Christ vs. Pannenberg vs. the Hermeneutic Death Spiral, pt 4:
Pannenberg still does not make the claim, but my comment here is that it surely could be said they pointed to God as lawgiver, but only a spiritual lawgiver who sees all physical morality as only a reflection of the inner morality of how the Truth is received and handled and a decision is made over its claim. That claim and our challenge are around the Prophetic Word since it is the only means of proving God and giving any legitimacy at all to the idea of any kind of morality.
The Outer revelation of history was then spoken of differentiated and interrelated to an inspiration of the effect and interpretation of these events in the subjectivity of the biblical witnesses in Protestant theology of the 18th and 19th centuries. As with Schleiermacher, “the content of revelation is viewed as independent of both practical and theoretical religion,” “related to religious awareness of the personal God regarded as the basis for awareness.”
“At this point the idea of the historical revelation that is distinct from inspiration linked up with the notion that revelation has God not merely as its subject but also its exclusive content and theme.” That is, “God” the concept, we must remind ourselves.
Pannenberg states that this is virtually the first time there was the suggestion that God is the central theme of revelation, “the self-revelation of God, while not making any serious attempt where this takes place. But since God is manifest to us and not just to himself, how does this revelation take place?” You see, that God is the theme of revelation seems very pious and correct, but not once we realize that these people are speaking of a revelation of concept and a revelation of demonstration, the former of which in the carnal mind always takes preeminence since if one isolates it one can determine for himself its demonstration which for which he will become morally responsible.
The decay of the protestant doctrine of the authority of scripture viewed as divine revelation continued, which predictably led to Kant who then found serious doubt in the reality of God, finding no possible positive basis.
In concluding this condensation of Pannenberg, I remark that in each occurrence it is an idea, a chosen symbol, that is taking the place and function of the prophetic symbol of God and the prophetic predicate in the Prophetic Word. “Inspiration” or “revelation,” no matter how biblical, are devices used only for tagging and carrying what substantiates them which, if divine, is beyond the choice of manipulation. These divine symbols are supposed to be the result of an appearance subjectively of the reality and nature of God where natural lawless subjectivity is set in moral order and guard by a historical truth by the God of Truth. ”Truth” is a concept, a symbol, which is known subjectively, but subjectivity does not determine it. It is the sinful place which nevertheless invites the divine fact of prophetic cause and effect into a space that also loves Truth and is searching for truth beyond subjectivity which can make an identification of natural subjective influences from transcendent ones. The divine fact that is accepted there determines subsequent subjectivity. Any talk of “morality” is a morality of the handling of the prophetic word of demonstration in the way it was intended by God, the only cause for which Christ, as its equivalent informational entity, can be the only mediator between man and the Father. Our theological topics and concerns, all our doctrines and dogma, all our systems, all our faith and practice and the way we form our dominant conceptual points of contact with God, come from this Prophetic Word or else, at least in time, they will come only from us and tainted by our less than holy hands.
This is why one idea always decays and another is taken up, with the same results. Since this historical miracle of promise and fulfillment is not believed or used as the biblical vital center and found a fundamental theological use, we are only left to the vicissitudes of and labor of the creations of the inner and outer temporal world to squeeze out any conception of divine revelation. Our problem is externally our obsession with opaque and prosaic language in general, but more pointedly a problem of ability or willingness to be moved in our thinking about eternal things by any fact or phenomena to which we will be locked and morally judged for our handling.
You will find Pannenberg’s book here:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Systematic_Theology.html?id=ontO0BIwVJUC
The next article in this series is here:How Can a Man Be the Atoning Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Only One Way. Part 5. The Man and Symbolism.
What is the Word of God?: A Prophetic Think Tank
When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, part 1: A Prophetic Think Tank
Christ and the Noun Norming of Transcendence: Passing by Nehushtan
