What is Pannenberg's Eschatological Idea of Resurrection?

Wolfhart Pannenberg

      Wolfhart Pannenberg is known by many as a theologian of the Theology of Hope.  He is also a German Lutheran.  During his years in college, Pannenberg studied both philosophy and theology at universities including Gottingen, Basel, and Heidelberg.  One of Pannenberg's teachers was actually Karl Barth. 

      Pannenberg holds a very strong view of history.  He believes that history itself reveals God's action in the past and gives hope for the future action of God.  Philosophy and science seem to have a large impact on Pannenberg's theology.  One example is that Pannenberg stresses creation of doctrine by strong historical evidence and analysis which points towards the Kingdom of God in the future .  History is eschatological in the way that the climax of history is the Kingdom of God.  Therefore, history can point us in the direction of God and give hope towards his Kingdom. 

      In order to understand Pannenberg's eschatological idea of the resurrection, we need this understanding of Pannenberg's view of history.  Jesus, according to Pannenberg, is a very eschatological figure.  Pannenberg claims that Jesus' historical resurrection confirms the hope of the future Kingdom of God.  By this, Jesus is confirmed as the one who is to lead us to the Kingdom of God.  Jesus' resurrection provides a foundation and evidence for the hope of our future resurrection.

      The experience of the resurrection is in the future.  Thus Christ's resurrection provides us hope, but does not make our own future resurrection real.  It is in the future that the general resurrection will become real and we will see that it was true all along.  Events in the future are confirmed by their occurrence which reveals that they were true all along.  Therefore, we do not experience our own resurrection with Christ now, but after it happens it will be as if it always was. 

      Pannenberg's views of history and its eschatological nature of revealing God and the path towards the Kingdom of God are very interesting.  His view of the resurrection is sometimes hard to follow.  Much of what one needs to know in order to make sense of Pannenberg's view on resurrection is his understanding of history and its beginning and ending (or at least climactic continuation). 


Here are some interesting sites and videos concerning Pannenberg: 



This is a lecture Pannenberg gave in regards to Frank Tipler's book The Physics of Immortality.  Pannenberg discusses resurrection in this.
http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/tipler/tipler3.html

These following videos are very interesting.  However, the second one does not finish the lecture.  I cannot find the next clip in the series though...sorry.