Pannenberg’s Doctrine of Resurrection as Science

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that Wolfhart Pannenberg’s doctrine of resurrection can be demonstrated as science. I utilize the so-called “soft” sciences (history and anthropology) alongside the “hard” sciences (cosmology and neuroscience) to demonstrate the rationality of the ostensibly miraculous resurrection. In the discussion, I argue against empiricists who posit the impossibility of the resurrection on account of analogy to favor Pannenberg’s approach of contingency and human exocentricity. Paralleling the shift in Pannenberg’s own theological approach from anthropology to the Trinity, I also argue that Pannenberg’s focus on the hard sciences in his later career reflects his concern for a more “objective” approach. Related to the hard sciences, I take the principle of continuity/discontinuity which touches on issues such as contingency, field theory, time and eternity, and various cosmological theories to demonstrate the scientific possibility of the resurrection that is both this worldly and other worldly. Moreover, using neuroscientific insights, I argue that the resurrection is not an immortality of the soul but a new body, consistent with modern science’s emphasis on physicalism, lifted by a scientifically explained exocentric field. In the discussion, I argue that Pannenberg is a modified Kuhnian who underscores evidence and facts but also the context from which they emerge.