I’ll be in Princeton for the next couple of weeks, doing some research in the Center for Barth Studies. Naturally I’ll still be posting here from Princeton, but there will probably be some gaps while I’m in transit.
Meanwhile, thanks to all those who have been contributing to my friendly appeal. I’ll keep receiving donations for the next few days, and then I’ll let you know how much we’ve raised.
Stanley J. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 318 pp. (with thanks to Eerdmans for a review copy)
With the untimely death of Stanley Grenz in 2005, North America lost one of its most significant and influential dogmatic thinkers. Grenz did his doctoral studies under Wolfhart Pannenberg, and his own constructive work remained deeply influenced by Pannenberg. So it was fitting that, towards the end of his life, he went back and revised his 1990 book on Pannenberg, Reason for Hope.
Grenz first wrote Reason for Hope while Pannenberg was still working on his three-volume Systematic Theology. At the time, Grenz produced the first detailed overview of Pannenberg’s entire dogmatics, based mainly on lectures presented in Munich in 1987-88. For this second edition, however, Grenz was able to utilise the complete published Systematic Theology, as well as a great deal of recent scholarly discussion.
So although this new edition follows the same basic format as the first edition (an overview of Pannenberg’s dogmatics, together with a critical evaluation of the main debates engendered by each locus of the Systematic Theology), the book is greatly enhanced by its up-to-date engagement with Pannenberg’s own work and with the contemporary scholarly discussion.
Grenz is an attentive and sensitive reader, and his analysis of Pannenberg’s methodology is particularly acute. He situates Pannenberg’s mature dogmatics within the context of the earlier methodological works such as Jesus – God and Man (1964), Theology and the Philosophy of Science (1973), and Anthropology in Theological Perspective (1983). And he argues convincingly that Pannenberg’s dogmatics flows from and builds on the methodological programme that had been so rigorously developed throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Further, Grenz is alert to changes and developments within Pannenberg’s thought, and he points out many instances in which Pannenberg has revised his earlier ideas in light of ensuing criticism and debate. Notably, Pannenberg’s christology underwent major methodological and material change between Jesus – God and Man and the Systematic Theology. And even more strikingly, his approach to the doctrine of God changed radically: earlier, Pannenberg had viewed the doctrine of God only as the final task of dogmatics; but by the time of the Systematic Theology, he had gained “a new-found confidence to develop the doctrine [of God] itself and to treat the other subjects of dogmatics from its perspective” (p. 57).
Indeed (as LeRon Shults has also argued), this orientation of all theological themes around the doctrine of God is the fundamental structuring principle of Pannenberg’s thought. Since God is the all-determining reality, the task of dogmatics is “[t]o show the illuminating power of the Christian conception of God” (p. 7). By proceeding in this way, Pannenberg offers an ambitious attempt “to give reason for the hope” (1 Pet. 3:15). Thus his whole dogmatic theology seeks to combat “the dominant trend toward the privatization of religious belief” (p. 290).
This second edition of Grenz’s work is a welcome contribution to the ongoing discussion of Pannenberg’s theology. Although scholars like Chris Mostert and LeRon Shults have more profoundly explored the underlying grammar of Pannenberg’s thought, Reason for Hope remains the most lucid, reliable and accessible introduction to the work of our most brilliant contemporary theologian.
You might have heard that our friend Byron has been having a hard time lately. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with cancer. So while most of us have been relaxing over Christmas and the New Year, this cheerful 28-year-old has been undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy (and I for one have been deeply moved by the patient trust and joyful hope with which he has faced all this).
Perhaps, as an expression of friendly solidarity, we could join together to get Byron a couple of books from his Amazon wishlist. If several of us each gave a dollar or two, we could easily raise enough to send him something nice to read during those unpleasant hours at the hospital.
Update: Thanks to everyone who generously responded to this appeal. To see the total amount raised, click here.
