Abstract
The ethics of Wolfhart Pannenberg has a nomological dimension at its center. Based on the history of the natural law tradition, Pannenberg maintains the possibility of the natural law theory on the following five grounds. The theological ground is his understanding of the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Pauline interpretation of the law. For its historical ground, Pannenberg articulates the natural law theories of Patristic theology and the theologies of Troeltsch and Brunner. The ontological ground is the order of the world, which God established in the process of history. The anthropological ground is the mutuality of human society. The latter two dimensions are related to the epistemological ground, which is based on the hermeneutics of universal history. Pannenberg attempts to combine the law, the gospel, and love in relation to the Kingdom of God. Thus, Pannenberg’s Kingdom ethics is nomological as well as eschatological.
Traditional scholarly interpretations of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s ethics focus on the eschatological dimension; however, they neglect its nomological aspect. For example, Ted Peters argues that the heart of Pannenberg’s ethics lies in his eschatological ontology. Peters holds, ‘Where Pannenberg takes us is to the future which transcends the present’. 1 For Pannenberg, the full revelation of God’s existence is future. 2 The aim of his ethics is to move from the transcendent source of being and goodness in the future to the present situation. 3 Along a similar line, Stanley Grenz points out that for Pannenberg the church is the anticipating representation of the future divine rule. 4 In Pannenberg’s ethics, the church should change human political structure to embody the proleptic presence of the eschatological rule of God. 5 Most clearly, Carl Braaten contends, ‘The most far-reaching proposal to recall ethics to its eschatological home has been advanced by Wolfhart Pannenberg’. Braaten calls Pannenberg’s ethics ‘eschatological ethics, or ethics of the Kingdom of God, or just proleptic ethics’. 6 Braaten himself argues that eschatology is the key to Christian ethics and endorses Pannenberg’s insights in his entire project. 7
One striking similarity in the research of the three above mentioned theologians is that they ignore the importance of the law in Pannenberg’s ethics. They argue that the law is secondary in Pannenberg’s ethics and should be sublated to give a superior place to the gospel and love. Peters maintains that in Pannenberg’s eschatological ethics, God’s rule is demonstrated in his creative love, and that ‘by loving our world now, we are actually participating in the transforming power of God’s rule, of God’s love’. 8 Grenz states that for Pannenberg, Paul’s claim—Christ is the end of the law—suggests that the law is now fulfilled through the Spirit in love. He is convinced that, according to Pannenberg’s thesis, love is higher than the law. 9 Even though Braaten does not clearly point to Pannenberg’s ethics, he claims that in eschatological ethics, love is the definitive content of the future of God. 10
It should be noted, however, that Pannenberg’s ethics is not only eschatological but also nomological. Pannenberg contrasts law and gospel, and he stresses love more than the law. Yet, he never ignores the function and importance of the law, and he continues to deal with the natural law in his ethics. 11 He holds that in the history of theology Augustine deepened the idea of the natural law with his view of love as the power of the Spirit who brings the natural law to fulfillment. 12 Even in his most recent work on ethics, Pannenberg combines the eschatological dimension of ethics with the nomological dimension. 13
The purpose of this paper is to explore Pannenberg’s natural law theory. The content will be developed as follows. First, I will examine Pannenberg’s description of the history of natural law theory. Second, I will deal with his formulation of natural law theory. Third, I will expound his application of his natural law theory. My thesis is that the natural law occupies a very important place in Pannenberg’s ethics, and that without due consideration of his law theory, the eschatological dimension of his ethics cannot be fully understood. Pannenberg’s ethics is a good exemplar that articulates the natural law theory in eschatological ethics.
Pannenberg’s Description of the History of Natural Law Theory
The History of the Natural Law Theory in Church Tradition
Pannenberg uses the word Naturgesetz for the laws of nature and Naturrecht for the natural law. 14 Naturgesetz means the laws that are applied to natural science. The laws of nature demonstrate continuous divine intervention. 15 God relates creatively to every single creature. 16 Naturrecht denotes the morality which is represented according to God’s eternal will. For Pannenberg, the first two chapters of Romans state that there is innate knowledge of God and the natural law. Pannenberg contends that this is not a statement of natural theology. It is a statement that is given to us in the light of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. 17
Pannenberg expounds on the history of the natural law tradition from Romans. He holds that Rom. 1.18ff. and 2.15 echo the Stoic doctrine of natural law. 18 Paul introduces the natural law as a witness against those who have turned away from the true God. Early on, Christian theology developed the idea of an inborn knowledge of God in the soul and the notion of the natural law. 19
The Jewish Christians interpreted Jesus as a new Moses, whereas the Gentile church came to see Christ as the giver of a ‘new law’. The Epistle of Barnabas 2.6, for instance, claims that God has abolished Jewish customs and established ‘the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ’. The early Christian church found the basis and content of this new law in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and in the new commandment of Jn 13:34. Pannenberg argues that early Christians regarded this exposition of Jesus as a reduction of the Old Testament law to the command of reason that was contained in the law and summed up in the Decalogue. Further, writes Pannenberg, the early Christians believed that rational nature was planted in all of us, though it was now brought into clearer focus and expanded. 20 Thus, according to Pannenberg’s description of church history, the early Christian church received the new law (lex nova) of Jesus Christ as an expanded form of the natural law.
Pannenberg attests his view to the works of Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus. 21 He claims that early Christian writers related Paul’s teaching about the end of the Torah to the idea of a new law that was promulgated for Christians, what Paul called the law of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2) or the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). 22 Tertullian argues that no law condemns the conscience of those who try to obey the law. 23 Thus, for Tertullian, the natural law is innate in every human mind. Pannenberg holds that in the Dialogue with Trypho 47.2, Justin defines the theme of the moral commands as eternally righteous acts that are also in keeping with nature. Justin argues the continuity between the Mosaic law and the law of Christ. For Justin, those who acted according to the Mosaic law could not help but believe in Christ. 24 According to Pannenberg, Irenaeus in Adversus haereses 4.13.1 and 4.13.4 claimed that Jesus’ exposition of the law had expanded and fulfilled the commands of the Torah that correspond to natural law. Irenaeus argues his view as he mainly refers to the Decalogue (Adversus haereses 4.16.1). 25 For Irenaeus, Jesus’ commandments in the Sermon on the Mount do not oppose the Old Testament law, but are the fulfillment of the law. By his teaching, Jesus implanted in us the varied righteousness of the law (Adversus haereses 4.13.1). Irenaeus states that ‘all natural precepts are common to Christians and to the Jews’, and that ‘the natural precepts had in the Jews the beginning and origin, but in Christians they have received growth and completion’ (Adversus haereses 4.13.4). 26
Pannenberg notes that the basis of the natural law theory of the Church Fathers is the belief in Jesus Christ as the divine logos manifested in human form, the logos in whom the whole race has a share (Justin, Apologia 46). 27 On this basis, it was plausible to think that in his exposition of the law, the human Jesus reestablished the pure teaching of the logos. The other regulations of the law that later came to be distinguished as ceremonial and judicial were viewed as added precepts that came after the worship of the golden calf (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.15.1-2; Epistle of Barnabas 4.8, 14.3-4). The ‘new testament of freedom’ abrogated them while extending and sharpening the ‘free and universal commands of nature’ (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.16.5). Pannenberg argues that for Irenaeus, these commands are the content of the gospel, which is now set in contrast to the law but agrees with its core, namely, the twofold command of love (4.12.3, 4.9.1). Thus, following Paul’s teaching that even the Gentiles know by nature what the law demands (Rom. 2.14-15), early Christian theologians developed a reinterpretation of the Old Testament law itself in the light of the doctrine of natural law.
