Notes

  1. . Augustine Soliloquies 1. 1. 3.
  2. . See Aquinas Summa of Theology 1. 12. 4.C.
  3. . Aquinas Exposition of Boethius on the Trinity 3. 1. C.
  4. . Henry Chadwick, “Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1967), 4:445.
  5. . See Henry Chadwick's discussion of this ambiguity in his Lessing's Theological Writings (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1956), p. 52.
  6. . Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 90.
  7. . William Warren Bartley, The Retreat to Commitment (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1962), p. 103. In all fairness Tillich does not simply opt for faith over reason. Rather he attempts a redefinition of reason as the depth of being which will allow for faith as one function of a more broadly–or deeply–conceived rationality, one which is identical to his uniquely creative and moral nature. Nevertheless Tillich does fail to demonstrate how the critical functions of reason ultimately can have anything to do with the decision of faith. At some mysterious level faith and reason are integrated, but just how reason can determine faith or serve as a basis for faith is not at all clear.
  8. . Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 67–68.
  9. . Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, trans. George H. Kehm, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 1:16.
  10. . Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostles' Creed: In the Light of Today's Questions, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), p. 6.
  11. . Pannenberg, Basic Questions, 1:65.
  12. . Ibid.
  13. . Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Response to the Discussion,” in Theology as History, ed. James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr., New Frontiers in Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 274.
  14. . Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed., Revelation as History, trans. David Granskou (New York: Macmillan Co., 1968), p. 138. Cf. E. Frank Tupper's discussion of this issue in his The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), pp. 126–28.
  15. . Offenbarung als Geschichte, originally published in Germany in 1961.
  16. . Pannenberg, Revelation, pp. 125–45.
  17. . Pannenberg, Basic Questions 1:41. The only problem that may arise with this principle is the extension of it to some causal principle which introduces an evolutionary determinism that denies the contingency of historical events and the openness of history to the future.
  18. . Tupper (n. 14 above), p. 112.
  19. . Pannenberg, Revelation, p. 155.
  20. . Ibid., p. 136.
  21. . Pannenberg, Theology, p. 389.
  22. . Ibid., p. 417.
  23. . Ibid.
  24. . Ibid., p. 348.
  25. . Cf. Tupper, p. 82.
  26. . Pannenberg, Theology, p. 380.
  27. . Ibid.
  28. . Pannenberg, Basic Questions 1:131; Tupper, pp. 119–20.
  29. . Tupper, p. 120. Pannenberg certainly has been influenced by Hegel at this point but criticizes and moves beyond him in several important respects. He faults Hegel (1) for failing to take account of what Pannenbergalls “the irreducible finitude of experience” (Pannenberg, Basic Questions 1:134), (2) for his denial of a real openness to the future “insofar as its openness would consist in its continuously bringing forth surprising experiences” (ibid.), and (3) for his failure to recognize “the impossiblity of taking account of the contingent and the individual by means of the universal” (ibid.). In order to develop a universal history which takes account of these factors‐a task which might seem like squaring the circle‐Pannenberg maintains that Hegel's way is not the only way “because the end of history can also be understood as something which is itself only provisionally known, and in reflecting upon this provisional character of our knowledge of the end of history, the horizon of the future could be held open and the finitude of human experience preserved” (ibid., p. 135).
  30. . Pannenberg, Basic Questions 1:66–67.
  31. . Pannenberg, Theology, p. 361.
  32. . Pannenberg, Revelation, pp. 152–53.
  33. . Pannenberg, Theology (pt. 2, “Theology as a Science”), pp. 225–440.
  34. . Ibid., p. 349.
  35. . Pannenberg, Basic Questions 1:150.
  36. . Tupper (n. 14 above), p. 101.
  37. . Pannenberg, Revelation, p. 135; see also n. 29 above.
  38. . Tupper, p. 91; Pannenberg, Revelation, p. 133.
  39. . Pannenberg, Theology, p. 365.
  40. . I think that there is one other criterion which is implied in Pannenberg's discussion but which he does not make explicit, i.e., the “goodness” of the apparent divine revelation in terms of both the original experience and our present understanding of the “good.” E.g., Jesus presupposes such a criterion in his refutation of the Pharisaic charge that his exorcisms were accomplished by satanic and not by divine power, as Jesus himself claimed (Matt. 12:22–29, 33–35, and parallels).
  41. . Pannenberg, Theology, p. 399.