accordingly, Pannenberg appeals to the anthropological basis of social life in the natural laws of recognition, benevolence, and mutuality.148 But as de Gruchy reminds us, democratic politics as mere form is unsustainable without a democratic vision and ethos cultivated around Christian Trinitarian values of love and individuals as created in the image of God. Pannenberg’s theology supplies a vision of persons not as mere instruments for an end, but ends in-and-of themselves. Kant’s demand that all individuals be treated as ends and not as means cannot be inferred through reason but is “a legacy of the Christian spirit.”149 The church cooperates with the political legal order against injustice stemming from arrogant and arbitrary rulers150 because, on this side of the eschaton, a society without political institutions leads to turmoil, violence, political turmoil, and unstable governments.151 As Pannenberg goes on to say, “History is full of the conflicts of states and people” because “people cannot agree on what is a right order of society or on the standards of right and righteousness and their application in our life together.”152 Without standards and norms, enforcement often results in “dominion and oppression.”153 What can theology provide to the public? At the very least, a religious, or quasi-religious (non-arbitrary), basis provides a fair, equal, justice, and consensual society.154 At the very most, the Christian vision strives not for mere formal and functional equality but a mutual and loving interrelationship of persons from within an ethos, the fulfillment of a mere formal recognition, mutuality, and benevolence. This Christian vision is communicable in a public world that, although cynical about such matters, still craves real and genuine interpersonal connection. According to Pannenberg, the earliest societies were ordered through customs and practices congruent with the cosmic order and fitting a more homogenous population marked by a similar culture or heredity. But as societies evolved and particular customs fell out of favor, more explicit laws and political organization were needed for social stability. These legal provisions, however, were largely based on custom and interpersonal relationships.155 In Pannenberg’s project, norms are based on social acts of interpersonal recognition; recognition prompts benevolent actions culminating in interactions marked by mutuality. The anthropologically documented activities of recognition, benevolence, and mutuality are fundamental for the social foundation of law and Pannenberg structurally relates these triad of interpersonal actions to love. Anthropological evidence displays the

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ubiquitous social practice of mutuality, recognition, and benevolence seen in geographically diverse cultures with different religious-social characteristics. These acts provide social relations with a fundamentally reciprocal structure, along with the stability and durability necessary for all legal relations.156 According to B. Hoon Woo, Pannenberg’s ethics is both eschatological and nomological. While he stresses love (gospel) more than the law, the latter upholds the function and importance of law. Pannenberg’s concept of natural law (Naturrecht) concerns an innate knowledge and morality of God, in distinction from the laws of nature (Naturgessetz) which concern the laws of the natural sciences. Natural law finds fulfillment in a community of mutual and reciprocating love, and thus, church fellowship becomes a “sign” for the Kingdom of God and the place for the proper application of the natural law (contra codified, restrictive, and provisional legal regulations).157 Pannenberg surveys natural law in theological history (Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, Aquinas, Reformers) and discusses the decline of natural law theory in the Enlightenment which favored the freedom of individuals on moral issues.158 He also considers the “relative” (on account of human sinfulness) natural law theory: “The uniform order of the world, insofar as it stands over against the plurality of events as the general forms of their conditions of origin, is that of the natural law that governs phenomena,”159 as “a timeless universal structure” and a “theoretical system of order.”160 As Pannenberg argues, “Even if the natural law is not good enough for the ground of concrete life, the idea of the natural law has an important meaning as a formulation of general conditions for the community of human beings.” These general conditions share a “factual connection” with the second tablet of the Decalogue.161 These are commandments forbidding murder, adultery, theft, and slander, among others, with the aim of cultivating a community characterized by the task of mutual recognition.162 In fact, mutuality based on natural law (such as the Golden Rule) forms the basis of social institutions.163 This speaks to the general issues of justice and equality (“such as the forbidding of injuries to others or the law that we must keep contracts”)164 that can be the shared goal of both religious and ostensibly secular communities. Thus, the righteous will of God makes possible mutual fellowship even in the “customs and legal relations in which human fellowship finds a lasting form.”165 In Systematic Theology he similarly writes: The abiding element of truth in theories of natural law seems to rest on the fact that the question of our common human nature constantly arises in a way that we cannot evade, and with it also the question of the basic anthropological conditions of social life. These basic conditions became the theme of doctrines of natural law and their discussion of the rules of social conduct in a situation of mutuality.166

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But rather than just finding common formal criteria for engagement, Does Pannenberg advocate for direct Christian action in public more akin to a kind of political theology? Moltmann once labeled Pannenberg a “Constantinian.”167 And there is some sense in which Pannenberg advocates using political means, especially when Christianity is in a position of strength in a society, to shape the public order. The church may regard “a public order that can be renewed on the soil of the Christian confession as a Christian form of political life in contrast to other types of orders of state.”168 The church has a “coresponsibility” to renew the political order: it shall “answer for the consequences of its decision for its historical world, and it must also face the question whether it has not balked at the implications of its missionary task out of fear of being entangled in the ambiguities of the world.”169 Nevertheless, Pannenberg is not entirely clear on what such political actions would look like, particularly because he constantly reminds the reader that the eschaton, the gospel, and the Kingdom are primary and that no present political or governmental structure should absolutize itself. This eschatological leaning ultimately informs Pannenberg’s general conservatism and might be more appropriate as a public theology which seeks dialogue, gradual reform, and a spirit of civic cooperativeness. Pannenberg’s understanding of direct political action will be further discussed later in the section on liberation theology. To close this section, I consider another (ostensibly) Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to discern what concrete political engagement might look like as it intersects with the notion of law and Christ’s love. According to Geffrey Kelly and John Godsey, Bonhoeffer understands the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms as “one reality, not two distinct realities in which Jesus is exiled from the political, militaristic, and moneymaking realms of secular life. . . . No state can claim intimacy for itself against the demands of Christ Jesus. No church can ignore its duty to call the state to account for its actions.” Moreover, “In Christ one embraces both God and the world, never God or the world.”170 Therefore, Christians noetically aware of the ultimate reality in Christ have responsibility to act in the world. In the essay, “Christ, Reality, and Good. Christ, Church, and World” Bonhoeffer describes a destructive “unnatural” life which “establishes itself as an autonomous sector” and “denies the fact of the world’s being accepted in Christ . . . a sector that opposes its own law against the law of Christ.”171 These human constructed laws will “inevitably be shattered and will destroy itself against the natural that already exists.” Therefore, responsible human action is “not fettered by principles but bound by love for God, this person is liberated from the problems and conflicts of ethical decision, and is no longer beset by them. . . . Wise people know the limited receptivity of reality for principles, because they know that reality is not built on principles, but rests on the

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living, creating God.”172 Responsible action potentially involves incurring guilt. In other words, Bonhoeffer is willing, and in fact did, “Break the law.” Bonhoeffer, similar to Pannenberg, affirms the autonomy but also the interrelatedness of the two kingdoms. But for the former, I sense that his view of the ontic realty of Christ’s incarnation means the world-as-such has a sense of finality dissimilar to the provisional status in Pannenberg’s historical approach. For Pannenberg, the world-as-such (and its laws) is anticipating a final consummation through the gospel. Thus, Bonhoeffer is more willing to break human laws belying a Christ-centered understanding of reality. For Bonhoeffer, his Barthian influence reveals an almost oppositional relationship to a non-Christ reality; for Pannenberg, worldly imperfections are all just a part of the process toward the ultimate Kingdom. I do not think Pannenberg would break the law, because for him, law is provisional. Then to what extent does Pannenberg, and his notion of “creative” love cultivated in church provide the ethos and vision to transform society? More will be discussed in the next section on the political and missional implications of church’s liturgical life. The Church’s Liturgy as Public and Political To provide the Christian vision necessary for a political society that is theologically informed, I will discuss how church liturgy cultivates a messianic fellowship and ethos suitable for a modern politic (and natural law) that requires (an anthropologically derived) recognition, mutuality, and benevolence. According to Pannenberg, the church is a fellowship of individuals bound together by faith, baptism, and the gospel “in which the future fellowship of the kingdom of God finds representation already in an anticipatory sign . . . the church, as the fellowship of believers mediated by that of each individual with Christ, is still the messianic community of the Lord, and as such it is also God’s people, chosen by God, and sent into the world, for the salvation of all people.”173 The church is liturgically constituted, and the church has a “liturgically-centered politic.”174 As Christians participate in worship, the proclamation of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, a sense of mutuality and fellowship, along with Christ-like faith, hope, and love are forged as a sign and presence of God. For instance, the Lord’s Supper is the “central liturgical prayer of Christians” and the “church’s great prayer of thanksgiving.”175 This is a “sacramental rather than a liberationist politic” relative to the church’s role as a sign to the world.176 As Page Brooks argues, Pannenberg’s theology of political and public engagement cannot underestimate the church as a messianic fellowship pointing to the future Kingdom of God. The messianic fellowship reminds believers to provisionally work for justice in the world with the understanding that no human

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institutions can ever complete the task. Furthermore, through church liturgy and worship experience, “Believers are reminded of the story of how God has come to redeem the world and that the expectation of total redemption is yet to be realized. Through their works of love in the world, believers point to the coming kingdom.”177 This is a sacramental politic in that love is not only a gift of grace that enables conduct in the world, but also, a charisma (1 Cor. 13) and a formative ethos: “What John says abiding in love (1 John 4:16) expresses the fact that what is at issue is not just a human action but a sphere in which we move, a force field what comes from God and binds us to him.”178 The attributes of churchly faith, hope, and love certainly has a connection to the recognition, benevolence, and mutuality required in the political world. According to Pannenberg, human community “depends on the mutual recognition of its members.”179 That is, acknowledging another person’s social role within a community. Furthermore, legal connections are “grounded in recognition, and namely prior to the recognition of legal norms, in the mutual recognition of the persons involved as regards to their roles . . . and their related status.”180 Thus, there appears to be a “structural connection between law and love”181 for love is not merely a “sentimental isolation of its emotional elements and an isolated emphasis on its drive for reunification”182 but a motivating force for (legal) recognition. However, Pannenberg rejects a necessary relation between law and love for they rely on positivistic assertions. That is, recognition is a structural element of love but remains “an interior phenomenon occurring within the recognizer.”183 Therefore, the eschatological fulfillment of recognition is cultivated through love in a church community toward not only social roles but persons as such. Shingleton argues, “Religiously based communities are grounded in a shared commitment to a common historical tradition and moral vision, all contributing to distinctive forms of social integration.” But in secularized societies, integration and “recognition” may be driven by “other motives such as economic self-interest and gratification of psychological needs.”184 The ethos of church liturgy and fellowship may best cultivate the love required for genuine recognition. Pannenberg speaks about “concrete morality” driven by the impulses of benevolence and “mutual goodwill” belonging to human nature for185 the reciprocity of good will are necessary for lasting relationships.186 Mutual goodwill is not mandatory because family, professional, and neighborhood relations can simply endure based on recognition of formal social roles. But mutual goodwill makes such relationships bearable. More specifically, Pannenberg speaks about the free good will that is not based on the natural or social conditions that leads to mutual dependence.187 I’m not exactly clear on Pannenberg’s position on benevolence as he argues that friendships based on (unilateral) benevolence alone are unable to endure. Perhaps what

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he rejects is mere formal and impersonal benevolence, the kind that fosters civility and recognition of social roles, but not true relationships, in favor of love and goodwill directed toward persons themselves. After all, persons are permanent and “time transcending” while formal relationships are transitory and conditional. Persons are permanent in the form of a “time-bridging identity.”188 Such sense of personal and mutual benevolence is best cultivated in a church community. Interestingly, Pannenberg does not presuppose equality in the act of mutuality. “The act of recognition combines moments of inequality and specialness that are the direct object of recognition, and equality that is established through the reciprocity of recognition, even when it is not itself the object of such recognitions.”189 This goes back to Pannenberg’s finding of love and law in the concept of covenant in the Hebrew Bible,190 a covenant whose unity-in-distinction is seen in the “unequal” relationship between clergy and laypeople and God and the people. W. David O. Taylor argues that the choice of liturgical art in corporate worship opens up possibilities for the formation of human beings. He goes on to say that “it forms our desires; it shapes our capacities to imagine the world; it confirms and disturbs our emotional instincts . . . and it solidifies and reconfigures identity and over time generates a certain way of being in the world.”191 This speaks to the church-centered manner Pannenberg understands regarding the formation of public theology and public Christians. In sum, just as Jesus consummates the law of Israel as the love of God, the body of Christ (at church) and its mutual and affirming relationships of creative love is a sign which consummates natural law (in society). In other words, following de Gruchy, the values and ethos of mutual love in the Christian community forms the vision necessary for democratic legal and political institutions, and real and authentic relationships, to flourish. But ultimately, as the Apostle Paul famously says, all things pass away but the Christian vision and ethos of love remains, “The eschatological consummation of human fellowship in God’s kingdom no longer need either law or state power”192 for the provisional system will be replaced by the ultimate vision. Pannenberg and Marxism To close the section on Pannenberg and the political sphere, I will now consider his views on Marxism and liberation theology, and relatedly political theology, in order to underscore Pannenberg’s relative conservatism and reticence toward direct political action. His understanding of a church ethos of grace which forms benevolent and mutually inclined individuals of love is similar to public theology’s concern to form a spirit of virtue and cooperativeness in citizens, and not cultivate “this-worldly” activists. I reiterate