Medieval theology, maintains Pannenberg, inherited the Augustinian tradition of natural law. He contends, ‘It was chiefly Augustine who deepened the concept of natural law as the quintessence of the divine command the knowledge of which the teaching of Jesus has purified and completed’. 28 Augustine supplemented his natural law theory by his doctrine of love and the Holy Spirit. God graciously gives believers the ability to fulfill the law in his love (caritas) and Spirit. 29 Pannenberg holds that it is natural to think of the Augustinian caritas as the law of faith, or as the new law, as in Thomas Aquinas. 30 He claims that for Augustine and Aquinas the reproach of ‘legalizing’ the gospel hardly seems to be appropriate. The new law of the gospel is no longer for either of them a demand that confronts believers, but is the power of the Holy Spirit himself at work in the heart (Summa Theologiae I-II, 106.1 ad 2).
The natural law tradition, according to Pannenberg’s analysis, was never abandoned in the Augustinian tradition of medieval theology. In the later writings of Aquinas, a certain form of knowledge of God contains only the practical principles of reason that are naturally implanted in the human mind. Other medieval theologians equated it with natural law and the foundations of religion and the knowledge of God. For them, the last equation was obvious because according to Rom. 2:15 the inborn knowledge of the divine law necessarily embraced the Ten Commandments, and especially that of worshiping God, which implies a knowledge of his existence. This innate divine law was ascribed to human conscience from the time of Abelard (PL, 178, 814ff). 31
The tradition of this natural law theory was handed over to Reformation theology. 32 According to Pannenberg’s explanation of Luther’s Smalkaldic Articles (1537), Luther criticized the thesis that human sinfulness was known only through faith. Luther did not mean that those who refuse to believe could also avoid the burden of their sinfulness. Pannenberg argues, ‘In Luther’s mind such a possibility was excluded by his unshakable conviction regarding the universal efficacy of the divine law, which in his view was identical with natural law and therefore extended to all human beings’. 33 In Luther’s Romans lectures of 1516/17, the apostle’s statement in Rom. 1:19-20 concerning the general knowledge of God from creation is related to the divine law that is written on the heart according to Rom. 2:15. 34
Pannenberg contends that Melanchthon had the same opinion as Luther in his 1521 Loci Communes. Melanchthon expounds the natural knowledge of God in the locus of the law which God has inserted into the human spirit. He states expressly that the related inborn knowledge of God underlies the apostle’s assertions in Romans 1. 35 Pannenberg judges that the Reformation preference for an innate knowledge of God and the natural law is understandable and justifiable, as evidenced by Luther and Melanchthon.
Pannenberg opines that the older Protestant dogmatics, especially the older Lutheran dogmatics, held fast to the natural law theory of Luther and Melanchthon for some generations. Beginning in the seventeenth century, however, some Lutheran theologians began to stress acquired knowledge in their understanding of the law. For example, Johann Musäus (1613–1681) contends that the innate knowledge is only a disposition, a kind of habitus, or a natural instinct, not knowledge in the true sense. In Musäus’s Introductio in theologiam (Jena, 1679), the accent shifts from innate knowledge to acquired knowledge. Pannenberg explains that in this way the insight that Luther and Melanchthon won from Paul’s argument in Romans 1 and 2 faded into the background. 36
Modern Decline of the Natural Law Theory
In his depiction of church history, Pannenberg argues that Pietism and the Enlightenment emancipated natural law theory from Christian theology. Both ideas emphasized the freedom of individuals regarding moral issues. Some theologians still tried to harmonize the voluntary acts of Christians and their obedience of the law. Depending on Luther’s 1520 Freedom of a Christian, Johann Arndt (1555–1621) described the spontaneity of the Christian life. Arndt holds that Christians have freedom through faith in Christ, for the Spirit of God’s love has liberated and cleansed them from carnal desires. 37 Thus, for Arndt, there is no law for the justified (1 Tim. 1:9), since true living faith does everything voluntarily. 38 Arndt claims, however, that the law is abrogated only as a compulsory law. The law is still an excellent rule for Christian living. The love that spontaneously issues from faith is identical with the natural law. 39
The idea of the ethical spontaneity of a Christian achieved independence in the course of Pietism and the Enlightenment. In the process, both movements broke free from the concept of a universal natural or moral law. The German theologian, Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), who grew up in pietistic surroundings but later became the father of rationalist theology, argued for the liberation of Christians from the universal natural law and moral precepts. 40 Pannenberg claims, ‘In place of the traditional theological concept of law oriented to the law of nature as an expression of eternal divine law, modern Protestant ethics put the doctrine of the autonomy of theonomously based human freedom’. 41 Modern Protestant ethics derived justice and law from freedom itself. In Pannenberg’s analysis, Kant did this at the price of merging individual freedom into a universal autonomy of reason.
