Introduction
In the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg, there is much in the way of a departure from classical, presupposed, and unexamined Church doctrine. One of the topics through which this red thread of commonality expresses itself is in Pannenberg’s work on the doctrine of Election. While scattered across the breadth of his work, in all of these mentions of the doctrine, Pannenberg maintains consistency in his critique of the abstract concept of the eternal Election of particular individuals to place the doctrine more concretely in history. The resulting outcome of this difference is a theology of Election in Pannenberg, which bears several significant marks of distinct contrast to the body of work that preceded him.
It is these marks of distinct contrast that this paper will seek to explore, both in essence and application according to their construction, essence, and application, toward the end of building up a theological characterization of Pannenberg’s work on this important topic of Christian Theology. This will be done by first gathering together his work on the matter from various key texts in order to systematically integrate them into a collective movement of thought, with a particular focus upon the aspects of distinction within it. Once gathered, this thought will be compared to the thought that he aims to respond to with his own work, with an eye toward identifying the key points of tension and or departure between Pannenberg and the classical writers that he deals with in these texts.
The Biblical Source Material
For Pannenberg, the discussion of the doctrine of Election cannot happen except within the basis of the source material from which it was worked upon. At the beginning of the third chapter of Human Nature, Election, and History, Pannenberg states that, as he perceives it, the Biblical text provides readers with a picture of God which is one of a God active and at work in history.1
In working to rebuild this historically grounded understanding of Election in the Biblical material, Pannenberg goes all the way back to the story of Adam in the Garden to trace its conception and development through time. In tracing Election all the way back to Abraham and the Patriarchs, he speaks of their calling and election toward a specific end within history itself, as a thing which later on is finally brought to bear on the world in Christ who fulfills what Adam failed to do, and becomes the New and Final Adam.2 Speaking of Adam, he states that Adam was placed in the Garden and given the task of imaging and representing God.3 Obedience to this calling was the task that Adam was, as we might now say, an Election unto the task of being the image of God. Obedience to this calling was the condition of Adam’s being the image he was Elected to be. This calling that was placed upon Adam, as with all the subsequent callings that Pannenberg looks at, has both an individual and a universal aspect. Individually, it is the selection and calling of one man. But this calling upon the individual Adam was not for the sake of this individual Adam alone. Rather, it was for the good of all of creation, and was conditioned upon his benevolent action upon all of creation itself, as the essence of his call to image forth God in the world. It is from this basis that Pannenberg pulls forth the biblical language of the two Adams, both old and new, in relation to the whole world. He says of this: “The reality of the new, last man is destined to become effective for all men through Jesus, just as sin and death affected every individual through the first Adam. Just as both death and its basis, sin, have been transmitted to all men from the first Adam.”4
However, as is seen from the changeover from the Old Man to the New Man, in failing to uphold the duties of his calling, Adam was no longer the representative man for all people who imaged forth God into the world. This is the earliest Biblically temporal basis for Pannenberg’s conception of the conditionality and retractability of Election, as well as its calling upon the elected one by means of a goal to be accomplished for the blessing of others.
This same paradigm is then placed upon Abraham and the Patriarchs, on Moses, David, and Israel as a whole. Speaking to these aspects of Election, with Abraham in immediate sight, Pannenberg says:
Election is understood as a selection of one out of many. It is the goal of such selection that the beloved one is to belong to God and to share community with God… From the Genesis report on Abraham’s calling, it could be remembered that the goal of God’s election was not simply Abraham and his posterity as the object of God’s love. God’s goal transcends Abraham and his posterity, since the promise of God’s blessing is extended through Abraham to “all families of the earth.”5
As Pannenberg states, this picture of Election as rooted and grounded in history, and pointed toward the purpose of God in the world was lost over time, even within the Biblical source material.6 For Adam, that was to image God in the Garden. For Abraham, that was to bear forth the promise of God through His posterity and to thereby bless all families of the earth. For the Israelites under Moses, it was to be God’s own redeemed possession, and to obey His Law, and bless all nations, being a royal priesthood among them and for them. This sort of task-based orientation of Election flows through Pannenberg’s recounting of the Biblical text.
