Eschatology sacred and profane: The effects of philosophy on theology in Pannenberg, Rahner and Moltmann

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 283-306

  Adams, Nicholas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61149470845     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1463-1652.00041     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 1-6;
2. Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998), pp. 37ff.;
3. Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
4. Michael Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (London: Yale, 1987);
5. Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
6. It is worth noting that Immanuel Kant in his refutation of what he terms the 'cosmological proof' (often associated with the second of the five ways) explicitly names Leibniz. It may be unsurprising that Aquinas is not mentioned. If Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy are any guide, Aquinas was not considered an important figure: he merits two short paragraphs in this work. See G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. E. Haldane and F. Simson (London: University of Nebraska, 1995), p. 71.
7. Cornelius Ernst, 'Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina', in Cornelius Ernst, Multiple Echo, ed. F. Kerr and T. Radcliffe (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979), p. 74.
8. Ernst, 'Metaphor and Ontology', p. 74.
9. Lash, 'When Did the Theologians?', pp. 143-4.
10. See Frederick Beiser, 'Hegel's Historicism', in Frederick Beiser, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 270ff. esp. pp. 271, 274, 288.
11. Beiser downplays the trinitarian associations of spirit in his discussion. Hegel himself is more explicit: see G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 46;
12. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 1.
13. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, p. 83.
14. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 1-25.
15. For arguably the best account see Andrew Shanks, Hegel's Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 16-70.
16. Shanks is friendlier to Hegel than I am here, in part because he seems not to think that in Hegel's thought Christ's role as Christ (rather than as Spirit) is terminated in his death. Against Shanks, it is sufficient to draw attention to Hegel's dismissal of the resurrection appearances as 'merely historical' , and for the New Testament accounts of them to be 'treated like the writings of profane authors'. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3, trans. R. Brown, P. Hodgson, J. Stewart (London: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 330-1.
17. Karl Barth, 'Hegel', in Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, trans. B. Cozens (London: SCM Press, 1972), pp. 384-421, esp. p. 418.
18. Wolfhart Pannenberg, 'The Significance of Christianity in the Philosophy of Hegel', in Basic Questions in Theology 3, trans. R. Wilson (London: SCM Press, 1973), p. 149.
19. Indeed, Pannenberg argues that Hegel's use of the word 'necessary' is quite different from its usage to mean 'a compulsion imposed from outside' and refers instead to the 'inner identity' of the real, and its character as something which unites the contingent differences of different substances. This rather begs the question why Hegel spoke of necessity, in this connection, rather than love or creativity or even trinity, for example. See Pannenberg, 'The Significance of Christianity', p. 171.
20. See Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1999);
21. F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978).
22. For an account of the role of love in Hegel's thought see Robert R. Williams, Hegel's Ethics of Recognition (London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 84ff.
23. Adorno's word for the excess of object over concept is 'non-identity'. Its meaning is well-expressed in his Aesthetic Theory: 'The task of aesthetics is not to comprehend artworks as hermeneutical objects; in the contemporary situation, it is their incomprehensibility that needs to be comprehended.' See Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p. 118.
24. It is not only in Schelling's early work that Hegel's position is criticized. On Schelling's later 'positive philosophy' as a rejection of Hegel's attempt to think the absolute, see Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 130ff.
25. For more detailed discussion see Nicholas Adams, 'The Present Made Future', in Faith and Philosophy 17 (2000), pp. 191-211.
26. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (London: SCM Press, 1962), pp. 349-50.
27. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 356.
28. For analysis see Piotr Hoffman, 'Death, Time, History: Division II of Being and Time', in Charles B. Guignon, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 196ff.;
29. William Blattner, 'Existential Temporality in Being and Time', in Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall, eds., Heidegger: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 102ff.
30. Karl Rahner, 'The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions', in Theological Investigations 4 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), p. 331, his emphasis.
31. Rahner, 'Hermeneutics', p. 332.
32. Karl Rahner, 'A Fragmentary Aspect of a Theological Evaluation of the Concept of the Future', in Theological Investigations 10 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), p. 237, his emphasis.
33. Rahner, 'A Fragmentary Aspect', pp. 240-1.
34. See Rahner. 'Marxist Utopia and the Christian Future of Man', in Theological Investigations 6 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969), pp. 59-70.
35. Rahner, 'Marxist Utopia and the Christian Future of Man', p. 62, his emphasis.
36. Richard Bauckham, 'Time and Eternity', in Richard Bauekham, ed., God Will Be All In All (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), pp. 155-65.
37. Bauckham, 'Time and Eternity', p. 161.
38. For Hegel's real views see Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History and Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
39. For discussions of these themes in Bloch's philosophy see Wayne Hudson, The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Block (London: Macmillan, 1982);
40. Richard H. Roberts, Hope and its Hieroglyph (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990);
41. Vincent Geoghegan, Ernst Block (London: Routledge, 1996).
42. On dreams and their role as 'psychological birthplace of the new' or 'the voice of tomorrow' see Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, vol. 1, trans. N. Plaice, S. Plaice, P. Knight (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 116ff.
43. On genius see Bloch, The Principle of Hope, vol. 1, pp. 124ff.
44. Søren Kierkegaard, On the Difference Between the Genius and the Apostle (London: Collins, 1962).
45. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. J. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1967), p. 17.
46. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), p. 517;
47. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 1-3.
48. (For Milbank's dissatisfactions with Barth see Milbank, 'The Theological Critique of Philosophy', in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, eds., Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 32-4.) Interestingly, Pannenberg is on this point more reliable than Moltmann, because at least Hegel's philosophy assumes an ontological continuity between God and reality, which is then reflected in his speech.
49. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 17-18.
50. Karl Barth, 'Hegel', p. 395.
51. Karl Barth, Ethics, trans. G. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), p. 27.