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Pannenberg’s position that the church is a “sign and tool” of the coming Kingdom of God reconciling God with the people of God. The church is “not in itself, “but essentially missionary.” Therefore, it is a “sacrament of the kingdom . . . the church does not fit in and for itself but only as the body of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.”193 The true church contrasts with liberation theology which Pannenberg says influenced the World Council of Churches assembly at Uppsala in 1968, an assembly which spoke of the church in-and-of-itself “as the sign of the future unity of humanity.” There was less space for “the missionary impulse” than there was for the “secular ecumenical effort” for a “purely ethical interest in promoting a unity of humanity that is as just and tolerable as possible.” Therefore, the council was far “from any question of religious unity as a basis of social harmony,” resulting in a “one-sided stressing of the instrumental function of the church relative to the fellowship of the rule of God that finds representation in the church in the form of a sign.”194 To Pannenberg, the church may have “revolutionary implication,” but the church itself “cannot transform the world into the kingdom of God.” “The kingdom comes only from God himself.”195 By “revolutionary implications,” Pannenberg intends for Christians and church to not keep silent “where there is crying injustice to be righted, where it is a matter of respect for human rights and improving the stablished order.”196 I take this to mean that justice (along with law and political life in general), should be formed within the context of an eschatological fellowship relying on grace and love, and the formation of Christ-like characteristics (such as benevolence and mutuality) in order to maintain and sustain a true civil society rather than just a formal sense of civic-mindedness. Pannenberg says liberation theology presupposes Marxism as a scientific and sociological tool, a system whose anthropology he deems as incompatible with Christianity.197 For example, Marxism says that an individual person is thoroughly dependent on social context. Christianity, on the other hand, claims that the person is endowed with dignity from a relation with God. According to Grenz, the church’s existence [to the Marxist] testifies to the continuing presence of alienation in the social system, an alienation that ought to vanish after the socialist revolution. . . . In so doing Marxism deprives persons of autonomy and human dignity.198 Moreover, Marxism has too optimistic a view of human nature, understanding history as human “self-creation,” not God’s historical revelation, while failing to recognize the problem of sin.199 I sense an inconsistency in Pannenberg’s argument, especially his first point on the societal function of human identity, for his thoroughly Trinitarian methodology relies on an ecclesial understanding of human identity, values, and formation. Moreover, Pannenberg’s critique of the societal function of human identity fails to see the societal and systemic evils (and unequal

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power dynamics) that plague humanity, something the Marxist-influenced Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, and the Frankfurt School see as a dehumanization marked by an instrumental rationality. Liberation theology, influenced by Marxism, does underscore society relative to the individualistic orientation of Western theology, but this need not discount a dependence on God or individualism, especially as it pertains to the organizing logic of the Trinity. Pannenberg almost seems to suggest that any work done on Earth, on its own terms, is atheistic. According to Moltmann, although political theology is a “natural confederate” of liberation theology, neither are a “progressive liberal theology of the established middle classes; it is a theology which is politically and socially critical, turned towards the victims of the First World.”200 which “prepossess the public testimony of faith and political discipleship of Christ.”201 Thus, it does not require a presupposition of an atheistic anthropology. Moltmann goes on to say that political theology does not “politicize the churches” but aims to “Christianize the political existence of churches and of Christians” with “the yardstick of Christian discipleship given us in the Sermon on the Mount.”202 Here I see the difference with public theology, for public theology neither politicizes the churches nor Christianizes politics but views the church as already political and politics (especially Western democracy) as already Christian to encourage dialogue and an inclusive and dialogical sense of virtue to rediscover what has been hidden. A Critique of Pannenberg’s “Non-law Breaking Approach” to Injustice Pannenberg’s non-law-breaking approach to injustice presumes a homogenous European framework of cultural values. Thus, he prefers working within a Western political system and its laws he uncritically accepts as true and a provisional extension of the church and the eschatological Kingdom of God. But what if the laws of the (Western) political sphere are unjust and need to be broken? What if injustice is rooted in the church and breeds racism and capitalism as heteropatriarchy? According to Marilyn J. Legge, the public vocation of the churches requires “justice love” and the fair sharing of power. She exhorts Christians to be intercultural moral agents for the good and “heterogeneity of public life,” particularly as globalization and neoliberal capitalism instigates “massive flows of people across lands and oceans and above all the dislocation, rupture and erasure of communities” and collapses economic and political support structures especially for the marginalized.203 Pannenberg’s uncritical acceptance of the political and economic status quo inadequately addressees the new reality, and is blind to two forms of systematically reproduced and routinized injustice in marginalized communities, oppression and domination.204 His taken-for-granted

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assumptions is susceptible to a “multiculturalism” that effectively ignores or erases “differences of gender, race and class and often reduces culture to a static, exotic status.”205 Legge calls for a heterogenous moral imagination “grounded in multiple and diverse particulars” in order to interrogate, refine, and apply Christian social ethical norms “to reflect concrete problems caused by social stratified differences and state sanctioned marginalizations and exclusions.”206 This challenge to heteropatriarchy and White normativity begins with the church’s own “ecclesial integrity.” For imagination follows “hunches, desires and suspicions, to break down, recreate, communicate and animate different possibilities and practices.”207 As stated earlier, Bonhoeffer’s view of the ontic realty of Christ’s incarnation means the world-as-such betrays a finality; for Pannenberg, the world anticipates the final consummation. Bonhoeffer is willing to break human laws belying a Christ-centered and “natural” understanding of reality; Pannenberg, I suggest, would be reluctant of breaking laws as they are proleptical and valuable as truth. But what if laws are unjust? What if the churches remain self-consciously blind to their “patriarchal framework” that transfers to their public theology, that is, their theological assessment of patriarchal political and economic systems? Bonhoeffer suggests that the church is incapable of speaking in the public world. This, according to Heather Walton, is due to “the movement of history, the challenge of the times and the judgment of God upon the church, this had become virtually unspeakable in the public realm.”208 According to Allison Fenton, “There is a danger that it will be just the voice of institutional patriarchy speaking to other patriarchal institutions.”209 Pannenberg’s political project is fundamentally an apologetical approach of rediscovering the Christian roots, that is, the Christian ethos of mutuality and love to animate the formalized notions of equality pervading the existing Western political order. Pannenberg states that the clearest signs of injustice need to be challenged, both in society and in the church. But as I will discuss in the next section, although Pannenberg calls for direct political action (law breaking?) in clear examples of injustice his conception of injustice fails to address the systemic nature of patriarchy and racism beginning with the church. Pannenberg would evaluate direct political action, such as Marxism and arguably feminism, a human-centered project that fails to wait for God’s gracious action. THE ECONOMIC SPHERE: PANNENBERG’S VIEW ON THE ECONOMY Pannenberg’s theology, which strives toward eschatological and universal unity, is commendable for its attempts at consistency. Thus, the principles

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and ideas of mutuality and benevolence within a shared churchly ethos is applicable not only to the political sphere but to other spheres as well (economy, family, culture). As Stackhouse writes, “Politics increasingly has become the forming of a stable government able to establish and maintain the kind of law and order that assures those conditions whereby a viable economy can function effectively.”210 Michel Foucault locates the beginning of the “political-economy” to the eighteenth century where the state’s sense of ontological, epistemological, and political warrant required a “market veridiction.”211 Pannenberg’s thoughts on the economy are relatively sparse compared to politics (and is more an anti-Marxist polemic), nonetheless, assuming the identification of a political-economy, this section will consider Pannenberg’s views and its implications for public theology, with the overall aim of discerning how the church embodies an alternative economic community and is a proleptic model for secular economic life (especially in a neoliberal age in which the person has been reduced to homo economicus). Pannenberg’s thoughts will emerge as I do the following: First, I will scan passages from his corpus which reveal his views on the economy in the contemporary world, particularly around the concept of freedom. Second, extending my discussion in the previous section on Pannenberg’s position on politics, I will analyze his thoughts on Marxism and liberation theology to discover the characteristics of his preferred economic system, that is, capitalism. Finally, I will consider the implications of his position on ecumenism and the economic Trinity (which are ostensibly dissimilar) as it pertains to the money economy, as the three terms share the root word oikos.212 Thus, I will consider how a Trinitarian logic informs his views on the economy and how the immanent Trinity (in this instance “theology”) is the economic Trinity (in this instance the “public” Wirtschaft) with a focus on the term “management.” Pannenberg on the Economy Pannenberg disagrees with those who see religious change as the function of political and economic ones. Rather, in ancient civilizations dominated by religion, political and economic changes followed religious ones. For example, religion impacted the political life of Babylon, Assyria, and Israel. While the economic impact is not directly discussed, there is an assumption that politics and economics are tied together. Agreeing with Max Weber’s protestant work ethic, Pannenberg is overt on religion’s impact (such as the Calvinist doctrine of predestination) on capitalism, which counters the historical materialism of Marxism in favor of a Christ-centered freedom mediated by the community.213 What are the characteristics of a Christian economic system? Pannenberg sees the capitalist economy as a “public institution” that requires a religious and Christian validation, a “Christian Spirit,” on human

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nature and naturally counters the secularized pseudo-religion of humancenteredness and corrupted drive toward infinity which inevitably leads to dominance and exploitation: Emancipation from religious ties and considerations, and from the conditions of social life that had their basis in them, has been one of the presuppositions of the autonomous development of economic life in the modern age. Contemporary secularism, while boasting of its emancipation from religious ties, at the same time places responsibility for the consequences of its absolutizing of the striving for possessions on the religious origins from which it has broken free.214

In other words, secularism attributes the “unrestricted exploitation of nature by modern technology and industrial society, and for the resultant ecological crisis” to the human task of “dominion” given by God (Gen. 1:28) rather than taking responsibility for its own “self-glorious misuse of the power we have been given by God.”215 But for Pannenberg, the “dominion” of the Christian Spirit “excludes arbitrary control or exploitation. It is like the work of a gardener.”216 The church that is extra nos in Christ, especially when in a majority position in society, has the “critical potential” to overthrow and restructure “all forms of social life that are not controlled by the Christian Spirit.”217 The economy is to be managed (gardened or stewarded) presupposing a Christian understanding of freedom, ostensibly absent in secular and Enlightenment understandings, but nonetheless present as an influential ethos in capitalism. God as the absolute future means that God is “pure freedom.” For freedom is to “have future in oneself and out of oneself.”218 God as pure freedom is the source of human freedom; humans are free for the future, an anthropology of exocentricity (Weltoffenheit), an openness to go beyond the world. The sociopolitical and economic expression of human freedom grounded in God and Christian faith is the socioeconomic structuring of life. While freedom and the root of “democracy” comes from Greek sources, “The contributions of the Christian faith to contemporary democratic society must first of all consist in creating an awareness of these Christian origins of modern democracy and a recognition of democratic freedom as the expression of the Christian spirit.”219 For example, the United States corresponds most closely to the freedom based on Christian principles . . . this agreement makes possible the high degree of pluralism and tolerance that exists in that society.220 According to Ted Peters, modern ideas of freedom (derived Enlightenment and from Marxism), are critical of Christ. But “Christians begin with the axiom that true freedom is found in Jesus Christ.”221 No different from the Christian Spirit which envelops Christian action in the political sphere, according to Pannenberg, the reconciliation accomplished in Christ reconciles the manifold conflict among human beings. As long as the spirit of Christ’s love is

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strong enough to overcome divisions among Christians, it can move humankind to overcome their “political, social, and economic conflicts.”222 Pannenberg prefers management inside a status quo and is critical of a political-economic theology that seeks political and economic change through “revolutionary” political action, reducing society to forms of political and economic rule. He advocates “Christian responsibility for the world” under the Christian spirit engaging in legal-political “discussion” (rather than revolution) with, and embodying, the (democratic and capitalist) political and economic order.223 He warns against the “revolutionary” economic presuppositions of the World Council of Churches, including “too many unnoticed ideological presuppositions.”224 Thus, he advocates for mutuality and benevolence in the economic sphere; not one marked just by the “principle of equivalent exchange” but rather “the mutual recognition of the individuals.”225 A “just economic order” based on rules and regulations or direct political action is difficult to grasp because what one considers fair may be unjust and oppressive to others.226 The economic integration of Europe requires a stable political framework based on consciousness of cultural unity, one based on the Christian Spirit.227 The spirit of Christ’s love moves humanity to overcome its political, social, and economic conflicts. How can the church embody an alternative economic community of the Christian spirit for public witnessing? After all, the economy, similar to the powerful and often subtle formative power of a society’s culture, creates citizens of certain dispositions, values, worldview, mores, and habits. According to Bertrand Russell, economic systems profoundly influence the characters and dispositions of men and women. For example, modern capitalism makes happiness depend upon possessions of the world.228 The challenge of a Christian economic system is to counter the modern secular (neoliberal) economy’s reduction of the imago Dei to homo economicus. The theologian John Cobb and the economist Herman Daly provide an alternative economic vision (that the church can model) of a “community of communities” that decentralizes economic power to focus on self-sufficient, economically feasible, and environmentally sustainable local communities.229 Similarly, Andrew Sung Park envisions a “global religious community in the economic sphere” that “upholds capitalism in terms of the private ownership of property and capital,” and socialism “in terms of sharing the means of production.” Each family as the basic unit possesses its own household and farms its own land, but the system deals with marketing and supply collectively, and provides education, medical, and cultural services.230 Park supports an ecological, rather than economic, church community which shifts the “goal of development from growth in economic wealth (vertical growth) to growth in the equitable distribution of wealth and in human and environmental health (horizontal growth).”231

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Pannenberg would undoubtedly deem such measures extreme, driven by Marxist presumptions of ideologically based human-centeredness, rather than trusting in the Spirit to gradually reveal itself in history. Therefore, Pannenberg is uncommitted to how the church (and society) should concretely practice (in terms of specific policies and programs rather than mere dispositions) a responsible economic politic. Perhaps we can classify Pannenberg as a cautious capitalist who works within a system he deems as already a provisional “Christianity outside the church.” His ambivalence about the term “justice” necessitates a church’s rejection of liberal theology’s interested economic programs, in favor of an abstract sense of mutuality and benevolence, which will manifest in a spirit of debate and understanding rather than force, leaning on persuasion as it practices both a constructive and apologetic public theology appealing to the unitive ethos of Christian (capitalist) cultural roots. I will now consider Pannenberg’s views on the ideology and economics behind Marxism in order to discern the dimensions of his ideal (capitalist and ecclesial) economic order and critique it for a lack of empathy for non-privileged peoples. Pannenberg’s Critique of Marxism as Insights for his Ideal Economic Order Pannenberg is critical of Marxism’s anthropocentric and atheistic view of humanity, which serves as a faulty sociological and philosophical tool for liberation theology. And Grenz attributes Pannenberg’s possible “neo-conservatism” to his negative experiences with Marxism-Leninism as a child, young-adult, and professor in Germany. “Pannenberg finds Marxism to be the archenemy of the open, liberal, tolerant society he advocates.”232 I will now discuss Pannenberg’s critique of what he deems the reductionist and simplistic Marxist view of economy. According to Pannenberg, Marxism sees labor as social activity producing “the social identify of the human being.”233 Therefore, private property, division of labor, and the private barter of goods in the market, is “original sin” driven by egotism and greed.234 Money, the medium for market exchange, displaces all other desires and becomes “the god of the alienated, selfish individual.”235 The “ghostly dynamics” of money “works like a vampire” in sucking “the blood of the labor class.”236 Pannenberg does not share the Marxist critique of private property, division of labor, or money. In fact, Jesus instructs against the idolization of mammon, not money’s useful function in a market society or the concept of private ownership.237 Therefore, “Marx did not appreciate the enrichment of life that results from the exchange of products, but only the impoverishment of human activity which results from being reduced to some partial functions in producing only one particular kind