Pannenberg argues that Hegel and Schleiermacher also made the link between the general and the particular in individual freedom. Hegel and Schleiermacher viewed the right and the law as the sphere of actualization. While criticizing a grounding of ethics in the concept of law, Schleiermacher described the right as an expression of individual dealings in a moral society. 42 In his concept of the right, Hegel balanced universal law with individual particularity. 43 Pannenberg assesses that in both Hegel and Schleiermacher there was some relativizing of the abstract universality of law. Hegel was inclined to stress the precedence of right relations over the abstract universality of law in the life of society. Hegel’s philosophy of law was important for Christian theology because it began to differentiate God’s righteous will from the concept of law. 44 Thus, Pannenberg asserts that the natural law theory was weakened by the theories of Hegel and Schleiermacher. According to Pannenberg, this trend was accelerated by the nineteenth-century historical school of law (die historische Rechtsschule). The historical school questioned a doctrine of natural law that was universally valid in the strict sense and showed how various concepts of natural law were historically conditioned. 45
Pannenberg contends, ‘In Protestant theology this criticism found a late echo in Barth’s question how we may recognize the content of natural law that supposedly has its basis in creation’. 46 In this way Barth attempted to christologically ground law. 47 The impulse came from his article, ‘Justification and Justice’, written in 1938. 48 In the 1930s, Emil Brunner and Karl Barth debated over the problem of ‘natural theology’. 49 The heart of the debate was whether one could attain knowledge of God naturally or, on the other hand, if the grace of God is strictly required. For Barth, human reason alone cannot attain to the true knowledge of God. Barth argued that there was absolutely no source of authority aside from the Word of God. By contrast, for Brunner, natural theology was the result of the formal possibility of the human ability to hear the Word of God. Brunner also contended that the actual and material realization of this depended on grace. For Brunner, therefore, the traditional doctrine of sola gratia was not endangered by this conception of natural theology.
Pannenberg stands along the lines of Brunner. He argues that Brunner was right in this debate because ‘our created nature must always “in some way” achieve awareness in us as self-conscious beings’. 50 According to Pannenberg’s description of history, the Barth–Brunner debate evoked many modifications related to the historical setting of recognition, and hence the related discussions about the content of law. 24 That is why there were many attempts among Protestant theologians to formulate various natural law theories and to find a christological basis for law in the years just after World War II. 51
Barth’s objection to the conception of natural law has a political background. Pannenberg contends that during the Third Reich of the Nazis, the church posed the question of the relationship of the Christian faith to law. It was apparent that the law no longer possessed a validity within itself. Pannenberg judges that the situation had been prepared by the collapse of the natural law tradition in the nineteenth century as described above. The positivistic understanding of law proved to be defenseless when the state itself abused and distorted the law. 52 During that period, traditional natural law theories were attacked by many theologians and jurists.
Pannenberg’s Formulation of the Natural Law Theory
Theological and Historical Ground of Pannenberg’s Natural Law Theory
Critically appreciative of theologians such as Troeltsch (1865–1923) and Brunner, Pannenberg has maintained the possibility of natural law theory alongside theological and historical engagement with the tradition of it. Agreeing with the German Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch, Pannenberg points to the necessity of natural law theory for Christian theology. Troeltsch argues that the Christian notion of the ‘relative’ law of nature—relative because broken by human sinfulness in the fallen creation—is the true cultural dogma of the church. He even asserts that the natural law theory is at least as important as the doctrine of the Trinity or other leading dogmas. 53 Pannenberg thinks that the comparison with the doctrine of the Trinity seems exaggerated, but nevertheless he contends that one must not question ‘the enormous importance of the Christian doctrine of natural law in the history of Christian thought until well after the Reformation’. 54
Pannenberg notes that Troeltsch also lamented the lack of understanding by Protestant theologians of the importance of the thesis of the brokenness of absolute natural law due to sin in its contrast to the new liberal form of natural law in the modern world. 55 To Protestant theologians, according to Troeltsch, the Christian character of the state and society has become so self-evident that they have become blind to these conditions. 56 Troeltsch points out that for Melanchthon the punishment of heretics is required by the natural law, which the Christian law complements, since the natural law itself desires the protection of religion. 57 Pannenberg maintains that because of the ignorance of Protestant theologians who took for granted the conception of the natural law, the traditional natural law theory broke free and the transition to liberalism took place. 58
Brunner has a very similar view on this issue. When observing the nineteenth-century history of natural law theory, Brunner detects an individualistic one-sidedness that neglects the idea of fellowship, which is essential to Christianity. 59 Pannenberg suggests together with Brunner that only at the beginning of the Enlightenment did the doctrine break loose with the new concept of natural law that rests on individual claims to freedom and self-fulfillment. He argues that even though Christian theologians criticized natural law theory in the modern world, their conduct demonstrated that ultimate norms were still in effect for them. 60 He points out that within modern churches the need for natural law theory was felt, not simply to maintain church life and its foundations, but also to observe Christian responsibility to take up the cause of justice beyond the church’s doors. 61 Considering modern criticism of natural law theory, Pannenberg tries to formulate the theory for the modern world.
Pannenberg argues that early Christian theology grounded the natural law in the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. 62 For early Christians, the moral precepts of Old Testament laws were identified with the principle of the natural law. The Pauline texts which claimed Christ as the end of the law were interpreted as limited to ceremonial and judicial laws of the Old Testament. The moral instructions of Jewish law were regarded as the same with the natural law, so they were understood as valid and unalterable for all people (für alle Menschen gültig und unabänderlich dargetan). 63 Thus, Pannenberg suggests that the theological basis of the natural law is the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Pauline interpretation of Christ.
When he deals with the concept of human dignity, Pannenberg asserts that it has its ground both in the natural law and on a religious basis. Basing ethics on the autonomy of reason, Kant developed the thought of Cicero that human reason gives us dignity. His thought is rooted in the concept of natural law that human beings are all equal as rational beings or that we should do to others as we would have them do to us (the Golden Rule). Pannenberg argues that the absoluteness of Kant’s demand that we treat all individuals as ends in themselves and not means can hardly be inferred simply from their rational nature. 64 Pannenberg is convinced that this demand is a legacy of the Christian spirit. 65 However, for Pannenberg, one axis of the concept of human dignity is the natural law. He also believes that the natural law is indispensible for the understanding of freedom. 66 Therefore, the theological ground of Pannenberg’s natural law theory is his understanding of the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Pauline interpretation of the law. For its historical ground, Pannenberg articulates natural law theories of Patristic theology and the theologies of Troeltsch and Brunner.
