Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science & Theology, Niels Henrik Gregersen, ed. (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2008), xxiv + 242 Pps., $29.95.
Wolfhart Pannenberg is emeritus professor of systematic theology at the University of Munich. One of the best-known German theologians, he began his theological studies at the University of Berlin after World War II and completed two doctoral dissertations as early as 1953 and 1955. Niels Henrik Gregersen is professor of systematic theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His two primary research fields are systematic theology and science and religion. He is author of four books and has edited a dozen volumes in the fields of theology and science and religion.
Pannenberg is considered a great interdisciplinary thinker, and these essays and articles on science and theology have been collected into one volume by Gregersen, as they both affirm it to be true that if God is the Creator of all that exists, there cannot be two separate domains – one to be explained by the natural sciences, and the other to be explained by the human sciences. Gregersen is well suited for this task, as he is a former student of Pannenberg. Gregersen has compiled the writings in four sections: Methodology, Creation and Nature’s Historicity, Religion and Anthropology, and Meaning and Metaphysics. This title highlights Pannenberg’s fundamental thesis of the historical character of nature. Gregersen has three interrelated aims for this volume: 1) to make available for English readers Pannenberg’s distinctive essays on the interface of theology and science that have heretofore been available only in German; 2) to show how Pannenberg has been in constant dialogue with the sciences of biology, physics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology over the course of his career; and 3) to document Pannenberg’s intellectual discussions with some of the proposals of American philosophy and theology, particularly with the heritage of Tillich, Gilkey, and Whitehead.
Part one contains two essays on the methodology of theology that somewhat summarize Pannenberg’s views on the methodological status of theology. He claims that nothing less than God can be the ultimate object of theology, and that ‘A religious proclamation of a particular God can be acceptable only if it plausibly explains how the world as we know it, including human society, emerged from that god’ (6). In the second essay in part one, Pannenberg notes that statements about God can only be indirectly tested via the implications of religious truth-claims for worldly realities.
The four essays grouped in part two of this volume primarily address the interface between physics and theology. More specifically, they revolve around three themes on which Pannenberg has done ground-breaking work. For example, according to Pannenberg, not only are the phenomena of nature historical nature, but also the very laws of nature. Pannenberg developed what has become known as the regularity view of the laws of nature. Pannenberg also offers a corresponding theological interpretation of the regularity view, one that holds God to be both the source of creative individuality, as well as the faithful provider of the regularities that result in the universe at large. Pannenberg writes, “in a theological interpretation of nature, the element of chance or contingency is even more important than design, because contingency and the emergence of novelty correspond to the biblical view of God’s continuously creative activity in the course of history and in the world of nature” (46). A second theme in part two is the reinterpretation of God’s eternality and omnipresence in relation to space-time. A third theme is the metaphorical concept of ‘field’ as a foundational one in both physics and theology.
Part three brings together five essays that largely address the relation between anthropology and religion. Chapter eight, for example, addresses Pannenberg’s views on the discussion between creation and Darwinian evolution. Chapter eleven introduces a novel interpretation on the root of the human propensity for self-destruction. Part four is composed of five essays that address Pannenberg’s theory of meaning, as well as his critical dialogue with the metaphysical approaches of Tillich and Whitehead. Pannenberg claims that just as scientists attempt to discover meaning instead of create meaning, so too do theologians. Pannenberg proposes to speak of God as acting in the world as the ‘power of the future’, not as a determinative force, but as a force that calls forth the freedom the creatures. It is only in this future, he claims, that humans have meaning. Also included in this part four is Pannenberg’s criticisms of Whitehead. He claims that Whitehead’s atomistic philosophy is too one-sided, and does not give equal weight to individual events (i.e. ‘actual occasions’) and broader forms of reality such as organisms in biology. Moreover, Pannenberg criticizes Whitehead’s claim that subjectivity extends downward to the most fundamental levels of reality, and he criticizes Whitehead’s view of creativity being to matter rather than to God.
In sum, I am thankful that Gregersen has provided these translations of Pannenberg’s principled argument for the consonance between science and religion, including contingency and laws of nature, field theories and space-time, and divine action. I also appreciate Gregersen’s informative introductory essay that broadly outlines Pannenberg’s theological engagement with the natural sciences. With this collection, the essays of Pannenberg and his illuminating views are presented in one convenient volume. I recommend this title without reservation for those patrons who possess interests in the science and religion dialogue, as well as for those who might be unaware of the writings of Pannenberg..
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA