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Election to Community untoMaximizing Shalom as the Heart of Vocation: Wolfhart Pannenberg and Stanley J. Grenz in Dialogue with John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

By August 18, 2025No Comments

The word vocation today often refers to one’s work or employment in the world. This secularized, individualistic connotation is discernible from definitions like “a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation” or the use of the word calling to describe such a “feeling.”1 Nevertheless, in what follows, the link between vocation and calling is assumed in a way that reclaims vocation’s original theological basis. As the oft-cited saying goes: “For there to be a calling, there must be a Caller”—and Christian theology posits the Triune God as Caller.2

Christian theology also associates calling with the concept of election without conflating the two. The former is understood by some as temporal and the latter as eternal3 Especially in the Christian West, however, election and calling have typically been cast along individualistic lines under soteriology (which individuals are elect and thus “saved”) or ecclesiology (what Christian service am I called to pursue). Meanwhile, the communal aspects and implications of election and calling are often underplayed. Biblically speaking, this is unfortunate considering the election and calling of Israel and the church, both of which are communal realities.

The present work looks to two twentieth-century voices that have been overlooked when it comes to such concerns—the late German Lutheran theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), and his student, the late American evangelical theologian, Stanley J. Grenz (1950–2005).4 Pannenberg took seriously election’s communal contours while also relocating the doctrine away from its customary eternal “abstractness” towards historical “concreteness” (his distinctive use of the terms “abstract” and “concrete” will be explained below)5 As for his American protégé, it is no secret that Grenz was greatly influenced by his Doktorvater. Even so, Grenz put his own stamp on things through using community as his theological program’s “integrative motif”—a move which complemented and furthered Pannenberg’s correctives regarding election6 Taken together, I argue that the complementary formulations of Pannenberg and Grenz on this can help us better understand the inherent nature of vocation in general. Sections one and two thus briefly outline the relevant lines of their proposals regarding election and community in anticipation of my broader argument.

The third section then turns towards constructive engagement by placing Pannenberg and Grenz in dialogue with the Canadian evangelical theologian, John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (born 1960)7 Stackhouse’s writings about vocation serve as a foil to help draw out the inherent significance of Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s ideas surrounding “election to community” while reciprocally contributing helpful language concerning the “permanent human task” of “maximizing shalom” (and the “temporary Christian task” of evangelism and discipleship that is framed by this permanent task)8 I argue that Stackhouse’s advances bring necessary clarity to what “election to community” in Pannenberg and Grenz has always materially intended via their respective usages of the more ambiguous motifs, kingdom and community (instead of shalom). Ultimately, I propose “election to community” (as per Pannenberg/Grenz) unto “maximizing shalom” (as per Stackhouse) as truly representing “the heart of vocation.”

Pannenberg on Election and Community

Upon release of Pannenberg’s 1977 book, Human Nature, Election, and History, a review in the Christian Century quipped: “The most prestigious European Lutheran theologian here plays catch-up ball with the Calvinists, who have known for four centuries and more how to believe in divine election without falling into apathy.”9 Unfortunately, Pannenberg was disappointed by the lack of response to Human Nature, Election, and History in the United States and United Kingdom, especially since the English-speaking world was where the lectures comprising the book’s contents were first delivered.10 In 1993, when he incorporated his mature understanding of election into the third and final volume of his Systematische Theologie (English translation, 1998), a similar lack of response resulted and has continued to the present day.11

This conversational gap means Pannenberg’s correctives have for too long been shielded from view. Yet, what he offers is a viable way forward beyond the Arminian-Calvinist impasse typically found in many theological circles. Along such lines, Pannenberg prefers to frame the debate as being between the doctrinal trajectories of Origen and Augustine—the two figures in whom the likes of the Arminian and Calvinist views, respectively, first show themselves in broad outline.12 In this regard, it is important to point out that Pannenberg’s doctrine of election is in many ways reacting to the abstract and individualistic soteriological tendencies of what he deems as being the more “traditional” or “classical” view.13 On this point, Pannenberg’s use of the word “abstract” requires clarification if we are to read him rightly. He does not mean “abstract” in the sense of pure theoretical ideas that are conceptually difficult to grasp or practically irrelevant. Rather, because Pannenberg’s thought emphasizes how truth unfolds within historical, relational, and communal contexts, the term “concrete” refers to that which is grounded in such historicity. By contrast, the term “abstract” refers to that which is not.

In reacting against the unhistorical abstractness found in the traditional view of election, then, Pannenberg observed that Origen’s understanding of God’s election as being based upon divine foreknowledge of human free choice is in at least one respect similar to Augustine’s monergistic understanding of God’s sovereignty in election.14 Specifically, both locate God’s electing acts as having taken place outside of time, in eternity, prior to history’s beginning. In Pannenberg’s mind, such a move: (1) timelessly abstracts God’s acts of election from the concrete historical process, (2) “detaches individuals as the objects of election from all relations to society,” and (3) “restricts the purpose of election to participation in future salvation in disjunction from any historical function of the elect.”15 Though Origen and Augustine represent different ways of reading Romans 8–9, Pannenberg’s conflation of their interpretations as representing a singular abstract “classical” view led him to conclude that: “This abstract view of election is very different from what the Bible has to say about the election of Israel or of special persons like the patriarchs or kings. Nor does it correspond to what the New Testament says, and especially, indeed, to Pauline statements about the election of Christians.”16

