Friday, September 4, 2026

It is the 4th of September 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Wolfhart Pannenberg is not only a great name, but was one of the most important theologians of the last century. And he may have died on this day in 2014. You say, “It was only 12 years ago; how could we be uncertain?” Good question. I was halfway into the research- starting with German documents that assured me he died today 12 years ago when a fair number of English obituaries stated with some confidence that no, he died on the 5th. Well, tomorrow is a Saturday, and I’ve got the weekend edition. I’m sticking with the German sources on this one. But I’ll note the American reflection in Christianity Today for its apt description of the fascinating Pannenberg- his was indeed a “strange legacy”.

 

Pannenberg was born in Stettin, Germany in 1928 (today that’s Szczecin, Poland) and baptized in the Lutheran church. But he didn’t grow up in the faith. By his own account, he was fascinated with Nietzsche and considered himself an atheist. An experience at the age of 16 with a light set him on the path of becoming a Christian, and this is somewhat ironic in that a man who would place objective historical fact at the center of his theology began his journey with an existential experience.

 

He would be drafted into the Nazi army late in the war but was given a medical exemption. He dove into studies at Berlin, Göttingen, Basel, and Heidelberg. He would study under Karl Barth at Basel, but his theology is not Barthian… this is part of his “strange legacy”. At once he sounds like an Evangelical banging the table about the historicity of the Resurrection while similarly embracing higher criticism and a doctrine of Scripture unlike that often held by those same Evangelicals.

 

His doctoral work was on Predestination in Duns Scotus, and his postdoc work was on the doctrine of Analogy in Thomas Aquinas. He began his professorial career at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal in 1958 and by the time of his retirement in the 1990s would have over 600 publications to his name.

 

He came to fame in the English-speaking world in the 1960s with the translations of his works Revelation as History, Jesus-God and Man, and Theology and the Kingdom of God. His writings are dense, and as a polymath he was conversant with theology, science, anthropology, philosophy, and the history of religions. To summarize his thought would be impossible, but perhaps we can state that his theology is rooted in the Resurrection of Jesus as the historical fact that makes sense of all other facts. A primary question throughout his works is whether Christianity can be true in a way that isn’t private or emotional or mediated through the church.

 

In many obituaries of the man, from every corner of the church (a feat that makes him stand out in the modern fractured world) his encyclopedic knowledge and the breadth of the disciplines with which he engaged. Stanley Grenz, the American Evangelical Baptist, wrote articles and an entire monograph on the theology of Pannenberg. He wrote that Pannenberg:

 

“[Was] attempting to change the course of contemporary theology, to provide a new direction in understanding in order to combat what he perceive[d] to be a widespread privatization of religious belief in general and of theology in particular.”

 

His was not the theology of transcendence and “otherness” of so many German theologians in the 20th century. He engaged with many of them but remained committed to what he called “Universal History” or perhaps a theory of everything- he himself wrote that to write a systematic theology one must first “acquire a systematic account of every other field”. More than one commentator has noted that it was perhaps his singular ability to do this that made him one of a kind. He is curious because of his dogged claim for objective truth amongst the modern theologians and because, despite his popularity, he didn’t spawn a school (like Barth’s Neo-Orthodoxy or Moltmann’s Theology of Hope). He retired from the University of Munich in 1994 but continued to teach and write until his death at the age of 85- on this day (or maybe tomorrow?) In 2014. Wolfhart Pannenberg’s legacy is strange, but his insistence on the centrality of the Resurrection and its occurrence in space and time make him one worth knowing.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Romans 10:

15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:

“Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
 their words to the ends of the world.”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 4th of September 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wonders where all the Wolfhart’s have gone? Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who always thought “wolf” names went especially hard… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.