Ontological and Anthropological Ground of Pannenberg’s Natural Law Theory
The ontological ground of Pannenberg’s natural law theory is the order of the world, which God established in the process of history. Pannenberg maintains, ‘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’. 67 He contrasts the natural law and the Logos. Both are the principles of the cosmic order, but the former has ‘a timeless universal structure’ and ‘a theoretical system of order’ while the latter is ‘the principle of the concrete, historically unfolded order of the world, the principle of the unity of its history’. 68
Pannenberg presupposes that in the theological tradition, ideas in the mind of God are the prototypes of creaturely things and their relations. 69 He assumes a critical attitude to the Christocentric ethics of Karl Barth. If Barth seeks a basis for the existence and order of created phenomena in the self-revelation of Jesus Christ, then he must find an appropriate place and rank for the natural order in its understanding of natural events. Thus, for Pannenberg, Barth’s project is self-contradictory. Pannenberg is convinced that Barth’s project should result in failure. He argues, ‘It will not do for Christian theology simply to set in antithesis to the description in terms of natural law a totally different view of reality as a field of personal experience in the open process of history’. 70
Theological statements, to Pannenberg, are binding not only for those of the same faith but also for unbelievers. He is certain that ‘even ethical truths claim validity regardless of whether or not they are acknowledged by those to whom they apply’. 71 True ethical assertions, if theologically true, are true regardless of whether they are acknowledged. They are valid for all people as well as for Christians. 72 Pannenberg claims that ‘even if the natural law is not 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’. 73 If members of a community do not keep the commandments of the second table of the Ten Commandments, their community cannot survive. Pannenberg explains those six commandments in this regard. Without the natural law, human communities cannot exist at all. 74 Although Pannenberg does not identify the commandments of the second table of the Ten Commandments with the natural law, he is convinced that these two play a similar role in human societies. 75
In this vein, according to Pannenberg, many theologians suppose that the natural law is indispensable for human community, and that the ontological ground of the natural law is the order of creation. Pannenberg, however, holds, ‘The unhistorical notion that the structures of inter-human relations remain essentially the same, because they are provided by man’s created nature, occasions the most serious theological objection to the conception of orders of creation’. 76 If human beings are totally sinners, their creaturely nature cannot be found intact in a perdurable residuum, but is drawn totally into the perversion of life by sin. Pannenberg notes that for this reason many proponents of a theology of orders have generally given up the concept of an order of creation. Instead, they present the conception of ‘orders of preservation’. Orders of preservation signify orders which were given by God, on the presupposition of sin, to protect fallen humanity from sin’s destructive consequences. 77 According to Pannenberg, it has been generally agreed that these orders of preservation are first known rightly through Jesus Christ because they were established for the sake of redemption. 78
Pannenberg agrees with these theologians. He argues:
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.
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Pannenberg argues that mutuality between individuals is the basis of all institutionalizing of human conduct, and that for the sound existence of this mutuality, the conception of the natural law is requested. 80 He argues, ‘The thought of mutuality itself as it finds expression in the Golden Rule and still underlies Kant’s categorical imperative had to be the central one for all natural law’. 81
Pannenberg contends that this was Augustine’s view when he writes, ‘In all true contraction and conversation among humans, it is enough to keep this one common maxim: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself’ (De ordine 2.8.25). 82 For Pannenberg, all special rules such as forbidding injuries against others or the law that we must keep contracts may be traced to natural law. 83 He is convinced that the idea of the natural law has ontological and anthropological grounds. 84 The ontological ground is the order of the world; the anthropological ground is the mutuality of human society. These two dimensions are related to the epistemological ground of Pannenberg’s natural law theory.
Epistemological Ground of Pannenberg’s Natural Law Theory
The particularity of Pannenberg’s understanding of the natural law arises when he deals with its epistemological ground. He critically endorses the idea of Helmut Thielicke, Walter Künneth, Paul Althaus, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who sharply rejected the formalism of natural law. 85 Thielicke and Künneth opposed the conception of the natural law because it ignores historical individuality. Althaus explicitly warned against understanding the orders as unchanging schematizations. For him, the orders of the natural law both have a given form and are to be formed. 86 In a similar context, Bonhoeffer designated this entire realm with the concept of the ‘mandate’, in place of ‘order’. 87
Pannenberg articulates these men’s theological mistrust of the conception of orders. He argues that the search for unchanging orders and structures is rooted in the soil of Greek thought. 88 In the ancient Greek mind, the temporal was considered meaningful only as a reflection of eternal archetypes. However, the aim of ancient Israelite religion was not oriented to the notion of an unchanging cosmos. Pannenberg asserts that the core of the Old Testament narrative is God who creates new events which were previously unheard-of. God’s history is full of contingent world events. Pannenberg argues that the ancient Israelites did not flee from the experience of the accidental, as senseless and chaotic, to an intuition of eternal orders. They found God’s activity precisely in the accidental and unexpected. Thus, for Pannenberg, Israel understood reality as ‘history’.
It is a big mistake to assume that Pannenberg here withdraws the above mentioned theological, historical, ontological, and anthropological grounds of the natural law. Rather, Pannenberg tries to restate these grounds in a dynamic historical dimension. He argues that even though the Israelites had a contingent origin, God’s fidelity provided the basis for their duration and reliability. Thus, Pannenberg grounds his law theory not on the Greek notion of static and unchanging structures, but on the dynamic work of a living God who drives world history for the salvation of his people.
Pannenberg applies his hermeneutics of universal history to formulate his own view of the natural law. As Laurence W. Wood rightly puts it, ‘Pannenberg proposes the convergence of history and hermeneutics into a universal-historical perspective’. 89 In the hermeneutics of universal history, Pannenberg claims that God’s revelation is given to humanity as a history, and one can know the contents and validity of the Christian message by a thorough academic study of history. 90 Pannenberg argues that only the conception of universal history can solve hermeneutical problems. From the hermeneutics of a universal-historical perspective, Pannenberg has a different strategy from the Hegelian idea of a total mediation of present-day truth through history. The idea of universal history does not mean that the historian can know everything about history. Rather, Pannenberg argues that the historian can know the future goal and end of history because it has proleptically occurred in Jesus of Nazareth. 91 He opines that universal history is the field where God reveals his own will, and that Jesus is its eschatological messenger. The history of Jesus demonstrates the proleptic fulfillment of God’s will. For the understanding of the natural law, Pannenberg suggests this hermeneutic vision of universal history and the proleptic fulfillment of Jesus Christ. Pannenberg does not ignore the ontological ground of the natural law, but he offers his hermeneutics of the universal history as its epistemological ground.
Pannenberg asserts that even the ancient Christian doctrine of natural law was established in due consideration of its historical aspect. 92 Early Christians thought that the Christian missionary message was of universal validity, but they explained it in a historical perspective. Educated Christians viewed natural law as the order of creation, the content of the Decalogue, and a constituent part of the Christian moral law. Furthermore, they considered the Logos incarnate in Christ. Agreeing with Troeltsch’s analysis, Pannenberg argues that early Christians believed that natural law presented itself to them as a Christian doctrine, and that they thus found at the same time a universal basis and critical rule for the relation to the political order and its laws. 93 It is important for Pannenberg that early Christians had to ‘distinguish between the pure natural law of our first estate and its broken actualization in the conditions of universal sinfulness in a world in which private property and its protection, social inequality, and political force had become necessary in order to check our offenses against one another’. 94 Along the same lines, Pannenberg differentiates the established natural law and its appearance in history. In order to appropriately understand the natural law, it is necessary to interpret it against the background of the history of the Kingdom of God where universal history is intermingled with the history of Christ.