Pannenberg arrives at this conclusion by beginning with Old Testament Israel, pointing out that: “In Israel’s election traditions election is always ‘a concrete historical act on God’s part that forms the starting point and basis of the salvation history of God with his people.’”17 In this vein, he recognizes a plurality of Old Testament election traditions that were sometimes in competition, whether it be those associated with individuals like Abraham, Jacob, and David—or, more important, the election tradition associated with the historical event of the exodus.18 With regard to the latter, Pannenberg maintained that the book of Deuteronomy, which historically looked back to the exodus event, was the first “fully elaborated theology of election” that would “become basic to all subsequent developments.”19 His description of this is worth quoting at length:

What is interpreted here as being chosen, or elected, is the event of Israel’s rescue from Egyptian oppression and especially from the pursuing army of Pharaoh at the Sea of Weeds. This historical event is seen as an expression of God’s love for Israel, and this love is further interpreted as God’s preference for Israel over all other nations. Election is understood as a selection of one out of many. It is the goal of such selection that the beloved one is to belong to God and to share community with God. The historical event of the exodus is understood as providing the foundation of a continuing community, i.e., [as providing the foundation] of God’s history with Israel on the basis of his covenant.20

For Pannenberg, the tie between election and history finds its scriptural roots in the concrete historical events of God’s election as attested in the Old Testament, particularly the historical event of the exodus that would become the constitutional basis for the formation of the covenant community of Israel. Later, in the New Testament, it is the church that arises upon the historical basis of the event “of God’s act of revelation in Jesus Christ.”21 As such, election has more to do with the chosen people of God than with the selection of isolated individuals. This is because those individuals who are chosen—Jesus Christ included—are chosen not for sake of themselves, but for sake of the wider context of the elected community. As Pannenberg himself put it: “The act of election does not pertain to individuals in detachment from all social relation but in relation to specific functions on the peoples’ behalf.”22 He elaborates:

Even if the Old Testament still refers to the election of individuals, this is always in connection with the people (e.g., David in Ps. 78:70–71). Individuals are chosen or called to serve the people. They also undoubtedly come in this way into a relation of special closeness with God. But in Israel it is true even that the election of the kings is related to that of the people and in some sense subordinate to it.23

Nonetheless, if the election of individuals is for sake of the elect community, in Pannenberg’s formulation, the elect community is ultimately elect for the sake of all humanity as well as the entire cosmos. Though Pannenberg does not use these exact words, the elective activity of God can be said to have an unbounded “view to expansion,”24 for it has in its sights a “universal horizon.”25 In his own words, “the electing action of God is not directed only to isolated individuals, but rather to a people, and through this people to the whole of humanity.”26 Once again, it is within the Old Testament where Pannenberg finds inspiration for this insight. Insofar as Abraham is chosen with a promise that is not just for sake of himself or his own family but is ultimately with the blessing of “all the families of the earth” in view (Genesis 12:3), Pannenberg observes that the election of Abraham “introduces a universalistic tendency into the notion of election”—one that Pannenberg believes finds resonance in the New Testament.27

Indeed, all of the aforementioned Old Testament emphases concerning election find their way into Pannenberg’s reading of the New Testament, especially his readings of Paul. On Paul’s reference to Jacob and Esau in Romans 9:13, for example, Pannenberg writes against Augustine’s abstract interpretation, stating that “the point here is simply the freedom of the divine electing, not the relation of election to the eternal salvation of individuals in isolation.”28 More important is Pannenberg’s subsequent comment:

For Paul, however, God’s act of election in the founding of the church of Jews and Gentiles is anchored to the eternity of God, and it is thus inviolable. Hence Rom. 8:28–30 traces back historical calling to the eternal counsel of the divine election and to the predestination in God’s world government that is founded on it. Calling by the gospel is no mere accident; it is an expression of the eternal electing will of God.

Only a detaching of the statements in Rom. 8:29–30 and 9:13, 16, from the content of salvation history in which Paul set them makes it possible to link them to the “abstract” notions of election that since the days of Origen and Augustine have been determinative in the history of the doctrine of predestination.29

Pannenberg’s distinctive understanding of eternity and its relationship to time is important to keep in mind when interpreting the passage just cited. It is his ideas about this, together with his eschatological outlook, which fund his very interesting proposals concerning “the ontological priority of the future.”30 References to these ideas can be discerned from the following quote:

We can clarify the relation between eternal election and temporal calling only by considering the relation between eternity and time in general. We have already shown earlier that eternity is not just the antithesis of time but in its distinction from time is to be thought of as embracing the whole course of time. As the totality of life, which is realized only partially in the sequence of moments in time, and split up by their successiveness, eternity forms also the constitutive basis of time, namely, the condition of relationship in the sequence of temporal moments. To the thought of an eternal counsel of God there thus corresponds as its temporal realization only the totality of temporal occurrence that the ultimate future alone will complete.31

For Pannenberg, eternity is itself constituted by what happens within history. In other words, what happens in history and what will happen in the future, including in the eschaton, has a retroactive effect on all that has come before.32 As acts of election occur within history, they become a part of eternity in a way that eternity has always included the act that has just occurred.33 This then underlies Pannenberg’s concrete “historical” account of election (in contrast to the abstract account of the “classical” view).34 As Pannenberg will go on to argue:

It is only in this light that we can repel the suspicion of determinism that otherwise so easily besets the thought of election “before the foundation of the world” when we relate it to the doctrine of providence, a determinism which precisely in a “triumph of grace” that aims at a final universal reconciliation of all things leaves too little place for human independence.35

Pannenberg’s approach to election thereby ties God’s eternal acts of election to the flow of concrete history. The communal dimensions of election take precedence over against the more traditional emphasis upon individual persons because the communal dimensions of election within history provide the very context for which to historically understand the election of individuals. Nevertheless, both types of election are ultimately seen as being for the sake of all humanity and even all creation through their unbounded eschatologically-oriented “universal horizon.”36

