Wolfhart Pannenberg

Ever a proponent of theology that is anchored in God’s work of cosmic redemption Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that the historical character of the redemptive event must be maintained and asserted in the dialogue with theologies of existence, redemptive history, and with the principles if critical-historical investigation. He does this in response to Bultmann who “dissolves history into the historicity of existence” and against Kähler and Barth who attempted to argue that the “real content of faith is suprahistorical” (or pre-historical in the case of Barth) (314). He sees both of those theologies as yielding to the method of critical-historical investigation for purposes of scientific verification, which in the end has pushed any notion of redemptive event out the door.
Pannenberg goes on to further define history as “event so suspended in tension between promise and fulfillment through that promise [that] it is irreversibly pointed toward the goal of future fulfillment (317).” Understanding that God is a God who acts again and again, that He is a living acting God is what forms the basis for Israel to understand reality as a linear history. Ultimately, Pannenberg will show that “history is reality in its totality”; that is to say that history is the full realization of reality from beginning to end. Or perhaps better stated, history encompasses all of reality past and present simultaneously – of course, this is only possible if it is anchored in God who transcends it all and in the Christ-event which brings the end of history into the midst of history.
Viewing history as the tension between promise and fulfillment brings a new perspective to the nature of our Covenant God and his work in the world. Further, if I am able to properly locate myself within this “history”, then understanding the Christ-event as the ultimate fulfillment of history, as God’s final act of cosmic redemption in the midst of history unfolding, then my location in this promise/fulfillment (what we may call the New Covenant) becomes the basis for my participation in history, empowering my existence towards redeeming the world around me. The implications of these ideas are huge and the reverberations long lasting for believer as we try to live out God's redemption on a daily basis.