This view has a biblical basis. Ancient Israel viewed the reality of humanity and its world as a history. 95 They found that God’s action in contingent events gives them integrity and meaning. Pannenberg contends, ‘Ancient Israel did not set nature and history in antithesis as modern Western thought does. In both realms the actuality of the divine action was considered constitutive. It viewed the orders of the natural world as divinely posited’. 96 Endorsing this view, Pannenberg relates the natural law with history. He holds that history is the place where God reveals the orders of the natural world with his own continuous activity. He argues that even the Pauline conception of the law echoes not only the Stoic concept of natural law but also the thoroughly positive historical sense. 97
Pannenberg attempts to expound the conception of the Logos along the same line. He argues that the Logos is the creative principle of the cosmic order, but that it ‘is not a timeless universal structure like natural law or a theoretical system of order in terms of natural law’. 98 Pannenberg holds that the Logos is the principle of the concrete, historically unfolded order of the world, the principle of the unity of its history. 99 The Logos is the overarching principle that incorporates the static order of the natural law and the dynamics of world history. Thus, Pannenberg argues that the incarnation is not an abstractly descriptive principle but the creative principle. He is convinced that ‘the incarnation is the integrating center of the world’s historical order, which is grounded in the Logos and will find its perfect form only in the eschatological future of the world’s consummation and transformation into the Kingdom of God in his creation’. 100
In sum, Pannenberg’s understanding of the natural law emphasizes both the order of the world as its ontological ground and the history and eschatology as its epistemological basis. Those who ignore the order dimension of the natural law will find no foundation for the mutuality of human community. Those who neglect its historical aspect cannot interpret it in an eschatological perspective. Pannenberg, however, accents the historical feature of his natural law theory because for him the gospel and love in the process of history surpass the requirement of the natural law.
Pannenberg’s Application of his Natural Law Theory
The Relationship between the Law and the Gospel
Pannenberg expounds on love and the gospel of Jesus Christ in his eschatological vision. But he does not discard the idea of the natural law regarding the issue. Pannenberg argues that Jesus interpreted the traditional divine law of Israel in terms of the love of God revealed in his eschatological message. The heart of his message, the command to love God and neighbor, was also based on Old Testament law, for the divine law of Israel had its root in God’s covenant with his people. For Pannenberg, Jesus met the righteous requirements of the law without damaging the essential content of the Jewish law. 101 He demonstrated the paradigm of the essence of divine law when he reinterpreted Old Testament law in his gospel. Pannenberg argues that although the content of Jesus’ gospel does not oppose the natural law, it cannot be fully elucidated in terms of law alone.
Pannenberg, unlike Luther, contends that the natural law cannot be equivalent to God’s law (i.e., the divine demand on us that is always the same).
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Yet Pannenberg, along the lines of Luther, argues that the gospel does not have the form of law, and that the natural law thus will not be identifiable with the concept of the gospel. Nevertheless, he also argues that ‘impulses toward a new and better form of law may constantly flow forth from it [=the gospel]’.
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That is why he does not repudiate entirely the notion of new law (nova lex) as an expression of the gospel in patristic works and medieval theology. Pannenberg asserts that the eternal will of God is not identified with ‘the eternal law expressed in natural law’, but identical with ‘love that is the fulfilling of the law without itself having to be a form of obedience to law’.
104
Thus, for Pannenberg, the ultimate aim of the gospel is not the fulfillment of the law but that of love. Pannenberg is convinced that regarding this issue he is standing along with Luther. In the 1519 Galatians commentary, Luther said:
Christ did away with the works of the law so that it does not matter whether we do works; they are not compulsory. True Christians, we are then told, are the same and impartial in all things, in what they do and do not do as matters arise… If they act out of love, they do right, but if under pressure or driven by fear, they do not act as Christians but out of human weakness.
105
Thus, Pannenberg does not equate God’s eternal will with the law of nature. Nonetheless, Pannenberg also points out that law and obedience to it are very important elements in the gospel. On the one hand, Pannenberg writes, ‘If we view natural law as the normative expression of God’s eternal will for us, we can no longer give full weight to what Paul says about Christ as the end of the law’. 106 He argues that for Paul the gospel is in no way a correlate of the law because the law carries only a historical function as a preparation for the gospel. 107 On the other hand, Pannenberg argues that Christians also have to keep the law. He writes, ‘No matter, then, how it be stressed that salvation is not by works of the law but by faith, there can be no avoiding the contrary implication that no one can partake of salvation without keeping the law, even though this be the work of faith’. Pannenberg points out that even Luther himself thought that ‘Christians who do not act in accordance with the eternal will of God announced in the law fall under the future judgment that will be by human works (2 Cor. 5.10)’. 108 Pannenberg contends that for Luther keeping the commandments is a condition of remaining in fellowship with Christ and of sharing in future salvation. 109
Accordingly, for Pannenberg, the law is an indispensable component in Jesus’ gospel. Salvation is obtained by believing in Jesus Christ, who is proclaimed by the gospel. However, faith is necessarily related to the outward working of the law in the Holy Spirit. The new law of the Holy Spirit contains the requirement of the natural law and goes further. The gospel of Jesus leads us to the fulfillment of the law and even more. For Pannenberg, this ‘further’ and ‘even more’ mean love.