Because the outworking of history contributes to the phenomenon of election, election is “open-ended” in the sense that its beneficiaries are not statically fixed by way of abstract decisions made by God prior to history’s beginning. There is instead a “dynamic inclusiveness” within the flow of history itself.37 Though God’s election of his people is both irrevocable and inviolable, such has more to do not with the election of individuals but with the community that is elect, of which individuals take part, in Christ, in a way that is for the sake not just of themselves or the elect community, but for the sake of all humanity and all the world.38 This is because the elect community (the church), especially in its liturgical life, is a proleptic sign to the world of the kingdom of God—a kingdom defined as the coming unity of all humanity under God, in “a fellowship of freedom, justice, and peace.”39 (Pannenberg had observed in one of his earlier essays that “theologians of the past correctly asserted that where men comply with the will of God, there is the Kingdom of God.”40)

Such a view naturally lends itself, then, to Pannenberg’s recasting of the doctrine of election and its couching within history as functionally being a bridge between ecclesiology and eschatology.41 It is therefore noteworthy that he places the doctrine of election (chapter 14) directly after his chapter on ecclesiology (chapter 13) and just before his final chapter on eschatology (chapter 15). Along with this innovation in the ordering of doctrine, his move to discuss soteriological themes like faith, adoption, and justification under the rubric of ecclesiology rather than having such concerns precede explication for a doctrine of the church (as in most Protestant theologies) is a move that also supports Pannenberg’s shift of accent towards the communal and universal as proposed by his doctrine of election.

Grenz on Election and Community

While Grenz appropriated the main thrust of Pannenberg’s reorienting of election towards community, in Grenz’s Theology for the Community of God, the theme of “Divine Election” came towards the end of his chapter on “Individual Salvation” (chapter 16), which itself fell under the locus of pneumatology (Part 4, chapters 13–16) rather than ecclesiology (Part 5, chapters 17–20). Ecclesiology was then directly followed by Grenz’s final major locus, eschatology (Part 6, chapters 1–24). Despite these differences in thematic progression, Pannenberg’s influence upon Grenz’s treatment of election shone brightly, even if Pannenberg was for the most part neither cited or acknowledged in this particular work.42 Nevertheless, one reason to take Grenz’s treatment seriously is that his brief explication of election is written in a manner that much more clearly conveys several crucial aspects of Pannenberg’s thought on election than does Pannenberg’s own writing on the theme.

After outlining the Calvinist and Arminian views for the general purpose of introducing election as a soteriological theme, Grenz closed these introductory remarks by asking the same question Pannenberg implicitly asked earlier: “Is there any way to move beyond the apparent dilemma? Need we choose between divine sovereignty and human freedom?”43 Grenz then moved into his next sub-section entitled “Election to Community.”44 This move clearly signified that he was seeking to advance the conversation beyond the usual confines of individual soteriology alone. By way of this section’s only explicit appeal to Pannenberg, Grenz suggested that the Calvinist-Arminian “impasse” was due to “the context in which theologies have traditionally posed the question”—namely, that of “the eternal past.”45 Instead of affirming this trajectory, Grenz adopted Pannenberg’s “ontological priority of the future” so as to make much in the present of the eschatological community of God. In this regard, Grenz first downplayed the propriety of “the unfathomable eternal past” as the “orientation point for theology” before stating to the contrary that it is necessary to instead “look to the revealed intention of God for his creation in which his work in history will culminate,” for:

Although it is not chronologically first in the historical flow, the final goal of history is logically first in the order of being. Only the end of the process determines ultimately “what is.” We are, therefore, what we will be. The doctrine of salvation reminds us that “what we will be” is the community of the people of God.46

It is on the basis of this “divine intention” for creation within history that Grenz posits election’s corporateness, especially through the Spirit’s work of uniting believers to Christ by way of participation in the Son’s “glorious relationship” of Sonship to the Father.47 It is this very participatory dynamic that effects the gathering of believers together as the sons and daughters of God into the one body of Christ.48 This, then, is what Grenz interprets as being the true meaning of Paul’s declaration that “in him [i.e., Christ] we were also chosen” (Ephesians 1:11). For Grenz, “election” (i.e., “electedness,” “chosenness”) is to be conceived of as something that is found “in Christ.” It is thus available to us only via a participation in Christ that is in fact a participation in Christ’s own “electedness” and “chosenness.”49

Grenz thus saw election as being “bound with community.” In his mind, “we are elected to community and for community” through “being ‘in Christ,’ and hence participating in a corporate reality” whose scriptural precedents include the election of Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church—both of which were for the expansive sake of blessing the nations.50 In a more mature essay (2002), Grenz found precedent for such an expansiveness in the Old Testament idea of “covenant,” which he believed was inherited by the New Testament writers.51 Specifically, there were two aspects inherent to the Old Testament idea of “covenant” which respectively spoke to its “universal extent” and “universal intent.”52 Whereas the former was illustrated by God’s earlier covenants with Adam and Noah (which “formed the wider context in which his special relationship with Israel stood”), the latter was illustrated by the observation that “God’s purpose was that his elect people be a means through which God could bless all humankind,” for “Israel . . . had been elected for sake of the nations” (Genesis 12:3; Isaiah 41:2).53 For Grenz, “election of the part [was] for the sake of the whole” and “the Christological impulse led the early Christians to apply [this] Old Testament principle to the church.”54 For Grenz, then, “This aspect of the biblical concept of election suggests that the ultimate goal of God’s constituting of a boundaried people is not to exclude but to include,” for at least in Grenz’s mind, “boundaries are meant to be crossed.”55 It is on these grounds that the missional call to evangelism within history gains its inherent meaning and significance in a manner that is much more in keeping with the entirety of the scriptural witness than the Calvinist and Arminian paradigms in their unfortunate historical abstractedness.56 As Grenz himself put it (with his own concrete understanding of things in view):