“If the futurity of God is thus the structure of his trinitarian life with and for us, we do not need to safeguard God’s freedom by the clumsy device of calling the ‘dispensational Trinity’ the ‘image’ of an ‘immanent Trinity.’ For futurity is the condition of freedom. God is free over against the realized actualities of his trinitarian life with us, because he is always ahead of them; he always can be otherwise triune than he has so far been. This freedom is his trinitarian life.”
—Robert W. Jenson, God after God: The God of the Past and the God of the Future, Seen in the Work of Karl Barth (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), p. 174.
“The history of twentieth-century Catholic theology is the history of the attempted elimination of theological modernism, by censorship, sackings and excommunication – and the resurgence of issues that could not be repressed by such methods.”
—Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 4-5. [Stay tuned for a review of this excellent new book.]
by Kim Fabricius
1. Why worship God? Because God is to be worshipped. Worship is a holy tautology.
2. Does worship make God present? No, worship presupposes God’s presence. But God’s presence is unlike any other. “God does not exist,” said Kierkegaard, “he is eternal.” Compared to all existents, God’s presence is an absence. The Holy of Holies is empty. If worship is fundamentally eucharist, you could say that it is “thanks for nothing”. Without this apophatic point of departure, worship inevitably becomes idolatrous.
3. Is worship necessary? Not for God it isn’t. God does not need our worship – because God is worship, the perichoretic adoration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Worship is, however, necessary for us, for it is only as homo adorans, participating in the very life of the Holy Trinity, that we become truly human. As the psychologist says in Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, “If you don’t worship, you’ll shrink.”
4. Does worship please God? The question’s assumption is right: God is the audience of worship, not the congregation (though you wouldn’t know it from many an act of worship). But whether or not the audience approves depends. Worship pleases God when we wash our hands before we raise and fold them, that is, when our praise begins in penitence – and then issues in the politics of peace. Then we are all reading from the same hymn sheet. Otherwise see Amos 5:21-24.
5. How should worship begin? But worship never begins, or, rather, it has always already begun. You could say that we are always late for worship, because we always enter worship in medias res, the praise unceasing of the communio sanctorum. Never forget that when there are only three old ladies and a dog in the pews.
6. How should worship proceed? Worship is a dialogue, or, better, a two-beat tempo of revelation and response, grace and gratitude. Worship is also an ellipse, spiralling around the foci of word and sacrament. And worship is a time machine that takes us back to the future. And the various liturgies? They are aides-memoirs, not incantations, synopses of the unfinished story we are invited to indwell and improvise; therefore they should not aim at closure but make space for contemplation and imagination.
7. How should worship end? With an ellipsis…. For when the liturgy is over, the service (λειτουργία) begins. Leaving the church is the ultimate liturgical act: Ite, missa est. On Romans 12:1-2, Ernst Käsemann observes that “the cultic vocabulary serves a decidedly anti-cultic thrust. Christian worship does not consist in what is practiced at sacred sites, at sacred times, and with sacred acts. It is the offering of bodily existence in the otherwise profane sphere.” Or as Michael Marshall puts it: “You do not become a Christian by sitting in the pew anymore than you become a car by sitting in the garage.”
8. What should we get out of worship? Wrong question. Worship is not a utility but an offering, i.e. a sacrifice, an economy of grace that interrupts and critiques the feverish cycles of production and consumption – which is why the collection is not fund-raising but cultural critique. If you want relevance, excitement, or profit, go to a rally, a concert, or the stock exchange. To put it most counter-culturally: Blessed are the bored, for they will see God.
9. What about people who don’t worship? We are responsible for them. Hence intercessions. But more: all worship is a vicarious act – in fact, Christ’s vicarious act – so that when we come to worship, we bring the whole world with us. Worship is the end of “us” and “them” – and a sneak preview of the reconciliation of all things.
10. And what about worship as evangelism, education, ethics? Of course, but as the blessings, not the motives, of worship – blessings given as worship reconditions the habits of our hearts and reshapes our disordered characters.
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