The Relationship between the Law and Love
Pannenberg argues that all law rests on acts of recognition, which is accorded to it by persons relative to their roles and status in relations with others. 110 One can recognize others as persons through love. Hence, Pannenberg writes, ‘The link between love and law arises especially from the fact that acts of recognition establish lasting relations, though these also stand in need of adjustment to changed situations’. 111 Pannenberg contends that love continually interprets and improves the law for a better purpose. 112
Jesus sublimated the law of Israel to the two great commandments of love: love of God and love of neighbor. 113 Love was the hermeneutical key of Jesus’ interpretation of the law. Jesus could reveal the true meaning and purpose of the law with his ‘love hermeneutics’. But his love hermeneutics was heading toward eschaton when the true love of God and Christians is fulfilled. Pannenberg argues that the love that the eschatological message of Jesus gave birth to sometimes collided with ossified rules of law, as actually happened in the case of the sabbath law (Lk. 6:1-11). 114
Pannenberg articulates ‘the agapeic and eschatological hermeneutics’ 115 of Jesus in relation to the Christian life. He contends that in the Protestant concept of Christian discipleship, the freedom of fellowship with God that we attain by faith in Christ is at work in love. 116 The love of the Christian’s ethical spontaneity in Christian discipleship not only fulfills but also surpasses the requirement of the natural law. Pannenberg asserts that the righteous will of God differs from the form of law, even of natural law. It is not enough to expound the eternal will of God only in a mora perspective. 117 The righteous will of God orients itself to make mutual love possible on the basis of the relation to God. Pannenberg argues that if one underscores the moral law or natural law one-sidedly, the possibility to neglect the creative freedom and multiplicity of life that flows from love can arise. 118 He holds that love has more creative possibilities than a legal form of life. Freedom, which characterizes the work of love, applies not merely to the mode of action but to its content. Love is more flexible and can bring new solutions to new situations better than the law is and can. 119 For Pannenberg, hence, it is love that ultimately regulates the Christian life. Nevertheless, Pannenberg does not neglect the importance of legal schematization of human society. The will of God expresses itself ‘primarily in the reality of the building up of human fellowship and thus in customs and legal relations in which human fellowship finds a lasting form’. 120 That is why our moral sense has force for us individually, in the form of the law, which is similar in content to the ideas of the natural law tradition. Pannenberg argues that ‘laws may be seen as the epitome of universal conditions of human fellowship in a specific society. Similarly the legal formulations of natural law express on a higher stage of universality the conditions of common social life in general’. 121
Proceeding from what has been said above, it can be stated that Pannenberg holds both the law and love as essential features of the Christian gospel. He stresses that love is the ultimate aim of the Christian life and the only channel through which Christians can fulfill the requirement of the law. It should be noted, however, that Pannenberg does not abolish the importance of the law in Christian life. The complementary feature of law and love comprises the essence of true Christian living. The law without love is empty; love without the law is blind.
Conclusion—Toward the Law Theory of the Kingdom of God
In the horizon of the history of the Kingdom of God, Pannenberg attempts to combine the law, the gospel, and love. He sees the possibility of overcoming the weaknesses of both the order ethics of Emil Brunner and the Christocentric ethics of Karl Barth in this perspective. 122 Pannenberg’s ethics is nomological as well as eschatological. He argues that ‘the eschatological outlook for a future, better community of law, constitutes the condition for the existence of justice in the present’. 123 He tries to connect his law theory with his argument for the ontological priority of the future in a unique fashion. 124 He holds that in this view only the future realization of the law would correspond fully with the will of God.
Pannenberg articulates this idea by appropriating Ernst Bloch’s work, Natural Law and Human Dignity. 125 He opines that Bloch interprets the conceptions of natural law as anticipations of a better future. This idea does not usually enjoy prominence among natural law thinkers because they tend to consider what is everywhere and always true in law. Pannenberg, however, argues that the tie between the law and the future is overtly constitutive for the Israelite anticipation of the Kingdom of God. He maintains that Bloch makes visible the actual significance of the truth, of which the exponents of natural law were unaware. 126 In addition to Bloch’s thought, Pannenberg also endorses Trutz Rendtorff’s view. He agrees with Rendtorff that eschatology does not have direct normative meaning (unmittelbar normative Bedeutung). 127 Rather, eschatology offers the function that gives ethics the orientation and encouragement (eine orientierende und ermutigende Funktion der Eschatologie für die Ethik) to seek the Kingdom of God. 128
In eschatological vision, according to Pannenberg, Jesus himself could address the forgiveness of sins to those who believed his message of the imminence of the Kingdom of God. Jesus made them incorporate into the future of God and proclaimed the fatherly love which bestowed salvation on sinners in grace. 129 The coming Kingdom of God was already present in the work and proclamation of Jesus. Jesus was the Messiah whom the Israelites expected as an establisher of ‘the perfect community of law’ among them. 130
With the Easter message about Jesus, the eschatological coming of the Kingdom was carried to all people. The perfect community of law did not already exist as established, but the church regarded it as an ever new mission both for themselves and for the formation of human social life out of the divine future. The church is still not perfect, but it is the community of those who await the Kingdom and already live in conformity with this expectation. In this sense the church lives for all of humanity until all people will be incorporated into the eschatological community of law. 131 Pannenberg argues that this is extremely significant for an ontology of law, for the love revealed by Jesus Christ proves to be the power which already bears all formulations of law. Pannenberg is convinced that the creative love of Christ produces positive law because it always creates new forms of human community. 132 Thus, for Pannenberg, the creative power of love in shaping law is not to be construed as unbounded and uncontrolled rambling.
Pannenberg holds that the need for law expresses the imperfect state of human society before the complete coming of God’s Kingdom. The same is true of the power of the state, which makes citizens keep the laws. 133 Pannenberg is convinced that the definitive reality of God’s Kingdom is already present in Jesus Christ’s eschatological works. He, however, notes that the eschatological reality of the Kingdom is revealed in the church only in the form of a ‘sign’. That is the reason why the order of the state and its laws must continue alongside the church. 134 Pannenberg formulates his own natural law theory in the eschatological vision of the Kingdom of God. The conception of the natural law is provisional inasmuch as the Kingdom of God is not yet fully fulfilled. But the heart of the natural law is historically revealed in the Old Testament and proleptically confirmed in the eschatological word and deed of Jesus Christ. Therefore, Pannenberg’s Kingdom ethics has a nomological dimension that is reinterpreted along the lines of his proleptic eschatology.
Footnotes
1
Ted Peters, ‘Pannenberg’s Eschatological Ethics’, in Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton (eds.), The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, with an Autobiographical Essay and Response (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), p. 241.
2
Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘The Kingdom of God and the Foundation of Ethics’, in Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 111; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (London: Westminster Press, 1981), p. 181.
3
Peters, ‘Pannenberg’s Eschatological Ethics’, p. 242.
4
Stanley J. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 208.
5
Grenz, Reason for Hope, pp. 205, 247.
6
Carl E. Braaten, Eschatology and Ethics: Essays on the Theology and Ethics of the Kingdom of God (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1974), p. 108.
7
Braaten, Eschatology and Ethics, pp. 116-22.
8
Peters, ‘Pannenberg’s Eschatological Ethics’, pp. 242-44. Citation from p. 242.
9
Grenz, Reason for Hope, p. 210.
10
Braaten, Eschatology and Ethics, p. 111.