The great electing event was the coming of Jesus Christ and the pouring out of the Spirit. By virtue of our incorporation into Christ’s body, God has elected us and mandated us to proclaim the gospel in all the world (Matt. 28:16–20). Consequently, we invite people everywhere to join us in serving the grand purpose of God in history which will culminate in the coming of the eschatological community.57

In the meantime, those “who are among the destined to be saved . . . belong to this blessed group by virtue of their connection to the church”—the church that gains its own communal meaning and significance by virtue of its being “in Christ.”58

It should perhaps be mentioned here that Grenz’s self-identification with the conservative American evangelical tradition may account for why he differed from Pannenberg in his continuing to frame the final eschatological judgment as including punitive rather than only purifying purposes.59 It should also be no surprise that Grenz wanted to correctively address the soteriological dimensions of predestination and perseverance, taking as his starting point not the abstract eternal past of the traditional views, but the eschatological future in the light of concrete history.60 In this regard, he wrote that: “The unfolding of history climaxing in the final harvest marks the determination of who is ultimately in Christ and consequently who will participate in the eternal community (Matt. 13:24–30).”61 Romans 8:29–30 was thus interpreted not in terms of predestining decisions made by God in an abstract eternal past that forever determines which individuals are and are not eternally saved, but is rather Paul’s way of collectively assuring believers that their eschatological glorification was sure to occur, for “God’s purpose will be served.”62 As Grenz would go on to elaborate in a way that stressed the latter part of the passage as opposed to the former parts that have typically been emphasized by the traditional views: “The apostle cited as the basis of predestination God’s purpose to glorify those who belong to Christ, that is, who are in Christ and therefore are elect.”63

In having now covered the main lines of Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s respective doctrines of “election to community,” we can briefly summarize the convergence of their thought. By way of their similar understandings of “election to community,” the lived outworking of the concrete historical process is reimbued with a meaning and significance that is unavailable to its eternally-abstract alternatives. Specifically, the choosing of “some” for the communal sake of “the many” takes place in an unbounded way towards a “universal horizon” that is through a “dynamic inclusiveness” via participation in Christ’s own chosenness and electedness. Likewise, the category of vocation—when soteriologically framed by way of election’s “view to expansion” unto the ultimate goal of kingdom (Pannenberg) or community (Grenz)—is also reimbued with historical and eschatological consequence as the proleptic experience of “election to community” in the present reminds us, in the spirit of “the ontological priority of the future,” that “what will be” is in fact “what truly is.”64

Pannenberg and Grenz in Conversation with Stackhouse

Pannenberg’s discussion of the relationship between election and community is perhaps surprising given his emphasis elsewhere on the historical significance of Christianity’s innovative valuing of individual human persons. On this, his ideas consisted of a theologically-grounded “personalism” in which each person’s dignity and autonomy stemmed directly from an immediate relationship to the God who created them and loves them (particularly as such is demonstrated through the Lukan parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, lost son, etc.).65 In many ways, though not his intention, this personalism weighs heavier throughout Pannenberg’s program than does his assertion of an evenly measured approach to the question of priority between the particular and universal, or between the individual and the social or communal.66 Nevertheless, in one of his earliest writings, Pannenberg alludes to a “chain of sociality” in which various levels of the social are not rooted in a “sudden worldwide coming-together of individuals” so much as in the idea of large groups being formed by a collective of smaller groups, which are collectively formed by even smaller groups, cascading downwards towards the terminus of particular individuals or upwards towards the telos of the universal.67 Though Pannenberg’s accent is placed more upon the personal rather than the communal throughout his program, it is in his doctrine of election where the implications of his underlying yet implicit chain of sociality between the particular individual and personal, the varying levels of the communal and social, and the ultimate horizon of the universal becomes most clear.68

Pannenberg’s thought on this is not only a major contribution to the conversation surrounding election but can be considered a contribution to the even broader discussion surrounding vocation and calling as well. An example of how Pannenberg’s and his former student Grenz’s view of “election to community” might help connect loose dots in this latter regard is by applying this type of “electoral-thought chain” to the recent proposals concerning vocation by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.69 Here, I am referring to a certain set of details underlying Stackhouse’s main argument for a “vocational understanding of epistemology” rather than the main argument itself.70 Specifically, what Pannenberg and Grenz can offer Stackhouse is a more helpful way of linking the individual with the communal (not to mention the universal), as opposed to Stackhouse’s own approaches of either implicitly treating them as parallel vocational entities71 or explicitly portraying them as two “poles” of a vocational ellipse.72 In this final section, then, we will seek to show through constructive dialogue with Stackhouse how Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s “election to community” is an indispensably crucial part to the heart of vocation. Further, it is a sentiment that Stackhouse’s views regarding maximizing shalom substantially agrees with and, importantly, also contributes to.