However, as commonly occurred with many of them, they were held as he says “accountable” for the upholding of the condition of this Election, and the completion of its intended goal.7 And when it is not upheld by the Elected one, it results in their subsequent rejection and reprobation.8 To substantiate this concept from the Scriptures, Pannenberg provides manifold textual examples, such as Amos 3:2, Psalm 78:59-60, and Jeremiah 7:14, 27, all of which exhibit God’s rejecting the people that He had subsequently chosen, for reason of their disobedience to His called command that He laid upon them.9 Yet he insists that this rejection, just like the previous calling that those who are rejected from, is not final or eternal. But rather, can be entered back into, and is thus provisional. To prove this, Pannenberg cites what may be the most compelling of all his cited Scriptures in proving both the retractability as well as the renewability of Election, in Isaiah 14:1, which states: “The Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel.”10
In Summarizing these views from the Old Testament’s theology of Election, Pannenberg says:
The historical concept of election, then, in contrast to what has been called the abstract notion of election, refers to a historical event as constitutive for being chosen. And it assigns a mission to the elected one that relates him to a more comprehensive context of God’s design in history. Thus the chosen individual is related to the people and the people to mankind in a similar way. At the same time, the interrelation of election and mission entails the consequence that the elected one is accountable to God for his mission to the world and may be rejected again in case of his failure.11
Where Pannenberg believes that the theological tradition begins to go awry from its historical grounding is in the post-exilic Jewish thought that arose due to the faithful Jews in exile who sought to make sense of their place in God’s elect people while living in a rejected and unfaithful nation.12 Pannenberg finds textual representation of this thought expressed in the Book of Enoch, which, as he believes, carried much force among later New Testament authors. He says,
Together with this concentration on the election of individuals blessed for their own sake, another change occurs: the historicity of the elective act of God fades… the historical act of God’s election of Abraham and of his family was now changed into a statement of God’s prescience, or foreknowledge, concerning those members of later generations who will turn out to be righteous.13
Moving toward an eternal choosing and individual selection of those whom God knew by prescient foresight would be faithful until the end, the faithful Jews were able to maintain their identity as the elect ones intact, even though their fellow countrymen and nation as a whole had fallen out of covenant with God.
Picking up from this point, Pannenberg finds much in the New Testament to carry forward from this point in the idea. As he says: “In early Christianity the post-exilic concept of election as an eternal decision of God (hidden in the present world) concerning the final salvation of a certain number of individuals continued to be influential.”14 Citing Matthew 22:14 and Romans 9 as working from this basis. Both which he states are echoing forth this post-exilic concept of an Election rooted not in God’s giving of a concrete task in history, but in God’s prescient foresight of a person outside of time.15 And in the case of Romans 9, this is intensified even further, with what he characterizes as a turning away from the post-exilic focus on foresight of creaturely action, by qualifying his statement from the beginning as being a thing not granted in sight of action, but given without reference or sight to action, and therefore, unconditional.16
Pannenberg, however, does not view the Biblical source material as speaking one cohesive idea, in either testament. But says, even of the New Testament material, that there are differing lines of thought, and varying traditions which arise out of it. Here he grants Jesus choosing of the apostles as a solid example of a historical election of an individual for the sake of the many, which can be failed and fallen out of.17 And while Pannenberg does not explicitly say so, we may add here that Judas is for us a solid example of one who did indeed fall out of this election, and Peter, one who, falling out, was called back in. And finds even in Paul’s texts of Romans 9 and 8 a historical rootedness in “the founding of the church, and by Christian mission,” which, “offered to people of all nations the opportunity of participation in the future salvation of the reign of God.”18
Drawing together then these traditions of theological thought from within the Biblical text, Pannenberg states that we begin to see in the New Testament a “fresh start for a historical conception of election,” which, though carrying forth some post-exilic ideas which emphasize the individual being timelessly elected, are nevertheless brought together on the ground of a shared historical task of God’s calling placed upon them to bless the world.19 This move, he says, transforms in a sense the post-exilic concept of timelessness from referring to “a withdrawal from historical time,” and makes it instead, an emphasis on “the eternal importance of what happens in time.”20
Thus, we may say of Pannenberg’s view of the Biblical source material, that while he believes that it has a dynamic nature to it, with variance in theological tradition and development over time, it remains, for the most part, unified in its rootedness within the giving of a historical task to accomplish for the blessing of all, and is therefore a form of participation in the Election of Abraham, and the final Adam.