11
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. G. W. Bromiley, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 108; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. G. W. Bromiley, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 62-63, 177, 342; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. G. W. Bromiley, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 62, 70-96, 566; Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘On the Theology of Law’, in Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (London: Westminster Press, 1981), pp. 23-56; Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, Anglican Theological Review 55.4 (1973), pp. 395-420.
12
Grenz, Reason for Hope, p. 210; Pannenberg, Ethics, pp. 53-56; Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:71-72, 88.
13
Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Die Ursprungssituation der Ethik und die wichtigsten Wege ihrer Begründung’, in Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik: Philosophisch-theologiscche Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), pp. 23-51.
14
Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Zur Theologie des Rechts’, Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik 7.1 (1963), pp. 1-23, at p. 2; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), pp. 133, 205.
15
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith, trans. Ted Peters (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 73-74.
16
Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, trans. Niels Henrik Gregersen (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), p. 48.
17
Barth contends that this knowledge is ‘imputed’ to Christians by the gospel. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957), p. 121.
18
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:108.
19
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:107-108.
20
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:70; Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 56.
21
In the following passages, I refer to Pannenberg’s interpretation and add my own research on those Patristic works.
22
Tertullian, De testimonio animae in Patrologia Latina [hereafter, PL], 1:607-18. Pannenberg also refers to further examples found in H. Merkel, ‘Gesetz’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie (henceforth, TRE), XIII, 75-82, esp. 78-79 from Tertullian. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:108, 3:70. In a marginal note on Tertullian, De testimonio animae, it is said, ‘When these senses of the mind and the nature are innate in all people, it is necessary for them to be inclined toward God’ (Cum autem hi sensus animae, et singulis hominibus natura sint insiti, a Deo eos manare necesse est). The translations of Latin, Greek, and German sentences are my own except when noted otherwise.
23
Tertullian, Ad nationes I.6. Nulla sibi lex debet conscientiam justitiae suae, sed eis a quibus captat obsequium.
24
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser, trans. Thomas P. Halton (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), p. 71.
25
For Justin and Irenaeus, see Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:70, n. 225.
26
Irenaeus, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: Against Heresies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (Raleigh, NC: Ex Fontibus Co., 2010), pp. 432-33.
27
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:70-71.
28
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:71.
29
Pannenberg refers to Augustine’s Expositio epist. ad Gal. 43 (PL, 35, 2136-37) and Epist. 11, 188, 3 (PL, 33, 849-50); cf. Enchiridion 31.117 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina [hereafter, CChrSL], 46, 112).
30
Pannenberg mentions Augustine, De spiritu et littera 27.29 (PL, 44, 218-19) and Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, 106.1. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:72.
31
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:108.
32
As a Lutheran theologian, Pannenberg studies here only the tradition of Lutheran theology. For the natural law theories of Reformed tradition, see Stephen John Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).
33
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1985), p. 93.
34
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:108-109. Pannenberg cites from Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe [hereafter, WA], 56:176-77. For English translation, see Luther’s Works, 25:157.
35
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:109. Pannenberg quotes from Corpus Reformatorum, ed. W. Baum et al. (Braunschweig, 1863), 21:117-18. For English translation, see Library of Christian Classics, XIX, 51.
36
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:110.
37
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:91. Johann Arndt, Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (Magdeburg: Francke, 1610), I, 25. Pannenberg quotes from the Struensee edn (1760), Johann Arndts… Sechs Bücher…, p. 75.
38
Arndt, Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum, II, 4.
39
Arndt, Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum, II, 4 and I, 26 (Struensee edn, p. 78).
40
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:91-92. F. W. Graf, ‘Gesetz VI, Neuzeit’, TRE, XIII, 90-126.
41
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:92.
42
F. Schleiermacher, Grundriss der philosophischen Ethik, ed. A. Twesten (1841), §§55-56. Pannenberg cites from Graf, TRE, XIII, pp. 109-10.
43
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right; The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952), §§211, 229 and 260.
44
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:92.
45
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:73; Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 58.
46
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1960), pp. 20-31.
47
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 396.
48
Barth’s article appeared in English under the title ‘Church and State’, in the book Community, State and Church, ed. Will Herberg (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1960).
49
Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, Natural Theology, trans. Peter Fraenkel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002).
50
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:73-4. Pannenberg refers to Emil Brunner, Justice and the Social Order, trans. Marie Donald Mackie Hottinger (New York: Harper, 1945), pp. 84, 86.
51
On these efforts see E. Wolf, ‘Christliches Naturrecht’, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart IV (1962), pp. 1359-65, esp. pp. 1364-65, with bibliography.
52
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, pp. 395-96.
53
Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (New York: Macmillan, 1931), I:159-60; Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 57.
54
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:73.
55
Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, I:159-60.
56
Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, I:197-98, n. 77.
57
Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, II:493.
58
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:73.
59
Emil Brunner, Justice and the Social Order, trans. Marie Donald Mackie Hottinger (New York: Harper, 1945), p. 86.
60
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 396.
61
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 396.
62
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:70.
63
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 56.
64
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), pp. 45-46, 251.
65
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:177.
66
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:342.
67
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:62.
68
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:63.
69
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:25-27, 69.
70
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:69.
71
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 405.
72
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 405; Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 60.
73
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 60. The translation is mine.
74
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 60.
75
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 61.
76
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 400.
77
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 400. Pannenberg notes that ‘Bonhoeffer had already coined the terminology [of orders of preservation] in 1932. It was taken up hesitatingly by Elert, then decisively with an explicit rejection of the designation “order of creation” by Künneth, also by Schlink, and in substance by Thielicke. Thielicke speaks of “orders of divine patience”, Schlink of the deed and “command of God the Preserver”.’ On Bonhoeffer’s concept of the mandate see J. Moltmann, ‘The Lordship of Christ and Human Society’, in J. Moltmann and J. Weissbach, Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, trans. Reginald H. Fuller and Ilse Fuller (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967).
78
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 400.
79
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:74. On mutuality between individuals as the basis of all institutionalizing of human conduct, see Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 406-407, 445-46.
80
Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 406-408.
81
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:74.
82
See Augustine, De ordine 2.8.25 in CChrSL, 29, 121. In omni vero contractu atque conversatione cum hominibus satis est servare unum hoc vulgare proverbium: Nemini faciant quod pati nolunt. Translation is my own. Cf. Enn. in Ps. 118, sermo 25.4 (CChrSL, 49, 1749-50), also in Enn. in Ps. 57:1: manu formatoris nostri in ipsis cordibus nostris veritas scripsit: Quod tibi non vis fieri, ne facias alteri (CChrSL, 39, 708).
83
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:74.
