Pannenberg on Anthropology

Christian theology has been suspected of being just a form of anthropology since the 19^th Century, and the work of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzche and so on. The danger is that God may be indeed eliminated from the study of theology! This was Barth's great worry, of course, and the root of his insistence that theology not be translated into anthropological terms. He was adamant that this not be the case: and critical of those theologians who he saw as collaborating in the anthropological reduction of theology.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, however , refuses to accept that theology can be cordoned off from other sorts of human knowledge. Or at least, it is a matter of theology's own self-authenticity that it not do so: it cannot park itself off the highways of human reason in a quiet little driveway and remain anything other than superstition. He writes:

If it can be shown that religion is simply a product of the human imagination and an expression of a human self-alienation, the roots of which are analyzed in a critical approach to religion, then religious faith and especially Christianity with its tradition and message will lose any claim to universal credibility in the life of the modern age. The Christian faith must then accept being lumped together with any and every form of superstition.

Without a sound claim to universal validity Christians cannot maintain a conviction of the truth of their faith and message. For a 'truth' that would be simply my truth and would not at least claim to be universal and valid for every human being could not remain true even for me. This consideration explains why Christian cannot but try to defend the claim of their faith to be true. It also explains why in the modern age they must conduct this defence on the terrain of the interpretation of human existence and in a debate over whether religion is an indispensable component of humanness or, on the contrary, contributes to alienate human beings from themselves. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 15)

Pannenberg argues that there isn't an option for Christian theology: it must

begin …reflection with a recognition of the fundamental importance of anthropology for all modern thought and for any present-day claim of universal validity for religious statements. Otherwise they will, even if unintentionally, play into the hands of their atheistic critics, who reduce religion and theology to anthropology, that is, to human assumptions and illusions. By narrowly focusing on the question of human salvation, theologians have undoubtedly forgotten in great measure that the Godness of God and not human religious experience must have first place in theology.

He goes on:

Theologians will be able to defend the truth precisely of their talk about God only if they first respond to the atheistic critique of religion on the terrain of anthropology. Otherwise all their assertions, however impressive, about the primacy of the Godness of God will remain purely subjective assurances without any serious claim to universal validity. p. 16

He maintains, furthermore, that rejecting this anthropological ground is in fact conceding the ground to anthropological suppositions – by reducing theology to mere subjectivity.

Which way are evangelicals going to swing on this?