For Stackhouse, the theme of maximizing shalom functions in a manner similar to Pannenberg’s kingdom and Grenz’s community. Shalom is “the biblical ideal” that, through an “imagined future,” comprehensively and eschatologically orients us even now in the present.73 Shalom is the “healthful interdependence of strong, growing creatures who both recognize and rejoice in their need for, and service to, each other, God, and the rest of creation.”74 Far from being simply the absence of “hostility and disruption,” shalom positively encompasses the idea of “flourishing” in a manner that is all-encompassing: “each element (human, animal, plant, and so on) flourishing as itself, enjoying flourishing relationships with everything else, and joining with all creation in flourishing relationship with God.”75

Stackhouse serves as a good foil for our present conversation for at least four reasons. First, in similar vein to Pannenberg’s explicit intentions, Stackhouse does not wish to place the individual and communal in competition. He prefers instead to see these categories as either implicitly being in parallel or, alternatively, explicitly serving as two “poles” of an ellipse.76 The implicit parallelism approach is on display when he writes:

We therefore see three basic components to her [i.e., one’s] sense of discipleship, not merely the idea of imitating Jesus: the revelation of Christ (about who he is, what he does, and what he proclaims), her sense of herself as a particular individual, and then the call of Christ upon her (particular) life. Moreover, this threefold scheme is true for any group of Christians, from a small fellowship to the church universal.77

Or when he opines: “‘What did Jesus say?’ . . . is the wrong question for Christian thought just as ‘What would Jesus do?’ is the wrong question for Christian ethics. ‘What would Jesus want me or us to think, be, and do, here and now?’ is the right question.”78 Such an implicit parallelism can also be discerned from Stackhouse’s comment elsewhere that “God calls particular groups of people and particular individuals to particular ways of making shalom and making disciples.”79 In extension of this, chapter seven of his Making the Best of It and chapter two of his Why You’re Here are structured in a parallel way that applies vocation first to “All of Us,” then to “Some of Us,” and finally to “Each of Us.”80 Stackhouse observes that “the Old Testament oscillates between emphases on corporate and individual responsibilities and consequences”81 while “The New Testament books are written mostly to churches” but with “the governing expectation . . . that individual Christians are members of congregations.”82 He explains that humanity’s and creation’s end goal of shalom includes the importance of both the individual and the social without prioritizing one over the other or dissolving the former into the latter, as in mysticism.83 “Individuality . . . properly construed is a crucial value of the Christian religion, and individuality of thought needs to be prized and protected alongside due regard for communities and traditions” when it comes to “responsible Christian thought.”84 Moreover, amidst the “perennial” question surrounding whether Christians best bring about societal improvement through “the conversion of individuals” (as per the ministry of Billy Graham) or “the conversion of social structures” (as per the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr), Stackhouse aptly responds that “The correct answer, of course, is both.85

Despite these explicit attempts to balance individual and communal, the second reason why Stackhouse serves as a good foil for us is that the overall accent of Stackhouse’s understanding of vocation falls more heavily upon the individual over against the communal, even if inadvertently—and this is similar to Pannenberg’s overall program (if not Pannenberg’s proposals concerning election’s communal orientation). Stackhouse of course seeks to account for this when he writes that he is self-consciously focusing his discussion of vocation upon individual disciples “for simplicity’s sake” before adding the qualification: “But we will regularly remind ourselves that these ideas apply also, at least in most cases, to groups.”86 Along such lines, it is not difficult to see how his statements about individuals are in many places easily transferrable to groups, as in the following example (in which the potential transpositions are indicated in brackets): “Each person [or group] is called by God to play a particular role in the gardening of the world. No one [or group] is useless, no one [or group] is free of responsibility, and each [individual or group] is called to contribute to the generic human task of contributing to shalom.87

At the same time, one senses a running undercurrent throughout Stackhouse’s thought that—in reactionary response to what he sees as an overemphasis in recent years upon the communal over the individual—seeks to reassert the place of the individual in a way that in effect (if not intention) relativizes the place of the communal. Especially pertinent to our present discussion, one wonders if Stackhouse is including his former colleague Grenz when he writes without specifying names that “For some time now, contemporary theology—not least among evangelical Christians—has decried individualism in theology in favor of a renewed emphasis upon thinking ‘in community’”, before later adding that “Some of this rhetoric about community and church and ecumenicity and so on sounds, to be sure, romantically unrealistic.”88 Or if Grenz is an implicit target when Stackhouse writes that “One of the great useless emphases of our time is the championing of community over individualism, as if the former is good and the latter bad—indeed, as if the former is a kind of cure for the latter.89 Stackhouse remarks that such “sentimentality” for the communal “sometimes is touted, even by intelligent theologians and preachers who ought to know better.90 With appeals to historic individual figures like Francis, Luther, Kierkegaard, and the Apostle Paul, Stackhouse cautions that:

Sentimental championing of communal thinking takes insufficiently into account the continuing need for prophetic (reminding) and creative (discovering) thought proffered by individuals or small fellowships of intellectual innovators. Furthermore, communities of Christians do not escape the dynamics of group behavior that may impede the Spirit’s voice91

This last sentence gives the general impression that it is individuals who seem to fare better than groups at discerning the voice of the Spirit92 thereby leading Stackhouse to conclude that any insistence “that ‘the church’ ought to have something like ‘epistemological priority’ is merely to sloganeer,” and that “Any Christian epistemology must be wary of any method that eulogizes the ecclesial context of Christian thought without serious qualifications.”93

Yet, perhaps Stackhouse’s most unequivocal favoring of the individual comes in a footnote affirmingly citing the words of Glenn Tinder:

Like every human being, a Christian is set apart from all others by a separate mind and a separate will. In contemporary social thought . . .  ‘individualism’ has become a pejorative term. It might be argued, however, that individualism originates in God. Not only did God refrain from giving us a common mind and will; he did not elect to save us in groups. Salvation depends always on a personal commitment, and this commitment can cause one to be not only isolated and scorned but even killed. Each one alone must decide what is true and false, and right and wrong. Granted, the surrounding social order helps one do this; but the social order offers nothing that can take the place of personal resolution and effort94