84
For the anthropological turn of Pannenberg’s ethics and Herder’s influence on it, see Kam Ming Wong, ‘From Eschatology to Anthropology: The Development of Pannenberg’s Thought over Christian Ethics’, Studies in Christian Ethics 21.3 (2008), pp. 382-402. Wong (at p. 401) points out that Pannenberg refers implicitly to the eighteenth-century scholar Johann Gottfried Herder’s idea of the image of God when Pannenberg writes, ‘The Christian life is thus nothing other than a truly natural life, if we understand it as the realization of human destiny to an unrestricted, free humanity’ (Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 87). It is also notable that Pannenberg explicitly endorses Trutz Rendtorff’s idea of the reflection on life (Reflexivität des Lebens) when he argues for ‘a truly natural life’ as an introduction to Humanität. Cf. Trutz Rendtorff, Ethik: Grundelemente, Methodologie und Konkretionen einer ethischen Theologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980), 1:93-129; Trutz Rendtorff, Ethics, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986), 1:75-82. For a more detailed discussion of the relationship between Herder and Pannenberg, see Kam Ming Wong, ‘Image of God as Both Fount and Destiny of Humanity: How Herderian Is Pannenberg?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 59.1 (2006), pp. 45-63.
85
Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature, p. 398. Pannenberg refers to the following books. Paul Althaus, Theologie der Ordnungen (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1935); H. Thielicke, Theological Ethics, ed. William H. Lazareth, vol. I (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1966); W. Künneth, Politik zwischen Dämon und Gott: eine christliche Ethik des Politischen (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1954). Pannenberg seems to make an error in the title of Künneth’s book; he wrongly writes ‘Evangelische Ethik des Politischen’.
86
Paul Althaus, Theologie der Ordnungen (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1935), p. 9.
87
On Bonhoeffer’s concept of the mandate, Pannenberg recommended to see J. Moltmann, ‘The Lordship of Christ and Human Society’, in J. Moltmann and J. Weissbach, Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, trans. Reginald H. Fuller and Ilse Fuller (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967).
88
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 401.
89
Laurence W. Wood, Theology as History and Hermeneutics (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2005), p. 119.
90
Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Hermeneutik und Universalgeschichte’, in Grundfragen systematischer Theologie: gesammelte Aufsatze, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967); Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Hermeneutic and Universal History’, in Basic Questions in Theology: Collected Essays, trans. George Kehm, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. 96-136; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 156-224; Wolfhart Pannenberg (ed.), Revelation as History, trans. David Granskou (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
91
Wood, Theology as History and Hermeneutics, p. 122.
92
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:72-73.
93
Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, p. 150.
94
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:73; Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, pp. 115-16.
95
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:67.
96
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:68. Pannenberg refers to G. von Rad, ‘Aspekte alttestamentlichen Weltverständnisses’, Evangelische Theologie 24 (1964), pp. 57-98, esp. 64-65.
97
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:62, n. 197. Pannenberg cites G. Bornkamm, ‘Gesetz und Natur’, Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, Studien zu Antike und Urchristentum (1959), pp. 98-118.
98
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:63.
99
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:63.
100
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:64. Pannenberg alludes to Maximus Confessor, in PG, 91, 1217A; Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1995), pp. 90-95. On Duns Scotus, see Ordinatio 3 d 7, q. 3; W. Dettloff, TRE, IX (1982), pp. 223-27.
101
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:77.
102
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:75.
103
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:75.
104
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:91.
105
WA, 2:477-78: Postquam enim Christus advenit, legis opera sic abrogavit, ut indifferenter ea habent possint, non autem amplius cogant; WA, 2:479: Igitur Christianus verus… ad omnia prorsus indifferens est, faciens et omittens, sicut ad manum sese res vel obtulerit vel abstulerit… quod si ex charitate facit, optime facit, sin ex necessitate aut timore urgente, non christianiter sed humaniter facit. The Latin text and English translation are cited from Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:91.
106
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:90.
107
Grenz, Reason for Hope, p. 178.
108
WA, 2:466. Cited from Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:90.
109
Pannenberg refers to O. Modalsli, Das Gericht nach den Werken: Ein Beitrag zu Luthers Lehre vom Gesetz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963); on Paul see W. G. Kümmel, Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments nach seinen Hauptzeugen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), pp. 203-204; also E. Lohse, Theological Ethics of the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1991), pp. 126-29.
110
See Pannenberg, ‘Christliche Rechtsbegründung’, in Handbuch der christlichen Ethik, ed. Anselm Hertz, vol. 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1978), pp. 332-37; Pannenberg, ‘On the Theology of Law’, in Ethics, pp. 23-56, esp. 52-56.
111
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:77.
112
Pannenberg’s view is exactly the same as the insight of Henry Stob when he says, ‘Love is required for the proper application of existing law’. Henry Stob, ‘The Dialectic of Love and Justice’, in Stob, Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), p. 140.
113
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:77.
114
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:77.
115
I coined both phrases (i.e., ‘love hermeneutics’ and ‘the agapeic and eschatological hermeneutics’). With the agapeic and eschatological hermeneutics, I mean a hermeneutic discipline where love and its eschatological fulfillment play the key role in interpreting the Word of God.
116
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:91.
117
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:92-93.
118
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:76.
119
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:76-77.
120
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:93.
121
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:94.
122
Pannenberg clearly argues that his ethics does not simply belong either to order ethics or to Christocentric ethics in Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, pp. 402-403; Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, pp. 69-72.
123
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 415.
124
For Pannenberg’s ‘ontology of the future’, see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 143; Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2:100; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God, trans. Philip Clayton (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 176; Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, p. 166; Herbert Neie, The Doctrine of the Atonement in the Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), pp. 56, 172; Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), p. 199; Christiaan Mostert, God and the Future: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Eschatological Doctrine of God (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 19, 97, 122, 181; John W. Cooper, Panentheism, the Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), pp. 269, 281; Michael Murrmann-Kahl, ‘Mysterium trinitatis’?: Fallstudien zur Trinitätslehre in der evangelischen Dogmatik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 135-36, 191-92, 228-29.
125
Ernst Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity, trans. Dennis J. Schmidt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986).
126
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 416.
127
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 70. Pannenberg criticizes Jürgen Moltmann and Paul Lehmann regarding this issue.
128
Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik, p. 70.
129
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 416.
130
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 417.
131
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, pp. 417-18.
132
Pannenberg, ‘Toward a Theology of Law’, p. 418.
133
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:95. In this same regard, Pannenberg’s thought resembles Augustine’s social thought that expresses ‘soft realism’. For soft realism of Augustine’s social thought, see Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
134
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3:96.