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of good.”238 Furthermore, Marxism which sees the private appropriation of the “surplus value” generated by human labor as the basis for exploitation “tends to present a simplified and at the same grossly exaggerated picture of the value that is supposedly due to the work of the labor force, but is in large part withheld from their wages.”239 Pannenberg recovers what he deems to be a healthier sense of self, one that does not neglect the individual in favor of the communal and does not attribute God-like infinity to what humanity can accomplish. Pannenberg is not unconcerned about justice. He calls for action in “examples of clear [economic] injustice.” However, as he admits, the fight against the “grosser types of injustice may appear rather modest as compared to the quest for justice in the full and complete sense of the word.” And it must be noted that Pannenberg’s concessions regarding action is a one paragraph postscript to a lengthy article that has critiqued the concept of justice, political action, and the “seductive” ideology of Marxism. Using Alasdair MacIntyre’s thoughts in After Virtue, Pannenberg justifies reluctance toward action because “no generally accepted concept of justice is available.” “Justice can only be provisional this side of the eschatological fullness of the kingdom of God.”240 The church-centered creative love that fosters a sense of benevolence and mutuality (applicable in both the political and economic realms) appears to be primarily internally transformative and generally (and realistically) confined to private and local relationships; not one that externally transforms society and its structures as a whole (at least on this side of the eschaton). This reminds me of Reinhold Niebuhr’s proposal for a Christian realism based on an anthropology that human beings are moral in local relationships (where bonds are more easily formed due to kinship, familial, or affectionate ties) but increasingly oppressive and immoral in larger more impersonal associations.241 According to Niebuhr, individuals suppress selfishness in acts of benevolence in organic and intimate relationships. Groups, on the other hand, nations, race, and economic classes, are self-interested. A dominant group will impose its will on irrational and prejudiced impulses which are not easily given up.242 Thus, economic and political life requires not idealism and appeals to (Christian) morality, but rational and utilitarian policies. Justice is not love of neighbor, but a rational “insistence upon consistency.”243 Niebuhr advocates for modest gradualism, “Not the creation of an ideal society in which there will be uncoerced and perfect peace and justice, but a society in which there will be enough justice, and in which coercion will be sufficiently non-violent to prevent his common enterprise from issuing into complete disaster.”244 James Cone criticizes Niebuhr for having the “eyes to see” injustice (black suffering) but lacking the “heart to feel it.” This is something Cone attributes

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to Niebuhr’s privileged status as a White educated man,245 a criticism that is particularly apt considering Niebuhr’s strong advocacy on behalf of the (White) working class on labor issues. I cannot but help but categorize Pannenberg (a White educated man) as a Christian realist who seems to prefer inaction. First, he generally advocates for gradual reform not direct political action due to a technical notion that justice is elusive as a definition and eschatological. Second, unlike Niebuhr who disqualifies what he deems the unrealistic eschatological love of Christ in the public sphere, Pannenberg at least sees its proleptic potential. Nonetheless, it remains an eschatological goal; the brokenness of present humanity thus requires a more practical and rational natural law, a good enough sense of temporary justice and freedom as seen in the present capitalist order. Pannenberg, however, does express reservations on the viability of such a system: This is still the hour of the principle of liberty and of a continuous calling for its realization in all dimensions of human life. But the ambiguities of its secular conception deprived the idea of liberty of its holistic meaning to such an extent that judgment on the societies based on that principle is already looming on the horizon. This judgement obviously appears in the rise of socialism. This ambiguous word may be taken as referring to the subordination in principle of the individual under some accepted image of society.246

Therefore, he endorses the Christian ecumenical movement to recover Christian freedom against the secularized and liberal optimistic and human-centered anthropology: “Religion in the strict sense of the world can feel more secure today than it has for a long time. It will outlive every ideological regime. And the only serious challenge to Christianity will not be secular society, which is badly in need of religious support in our days, but rival religions.”247 Third, perhaps Pannenberg “lacks the heart to feel” injustice because he presupposes that the European nations, as secularized as they are, are united by a Christian cultural heritage, a ruling (and perhaps hegemonic if not secularized) ethos in which the perspectives of the marginalized (nonwhite, non-Christian, and non-rich) are generally invisible and lack access to the “natural.” In fact, Pannenberg is guilty of a Eurocentrism that is problematic in contemporary terms. He writes, it is “understandable” that many “younger churches” “insist that their own cultures have a dignity equal to that of Europe or America.”248 However, these “younger churches” need to recognize European and American Christian legacy and heritage.249 Pannenberg does not call for developing nations to directly appropriate European and American culture, nonetheless the reception of the Jewish and Hellenistic

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should be mediated by the West. Moreover, it is “ironic” that “some Christians in Asia and Africa no longer want to understand the gospel in the forms they have encountered through Europeans or Americans.”250 Just as Europe would morally decline from its pre-Christian Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavic roots, as exemplified in Nazism, African theologians should not complain that Europe suppresses and oppresses their (implied to be barbaric) indigenous pre-Christian cultures.251 Pannenberg does not intend to be offensive and was a product of his own contextual experiences with Nazis and Marxists.252 And it is anachronistic to subject Pannenberg, a member of the “45er Generation” who came of age during the Second World War and was tasked with political and social reconstruction,253 with critical race theory. Finally, there is some development in Pannenberg. Ten years after his thoughts on the Faith and Order Commission’s meeting in Bangalore he acknowledges that everyone speaks from a context and it “would amount to intellectual imperialism if any one of us would claim to do what only theologians from those regions [the majority world] can do for themselves in order to appropriate the gospel and the heritage of other cultures to their own context.”254 Pannenberg returns agency to non-Western theologians in appropriating Hellenistic and Jewish texts (of course it is impossible to do Christian theology without Western sources). Nonetheless, Pannenberg’s position on the European status quo is clear. As I will discuss in the section on Pannenberg’s view of culture, Christianity has a civilizing influence, in the sense of a modern anthropological notion of culture (and the notion of Kultur) which has an “evaluative and exclusivist concept.”255 This criticism of Pannenberg’s conservativism could be levied against public theology as public theology works within the system rather than seeking revolutionary changes, pursuing dialogue presupposing universal categories of justice and a certain sense of privileged access to the grammars of discussion. Grenz’s criticisms against Pannenberg’s anti-Marxism are worth noting. First, Pannenberg assumes too quickly the virtue of capitalism, private property, and the market of exchange. Although Jesus is against the idolization of mammon and does not directly speak against money itself, the Gospels clearly excoriate the rich for oppressing the poor and exhort them to be generous. Second, history has not disproven Marxist historical analysis. Capitalism, particularly in the democratic socialism of Europe, has survived because it has co-opted certain aspects of socialism. Third, it is unfortunate and problematic that Pannenberg puts the blame on developing nations for their poverty and human misery because they cooperate with international corporation and willingly accept foreign credit. But “this fails to acknowledge the clout wielded by large banks and transnational corporations.” Third, the GDP of nations are often dwarfed by the incomes of corporations.256 This

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comes back to Pannenberg’s false presupposition that natural law is universally natural and a fair and equal market is easily accessible for all. There is “inequality” in Pannenberg’s economic system. Social positions considered “higher” in our market-dominated society are generally linked to higher salaries. Pannenberg values capitalism because it fosters a provisional sense of (Christian-rooted) freedom and individualism (rather than the individual being a function of the society in Marxism in atheistic terms). However, he naïvely assumes that capitalism is independent of social forces and power dynamics, that the market is a value-neutral exchange of autonomous economic subjects whose wealth is justly earned through hard work and ingenuity. Ultimately, Pannenberg’s pro-capitalist position is maintenance of the status quo, derived from his negative perception of a Marxism he perceives as anti-Christian and anti-free. A particularly sharp critique comes from Carl Braaten, once a preeminent advocate of Pannenberg, who increasingly favors Jürgen Moltmann’s political theology for its Christian inspired “revolutionary spirit of the modern world.”257 In sum, John Cobb and Carl Braaten are critical of Pannenberg’s political-economic system for its “excessive sense of private individuality” influenced by Western individualism. Thus, Cobb and Braaten are open to liberation theologies and a critical theological analysis toward democratic sociopolitical structures because the resurrection by itself, crucial in Pannenberg’s thought, cannot “thematize the social and environmental fabric that is constitutive of life,” and fails to “express the relationship between the individual and society.” Cobb seeks the creative transformation of sociopolitical structures and is more open than Pannenberg to non-Western sociopolitical experiments.258 The Economy, Ecumenism, and the Trinity Economy, ecumenism, and the economic Trinity share the Greek root word oikos. This section will discuss how Pannenberg’s views on the economy interacts with and can be defined through his position on ecumenism and the economic Trinity. In its classical Aristotelean definition, oikos, which conveys a sense of private, and authoritarian, sense of household economic management, contrasts with polis, a more public facing, and free, association with rule, the state, and its laws.259 According to Carl Braaten, Martin Luther, who makes a threefold division of public orders (status economicus, status politicus, and status ecclesiasticus) identified sexual identity and family status into the economic order because the household “was the basic sphere in which people secured all the necessities of livelihood.”260 On the other hand, Stackhouse understands the economy of the modern world as management (or stewardship) not in the sense of “home economics” but as public institutional arrangements,

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that is, civil society involving “the factory, the industry, the transnational corporation, the global market, the bomb, the computer.”261 In other words, the economic sense of the oikos has expanded beyond the home and must be redefined as public and a political-economy in and of itself. Moreover, the oikos is to be “free” much like the ancient public “polis” and the private “civil society” Habermas describes as the reasoned, voluntary, and free participation of all people. According to Stackhouse, economic stewardship as understood in the West is expanding further and moving in the direction of the “whole inhabited world” toward globalization and the interdependence of the structures of civilization.262 This is similar to how Pannenberg understands ecumenism. According to Neuhaus there is a sense in which the oikos (the church) and polis (eschatological Kingdom of God) are united: In Pannenberg’s thought, the world has an enormous stake, indeed it has everything at stake, in the future of the gospel, if, as claimed, the gospel is the truth about the world. This is the connection that makes necessary for Pannenberg’s deep concern for ecumenism. The unity of Christians is an anticipation of and a sign of promise for the unity of humankind. The reconciled diversity of the Church models the reconciled diversity of the polis.263

In other words, Pannenberg’s ecumenical theology sheds light on his position on the market economy. According to Pannenberg, the WCC and Vatican II, emphasizes the Church as a sacrament symbolizing “the future unity of a new humankind in the Kingdom of God.” However, it seems that the unity of humankind is largely envisioned in secular, economic, and political terms “quite apart from the symbolism of the Church.”264 Pannenberg reiterates ecumenism as the unitive hope of a divided world and fundamentally and eschatologically God (not human) centered: The ecumenical movement could develop into the most far-reaching contribution of present-day Christianity to the political [and economic] future of humanity and especially to that of the Western world. . . . It is not proclamation about social ethics but theological dialogue and religious reconciliation, which, if they reach their goal, will have truly revolutionary consequences for social and political [and economic] life, because the religious problem is directly involved with the social and political unity of society.265

First, ecumenism involves growing unity among the various Christian denominations as a proleptical representation of general humanity’s ultimate destiny, this involves a growing sense of globalizing economic interdependency. Second, the eschatological referent of the Kingdom which controls Pannenberg’s theology can be said to be a “household,” for the Kingdom is

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not only a political notion (Jesus as King) but also familial because God is the “father” and Jesus is the “son” (and the Spirit is “mother”?) and, correspondingly, the affairs of the church are to be managed by church members who in their unity-in-differentiation practice different functions (much like a market economy and the immanent Trinity). For Pannenberg, ecumenism is the first pillar of his political and economic theology, it is a “countermovement” of a “new form of religious consciousness” so that the Christian faith becomes more potent in political, economic, and social issues.266 Thus, the economy needs to be “managed,” but persons are also free to pursue their interests. This fits Pannenberg’s understanding of the Trinity (both immanent and “economic”) in which the second person is the source of autonomy, freedom, and differentiation, the Spirit is the agent of unity, and the Father serves as the functional head. According to Pannenberg, “The relationship between the person of Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit might well prove to be not just historical or economic but relations which characterize the eternal divine essence.”267 The economic Trinity, the actions of the Father, Son, and Spirit in historical revelation, empowers a movement toward global unity as an earthly steward, which Stackhouse writes, is a “manager of that which belongs temporally to others, and ultimately to the Lord”268 forges “covenantal patterns of responsible relationship” and the “trustee-stewardship model of management.”269 In sum, can ecumenism be a kind of public theology on the money economy? Pannenberg recovers the human being as the imago Dei (or imago trinitatis) contra the neoliberal reduction of human beings to atomized homo economicus. Neoliberalism is an ideology, a worldview in which persons are defined as self-entrepreneurs who cultivate self-value rather than actual products, and everything becomes competition. Pannenberg’s view of ecumenism, which is inclusive, might shed light on economy proper, of genuine mutuality, conversation, and beneficence striving for a peaceful common good rather than individual wealth. To Gary M. Simpson, Pannenberg’s political theology is undeveloped as it focuses on ecumenism and freedom, and neglects a theological theory of justice.270 As I have tried to show, a focus on ecumenism and freedom is more along the lines of a public theology as the key words are management, stewardship, conversation, dialogue, unity-in-differentiation, Trinity, natural law, among others. THE FAMILIAL SPHERE: PANNENBERG’S VIEW ON THE FAMILY Martin Luther collapses the family sphere into the economic one because “management” of the family includes economic realities. However, what