The Classical View
Working off the basis of Pannenberg’s perception of the development of thought within the Biblical source material, we begin to look at the extra-Biblical theological conversation which forms the basis of the accepted theological assertions that came before him. Of this, he recounts that, while the Biblical idea of Election was rooted in history, what became the classical view had become abstracted again, in the direction of withdrawal from history and the world. As he states:
The classical doctrine of election, as represented in the work of Thomas Aquinas and Calvin, offers little reference to history. Instead, it deals with an eternal decision of God, made before the creation, and (usually) relates immediately to individuals concerning their final salvation. Three elements characterized this classical doctrine of election: the timelessness of the divine decision in regard to its subject, the restriction of its objects to individuals (in most cases to unrelated individuals), and finally the predominance of a transcendent salvation as constituting the purpose decided upon in the act of election. These elements characterized the classical concept both in its strictly Augustinian and in its more or less Semi-Pelagian form.21
This development, as Pannenberg has already stated for us, did not begin with these theologians themselves without reason,but was built upon a development that had already begun to work itself out in the Biblical source material from which they worked. As he says: “The development of the doctrine of election and predestination in Christian theology has been governed chiefly by Pauline ideas, less by the explicit discussion of the theme in Rom. 9–11 than by the short but rich statement about God’s purpose of election in Rom. 8:28–30.”22
Dealing with a great many early thinkers, from the Gnostics, Mileto of Sardis, through to Lombard, Aquinas, and Calvin, Pannenberg runs through a thorough retelling of the development of the theological conversation of the doctrine of Election in the history of its discussion within the church, which led to the establishment of what he calls the classical view.
However, while he mentions earlier thinkers, it is in the thought of Origin and Augustine that Pannenberg pins down a sort of fixity to the theological tradition in its “classical” sense. Referring to Augustine, Pannenerg states:
Augustine took election to be an act of the will of God prior to any prevision of the future conduct of his creatures. In this regard Augustine appealed especially to Rom. 9:16. Not of anyone’s will or conduct, but of God’s free mercy he decides to whom to turn. From the time of his writing to Simplicius (395), which is devoted especially to an exposition of Rom. 9, Augustine set aside the view suggested by the wording of Rom. 8:29, that God’s foreseeing of human faith and obedience is the basis of predestination to salvation. Instead he declared that the purpose of predestination is itself the basis of the electing of some out of the mass of the lost (massa perditionis). He followed up on this in the development of his thinking even before the beginning of the Pelagian controversy. But in the course of the controversy special weight would fall on the concept of predestination as a final basis for the sovereignty of divine grace23
The aspects of timelessness, individualism, lack of functional goals, and immutability that Origin and Augustine shared lead toward the development of the fixity of what he calls the classical view, along the lines of this abstraction. What he meant by this was that Election was, on the basis of Paul’s writings in Romans 8 and 9, viewed as a timeless decree of God, either unconditionally, as Augustine saw it, emphasizing Romans 9, or conditioned upon God’s foresight of faith and or works, as Origin saw it, emphasizing Romans 8.24 This timelessness, distinguished from Paul’s use of timelessness, which he elsewhere refers to as the pointing toward the eternal importance of history, is a full withdrawing of God from history as source or purpose. This reoriented the purpose of election from being a function of the Elect one in history for others, toward being the salvation of the person, or a separating of them from the unchosen or unelected on the basis of foreseen differences.25
Carried forth then in Aquinas, Lombard, and Calvin, the conversation is drawn even farther away from the historical task of God’s called people in the world, and out toward a thing which exists in God’s mind, only to be revealed on the last day, which deals only with one’s own salvation, and for one’s own sake. As a result of this much of the conversation on the doctrine of Election within the classical parameters had become framed as little more than a question of whom God either has foreseen to be saved, in the Semi-Pelagian camp, conditioned upon the faith and or works of the person foreseen by God, or within the Augustinian camp, as being unconditioned from before the beginning.
