Summary in English
The purpose of this essay has been to examine the Christology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, and especially his interpretation of the belief in Jesus as true God and true man. The consequences for his ontology and his view of the incarnation are also focused upon.
Fundamental features in the Christology of Pannenberg demand a closer examination in this connection. First, christological method regarding which a certain development can be shown from the early to the late writings of Pannenberg. According to my view, the later Pannenberg is more balanced in his way of describing the christological movements "from above" and "from below" and how these movements complement each other. In contradistinction to his mature Systematic Theology, in Jesus, God and Man from the 1960s he was more categorically an advocate of the from-below-perspective.
Secondly, Pannenberg risks his entire Christology claiming the historicity of the resurrection. The centrality of the resurrection in Pannenberg's thought implies a very careful proof of its historicity. This is especially striking in Jesus - God and Man. An obvious connection between his painstaking effort to prove the historicity of the resurrection and the central concept of God's self-revelation in the historical Jesus can also be established. As the Father is believed to have confirmed Jesus' claim to the Kingdom precisely through the resurrection, the historicity of this event becomes necessary for upholding the belief in Jesus as true God, according to my reading of Pannenberg.
As a third point, I contend that Pannenberg understands the incarnation itself as being dependent on the Father's confirmation of Jesus through the resurrection. This means further that he rejects a view of the incarnation as isolated event connected to Jesus' birth, and hence the view that Jesus is constituted as true God and true man through his birth exclusively.
The fourth and in my view most important finding is the close relation between the ontology of Pannenberg's Christology and his concept of revelation as history. The latter can partly be understood as an effort to link up more closely with the "ontology" of Jewish apocalyptic expectation, without disqualifying the more static ontological approach of classical Christology altogether.
My critique against Pannenberg can be summed up...