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about matters of family as it pertains to noneconomic and nonpublic spheres. This monograph has discussed Pannenberg’s conviction that a “Christian spirit” envelops the Western world as a cultural ethos influencing public economic and political governance and the corresponding virtues and values of freedom, mutuality, beneficence, and the like which emerge. This section presupposes the Christian spirit but applies it to, strictly speaking, the “private” realm of the family. According to Pannenberg, the family, as the “most basic area of mutuality” contrasts with property and economy which are “subject to conditions of reciprocity.” Familial relations should not be confused with economic ones.271 In this section, first, I will discuss why the ostensibly private sphere of the family is formative for a public theology. Second, drawing upon the notion of a Confucian “filial piety,” I will discuss how Pannenberg’s understanding of the Father-Son relationship in the immanent and economic trinities can replace a Western (Kantian) abstract ethic and has implications for the family sphere. Third, drawing on the discussion of the church as a “household” of the Trinitarian God, I will discuss Pannenberg’s understanding of the family of Christ (the church) and its values, dispositions, and relational orientations. Fourth, synthesizing the insights of the previous three sections, I will identify Pannenberg’s position on marriage and its significance for the public. Finally, I will engage in a preliminary discussion of an Asian American public theology of family drawing on the notion of liminality in order to propose the Asian American church as a public space for value formation. Is the Family Sphere a Public Theology? According to Stackhouse, every society has a family sphere whose institutions “nourish, guide and constrain the impulses of human sexuality [eros] that are both necessary for the propagation and nurture of the next generation and for fostering experiences of self-transcending ecstasy and bonding affection.” However, these impulses become destructive when “fostering the worship not only of body parts or functions, but also of genetic gene pools by the making of genealogical heredity the center of a collective identity.”272 Stackhouse recognizes the importance of family, one’s most intimate and biological relationship, in shaping values and virtues which have public significance. How is family, a seemingly private space, formative for a public theology? Although Hegel recognizes family life as the most basic example of human relationality, he deems it the least “rational moment.” More recent analysis reverses course and locates the family as part of civil society.273 Family membership is involuntary compared to associations (such as church) which are voluntary and bonded through mutual obligations to a common cause. However, biological bonding is arguably stronger as a formative influence

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than an abstract sense of beliefs or a Kantian communicative rationality. As Lisa Cahill writes, “The social meanings of the body [is] realized through parenthood and kinship.” “It is the reproductive, economic, and kin-oriented contributions of sexual partnerships, as well as social control over them, which are the major practical dimensions of the human sexual experience cross-culturally and historically.”274 Pannenberg suggests that human sexuality is a “permanent actuality” “with the potential eroticization of all areas of social and cultural life.”275 Works on public theology, especially after Gramsci, locate the private family as part of civil society, but I’m not convinced as to why. Gramsci’s main argument is that family is an association similar to the voluntary associations of civil society. But what would be the public theological significance of an association which is biological, not voluntary? First, as the majority of individuals belong, or have belonged, to a family, it has universal apologetic potential. It is axiomatic that the values, virtues, and ethos, good and bad, cultivated in both nuclear and extended families, form not only private virtues and values, but public ones. Second, according to Alexis de Tocqueville, political and economic structures influence the family: “The changes that are taking place in the family are related to the social and political [democratic] revolution that is culminating before our eyes,”276 for “the distance that once separated a father from his sons has decreased and that paternal authority has been if not destroyed then at least impaired.”277 Tocqueville rejects separating the private and authoritarian patriarchal household from the more democratic public sphere. He concludes that the “domestic habits of democracy” are “impossible to enjoy” without the “social state and laws.”278 Almost eight decades later, Walter Rauschenbusch concludes that family is “the simplest and most familiar social organization.” It is “the most Christian” because: The word “Father” has become the most satisfactory symbol of a loving God, and that the word “child” the most trustful expression of our relation to him. When Jesus substituted these family terms for the old royal conceptions with their connotations of despotism, the change meant a redemption of religion. Wherever the members of a social organization have taken to calling one another “brother,” it has stood for higher social ideals. . . . As for the word “mother”—that carries a mystic breath of religious sweetness to which we all do homage.279

In other words, the family and what happens inside of it, is possibly both a theology (following Rauschenbusch) and public (following Tocqueville). And to go a step further, the (Christian) family is not only constituted by the surrounding (democratic) culture, but is constitutive of it. According to Pannenberg, marriage and family “aid in the social integration of human

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behavior generally.”280 What then does the Christian family look like and is this public theology? Filial Piety in Pannenberg Korean Methodist theologian Sung Bum Yun contrasts the Western (Kant) and Eastern (Confucius) approaches to ethics. The Western is characterized by universal principles derived from reason which govern human activity. Western ethics centers on the individual and emphasizes Sollen (duty), which “I myself must fulfill.” The Eastern is characterized by “principles governing inter-personal relationships.”281 Drawing on Karl Barth, his doctoral advisor, Yun, identifies family as the starting point for Christian ethics: “Both Christianity and Confucianism are religions of the East, and the ethics of both begin with the family . . . I feel there is an urgent need to correct this shortcoming of western ethics by re-emphasizing family based ethics, the characteristic ethics of East Asia.”282 Focusing on the father-son relationship, Yun writes: “For in Christian ethics the concrete ethical pattern is Jesus Christ, and whenever one speaks of Jesus Christ the relationship of the Heavenly Father with His Only-begotten Son is always present. In this it represents the Confucian ethics in which filial piety (hsiao 孝), i.e., the father-son relationship, is the constant norm and the basis for all virtue.”283 Just as Barth understands freedom as not freedom from but freedom for, the Confucian approach is freedom for others, as seen in the son’s (Jesus) freedom for the Father.284 Pannenberg285 underscores the Father-Son relationship as constitutive for his theology. As Yun indicates, a father-son relationship, compared to a man-woman relationship, is unchangeable and does not depend on affections.286 The father-son relationship becomes the foundation and norm for ethics287 because it is “unchangeable; it cannot be truly severed even if one so desires. . . . If, as in the case of western Christian ethics, the husbandwife relationship is put foremost, one must ask how this relationship, with its extreme changeability, can serve as the norm for ethical value.”288 Pannenberg is not a Confucian thinker, after all he prefers the Western concern for “freedom, love, and equality” (at least in his ethics) compared to the Confucian concern for “humility, order, and peace.”289 Nonetheless, Pannenberg’s methodological and postfoundational concern for coherence and the whole has Confucian sensibilities for order. Unlike the analogia entis, Pannenberg’s doxological approach may shed light on the reverence and filial piety the Son shows to the Father. I want to reiterate some of the tenets of Pannenberg’s Trinitarian theology, particularly the constitutive significance of the father-son relationship. Confucian filial piety assumes that the father cannot be the father without the son and the son cannot be the son without the father. Similarly, Pannenberg

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states the presence of such relations in both eternity and in history: “The action of the one God in relation to the world is not wholly different from the action in his trinitarian life . . . and becomes the determinative basis of relations between the Creator and the creatures.”290 The mutually constitutive relationship between the Father and the Son in eternity and in history, is seen in the Son’s “filial piety” toward the Father: Jesus distinguishes himself from the Father as one who bears witness to him . . . the Johannine Christ says that the Father is greater than he (14:28) and that his own word is “not mine but the Father’s who sent me” (14:24) . . . Jesus will not let himself be called “good Teacher” because “no one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). He thus distinguishes himself from God and sets himself as a creature below God as he asks his hearers to do in his message of the nearness of the rule of God. The same subordination to the Father may be seen in his not knowing the time of the end (Mark 13:32 par.), in his reply to the sons of Zebedee that it was not for him to assign places of honor at his side in the heavenly kingdom (Matt. 20:23 par.), and finally in his subjection of his own will to that of the Father in the prayer in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36 par.).291

The Father’s handing over of lordship to the Son, and vice versa, displays a mutuality not seen in the Father’s begetting of the Son. But the Father’s action “makes his kingship dependent on whether the Son glorifies him and fulfills his lordship by fulfilling his mission.”292 The Father’s essence as Father (and King) depends on the Son’s ability to acknowledge the Father as such. What is right and good (ethics) is the Son’s self-differentiation without self-glorification that acknowledges the infinity of the Father. Pannenberg’s understanding of the Father-Son relationship contrasts a Western (Kantian) abstract ethic of equality to underscore the inherent relationships of the family dynamic. Public history is thus dependent on the relationship between the Father and the Son, and the ability of finite beings to acknowledge their own finitude relative to the infinitude of the Father. This family dynamic is at the heart of Christian (and church-based) ethics. Confucianism deserves critique for its deeply patriarchal worldview. East Asian Americans reared in Confucian values display “conscious/ unconscious cultural convictions” in which the “roots of a woman’s greatest virtues are maternal rectitude, purity and deference, chastity and appropriateness.”293 According to Xinhong Yao, a professor of religion and ethics, the primary virtues of a young woman in the Confucian family is “her filial piety towards parents and parents-in-law, assistance to her husband and education of her children.”294 Thus, the Father-Son relationship of Confucianism, when paralleled with the Godhead, requires a non-gendered approach to symbolic relationality that the Christian Trinity attempts.

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Church as New Family The relationship between the Son and the Father affects the new family of the church; not necessarily emotional or affective (which is transient), but based on mutuality, beneficence, and a sense of exocentric concern for others based on the believer’s “adoption” into the family. According to Pannenberg, Israel’s description of God as Father “undoubtedly” relates to the “the patriarchal constitution of the Israelite family”; the father as head of the clan cares for clan members.295 The fatherhood of God becomes a model for the human fatherhood as “the epitome of God’s comprehensive care,” although it must be recognized that human fatherhood can never achieve this.296 Regarding the Son, “On the lips of Jesus, ‘Father’ became a proper name of God. . . . It embraces every feature in the understanding of God which comes to light in the message of Jesus.” Moreover, “Jesus brought the creative activity of God, especially in his providential care for his creatures (Matt. 6:26; 5:45), into the picture of God’s fatherly goodness.”297 For the New Testament church, the fatherhood of God is accessible through Jesus in the church (compared to the ancient Israelite family) by the power of the “mother”: The fellowship of Jesus as Son with God as Father can obviously be stated only if there is reference to a third as well, the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit of God is the mode of God’s presence in Jesus as he formerly was of God’s presence in the prophets or in all creation. Yet he is now present with eschatological ultimacy as an abiding gift which was the content of the eschatological hope of Israel, especially in expectation of the Spirit-filled Messiah. . . . The Spirit is thus given to believers, and by receiving the Spirit they have a share in the divine sonship of Jesus.298

The family relation not only concerns one’s immediate relationship to the Father but to their “siblings.” The Spirit is “the basis of the fellowship of believers in the unity of the body of Christ.” The Spirit which ecstatically lifts individuals to participate in the sonship of Christ (extra se in Christo) results in individuals participating ecstatically in fellowship with the church body in personal relationships (love of God and love of neighbor just as Jesus taught) and in its liturgical life.299 According to Stackhouse, church membership is accessible to all “whatever their birth or citizenship or, for that matter, mother tongue.” This attracts outsiders who organize a new association based on “a higher purpose in life, one that could bring, indeed, a fresh moral and spiritual content to the whole of life, of the familial and political, that is, to all cultural and economic existence.” The church members live under a “covenant” that is autocephalic and understand themselves as the “corpus Christi.”300 In other words, the Church in Christ is both inclusive (which biological families are

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unable to be) and loving (which non-biological associations, particularly at higher levels, are unable to be). According to Stackhouse, eros can become idolatrous and obsessive because it “can stimulate the experience of religious ecstasy.”301 However, if eros is located within the church family, religious ecstasy need not be a simulacrum but the real thing and regulated according to God’s intentions. Public theology as it pertains to the church family involves the family in the “economy” of the church. If church is a preconsummated preview of the public’s destiny, and the arena by which ideas about economic and political matters are formed, the church family also has implications for how relationships work in the public. Like the church, the relationships of the public are also like “family,” rather than a formal and functional focus on roles, duty, and rational justice. As Rauschenbusch shows, replacing political terms for familial ones better conveys the mutuality and beneficence that marks the affairs of the church, and consummates the natural law focus on equality as provisionally seen in Western democratic governance which are merely ad hoc responses to sin. Thus, the Trinitarian and familial basis for public theology contrasts Habermas and his notion of public communicative rationality which rests on Kantian abstract principles of justice. The latter may provide a semblance of order and justice in society, but ultimately, it lacks love. This Trinitaran basis also supplements Stackhouse who often sublimates his own Trinitarian theology to a focus on ethics. Pannenberg on Marriage According to Pannenberg, the social and cultural context forms human nature and human sexuality and is connected with the institutions of marriage and family.302 As the new public family, the church implicitly comments on what the family is, what marriage does, and how it forms individuals for public life. In this section, I will discuss Pannenberg’s theological perspectives on marriage and its public implications. The church is the bride waiting for the coming bridegroom (Christ) in eschatological marriage; marriage is a “mystery (mysterion).”303 Theological tradition labels baptism and the Lord’s Supper as “sacrament” or “mystery” signifying the nearness of God and Jesus Christ to whom faith depends in the lives of members and their fellowship in anticipation of the consummated creation.304 But the traditional rites as “mystery” or “sacrament” is not self-evident; the New Testament is only explicit about marriage [between Christ and the church, but also husband and wife] as a mystery.305 Pannenberg argues that sacraments are connected with Christ’s “passion as the divine mystery of salvation.”306 And proof of Christ’s institution of each sacrament is essential since sacraments impart grace and only Jesus is the “source of grace

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and reconciliation . . . Jesus Christ stands inviolably over against the church as the Head of his body.”307 Marriage is sacramental.308 Sacrament includes confirmation, penance, and the anointing of the sick as “concrete forms of the baptismal event.”309 But marriage and ordination are connected with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper “insofar as marriage and ordination each in their own way can be sights of that which is signified in the Eucharist.”310 A church action is sacramental when “the content of the action, if not necessarily the action itself, has its origin in Jesus Christ, and . . . has the function of a sign that expresses the mystery of Christ that unites Jesus Christ and his church.”311 The marriage between husband and wife312 is sacramental because the “love that ties both people together is not derived from themselves, but comes over them as the presence of their divine destiny”313 That is, in Jesus Christ and the filial relationship he has with the father as mediated by church tradition. According to Pannenberg, human sexual life depends on the social and cultural context.314 Pannenberg argues that the Western tradition of gender roles has “important advantages” and is “extensively appropriate” as it relates to a functional differentiation befitting a Trinitarian logic: Monogamy preserves the greatest chances for personal community between man and woman; the connection of sexual community with responsibility for the coming generation fits it into substantive tasks of the total society; that the woman is connected in a particular way with the children and thus also with the house takes into account her particular relation to children; then the task of caring for the livelihood of the family doubtless has the fall to the man; together with that, the interconnection of the family with the rest of society becomes his particular concern.315