In response to this view, Pannenberg lists three problems and explains:
1. It makes the divine decision timeless, in abstraction from the concrete historicity of the divine acts of election as the Bible bears witness to them.
2. It detaches individuals as the objects of election from all relations to society.
3. It restricts the purpose of election to participation in future salvation in disjunction from any historical function of the elect.
This abstract view of election is very different from what the Bible has to say about the election of Israel or of special persons like the patriarchs or kings. Nor does it correspond to what the NT says, and especially, indeed, to Pauline statements about the election of Christians26
Here we may understand that while he does believe that the New Testament statements (with the exception of Matt 22:14) have deviated from the Old Testament’s conception of Election through the influence of the post-exilic thought found in the book of Enoch, they did not divorce themselves completely from the blessing of others, but remained tied toward the blessing of all nations in connection to the Abrahamic calling through missionary activity.27
But this true abstraction of classical theology, which withdraws from history into timelessness, is not bound toward the missional outreach of the church, and is not geared toward the blessing of others, could only have come, as Pannenberg says, from “detaching of the statements in Rom. 8:29–30 and 9:13, 16, from the context of salvation history in which Paul set them.”28 It was just this thing which Pannenberg asserts happened in the history of Christian theology, and which, as he likewise asserts, has determined the conversation since that time on the doctrine of predestination.29
Thus, as Pannenberg sees it, Classical Theology is out of joint with the Scriptures on the matter of the doctrine of Election. On the one hand, Classical Theology posits Election as a decree that takes place outside of time in the mind of God, either unconditionally or on the basis of something foreseen in the person through Divine prescience, which is toward the salvation of the individual, for the sole sake of the individual. The Scriptures, on the other hand, speak of Election as God’s choosing a specific person or people in a particular context in history, toward the doing of a particular task for the sake of others.30
These differences lead toward a conflict of concerns between Classical Theologians and Pannenberg himself. For Classical Theologians, the concerns regarding Election circle mostly around matters of conditionality within the confines of God’s temporal and functional withdrawal, and toward the end of the sole benefit of the self through salvation. That is to say, the concern was about the basis on which God decides who will be elected to receive the blessing of salvation. But for Pannenberg, the concern was almost turned on its head, not for God’s decision about who to save for their own sake, but about what God has chosen certain individuals to do in their own particular contexts for others. This flowed out into a distinction between these two perspectives, firstly on what was meant by the conditionality of Election, as well as, the connected theme of its retractability. As he sates:
In the classical doctrine of election there is no room for successive acts such as electing someone first and rejecting him later on. Why is such a sequence of acts excluded in that doctrine? Because election is conceived of as an eternal rather than a historical act. Moreover, the chosen one is not understood to be elected for some function within the wider context of God’s design, but the purpose of his election is only for his own final salvation. Therefore there is nothing he could be held accountable for so that the chosen one could be rejected again.31
It is from the point of his critique against the classical theology of Election and its divorce from historical grounding that Pannenberg attempts to return to a view of Election that roots God’s Election of a people within temporal and functional particularity.