In this light, it makes sense that some running themes in Stackhouse’s thought are that “God strategically deploys individuals, not just groups”,95 that “the individual human being matters and . . . is called by God to play a part that matters”,96 that “not only do we ourselves matter as individuals, but so do the individuals whom we influence everyday”,97 that human beings are “created as individuals” but are (merely) “enveloped by communities”98 and that “community” is nothing “other than a God-given mode of human existence with which she (i.e., one) properly reckons as she sorts out ethics as a responsible individual—for herself, but not by herself.”99

For Stackhouse—in effect if not intention—the individual has been elevated throughout with regard to priority and significance while the communal has been relativized as being a “mode of human existence” that individuals formatively experience. In defense of Stackhouse, this relativization of the communal is descriptively helpful (even if a stronger ontology of the communal is to be preferred). Without falling for the “postmodern” epistemological trap of a radical social constructivism, Stackhouse cogently recognizes the indispensable role of social realities (e.g., context) when it comes to the formation of human persons and particularly the way in which such individual persons come to “know” things.100 In his own words: “Well short of any extreme social constructivism . . . even strikingly original thinkers throughout history show themselves to be men and women ‘of their times,’ working within—even as they stretch and perhaps reshape—the categories and convictions of their day.”101 He further comments that: “a social dimension to our thinking is simply a given, and the wise person takes that context as thoroughly and clearly into account as she can,”102 as such awareness especially aids us in the task of negotiating what “to accept or to alter” with regard to “what and how we think.”103

Even so, Stackhouse’s recasting of the individual and communal as being in parallel—or by way of the different metaphor of two “poles” of a vocational ellipse—lacks a more palpable “thread” that can help “string” them together along a continuum that more readily also includes the universal.104 The third reason for why Stackhouse’s thought serves as a good foil for us, then, is because of my contention that Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s proposals surrounding “election to community” can formally serve as just such a thread if reappropriated towards the category of vocation. I use the word “formally” here because the desire for such continuity is already embedded within Stackhouse’s proposals. What remains missing, though, is a stated mechanism that can more effectively connect individual, communal, and universal together. “Election to community,” applied to vocation, can be that formal mechanism—and in fact, this type of close linking between election and vocation (without conflating the two) is a move that is not foreign to Pannenberg. As Pannenberg himself once put it: “If possibility is conceived not only in terms of formal alternatives [e.g., destiny vs. freedom] but in terms of a lure or of some special calling that is accompanied by a corresponding element of responsibility, then the notions of vocation and election seem rather close at hand.”105 Pannenberg’s association of election with “covenantal responsibility” and “judgment” (a cue he receives from the Old Testament minor prophet Amos as well as the other prophetic writings in scripture) also leads him to refer both positively and negatively to the possibility of a “secular” or “public” doctrine of election.106 Such is a move that further correlates election with vocation in a manner that, while deserving of further elaboration and exploration in future work on Pannenberg, is for now simply mentioned here as a constructively conducive point for our dialogue with Stackhouse.

For both Pannenberg and Grenz, election and vocation “to community” are framed by a chain of sociality (an “electoral-thought chain” from individual election and vocation, through to all levels of communal election and vocation, cascading upwards towards the universal).107 This chain of sociality is concrete in its eschatologically-framed historicity rather than being abstract by way of a static eternality, and as such, it is characterized by a “dynamic inclusiveness.”108

In speaking of humanity’s calling to maximize shalom, Stackhouse’s proposals reflect this chain without directly utilizing it. Stackhouse refers, for example, to humanity’s call to maximize shalom “in the context of love for God, love for neighbor, and love for all creation.”109 He writes that “God made us for one express purpose: to garden the rest of the planet” (Genesis 1:26–28),110 that the “dominion” given humanity by virtue of having been created in the image of God “is an oversight on behalf of others,”111 that “the New Testament emphasis is not on freedom for the Christian to live freely per se, but on freedom for the Christian to live freely for the other,”112 that “The fundamental ethical question for groups . . . is precisely how they are contributing to shalom,”113 that “the church maintains its integrity—literally, its integration around God in worship and with each other in fellowship—both for the intrinsic importance of authentic worship and fellowship and for the benefit of the world,”114 and that when it comes to the biblical vision of shalom, both unity and diversity are prized, for “It is one city, with one Lord, the capital of a single world. But the nations enter as such, in their evident differences, bringing the best of their cultures in tribute to the one King of all and in contribution to the mutual benefit of all.”115 Taken together, all of this speaks to a definition of vocation (or, if I may—election) that is for the sake of and thus oriented “to community”—a definition of vocation that cascades upwards unto the universal that is all humanity and even the entire created cosmos.116 Importantly, this is precisely what Pannenberg and Grenz were seeking to say via their respective proposals surrounding “election to community”—an election that, in the words of Stackhouse, truly is for the sake of “maximizing shalom.” We mention again here that shalom is a thoroughly biblical word and eschatological concept that helps to clarify the essential content of what Pannenberg intended through his use of the also biblical but more elusive term, the kingdom of God, and what Grenz intended through his use of the arguably non-biblical and perhaps even more elusive term, community.117 Just as Pannenberg and Grenz receive helpful clarification through conversation with Stackhouse, so also Stackhouse’s proposals would become more complete and coherent if he were to explicitly employ Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s “election to community.”