Marriage between a man and a woman is an “example of every relationship between the I and the thou.” By “cultivating the relation between the sexes and by developing contrasting, but supplementary, roles,” one forms other meaningful relationships in society. Moreover, the life of two people in marriage becomes a personal community that is open to God in Christ.316 The eschatological thrust of a Christ-centered sacramental understanding of marriage speaks to Pannenberg’s underscoring of time in marriage: Sexual affection is directed to the entire person of the partner. This includes a directedness to the whole person as one whose life is characterized by extension in time. That is, given the temporality of human beings and the important part played in their lives by knowledge of past and future, the affirmation of the whole person of the partner necessarily implies at least the intention of a lasting relationship with that person.317

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In sum, the public and secular institution of marriage is consummated and properly understood within a Christian understanding of marriage as a sacrament, signifying Christ’s own eternal relationship to the Father; the husband-wife relationship is connected with the Son-Father relationship. Moreover, as Pannenberg states, kinship groups (families) merged with one another to form civil society because, as Claude Lévi-Strauss argues, “Religious convictions and norms originally made possible the transition from nature to culture.”318 A theological understanding of family and sexuality helps regulate an unfettered eros for “human sexuality also erotically colors and permeates all other behaviors.”319 Critiquing the Biological Family as Model for Christian Relationships Jacqui Grey uses “princess theology” to describe the ideal woman in the Pentecostal church.320 Steeped in medieval mythology, the princess is a woman of virtue, goodness, value, beauty and dignity; her beauty motivates the male knight to fight valiantly for her hand as she patiently and passively waits for his return. On the one hand, the princess image builds women with self-esteem and worth, they are after all, daughters of the king. However, it also undercuts these values for the princess is conceptualized “in medieval terms of commodity in the currency of territorial feudalism.”321 That is, “princess” can reduce a woman’s traits and virtues to a commodity; her role limited to “sealing of inter-dynastic politics.”322 Martin Luther identifies the family sphere with the economic one so that home becomes a synonym for economic management and commodification. Thus, the family can be a deeply unjust and oppressive place, perpetuating the traditional public/private and active/passive gender roles and the essentialized understanding of the private “woman” as representative of women’s experiences. The family, or home, can be “a nostalgic longing for an impossible security and comfort bought at the expense of women and those constructed as others, strangers . . . in order to secure a fantasy of a unified identity.”323 From a womanist perspective, Katie Cannon writes, “The vast majority of Black churchwomen live in the midst of two competing sexual realities. Either sex is a positive blessing for procreative purposes only, or sex is a negative curse that lays claim to bodily pleasure, contaminating the mind.”324 She goes on to say, Black women’s bodies have been “perceived through the lens of heteropatriarchal imagination . . . degraded, demeaned, demonized—locked into an oppressive gaze of beauty created in opposition to us.” This amounts to an anti-body and commodified dualism “compounded by chattel slavery and racial segregation, [which] signifies Black bodies, female and male, as inferior, mere performers of brute drudgery; white male bodies as unmarked,

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normative, full humanity, signifying superior individuality; and white female bodies as the apex . . . [the] prized possession in a privileged masculinist culture.”325 A better understanding sees “home” as both “personal and political . . . associated with hospitality, identity and land . . . a site of integration and difference . . . where identity is formed and challenged . . . the place from which we find the confidence to engage the world and allow the world to engage us . . . it helps with engaging diversity, creating meaning and honouring difference.”326 Thus, the home is a “habitus for meaningful inhabitation whereby the oikos, the economy of household and relationships are founded on the theological values of hospitality, dialogue, reconciliation, compassion and justice where both human and non-human is nourished.”327 The Christian family is not just a biological one but includes all who are grafted onto the Jewish covenantal tree “in excess of nature, against nature.”328 According to Linn Tonstad, this apologetical approach to Queer relationships indicates God’s inclusion of alternative sexualities in salvation history,329 but this can be extended to include blended families of different biological origins. Thus, a reimagined theological understanding of Christian family is not just defined biologically but “as reflectors of God’s image,” humanity’s relationship to God, each other, and the entire creation.330 According to Grey, “As creator, God is the source of the existence of each human being, and in this sense is the Father (and Mother, to continue the parent imagery) of all. . . . Humanity finds its identity in this familial tie: relationship with their Creator, Father and King. This means for women (and men), their value and identity are found in relationship with God as creation, daughter and subject.”331 Individual women are not autonomous individuals whose value is “based on their perceived worth relative to another person, society, or the marketability of their bodies.”332 From a theological perspective, they are members of God’s reestablished family of interpersonal relationships no longer governed by outward distinctions. Rather, “All members enjoy an equal status that transcends all racial, socio-economic and gender distinctions . . . women and men, in community, find their purpose in returning to the original creation mandate of reflecting God’s image . . . in all areas of the faith community. Their function, to declare the wondrous works of God, is distributed to all members of this community through the empowerment of the Spirit. . . . Women are required not to be passive observers of the community, not princesses waiting to be rescued, but active participants.”333 Asian American Public Theology of Family Following the preceding discussion on family, this section will briefly discuss an Asian American public theology of family. The family sphere and the new family of the Asian American body of Christ (the church) supports the Asian

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American public theological discussion because of its constitutive role in Asian American identity. As seen in the analysis of Sung Bum Yun, classical Eastern ethics underscores inter-relationality and the family, particularly the father-son relationship and filial piety. Yun’s conclusion that Christian ethics equates to an Eastern one that starts with the family is a valuable insight. However, the accelerating individualism of late capitalism (postmodern fragmentation of community and the neoliberal underscoring of individual entrepreneurship) is undeniable, and for Asian Americans caught in a liminal space between their Western and Eastern sensibilities, social institutions with a focused ethos are necessary to form principles, values, and customs that can navigate the tensions. According to Hak Joon Lee, “In addition to seeking a space of worship, fellowship, and small groups, Asian Americans need to build a moral community in God around a higher moral cause that the members are committed to . . . the sharing of common moral causes, core moral values, and convictions is critical for community-building.” This is necessary lest Asian Americans “end up more and more assimilated into the damaging values of American culture that are competitive, hedonic, and Eurocentric.”334 The Asian American church has public theological potential to form and empower public agents for God’s righteousness, justice, and love in society, particularly as it relates to challenging Asian American racism and addressing the structural inequalities of racialized America.335 The Asian American church, generally speaking, is either evangelically minded (in the White individualistic and American sense) in its concern for personal redemption, piety, and salvation, and/or a segregated space in which the older generations preserve the older culture and the newer generations practice their Americanness. There is a tension between community and the individual exacerbated by language and cultural barriers. But the Asian American church, an important public space for the community and a new family of social relationships for both recent immigrants and “native” Americans,336 can be an incubator for responsible, theological, and public-minded liminality. For instance, how can the church help alleviate the two most pressing issues of Asian American identity in the American public, the model minority myth and perpetual foreigner syndrome, which are arguably corrupted and racialized versions of individualism and communitarianism respectively? According to Frank Wu, the following stereotypes are associated with the model minority myth: doing well at school, especially math and science, passive, polite, deferential, and always smiling.337 The myth assumes that Asian Americans are successful, which problematically ignores the very real political, economic, and educational marginalization they experience (especially for South and West Asians). Asian Americans are also seen as perpetual foreigners, which Wu expresses with the question he is constantly asked “Where

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are you really from?”338 The perpetual foreigner syndrome manifests in the notion of the “yellow peril,” the view that Asians are foreign, exotic, violent, and dangerous. These two myths are “the most enduring of all the images of Asians and Asian Americans,”339 and display “the perils of the body (the yellow peril) and mind (the model minority).”340 One Asian American theological response is provided by Jung Young Lee who proposes a “new marginality” which stresses marginality over centrality in order to find a “new center” which is liberative.341 The classical definitions of marginality place the marginalized subject as “in-between” two worlds belonging to neither. A more positive alternative is marginality as “in-both” where the subject affirms both identities. Lee’s preference is for “in-beyond,” which includes both the negative experiences of “in-between,” and the positive experiences of “in-both,” to acknowledge “interpenetration of both positive and negative experiences of marginality.”342 In another work, Lee similarly proposes the “complementary dualism” of the yin and yang principle which is “deeply embedded in the collective subconsciousness of the East Asian people”343 which helps explain the “in-beyond.” The ancient Chinese text I Ching contains sixty-four “hexagrams.” Each hexagram is formed by stacking two kinds of lines, the “yin” (—), and the “yang” (–). Yang symbolizes the “masculine, the firm, the strong, the odd numbers, as well as all active things.” Yin symbolizes the “feminine, the yielding, the weak, the even numbers.”344 The yin and yang are “opposite and yet united.”345 In other words, “Yin has yang in it, and yang has yin in it.”346 And “what is intrinsic to the yin and yang relationship is not its being but its change.”347 The pure yang essence and pure yin essence are not the only hexagrams. A “third” is introduced as the intermingling of the yin and yang lines, resulting in the “children” of the father and mother seen in the various ways the yin and yang lines are arranged.348 According to Lee, “When two (or yin and yang) include and are included in each other, they create a Trinitarian relationship.”349 This resembles the Christian Trinity, the relations between the members are not only “in-between” or “in-both,” but “in-beyond.” The persons are the same but are different, and the persons also inhere “in” one another. Gary Okihiro asks, “Is Yellow Black or White?”350 Based on the Asian Trinitarian logic, my answers are Yellow is Black and White and Yellow is neither Black nor White. This has subversive potential regarding the two racial myths discussed above. Asian Americans can mimic Whiteness (model minority) while still Black (as marginalized persons of color and perpetual foreigners), in order to name the destructiveness of Whiteness and challenge the notion that success equates to Whiteness. At the same time, Asian Americans should not ignore the very real political, educational, and

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economic successes they have achieved; this “third” element reminds them, however, that Asian American success must not be essentialized. Asian Americans, as both White and Black, have the potential to practice empathy and solidarity with other victims. The Asian American church, operating with an Asian ethos of the non-dualistic yin and yang principle, can be the space to foster the Asian Trinitarian logic toward a moral community capable of dismantling racism and practice genuine liminality. THE CULTURAL SPHERE: PANNENBERG’S VIEW ON CULTURE In this section, I will consider Pannenberg’s underscoring of anthropology and its connection with culture. How do human beings through play and language embody and manifest culture? First, I will discuss his definition of culture as the unifying myth from which culture and institutions arise. Then I will discuss Christian culture as the unifying principle that organizes Western societies. I will also critique Pannenberg’s unitary understanding of culture through a postmodern lens. What is Culture? According to Stackhouse, cultural institutions facilitate communication and “articulate aesthetic sensibilities through disciplined forms of the arts.”351 Symbolized by muses, culture becomes idolatrous “when humans worship their own creativity and impose it on others as if no spiritual life force outside the self could be the source of inspiration.”352 Romanticism is an example of cultural idolization as the transcendent frame of reference was replaced by an immanent one, art in-and-of-itself became a kind of transcendent immanence. Idolization is seen today in the celebration and pseudo-worship “pop culture.” Thus, public theology can discern culture’s divine origins and proper teleological identity in order to rediscover the transcendent power of culture and counter the inevitable legitimization crisis (due to an unfettered diversity) and idolization when meaning is purely immanent. That is, culture soli deo Gloria. Pannenberg discerns the divine origins of culture through an anthropological study which also considers culture’s connection with language (communication). His more accessible work on anthropology states, “We live in an age of anthropology. One of the principal goals of contemporary thought is a comprehensive science of man.”353 Human beings desire to rule over the world not fit into it as given; the world is the material for the humanity’s creative activity.354 The anthropological sciences argue for human

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“world openness” and “eccentricity” relative to their environments.355 This innate openness drives human creativity and imaginative expression in the cult and relatedly language, play, and the construction of social institutions and cultural products. Open-endedness reflects the seed of religion only satisfied eschatologically by God for human beings are “infinitely dependent.”356 Infinite dependence on “myth” makes possible the unity of conscious, social, and cultural and the “continuity of history amid the open-endedness and incompleteness of its processes.”357 There is a balance between society as functional or objectivist and free human beings.358 Culture is “neither the result of individual creativity nor an external-collective constraint but rather a fabric of meanings constituted in and by language—a language which, in turn, is not merely performative utterance but has a transindividual, playful, and partly mythical character.”359 Thus “the unity of culture is based on a communal consciousness of meaning which establishes the social order as an orderly world, permeates it, and, in the beginning, is represented in communal play.”360 That is, the mythical consciousness and meaning frames are not reified and impractical for everyday life, but permeates the contingent “shared world” in which individuals live together and creatively form institutions regulating reciprocal relationships.361 According to Kathryn Tanner, culture is the “meaning dimension of social life” which is “sufficiently autonomous” to distinguish between culture itself and public social activities. However, culture is “usually discussed in direct relation to social activities, as a public feature of social behaviors and their consequences”; culture is an “ordering principle” of society, but ultimately inseparable from society.362 If society, its institutions and its art and language (strictly speaking), are expressions betraying mythic and religious origins, then culture is potentially a public theology. I will now turn to Pannenberg’s understanding of the Christian culture. What is a Christian Culture? According to Tanner, modern anthropology understands culture as a “groupdifferentiating, nonevaluative, and context-relative notion.”363 The premodern notion of culture in Europe was the spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual cultivation of a society through self-development and education. For example, the German Kultur was a social, contra individual, cultivation (bildung) of the cultural achievements of a people. Although, it was “delimiting” in “setting social groups off from one another,”364 it was not “nonevaluative.”365 The Germans placed their own culture over others in a “quasi-racialist hypothesis of differences in inner ‘genetic’ disposition among peoples of the world.”366 The modern anthropology of culture aims to be scientific and nonevaluative when observing cultures as self-contained wholes.