Pannenberg’s Attempted Return to History
For Pannenberg, the place in which classical theology went awry regarding their work on Election was in divorcing it from its grounding within a called goal in concrete history. As has been seen from his comments on what he views as the development of this doctrine within the development of Biblical thought, and likewise with the development of theological thought within the church, his issue is not with its eternality, per se. But rather, his issue is that this eternality has been used to connect the present with the coming eschaton, thus granting eternal significance to the actions done in the present age, but with divorcing it so much as to strip history of the entirety of its importance and relevance to the eschatological purpose of God.32 Nor is his issue with the inclusion of salvation as a goal in the Election of the individual, per se. But rather, it is with the ridding of any practical tasks applied to the Elected one for the sake of others, such that Election becomes a wholly self-serving enterprise.33
Building up his response to the classical position, which begins with his work on the Biblical literature, Pannenberg insists that there are three key aspects to God’s Election of human beings. The first is the choosing of the one, or the few, out of many. This he states, is represented in both the individual sense, and the collective sense. Individually, he grants the examples of Abraham and David.34 For that of the collective fellowship, he puts forth the nation of Israel and the New Testament Church of Jesus Christ.35 Naturally, as Pannenberg expresses, there is an organic unity between the individual here and the unitive fellowship that flows forth from it. Just as Abraham is called to grow into a nation, so that nation then takes up the Election of God that they are, in a sense, birthed into.36
The second aspect of Election is its purpose or function. Beginning with Abraham, God calls His chosen to go forth from the country of his fathers and into the land of promise to beget a child who will grow up into the nation of Israel. All of this, even within Abraham’s own calling, is placed as a thing that he is to do, not merely for his own sake, but for the sake of the whole world, as said in Genesis 13:2, as cited by Pannenberg to express this purpose.37 For the nation of Israel collectively, this was no different, as they were called, similarly to Abraham, and, in a sense, in Abraham, or through Abraham and his own Election and calling, to be a nation of royal priests unto God, for the service of the gentile nations surrounding them, unto the ends of the whole world.38 Both which, in themselves, have a unitive flow from their own personal blessing toward a blessing that they are called to dispense toward all nations around them, through the completion of the task placed upon them by their calling God. As Pannenberg puts it:
The particularism of the love of God for the elected one is to be related to the more comprehensive horizon of God’s love for all mankind. The chosen one, then, is assigned a function for that wider context. He is elected in order to serve as God’s agent in relation to a more comprehensive object of God’s love. Therefore the chosen one belongs to God precisely in serving God’s greater purpose in the world.39
For the church as well, this calling does not go away.40 And, though Pannenberg grants, it has undergone a development over time away from the earlier strictness of containment within the parameters of intra-temporal contexts, it does not, in the New Testament era, depart entirely away from the historically contextual service of neighbor in ethical life and evangelistic mission.
The third aspect that Pannenberg draws out, is what he calls the Elected one’s accountability to God for this Election and calling.41 Reworking the doctrine of Election then, away from the classical conception of it as being God’s foreseeing or causing of one’s being in the group of the saved, who receive the blessing of God, toward God’s placing of a calling upon an individual or fellowship to fulfill His particular purpose in history, the flow of Election then follows the movement, not only of Gospel, but also of Law. Thus, they are accountable to God for doing this task. Where they fail to do so, Pannenberg states, there is a conditional retractability of this Election. Leading to the situation of Israel as a once-called people, who are at times rejected for reason of their walking away from God’s commands placed upon them.42 This casting off, however, as with the Election which preceded it, is also retractable. As the once-called but then cast-off group, can, by God’s choosing, nevertheless be called back into that same Election at a later time.43 The same concept is then placed upon the New Testament Christian Church, in which, the individual Christian enters into the Elected fellowship of the Church, in part to be included in the proleptically eschatological people of God who bring that Kingdom to bear upon the earth in history in real time, but are also, as part of that, not merely recipients of its blessings, but also doers and dispensers of it. It is to those who refuse to participate in this life and mission to which Paul’s apostasy warnings apply. Which, when not heeded, lead to a provisional reprobation of sorts, whereby the once-elected Christian exempts his or herself from the proleptic eschatological mission. As Pannenberg states:
Hence those who live in accordance with God’s righteous will and confess Jesus as him who proclaims and expounds it can even now be sure of participation in the final fellowship of salvation. Already according to the message of the prophets, however, external membership is no guarantee of sharing in future salvation. Conversely, those who do not belong to the historical people of God may find acceptance into the end-time fellowship of salvation because they measure up to the criteria of the righteous will of God (Matt. 8:11 par.). The election of a fellowship to be God’s people does not mean that none of its members can fall victim to rejection by conduct that brings them under God’s judgment44
Pannenberg clarifies his nuance upon the tension between conditionality, retractability, and irrevocability further, by stating that, while “the election of the fellowship itself remains inviolable,” it “need not rule out the possibility of converting and therefore of life.”45 For, “although we must all bear the consequences of what we do, the salvation that means fellowship with God does not have to be finally closed to the guilty.”46 And thus, “there is no guarantee of an ultimate universal reconciliation, but in a history that is still open the possibility of forgiveness is promised to those who repent.”47
The result of these three key aspects of Pannenberg’s theology of Election is a turn not only away from timelessness toward historically contextual grounding. Nor away from self-serving reception of a Gospel that is, as it were, pro me, in the exclusive sense, but which is an inclusion of the self into the missio dei, pro mundo. From this point, one sees that Pannenberg’s conception of Election is not in view of a set number of individuals who will be saved, as decided outside of time, but rather, a question of who God has called into His missio pro mundo, in a particular context in time, who are themselves tasked with drawing the whole of that world into that same mission. In this sense, one is not considered elect or not, as eternally decided. But elect or not, at this particular time. With a goal of electing all of the world into the number of the called people of God.
Conclusion
Thus, when characterizing Pannenberg’s theology of Election, it is crucial to note that he is not merely attempting to return to history, but to return to function also. For Pannenberg, Election and the identity of the Christian as an Elect people, does not mean so much the favoritism of God for one over many, but the commanding of a function upon one for the sake of the many. In this way, we may say that Pannenberg’s theology of Election is greatly distinct from that of classical theologians, in that he spins this doctrine as being after the fashion of Law together with Gospel, rather than being a Gospel without Law, or a grace without imperative toward transformation.
Writing on the distinction between Law and Gospel in Pannenberg, Timothy R. Scheuers states that for Pannenberg, the conception of Law and Gospel are not distinguished along the lines of activity and passivity, or between faith and works. But rather, upon epochal and Kingdom-dominance lines. As he states, in Pannenberg, the Law is conceived of through the lens of the waiting-world after the fall of Adam, which is characterized by its anticipation of redemption.48 And the Gospel, on the other hand, as the eschatological in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, and the new reality that God has crafted in Jesus, along with it.49 In other words, it is a split between the world as it waits, and the coming world for which it waits. Thus, for Pannenberg, the question of whether or not this blends together the themes of Law and Gospel, as understood in the terms of our doing and Christ’s done, is answered by a reframing of the terms altogether, into anticipation and realization. Scheuers summarizes: “Pannenberg’s exposition from a complicated matrix of Christian doctrines that relies on a novel interpretation of believers’ present participation in eschatological salvation.”50
In doing this, Pannenberg reveals a yet greater distinction from the classical position, in that the move he makes in doing this is already found among classical theologians in the Election of Christ as the one called to save the whole world. Thus, what Pannenberg is doing, in truth, is really a drawing together into one, the Election of the Church and the Election of her Lord and King Jesus Christ as an Ecclesial Participation in Christ’s calling to save the world. This unitive move between Christ’s Election, and the Election of His body, the Church, reveals the dynamically unitive relation between themselves as organically connected concept. The one flowing out of, yet retaining distinction from the other, similar to that between the Election and callings of Abraham, Jacob, David, Israel, and the Church.