In offering these above reflections, I have now hinted at my own proposed formulation that “Election to community unto maximizing shalom is the heart of vocation.” But en route to concluding this, there remains a fourth reason why Stackhouse serves as a good foil for our inquiry into Pannenberg and Grenz. On this, Stackhouse helpfully categorizes the three main ways in which, historically, the terms vocation and calling have often been tied to the idea of work—whether it be (a) by way of a direct association with one’s full-time work in the world, be it religious or secular, (b) by way of a calling to Christian activities that are decidedly not a part of one’s work in the world, or (c) the view that Stackhouse himself prefers: an understanding “that work is part of vocation” in a way that vocation is redefined to be inclusive of every aspect of life, so as to obliterate the hierarchical elitism that pits so-called “super-Christians” against the just “regular Christians.”118 Stackhouse then unfolds this preferred understanding of vocation through a very insightful discussion of “Creation and the Permanent Human Vocation” which will last into the eschaton, a.k.a. “maximizing shalom” (Genesis 1:26–28) and “Salvation and the Temporary Christian Vocation” of mission and evangelism that “exist, so to speak, for the larger purposes of the [permanent] Creation Commandments” (Matthew 28:18–20).119 Again, I find this distinction between the “permanent human” and “temporary Christian” tasks to be immensely helpful when it comes to the fuller picture of vocation, and I do believe that Pannenberg and Grenz would both subscribe to such categories if they had access to such conceptual language.

Nevertheless, we would be wise to reflect upon whether vocation should primarily or only be centered upon “work” or “tasks.” In several places, Stackhouse emphasizes that God is a God who desires “to get things done” and that, as such, our “mission” (i.e., “vocation”) as human beings and as Christians in this world is also “to get things done.”120 In response, there is a sense in which a thorough refocusing of the heart of vocation upon “election to community”—with the help of Pannenberg and Grenz—is able to retain the positives gained by Stackhouse’s more task-based arguments for vocation while at the same time providing us with an even wider context within which “to work” (if I may use a double-entendre here) than the more limited contexts of the permanent and temporary tasks.

Namely, one important element that this renewed emphasis upon “election to community” gives us that the more conventional views of election and especially vocation perhaps do not is an increased indicative stress upon who we are (in Christ) to be and to be for, which of course by way of extension is inclusive of the more typical imperative stress upon what we are called (in Christ) to do.121 “Election to community” stresses that our election is not only about what we do, but is more importantly about who we are and are for by way of the “community” that we have been “elected to.” My saying this is not to suggest that Stackhouse would necessarily disagree, but more to say that this difference in accent carries implications for how we might not only think about but also live out our understanding of election and vocation in our real lived lives. Stackhouse’s desire for vocation to include every aspect of life in a manner that fulfils both the permanent human and temporary Christian tasks unto maximizing shalom is of course to be upheld. Yet rather than focusing primarily upon vocation as “task,” a reframed emphasis upon the broader and more expansive basis of election to a new communal identity reorients who we are and are for while also determining both the generalities of and general context for what we are then specifically called by the Caller to do. At the same time, whereas Pannenberg’s and Grenz’s “election to community” encapsulates who we are called to be and be for, Stackhouse’s parsing of vocation as ultimately being about “maximizing shalom” helpfully brings greater clarity and much needed specificity to the implicit vocational imperative that “election to community” entails. Along all the above lines, I hereby propose that “election to community unto maximizing shalom is the heart of vocation.”

Cite this article
Clement Y. Wen, “Election to Community untoMaximizing Shalom as the Heart of Vocation: Wolfhart Pannenberg and Stanley J. Grenz in Dialogue with John G. Stackhouse, Jr.”, Christian Scholar’s Review, 49:4 , 31-50