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Unfortunately, the nonevaluative and modern approach betrays a self-contained sense of consistency that is “contrary to the fundamental egalitarianism of the anthropological impulses.”367 It “distorts the realities of lived practice . . . culture never appears as a whole for the participants in it.”368 I find similarities between Pannenberg’s anthropological project of culture with the German notion of Kultur, not in the sense of a unifying culture of the German Volk, but a Christian underlying myth that is evaluative. Pannenberg’s understanding of culture is modern as it presupposes a self-sufficient whole; it is evaluative as all of reality is fulfilled by the eschatological Kingdom of God and implicitly elitist. Tanner proposes a postmodern anthropology that breeds conflict as much as it does agreement on beliefs and sentiments. Important is that culture “binds people together as a common focus for engagement.”369 Thus, rather than a homogenous Christian culture there are many. Christians are “essentially parasitic,” their cultures are “odd” modifications of surrounding cultures, a matter of “how” to interpret and apply rather than “what.”370 The Christian culture should not draw sharp and homogenous cultural boundaries. Instead, the boundaries are permeable and “a hybrid affair established through unusual uses of materials found elsewhere.”371 Pannenberg values engagement with various sacred and secular perspectives through the process of revelational history. However, he does not value engagement-as-such like a postmodern anthropology of différance, but favors the ultimate goal of Christian unity. And while I agree with Pannenberg’s project and hypothesis of said unity, Pannenberg’s method is also all-encompassing, relying on Western rationality, the natural and human sciences, Western philosophy, and intellectual academic participants, relative to the diversity of voices, people, and methods in marginalized spaces. According to Jacqui Stewart, “Pannenberg’s universe is a supremely rational world, in which taste, preference or prejudice are dissolved and reasoned away, and in which agency and interest groups have a subordinate or non-existent role.”372 What is Pannenberg’s concrete understanding of the Europeanized Christian culture? The article “Toward a Multicultural Society?” sheds some insights.373 Pannenberg asks, Has there ever been a monocultural society? What is the nature of the uniting principle which organizes disparate elements? In contemporary times, human rights and the democratic legal system are seen as common denominators. However, these do not constitute a cultural unit. Then what is a multicultural society? The United States is one such example, however, even in the United States “the nation” is a sufficiently uniform cultural basis, a unity based on language and a religion.374 Utilizing Talcott Parson, Pannenberg concludes that societal unity based on common values and norms presupposes a fundamental unity of culture, that is, religion. Some derive legitimacy from procedural rules and others through secular

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ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, and socialism. But according to Pannenberg, rules and ideologies function as unity “on the surface,” raising the question of a consensus of values and ultimately religious foundations.375 Thus, European cultural identity is Christian and society must be reminded as such for society’s continued unity and the avoidance of anomie.376 Then how would European nations incorporate other cultures and religions? Drawing from Leviticus, Pannenberg states that the alien is under God’s protection and must not be oppressed. But at the same time, he affirms, rather problematically, that the alien is to respect, and sometimes observe the religious rites, of the God of Israel. He says the modern idea of religious freedom as strictly private betrays a general societal position of “indifference” as it relates to different religions; rather, the Christian approach should be one of “tolerance.” Tolerance presupposes a norm and identifies in varying degrees the differences that deviate from it.377 Christian churches remind the secular state of its Christian roots to sustain a sense of societal unity and be “tolerant,” not “indifferent,” toward deviations from the norm.378 I have no fundamental problem with the church dialoguing with secular institutions in order to find parallels with democracy, human rights, and freedom, or even mining the Christian roots of secularized institutions. This is the very task of public theology. However, Pannenberg is problematic when presupposing certain beliefs and practices as deviations and implying that one must “assimilate” into the Christian (Western) religion in order to be properly European. Christian beliefs and practices are obviously mandatory to belong to a church. And Pannenberg’s eschatological perspective on the universal Kingdom means that even in supposedly secular realms Christianity is the ultimate unifying norm. However, this side of the eschaton, political and national membership (which are undeniably secular) requires inclusivity rather than excluding “others” that are to be merely tolerated. Perhaps a better approach is to base cultural unity not on Christian and Christian-influenced notions of democracy and human rights, but on notions of freedom, mutuality, and beneficence found in natural law, traits which precede Christianity and which all religions seemingly share. Pannenberg uses natural law to justify Christianity in the public political and economic spheres, perhaps he should also have used it to more closely relate Christianity with other religions as it relates to contemporary cultural interreligious dialogue beyond individualistic notions of exocentricty or personal sense of the infinite. Critiques of Pannenberg’s Theology of Culture Pannenberg’s modern anthropological and all-unitive approach to culture, or his theology for that matter, is not without its critiques. Gillian Rose critiques Pannenberg’s rather casual proclivity toward unity while ignoring

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the very real contradictions and problematics of human culture. Similarly, Christoph Schwöbel notices that Pannenberg’s ecclesial unity requires diversity as merely “a shortcoming to overcome.” Anthony Thiselton states that Pannenberg’s socio-critical component is undeveloped and Dan Hardy claims that Pannenberg’s understanding of God is depersonalized with an abstract and idealized concept of openness.379 Jacqui Stewart says Pannenberg’s work is “unacceptable by the standards of social science.” On the one hand, Pannenberg assumes a systematic understanding of culture, and its ideas and meaning, which is static; on the other hand, his stress on rationality and culture as a shared space of “ideas,” amounts to a “basic individualism” lacking relationality. According to Stewart, “Pannenberg’s anthropology is not informed by Trinitarian considerations, but by historical, philosophical and scientific approaches.”380 In other words, Pannenberg underscores an individualist and rationalist understanding (based on the individualistic notion of human exocentricity) of a mythic and homogeneous culture (as an independent and authoritative source of meaning) rather than the “social structure” of shared life, and is unable to account for agency, diversity, conflict, and social change.381 As stated earlier, Margaret Archer does not see culture as a mythic sense of self-contained unity but rather a library of inconsistency and contradiction which requires constant conflict and negotiation.382 Applying Archer to Pannenberg, Stewart concludes, “Pannenberg does not separate the ideas and meaning of a culture from the social interactions which transmit, modify and express it. What Pannenberg wishes to establish is the necessity and epistemological legitimacy of a background of meaning for society.”383 Thus, “The claim to cultural integrity can then be used to hide xenophobia and racism.”384 As I have argued, Pannenberg’s public theology assumes a Christian cultural unity that operates in White-normative spaces that can marginalize non-privileged peoples, particularly when rationalistic devices and methods are considered public. Moreover, Stewart’s argument that Pannenberg’s anthropology is not Trinitarian and thus individualistic and exclusive may be correct. However, Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology is self-consciously a Trinitarian project. The Trinity subsumes “the anthropological elements of truth” into “theology that is oriented to the primacy of God and his revelation.”385 In other words, Stewart fails to notice the apologetical use of anthropology in Pannenberg’s project, similar to his use of force field as merely a heuristic device not meant to definitely argue that the Spirit is a field of force. Consistent with public theological method, the use of anthropology at least brings the overtly religious Trinitarian theology to the table of public discussion. Stewart claims that Pannenberg’s anthropology is not proper social science, my counter is that it should not be. Pannenberg is neither a sociologist

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nor an anthropologist, he is a theologian who uses sociological and anthropological (and for that matter philosophical and the natural scientific) methods on an ad hoc basis. After all, Pannenberg underscores the Kingdom of God and the role of the Holy Spirit in overcoming the antagonisms between individuals and society as seen in the church.386 Since modern anthropology is independent from confessional Christianity and explicitly religious themes, “This shows how ambivalent a procedure it would indeed be to try to base a Christian dogmatics and theology on anthropological conceptions which arose from the progressive abandonment of Christian dogma.”387 Theologians should not “accept indiscriminately the findings of a nontheological anthropology as basis for their work, but rather to appropriate them in a critical manner.”388 This is similar to what Hans Frei says about Karl Barth’s relation to historical criticism: “You look steadily at the text and what the text says, and then, you utilize, on an ad hoc basis, what the historical scholars offer you.”389 Pannenberg’s anthropology is accused of a rationalized individualism because of his anthropological use of human sense of exocentricity, but I argue that this is subservient to Pannenberg’s larger goal of a Trinitarian understanding of sociality, and the dialectic of part and whole, individuals and community, in historical revelation. Moreover, unity-as-such is not problematic. The problem arises when unity is absolutized in a temporal moment. Pannenberg’s eschatological perspective always maintains the provisional nature of all present manifestations. What Stewart misses is the real sense of uncertainty and contingency in Pannenberg’s system and the relational way in which revelation as history ensures that ideas are debated and negotiated; she misses the diachronic aspect of Pannenberg. On the other hand, Dallmayr asks, “Does an ‘anthropology in theological perspective’ not necessarily entail a ‘theology in anthropological perspective’ or an anthropocentric theology?” While Pannenberg is aware of the problems associated with anthropocentrism his “comments on the issue are somewhat pale and elusive.”390 Pannenberg acknowledges some of the problems with associating an anthropological notion of “world-openness” with “openness toward God,” the idea that “the most general horizon” and a “pre-given realty” “implicitly affirms the divine reality.”391 But according to Dallmayr, Scheler’s and Plessner’s anthropology “does not exclude a nontheistic construal.” And perhaps Albert Camus’s nontheistic interpretation of the “godless” age “has some theological advantages . . . to grasp the need and urgency of the ‘coming kingdom.’”392 Moreover, much like Pannenberg’s use of the natural sciences may rely on Newtonian worldview and cosmological research pre-1949, Dallmayr notes that Pannenberg’s use of humanist anthropology is rather “oblivious” to the “relentless structuralist and poststructuralist critique” that is “beleaguering all the human and social sciences.”393 This includes Michel Foucault’s

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deconstruction of the subjective humanist disciplines of psychology and sociology and proposal of “counter-sciences” such as ethnology and linguistics. Pannenberg may describe language as a “primeval institution,” but ultimately it becomes a mere instrument for a prior more ontological reality.394 CONCLUDING REMARKS ON PANNENBERG AND CIVIL SOCIETY The purpose of this chapter was to develop Pannenberg’s public theology by elaborating on what he means by “Christianity outside the church.” Implied in this idea is that both church (theology) is outside (public) and that the public is Christian, or at least has Christian roots and has similarities with Christian ideas such as freedom and mutuality. Pannenberg aims to reduce the sacred and secular distinction in order to provide public spaces with the cultural and unifying Christian myth necessary for healthy functioning against the seeming anomie that is present reality. The method of public theology which engages the public with the tools of the public (such as the natural and human sciences) seeks mutual dialogue and cooperation in order to find commonalities. The purpose is not necessarily to proselytize the Christian faith but to convince the secular world that Christianity is not unrelated to secular affairs and a premodern superstition to be discarded. Public theology is also cautious about political theology and more revolutionary approaches that challenge the status quo altogether. Similarly, Pannenberg also uses the natural and human sciences as heuristic devices, perhaps as a Trojan horse hiding Christian Trinitarian theology. Pannenberg is also highly, and problematically, skeptical of Marxism and liberation theology. Much discussion of Pannenberg’s so-called public theology has discussed his engagement with the natural sciences. My monograph has sought to also include his knowledge of the human sciences (notably philosophy and anthropology). My aim has also been to define what public theology actually is, in order to not only see how Pannenberg’s dialoguing with the sciences is a public theology, but how his understanding of culture and the various “institutions” of society are consistent with public theology, particularly Stackhouse’s understanding of five social spheres. I began by defining Pannenberg’s conception of the public, a historical space in which ideas are discussed and debated in a diachronic process, with the telos of finding the idea best able to convey a sense of holistic meaning. Then, I considered his understanding of the respective social institutions in order to frame Pannenberg’s view of the social spheres within a postlapsarian world in which the secular world, its laws and its institutions, acts as a provisional guardian against human sin. Then I discussed the individual spheres: the

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religious (with a focus on the notion of the “true-infinite,” which has universal implications); the political-economic (with a focus on natural law and relatedly Christianity’s relationship with democracy, equality, and freedom); the familial (which is arguably more basic than other social institutions and thus the prime incubator for values, which also resembles the role of the Christian church as the body and new family of Christ), and the cultural (with a focus on the modern anthropological notion of culture). Finally, I critiqued Pannenberg for his rationalized, Eurocentric, and White-normative perspective and suggested feminist and Asian American alternatives which operate not just in the Habermasian public sphere of masculine, rational, White, and intellectual dialogue, but subaltern publics, which can be biological, instinctual, emotional, and marginal. NOTES 1. For instance, Gary M. Culpepper, “Ecclesial Being and One Theologian: Pannenberg’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Sacramental Context,” The Thomist 63, no. 2 (1999): 283–306; and Gary M. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg? Reciprocity and Political Theology,” Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 33–49. 2. Kent Eilers, Faithful to Save: Pannenberg on God’s Reconciling Action (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 210–14. 3. Eilers, Faithful to Save, 5–6. 4. ST 3, 46–48. 5. ST 3, 482. 6. ST 3, 53. These track quite closely with Stackhouse’s five spheres. 7. Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Church, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 11. 8. Pannenberg, The Church, 11. 9. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 33–39. 10. Pannenberg, The Church, 14. 11. Pannenberg, The Church, 13–15. 12. Pannenberg, The Church, 21. 13. Pannenberg, The Church, 21. 14. Pannenberg, The Church, 16. 15. ST 3, 482. 16. ST 3, 510. 17. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Die Kirchen und die entstehende Einhit Europas,” in Beiträge zur Ethik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 24. 18. These are Pannenberg’s standards which determine the status of Christianity in a given culture. First, the correspondence between the political order’s constitution to Christian values. Second, the freedom given for Christians to proclaim their kerygma

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and practice their ecclesial life. Third, whether the political model is preferred over other model. ST 3, 482. 19. Clement Yung Wen, “An ‘Open-Ended Distinctiveness’: The Contemporary Relevance of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Participatory Ecclesiology and Ecumenism for World Christianity,” PhD diss. University of Edinburgh, 2019), 208. 20. Vincent E. Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology, 51, identifies Stackhouse as an apologetic public theologian. But Breitenberg rightly notes that Stackhouse engages in a “comprehensive” public theology. Breitenberg, To Tell the Truth, 65. 21. ST 3, 45. 22. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985), 315. 23. English translation found in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rolf Rendtorff, Trutz Rendtorff, Ulrich Wilkens, Revelation as History, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg, trans. David Granskou (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969), ix. 24. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 8–13. 25. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 8–13. 26. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 14–15. 27. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 16. 28. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 16–17. 29. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 16. 30. Pannenberg, introduction, in Revelation as History, 6. 31. Pannenberg, “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation,” in Revelation as History, 139. 32. Pannenberg, “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation,” 145. 33. Pannenberg, “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation,” 135. 34. Pannenberg, “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation,” 137. 35. Stanley Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 36. 36. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 50 37. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “What Is a Dogmatic Statement,” in Basic Questions in Theology: Collected Essays, volume 1, trans. George H. Kelm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 201–29. 38. ST 1, 63. 39. ST 1, 62–63. 40. ST 1, 70–73. 41. ST 1, 114. 42. ST 1, 397. 43. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God, trans. Phillip Clayton (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 18. 44. Pannenberg, Metaphysics, 19. 45. Pannenberg, Metaphysics, 19–20. 46. Pannenberg, Metaphysics, 41–42. 47. Gunther Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 59.

