Ecclesial Being and One Theologian: Pannenberg’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Sacramental Context

The Thomist 63 (1999): 283-306 ECCLESIAL BEING AND ONE THEOLOGIAN: PANNENBERG'S DOCTRINE OF FAITH IN ITS SACRAMENTAL CONTEXT GARY M. CULPEPPER Providence College Providence, Rhode Island I. INTRODUCTION THE APPEARANCE OF Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology, Volume 31 completes his explorations into the God ofJesus Christ with an ecumenically oriented elaboration of the theological reality of the Christian Church. Readers familiar with Pannenberg's Christology and doctrine of God will be prepared for his distinctive treatment of the "provisional" and "proleptic" aspects of the Church as "sign and instrument" of an eschatological form of life wherein all sin, and the death and division that accompany sin, are overcome in the Kingdom of God. Less well known, however, is the path taken by this ardent Lutheran opponent of theological subjectivism and authoritarianism in his explorations into the conditions for Christian consciousness and life in its essentially communal setting. In this final volume of his dogmatics,2 the subjectivity of the Christian 1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1998). Henceforth cited as ST3. Volume 1 (1988) and Volume 2 (1994) have the same translator and publisher as ST3, and are cited below as ST1 and ST2 respectively. 2 I employ the term "dogmatics" here to underscore Pannenberg's emphasis on the primacy of the object (God) in theological science, though this object is investigated by Christian theologians in the subjectivity of faith. For Pannenberg, dogmatics is always reflection upon dogmata theou, which is distinguished from, but inseparably connected to, the doctrinal content of Scripture and the articuli fidei (the complex unity of revealed teaching that Aquinas and others called sacra doctrina). Dogmatics takes the form of 283 284 GARY M. CULPEPPER believer comes into view especially in Pannenberg's development of the theology of faith as both gift and personal appropriation of the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental life ofthe Church. For Pannenberg, saving faith is actualized most fully in the moment of Eucharistic doxology, understood as both sacrifice and "eschatological anamnesis." This understanding of the Eucharist, Pannenberg believes, can underscore the primacy of the eschatological Kingdom in a salvation-historical approach to theology, and at the same time affirm that it is the real presence of Christ and his passion in the present life of the Church that constitutes its identity as Body of Christ and its mission as People ofGod. Eucharistic doxology is for Pannenberg the supreme moment wherein Christ in his objective reality determines the identity of the believer, in the subjectivity of faith, as an adopted child of God the Father in fellowship with all those for whom the future eschatological life has already dawned. Volume 3 begins with chapter 12, "The Outpouring of the Spirit, the Kingdom of God, and the Church," which shifts attention from the person and work of Christ (the theme ofVolume 2) to that ofthe Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, at work in the creation and "continuous creation" of the world, consummates this work in the eschatological elevation of human creatures to an eternal, interpersonal form of life in the communio of Father, Son, and Spirit. In this pneumatological perspective, Pannenberg will identify the essence of the Church as a society that exists "between" a temporal social order governed by a rational quest for justice ("Law") and the arrival of the Kingdom of God, wherein the "new law" of grace alone governs all creatures. systematic theology when faith initiates a search for understanding and rational confirmation ofdogmata theou through exploration of the systematic coherence of revealed dogma '3san aspect of the reality of its truth-see STl, 48-61) in the Church (STl, 17-19), together with all other truth or claims to truth in philosophy, science, and especially the history of the religions. Citing Anselm, Pannenberg argues that the interpretive reconstruction of theological dogma in academic theology takes place sola ratione (in distinction from Karl Barth's interpretation ofAnselm; see STl, 51). On this basis, many identify Pannenberg as a "rationalist." The present volume presents a more complex understanding of the relation between theological faith as an ecclesial reality and theology as systematic...