This dynamic connectivity and continuity between the God and the Elect people of God, taking part in the work of God, have led some scholars to conclude that Pannenberg ends up in a place not far off from that of modern Roman Theology in some places. In his Systematic Theology, Anthony C. Thiselton makes this very point, stating that Pannenberg endorsed Vatican II’s theological definition of the Church as being a sacrament of salvation.51 While not directly relating to Pannenberg’s doctrine of Election, Thiselton here does press upon the conclusion and effect of it. For so it is that Pannenberg’s theology of Election, and the relation between God’s eternal decision to save the whole world takes place, yes, firstly and primarily through Jesus Christ, but secondarily through the work of His mystical body in the world, which is the church. In affirming certain Roman wordings of this conception, with it as sacramentum, or, mysterion, what Pannenberg is doing, is recognizing the Church’s activity and work as connected to God’s activity, through her active participation in it.
In drawing together this unity between Christ and the Church, Pannenberg bears similitude not only to post-Vatican II Rome, but also, ironically, with Luther himself, who, in his Small and Large Catechism, repeatedly places the saving work of God into the hands of the Church as she actively lives out her as the Elect instrument of God. This is seen in Baptism, where God Baptizes sinners through the hands of the pastor, in the Eucharist where the pastor speaks Christ’s own “this is my body,” and in the Absolution, in which the pastor asks, “do you also believe that my forgiveness is God’s forgiveness?”52 This unity between the work of God, and the work of the Elect people of God in participation is seen even more strongly expressed in Luther’s Large Catechism, where he writes:
The Holy Spirit effects our being made holy through the following: the community of saints or Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. That is, he first leads us into his holy community, placing us in the church’s lap, where he preaches to us and brings us to Christ.53
It is here, in this dynamic connectivity between Christ and His Church that these matters of Election, Ecclesiology, Law and Gospel, and the practical life of the Church in mission are grounded back into history. Furthermore, it is in this active participation in God’s mission in the world that the Election of the Church, and the identity of the Church as the Elected people of God coincide into one reality.54 For while a called-one, may renounce the task God has called them to, they would, by so doing, no longer be a called-one. However, when one who is called into the fellowship of God’s Elect, actively participates in this calling, they enter into an active living of this Election, and so live into their identity as the Elect of God.
In final analysis, we may break these aforementioned differences down with a table of distinction between the classical tradition on the one hand, and Wolfhart Pannenberg on the other.
| Topic of distinction | Classical Tradition | Pannenberg |
| The object | One out of many | Fellowship & Individuals therein |
| Subject | God | God & His Elected fellowship |
| Purpose | Salvation | To both enjoy and communicate God’s salvation of the world & to accomplish contextual tasks related to it |
| Contextual grounding | Extra-temporal, extra-situational eternal mind of God | Intra-temporal & contextually grounded in historical situation |
| Conditionality | Either unconditional or conditioned upon foreseen qualities in Elected object | Conditioned upon continued performance of Elected purpose |
| Retractability | Irrevocable | Collectively irrevocable, individually retractable |
| Finality | Final & eternal | Temporal and provisional |
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1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 45-46.
2 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, Trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1968), 142-144.
3 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 24.
4 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, Trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1968), 145.
5 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 47
6 Ibid, 46
7 Ibid, 49-50
8 Ibid, 50
9 Ibid, 51
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid, 51-52
12 Ibid, 53
13 Ibid, 52
14 Ibid, 55
15 Ibid, 55-56
16 Ibid, 56
17 Ibid.
18 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 443
19 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 56.
20 Ibid.
21 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 46.
22 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 439.
23 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 440.
24 Ibid, 440.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid, 442.
27 Ibid, 443
28 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 444.
29 Ibid
30 Ibid, 499
31 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 50
32 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 437.
33 Ibid, 442.
34 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 48-49
35 Ibid, 48-49, 56.
36 Ibid, 48-49
37 Ibid.
38 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 455-456.
39 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History, (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1977), 49.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid, 50.
43 Ibid, 51.
44 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 462.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48Scheuers, Timothy. “Law and Gospel in the Theologies of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Karl Barth: A Comparative Study.” Mid-America Journal of Theology 26 (December 2015): 105–29. EBSCOhost. 123.
49 Ibid, 109.
50 Ibid, 128.
51 Anthony C. Thiselton, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), 316.
52 Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 361.
53 Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 435–436.
54Stanley R. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Second Edition, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 238.