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48. Pannenberg provides a description of the orders of creation in relation with his understanding of law. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, “On the Theology of Law,” in Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1981), 23–56. 49. ST 2, 62. 50. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of Law,” Anglican Theological Review 55, no. 4 (1973): 400. 51. Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of Law,” 400. 52. Pannenberg, “On the Theology of Law,” in Ethics, 54. 53. Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of Law,” 400. 54. ST 3, 62. 55. Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 118–19. 56. Carl Raschke, “Review of Anthropology in Theological Perspective, by Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 54, no. 3 (1986): 602. 57. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 397. 58. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 397. 59. Brian J. Walsh, “A Critical Review of Pannenberg’s Anthropological in Theological Perspective,” Christian Scholar’s Review 15, no. 3 (1986): 252. 60. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 230. 61. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 235. 62. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 318. 63. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 315. 64. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 400. 65. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 320. 66. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 321. 67. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 321. 68. In general, but particularly as it relates to Anthropology in Theological Perspective, see Fred R. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom: Pannenberg’s Anthropology,” The Review of Politics 49, no. 1 (1987): 86. 69. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 413–14; Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 95. 70. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 411. 71. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 85–86. 72. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 530. 73. ST 3, 53 74. Title of chapter 3 of ST 1. 75. ST 1, 120. 76. ST 1, 120. 77. ST 1, 128 78. ST 1, 128. 79. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 28. 80. ST 1, 167. 81. ST 1, 60. 82. ST 1, 21–22. 83. ST 1, 170–71. 84. ST 3, 53.

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85. ST 3, 479. 86. ST 1, 12. 87. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 90. 88. ST 1, 12, note 19. 89. Max Stackhouse, “Reflection on Moral Absolutes,” Journal of Law and Religion 14, no. 1 (1999–2000): 87–117. 90. Asif Agha, Language and Social Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 3. Similarly, Louis-Marie Chauvet speaks of the role of the “social, cultural, or historical place we inhabit.” See Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Interpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 2. 91. Graham Ward, “Speaking of Jesus Today: Towards an Engaged Systematic Theology,” in Grace, Governance and Globalization, ed. Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom, and Lieven Boeve (London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), 91. 92. Margaret Archer, Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory, Revised Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 299. Cited in Jacqui Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” Studies in Christian Ethics 13, no. 2 (2000): 36–37. 93. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 37. 94. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 88. Quote from Habermas is English translation of the German text found in Jürgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Subsequent references will be to Pannenberg’s use of Habermas. 95. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 90–91. 96. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 91. 97. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 105. 98. Walsh, “A Critical Review of Pannenberg,” 250. 99. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 128. 100. Elizabeth Johnson, “Review of Anthropology in Theological Perspective, by Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Theological Studies 47, no. 2 (1986): 306. 101. Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation,” in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 37. 102. Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 10. 103. Kevin Considine, “From Han to Mystical-Political Praxis: Intercultural Hermeneutics and Schillebeeckx’s Soteriology,” in Grace, Governance and Globalization, ed. Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom, and Lieven Boeve (London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), 77. 104. Considine, “From Han to Mystical-Political Praxis,” 78–80. 105. Park, The Wounded Heart of God, 132–33. 106. Wonhee Anne Joh, Heart of the Cross (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 114. 107. Joh, The Heart of the Cross, 73.

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108. Joh, The Heart of the Cross, 102. 109. Jae Yang, “A Postcolonial Pannenberg? Mimicry, the Law, and the Cross of Love,” Dialog 62, no. 1 (2023): 75–85. 110. Max Stackhouse, God and Globalization, vol. 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007), 42. 111. Daniel M. Bell, “State and Civil Society,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, eds. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 423–28. 112. Marsha Aileen Hewitt, “Critical Theory,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 465–68. 113. Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press, 2011), 21. 114. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 22. 115. John Cobb and Carl Braaten’s political theologies are notable for the conspicuous absence of Pannenberg, who had featured prominently in their prior work. Cobb and Braaten were drawn to Metz, Moltmann, and Söelle and liberation theologies. See Gary M. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg? Reciprocity and Political Theology,” The Journal of Religion 67, no. 1 (1987): 33. 116. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 96. 117. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 446. 118. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 446. 119. ST 2, 413. 120. ST 2, 413. 121. ST 2, 436. 122. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “A Response to My American Friends,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 333. 123. ST 2, 459. The eschatological sense of the gospel reminds me of Barth’s refusal to tie down doctrines and laws to one historical moment. 124. ST 2, 460–64. 125. ST 2, 455. 126. ST 3, 95. 127. ST 3, 75. 128. ST 3, 91. 129. ST 3, 57. 130. ST 2, 463. 131. ST 3, 56–57. 132. ST 3, 57. 133. Timothy R. Scheuers, “Law and Gospel in the Theologies of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Barth: A Comparative Study,” Mid America Journal of Theology 26 (2015): 111. 134. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 97. 135. Scheuers, “Law and Gospel in the Theologies of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Barth,” 112. 136. ST 3, 76.

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137. ST 3, 583. 138. Wolfhart Pannenberg, What Is Man?, trans. Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 95. 139. Pannenberg, Ethics, 52. 140. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of Law,” 396. 141. ST 2, 63. 142. English-language translation of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik: Philosophisch-theologische Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 60. 143. ST 3, 49. 144. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 449. 145. ST 3, 49. 146. ST 3, 56. 147. Bradley Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality: Pannenberg’s Theology of Law,” Journal of Law & Religion 28, no. 1 (2013): 234. 148. See Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality: Pannenberg’s Theology of Law.” 149. ST 2, 177. 150. ST 3, 583. 151. ST 3, 583–84. 152. ST 3, 524. 153. ST 3, 524. 154. ST 3, 482. 155. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 23. 156. Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality: Pannenberg’s Theology of Law,” 239. 157. B. Hoon Woo, “Pannenberg’s Understanding of the Natural,” Studies in Christian Ethics 25, no. 3 (2012): 347. 158. ST 1, 73–81, 107–18. 159. ST 2, 62. 160. ST 2, 63. 161. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 60. English translation by Woo, “Pannenberg’s Understanding of the Natural Law,” 356. 162. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 60–61. 163. ST 3, 74. 164. ST 3, 74. 165. ST 3, 93. 166. ST 3, 74. 167. Clement Yung Wen, “An ‘Open-Ended Distinctiveness’: The Contemporary Relevance of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Participatory Ecclesiology and Ecumenism for World Christianity” (PhD diss. University of Edinburgh, 2019), 204. 168. ST 3, 510. 169. ST 3, 510. 170. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition.” In Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 9. 171. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, volume 6 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 227.

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172. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 81. 173. ST 3, 98. 174. Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 213. 175. ST 3, 208. 176. Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 226. 177. Page Brooks, “The Coming Kingdom: Ecclesiological and Pastoral Implications for Pannenberg’s Public Theology,” in Theology for the Future: The Enduring Promise of Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed. Andrew Hollingsworth (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2021), 212. 178. ST 3, 78. 179. Pannenberg, “On the Theology of Law,” 53. 180. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christliche Rechtsbegründung,” in Handbuch der Christlichen Ethik, Band 2, eds. Anselm Hertz, Wilheim Korff, Trutz Rendtorff, and Hermann Ringeling (Freiberg, West Germany: Herder, 1978), 323–24. Translated and quoted in Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 240. 181. Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 240. 182. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christliche Rechtsbegründung,” 336. Translated and quoted in Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 242. 183. Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 243. 184. Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 243. 185. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 77. 186. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 89. 187. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 89. 188. Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, 89. 189. Translated and quoted in Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 246. 190. Shingleton, “Recognition and Mutuality,” 246. 191. W. David. O. Taylor, Glimpses of the New Creation: Worship and the Formative Power of the Arts (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 1–2. 192. ST 3, 95. 193. ST 3, 45–46. 194. ST 3, 47–48. 195. ST 3, 48. 196. ST 3, 55. 197. See Stanley J. Grenz, “Pannenberg on Marxism: Insights and Generalizations,” The Christian Century 104, no. 27 (1987): 824–26. 198. Grenz, “Pannenberg on Marxism,” 824. 199. Grenz, “Pannenberg on Marxism,” 824. 200. Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 46. 201. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 49. 202. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, 44. 203. Marilyn J. Legge, “In the Company of God and One Another: Feminist Theo-ethics, Heterogeneous Publics and Intercultural Churches,” in Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (London: Routledge, 2015): 47.

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204. Legge, “In the Company of God,” 50. 205. Legge, “In the Company of God,” 47. 206. Legge, “In the Company of God,” 52. 207. Legge, “In the Company of God,” 53. 208. Heather Walton, “You Have to Say You Cannot Speak: Feminist Reflections Upon Public Theology,” International Journal of Public Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 23. 209. Allison Fenton, “Elaine Graham and the ‘Good City,’” in Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (London: Routledge, 2015): 121. 210. Max Stackhouse, “Spheres of Management: Social, Ethical, and Theological Reflections,” in Shaping Public Theology: Selections from the Writings of Max Stackhouse, ed. Scott R. Paeth, E. Harold Breitenberg Jr., and Hak Joon Lee (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 249. 211. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2004), 12–15. Cited in Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 57–58. 212. Keeping in mind that Pannenberg tends to use Wirtschaft rather than die Ökonomie. 213. ST 1, 161–62. 214. ST 2, 204. 215. ST 2, 204–5. 216. ST 2, 205. 217. ST 3, 479. 218. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 63. 219. Pannenberg, Ethics, 20. 220. Pannenberg, Ethics, 21. 221. Ted Peters, “Pannenberg’s Eschatological Ethics,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 259. 222. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Reich Gottes, Kirche und Gesellschaft,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 33. 223. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Recht und Religion,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 168–69. 224. Pannenberg, “Recht und Religion,” 169. 225. Pannenberg, “Recht und Religion,” 169. 226. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Leben in Gerechtigkeit,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 203. 227. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Die Kirchen und die entstehende Einheit Europas,” in Beiträge zur Ethik, 223. 228. Quoted in Park, The Wounded Heart of God, 155. 229. Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon, 1989). 230. Park, The Wounded Heart of God, 157. 231. Park, The Wounded Heart of God, 167–68.

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232. Grenz, “Pannenberg on Marxism,” 824. 233. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” Christian Scholars Review 18, no. 3 (1989): 219. 234. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 219. 235. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 220. 236. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 220. 237. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 220. 238. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 219. 239. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 222. 240. Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” 226. 241. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943). 242. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 48. 243. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 29. 244. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 22. 245. James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 41. 246. Quoted in Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 37. 247. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “God’s Presence in History,” Christian Century 98 (1981): 263. Quoted in Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 38. 248. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Faith and Order in Bangalore,” Worldview 22, no. 3: 40. Cited in Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 247. 249. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Notwendigkeit und Grenzen der Inkulturation des Evangeliums,” in Christentum in Lateinamerika: 500 Jahre seit der Entdeckung Amerikas, ed. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz (Regensburg: Verlag Freidrich Pustet, 1992), 150–51. Cited in Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 247. 250. Pannenberg, “Faith and Order in Bangalore,” 40. Cited in Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 247–49. 251. Pannenberg, “Notwendigkeit und Grenzen der Inkulturation des Evangeliums,” 151. Cited in Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 247–49. 252. Wen, An Open-Ended Distinctiveness, 248–49. 253. See Katrin Gülden Le Maitre, “More Than a Promise,” 21. 254. Pannenberg, “A Response to My American Friends,” 330. 255. I’m using categories and definitions suggested by Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997). 256. Grenz, “Pannenberg on Marxism,” 825. 257. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 39–40. 258. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 41. 259. Aristotle favors barter over market relations because the market produces “unnatural” desires rather than need and usefulness. Therefore, the “economy” was considered the domain of the “natural” household. See Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 90. 260. Carl E. Braaten, “God in Public Life: Rehabilitating the ‘Orders of Creation,’” First Things 8 (December 1990): 32.

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261. Max Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy (Lanham, MD: University Pres, 1991), xiii–xiv. 262. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, xiii. 263. Richard John Neuhaus, “Theology for Church and Polis,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, ed, Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 231. 264. Neuhaus, “Theology for Church and Polis,” 232. 265. Pannenberg, Ethics, 196–97. 266. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 34–35. 267. ST 1, 307. 268. Stackhouse, Shaping Public Theology, 256 269. Stackhouse, Shaping Public Theology, 257. 270. Simpson, “Whither Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 34. 271. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 413. 272. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 42. 273. Scott Paeth, Exodus Church and Civil Society: Public Theology and Social Theory in the Work of Jürgen Moltmann (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 118. 274. Lisa Cahill, Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1996), 10. 275. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 428. 276. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: The Library of America, 2004), 686. 277. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 685. 278. My emphasis. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 690. 279. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York: Macmillan Company, 1912), 128. 280. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 427. 281. Sung Bum Yun, Ethics East and West: Western Secular, Christian, and Confucian Traditions in Comparative Perspective, trans. Michael C. Kalton (Seoul: Christian Literature Society, 1977), 14. 282. Yun, Ethics, 15. 283. Yun, Ethics, 16. 284. Yun, Ethics, 19. 285. A helpful comparative study of Pannenberg’s understanding of Spirit with the Confucian understanding of Chi is Koo Dong Yun, The Holy Spirit and Ch’I (Qi): A Chiological Approach to Pneumatology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012). 286. Yun, Ethics, 22. 287. Confucianism does not discuss in detail the mother-son, or father-daughter relationship. 288. Yun, Ethics, 26. 289. Yun, Ethics, 19. 290. ST 2, 5 291. ST 1, 309. 292. ST 1, 313.

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293. Kirsten S. Oh, “Sex,” in Intersecting Realities: Race, Identity, and Culture in the Spiritual-Moral Life of Young Asian Americans, ed. Hak Joon Lee (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 93. 294. Quoted in Kirsten S. Oh, “Gender,” in Intersecting Realities: Race, Identity, and Culture in the Spiritual-Moral Life of Young Asian Americans, ed. Hak Joon Lee (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 110. 295. ST 1, 260. 296. ST 1, 262. 297. ST 1, 262. 298. ST 1, 262. 299. ST 1, 262. 300. Stackhouse, Shaping Public Theology, 234. 301. Stackhouse, Shaping Public Theology, 234. 302. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 429. 303. ST 3, 33. 304. ST 3, 238. 305. ST 3, 238–39. 306. ST 3, 348. 307. ST 3, 341. 308. ST 3, 358. 309. Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, 193. 310. Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, 193–94. 311. ST 3, 367–68. Wenz, Introduction, 194. 312. Pannenberg holds a traditional view of marriage. 313. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 90. 314. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 91. 315. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 92–93. 316. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 93. 317. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 430. 318. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 432. 319. Pannenbrg, What is Man?, 91. 320. Jacqui Grey, “‘Princess Theology’ and the Promotion of Women within Pentecostalism,” in Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (London: Routledge, 2015): 77. 321. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 78. 322. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 78. 323. Biddy Martin and Chandra Talapade Mohanty, “Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do With It?,” in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1986), 191–212. Cited in Seferosa Carroll, “Homemaking as an Embodied Feminist Expression of Interfaith Encounters in Public Life,” in Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Stephen Burns and Anita Monro (London: Routledge, 2015), 101. 324. Katie Geneva Cannon, Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community, Revised and Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2021), 85–86.

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325. Cannon, Womanism, 85–86. 326. Carroll, “Homemaking,” 99. 327. Carroll, “Homemaking,” 102. 328. Linn Tonstad, Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 38–39. 329. Tonstad, Queer Theology, 38–39. 330. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 80. 331. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 81. 332. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 81. 333. Grey “‘Princess Theology,’” 82. 334. Hak Joon Lee, “Community,” in Intersecting Realities: Race, Identity, and Culture in the Spiritual-Moral Life of Young Asian Americans, ed. Hak Joon Lee (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 143. 335. Lee, “Community,” 145. 336. Hak Joon Lee remarks that “cultural and psychological needs drive young Asian Americans to Asian American churches.” Hak Joon Lee, “Community,” 143. 337. Frank Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 39–40. 338. Wu, Yellow, 3. 339. Gary Okihiro, Margins & Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), xiii. 340. Okihiro, Margins & Mainstream, xiv. 341. Jung Young Lee, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 31. 342. Lee, Marginality, 60. 343. Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in Asian Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 23. 344. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 2. 345. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 27. 346. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 2. 347. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 2. 348. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 64. 349. Lee, Trinity in Asian Perspective, 58. 350. Okihiro, Margins & Mainstream, xi. 351. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 42. 352. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace, 42. 353. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 1. 354. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 1. 355. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 3. 356. Pannenberg, What is Man?, 10. 357. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 520. 358. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 95. 359. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 94. 360. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 397. 361. Anthropology, 398.

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362. Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture, 31. 363. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 24. 364. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 9. 365. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 10. 366. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 12. 367. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 42. 368. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 42. 369. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 57. 370. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 113. 371. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 152. 372. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 44. 373. English-language translation of Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg in eine multikulturelle Gesellschaft?,” in Beitrage zur Ethik. 374. Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg,” 69–70. 375. Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg,” 71. 376. Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg,” 72. 377. Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg,” 73–75. 378. Pannenberg, “Auf dem Weg,” 75. 379. These critiques are listed in Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 32–33. 380. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 34. 381. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 33–34. 382. As Tanner writes, “‘Conflict’ sociologies, which follow Max Weber or Karl Marx rather than Emile Durkheim or Talcott Parsons in conceiving of society in terms of conflict among different groups or forces, increasingly give the meaning of behaviors and situations for human actors a central place in their study, and thereby contest assumptions of consensus in cultural analysis.” Tanner, Theories of Culture, 39–40. 383. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 37. 384. Stewart, “Does Pannenberg’s View of Culture and Social Theory Have Ethical Implications?,” 39. 385. ST 1, 238. 386. ST 3, 133. 387. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 18. 388. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 18. 389. Hans Frei, “Scripture as Realistic Narrative: Karl Barth as Critic of Historical Criticism,” Unpublished Pieces, Yale Divinity School Archive, https:​//​divinity​-adhoc​ .library​.yale​.edu​/HansFreiTranscripts/ 390. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 103–4. 391. Pannenberg, Anthropology, 69.

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392. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 104. 393. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 105. 394. Dallmayr, “Politics of the Kingdom,” 105.

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SUMMARY OF PANNENBERG’S PUBLIC THEOLOGY This monograph was conceived under a felt need that Pannenberg’s public theology is an undeveloped aspect of his theology. Secondary works are predominately concerned with Pannenberg’s theological correlation with the academic public of the natural and human sciences. I initially went into the monograph assuming that primary sources would be the same, focusing on reason, empirical evidence, and an abstract sense of revelation as public history. Therefore, my intention was to discover hints of public-mindedness (in not just the academic sphere but including ethos, virtues, dispositions, and the sense of common and mutual dialogue) in order to concretely suggest and construct what a Pannenbergian public theology might look like. However, in my study, I have discovered his concrete thoughts on public concerns to actually parallel, in many ways, what modern scholarship has deemed to be “public theology,” that is, how theology relates to the church, academy, and civil society, and the spheres of religion, politics, economy, family, and culture, and the ethos therein which drives civil society. Therefore, the monograph has organized these thoughts into a structure of public theology. Pannenberg’s understanding of “public,” based on his view of revelation as history, is literally, everything. And as everything in history (from religions, ideologies, customs, ideas, and so on) is revelation, everything in public is potentially a “theology.” Of course, a public theology of everything is impossible, therefore, I limited myself to five spheres which are generally considered to constitute a civil society. I attempted to analyze a Pannenbergian public theology with categories provided by Stackhouse and the growing field of “public theology” (chapters 1 and 2) by first, correlating Pannenberg’s theological methods (postfoundational, eschatological, and Trinitarian) with the aims and methods of public theology (chapter 3), and second, with Pannenberg’s views on the aforementioned spheres (chapter 4), arguing that Pannenberg’s public theology engages not just the academic 169

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world but also the political, economic, familial, and cultural. Particularly notable of Max Stackhouse’s definition of public theology is the role of powers and principalities which shape and drive the ethos of the institutional clusters of respective spheres for its similarities with Pannenberg’s understanding of Spirit as an exocentric and propulsive field. My conclusion is that Pannenberg can be seen as a public theologian because the public purpose of his theology is not to coerce or inject a Christian agenda onto the public (political theology), challenge and subvert unjust structures (liberation theology), or to substitute overtly Christian religion with a publicly palatable secular and vaguely religious one (civil religion), but to cooperate and dialogue with the established order under the presumption of a “Christianity outside the church,” and the church (its theology and its spirit of fellowship, mutual reciprocity, and beneficence), this side of the eschaton, is a proleptical preview of the eschatological Kingdom of God, which is literally everything. Moreover, the church ethos of love, responsibility, and unity-in-distinction resembles the covenantal structures of modern democracies. The weaknesses and critiques of public theology also apply to Pannenberg’s theology in general, which, ironically, could indirectly associate Pannenberg with public theology. According to Sebastian Kim, the major limitations and criticism of public theology are: the vague and unclear definition of “public”; similarly, the issues of public theology are generalized and broad and lack expertise and a focused approach; there is no clear and consistent theological methodology; justice issues for the poor and marginalized need development; a more sustained engagement between the balance between Christian uniqueness and a shared public space for the common good.1 I offer the following suggestions when the aforementioned criticisms are applied to Pannenberg: revelation as public history is too broad and generic; Pannenberg as a theologian lacks the expertise of a true natural scientist2 and political scientist; his prime theological methodology varies; his stance on justice and the poor and marginalized is unacceptable; revelation as public leaves the possibility of Christian distinctiveness being challenged. As a White European, Pannenberg’s public theology presupposes Western democratic political and economic systems in their computability with Christian ideas, my hope with my next project is to discuss the public significance of Pannenberg’s theology in non-Western contexts. AN ASIAN AMERICAN PUBLIC THEOLOGY My initial intent was to develop an Asian American public theology (as chapter 5) as an addendum to the main monograph. But I soon recognized that that study requires more than a chapter and a monograph of its own.

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What I did was to insert Asian and Asian American perspectives periodically throughout the study analyzing Korean concepts such as han, jeong, and hyo (filial piety) in addition to notions of subalternity which critiques the White normative spaces of the public and a focus on the “sinned against.” In the section “The Familial Sphere: Pannenberg’s View on the Family” (chapter 4), I make an initial attempt at an Asian American public theology focused on a foundational aspect of Asian and Asian American identity (family). My next project, hopefully, will expand an Asian American public theology to other spheres as well as Asian American understandings of political theology, civil religion, liberation theology, and comparative religion. In a conversation, Sebastian Kim offered the following insights: Asian American theology/studies primarily concerns issues of hybridity and interiority, not so much public spaces and issues of justice. I cannot help but wonder if this is a symptom of White evangelicalism’s focus on the personal and the individualistic. I will compare and contrast the Eastern Confucian (communal and public) and Western Kantian (individualistic and private) aspects of Asian American identity. Although, an Asian identity is arguably more “Western” than an Asian American one.3 Moreover, as David Tracy argues, the public role of the church is particularly important. I desire to explicate what an Asian American is, including the worldviews and philosophes that form them in the Asian American church. This is not just a religious institution, but a place where Asian culture, ethnic identity, and nationalism are preserved and cultivated. Therefore, the role of Christianity in Asian America has similarities to how civil religion functions in Asia.4 Despite some warranted and necessary critiques of Pannenberg’s Europeanized method, his project is valuable toward an understanding of public theology. To close, I quote Richard John Neuhaus who lauds Pannenberg’s theology because it works “for Church and Polis.”5 As Neuhaus indicates: His argument is particularly pertinent to today’s discussions about a need for a “public theology” that can guide and undergird a democratically pluralistic society. Talk about a public theology will inevitably seem threatening to secularists unless it is demonstrably respectful of alternative ways of construing reality, of alternative traditions of rationality. To say that it is respectful of alternative ways of thinking does not mean that it is accepting of them. Christian theology, if it is Christian, must dispute claims that contradict Christian doctrine. But this is precisely the kind of critical engagement with other claims that elevates intellectual discourse by affirming the public “debatability” of the most important truths about human nature and destiny, and about the world we share in common with those who do not credit the biblical account of the revelation of God.6

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NOTES 1. Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press, 2011), 25. 2. See David Wilkinson, Christian Eschatology and the Physical Universe (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 41–43. 3. For example, neoliberal ideology (hyper competition, focus on aesthetics, focus on personal value over production) is more pervasive in South Korea and Singapore than among diaspora in the United States. 4. I assume that Asian Americans are more Christian than their native Asian counterparts, this is particularly true in the Korean community as once Christian South Korea is rapidly secularizing. 5. Ricahrd John Neuhaus, “Theology for Church and Polis.” In The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 226. 6. Richard John Neuhaus, “Reason Public and Private: The Pannenberg Project,” First Things 21 (1992): 57.

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Index

Asian American: han, 25; hybridity, 3, 7, 171; liminality, 3, 7, 136, 145, 147; family sphere of, 7, 144–147; public theology, 3, 7, 16; Bohoeffer, Dietrch: two kingdoms, 119–120; Habermas, Jürgen: bourgeois understanding of public, 10–14; critiques of, 14–16, 19; theological engagement, 13, Moltmann, Jürgen: political theology, 4; Pannenberg, Wolfhart: church, 71–74; creative love, 62–64; culture sphere, 147–150; death, 66–68; economic sphere, 125–129; economy, ecumenism, and the Trinity, 133–135; eschatological method of, 3, 64–71, 87–88;

family sphere, 135–138, 140–141; filial piety, 138–140; feminism, 84–86, 110–112; history of religions, 6; law and gospel, 114–116; liturgy as political, 120–122; Marxism, 122–124, 129–133; orders of creation, 103–106; philosophical theology, 101–102; pneumatology of, 4; political sphere, 113–116; politics, 74–80; postfoundational method of, 3, 55–64, 86–87; provisional and universal knowledge, 2; public theology, 1–2, 4, 65–67, 97–99, 116–120; religion sphere, 106–110; revelation, 99–101; sciences, 6, 57–60, 83–84; time, 68–69 trinitarian method of, 3, 80–86, 88; public sphere, 2, 9–12 public theology: definition of, 16–21; environment, 21–22; social justice, 22–24; 187

188

Index

bioethics, 23–24; Stackhouse, Max: comparison with Pannenberg, 32–33, 34–35, 37–38, 40–41, 43–45, 48–49; covenant, 38–40; definition of public theology, 31–33;

faith and theology, 34–35; pillars of authority, 35; spheres, 45–46; political economy, 31, 33–34; powers and principalities, 4, 38, 44–48; three graces, 35–43;

About the Author

Jae Yang is postdoctoral teaching fellow at Calvin University teaching in the Religion Department. His research interests include the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, public theology, modern theology, and Asian American theology, and his work has been published in a variety of journals. He earned his PhD in systematic theology, with a minor in Christian ethics, at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, Baekseok University in Seoul, South Korea, and UCLA.

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