Footnotes

  1. Lexico, s.v. “vocation,” accessed 29 November 2020, https://www.lexico.com/definition/vocation.
  2. R. Paul Stevens, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (Eerdmans, 2000), 139.
  3. See for example Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Eerdmans, 1998), 449 (hereafter ST3).
  4. Pannenberg spent the bulk of his career as a member of the Protestant faculty at the University of Munich. He came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s through his proposals surrounding “revelation as history” and has since been considered one of the most complete systematic theologians of the twentieth century. Grenz was Pannenberg’s doctoral student at Munich in the early 1980s and became known for his proposals concerning a postmodern revisioning for evangelical theology in the early 1990s. His most productive years were spent as a faculty member at Regent College and Carey Theological College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
  5. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election, and History (The Westminster Press, 1977), hereafter HNEH; ST3, 435–526. Several recent works have encouragingly made reference to Pannenberg’s doctrine of election: Clark H. Pinnock, “Divine Election as Corporate, Open, and Vocational,” in Perspectives on Election: Five Views, ed. Chad Brand (Broadman & Holman, 2006), 276–314; Kent Eilers, Faithful to Save: Pannenberg on God’s Reconciling Action (Bloomsbury, 2011), 64, 78, 94–5, 153–4; Gunther Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, trans. Philip Stewart (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 201–6; Walter Dietz, “Kirche und Erwählung in der Theologie W. Pannenbergs,” in Kirche und Reich Gottes: Zur Ekklesiologie Wolfhart Pannenbergs, ed. Gunther Wenz (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 145–56; Friederike Nüssel, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, ed. Paul Avis (Oxford University Press, 2018), 487–504; Jae Yang, “Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Postfoundational Ecclesiology,” Ecclesiology 16 (2020): 76–98; Clement Yung Wen, An ‘Open-Ended Distinctiveness’: The Contemporary Relevance of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Participatory Ecclesiology and Ecumenism for World Christianity (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021).
  6. Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (InterVarsity, 1993), 137–62; Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Eerdmans, 2005 [1994]), hereafter TCG; Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 203–38 (hereafter BF).
  7. Stackhouse studied for his master’s degree under Mark Noll at Wheaton College (1982) and then for his doctorate under Martin E. Marty at the University of Chicago (1987). His many publications span the spectrum of Christian history, theology, ethics, and apologetics. Stackhouse held eminent faculty chair positions in Canada at Regent College and then Crandall University, from which he departed in 2023 under disputed circumstances. Despite this, his work continues to offer valuable insights across multiple fields. I will mainly be referring to the following works by Stackhouse: John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford University Press, 2008), hereafter MTBOI; John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2014), hereafter NTK; and John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Why You’re Here: Ethics for the Real World (Oxford University Press, 2018), hereafter WYH.
  8. Stackhouse, NTK, 68–80.
  9. Review of HNEH in The Christian Century (15 February 1978): 171.
  10. Stanley J. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2005), 255.
  11. Donna Bowman’s The Divine Decision: A Process Doctrine of Election (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), Suzanne McDonald’s Re-Imaging Election: Divine Election as Representing God to Others and Others to God (Eerdmans, 2010), and Stephen N. Williams’s The Election of Grace: A Riddle without a Resolution? (Eerdmans, 2015) all minimally reference Pannenberg without truly describing or engaging him; Mark R. Lindsay’s God Has Chosen: The Doctrine of Election through Christian History (Eerdmans, 2020) does not mention Pannenberg at all.
  12. Pannenberg, ST3, 439–42.
  13. Pannenberg, ST3, 439–42.
  14. Pannenberg, ST3, 439–42.
  15. Pannenberg, ST3, 439–42, especially 442.
  16. Pannenberg, ST3, 442.
  17. Pannenberg, ST3, 442, where he is quoting Klaus Koch, “Zur Geschichte der Erwählungsvorstellung in Israel,” Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 67 (1955): 205–26, at 212.
  18. Pannenberg, HNEH, 48.
  19. Pannenberg, HNEH, 47–8.
  20. Pannenberg, HNEH, 48.
  21. Pannenberg, ST3, 443.
  22. Pannenberg, ST3, 443.
  23. Pannenberg, ST3, 455, emphases mine.
  24. See Ross Hastings, Missional God, Missional Church: Hope for Re-Evangelizing the West (IVP Academic, 2012), 111–12.
  25. Dietz, “Kirche und Erwählung,” 146–7 n. 7.
  26. My own translation of Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Die Bedeutung des Alten Testaments für den christlichen Glauben (1997),” in Beiträge zur Systematischen Theologie, vol. 1: Philosophie, Religion, Offenbarung (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 255–65, at 264: “das erwählende Handeln Gottes nicht nur auf vereinzelte Individuen richtet, sondern auf ein Volk, und durch dieses Volk auf die ganze Menschheit.”
  27. Pannenberg, HNEH, 48–9; the word “universalistic” here ought not to be confused with “universalism,” which Pannenberg was hesitant about in ST3, 610–20.
  28. Pannenberg, ST3, 444.
  29. Pannenberg, ST3, 444, emphasis mine.
  30. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (The Westminster Press, 1969), 62–3 (hereafter TKG).
  31. Pannenberg, ST3, 449, emphases mine.
  32. Pannenberg, TKG, 62–3.
  33. Pannenberg, TKG, 62–3.
  34. Pannenberg, ST3, 449.
  35. Pannenberg, ST3, 453.
  36. Dietz, “Kirche und Erwählung,” 146–7 n. 7.
  37. Pannenberg, ST3, 523; Wenz, Introduction, 216.
  38. Pannenberg, ST3, 462.
  39. Pannenberg, ST3, xv; see also Nüssel, “Wolfhart Pannenberg,” 500.
  40. Pannenberg, TKG, 51.
  41. Grenz, Reason for Hope, 202–4.
  42. The following paragraphs rely heavily upon Grenz, TCG, 452–5; Grenz mentions Pannenberg once in this section but owes him much more credit. Grenz later made up for this lack, e.g., in BF, 203–73.
  43. Grenz, TCG, 448–52 especially 452.
  44. Grenz, TCG, 452–5.
  45. Grenz goes on to elaborate: “for they inquire about the decree concerning the final salvation of individuals present in the mind of God prior to creation.” See TCG, 452.
  46. Grenz, TCG, 452–3, emphasis mine.
  47. Grenz, TCG, 453; the word “Sonship” here is inclusive of both “sons” and “daughters”; participation in Christ’s “Sonship” is basis for adoption as “children” of God.
  48. Grenz, TCG, 453.
  49. Grenz, TCG, 453; also 479.
  50. Grenz, TCG, 453, where Deuteronomy 7:6–8, Genesis 12:3, Isaiah 2:3, and 42:1 are cited; see also his later “Die Begrenzte Gemeinschaft (‘The Boundaried People’) and the Character of Evangelical Theology,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45, no. 2 (2002): 301–16, especially at 302–5 (hereafter DBG).
  51. Grenz, DBG, 303–5; see also Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era, 2nd ed. (Baker, 2006), 278–80.
  52. Grenz, DBG, 303–4.
  53. Grenz, DBG, 303–4.
  54. Grenz, DBG, 304, where Grenz refers to the word studies of H. Seebass, “bachar,” in TDOT 2.82–3 and G. Schrenk, “eklektos,” in TDNT 4.192.
  55. Grenz, DBG, 304.
  56. Grenz, TCG, 453.
  57. Grenz, TCG, 453.
  58. Grenz, DBG, 313.
  59. Grenz, TCG, 641–4, esp. 642; cf. Pannenberg, ST3, 610–20.
  60. Grenz, TCG, 453–4.
  61. Grenz, TCG, 453.
  62. Grenz, TCG, 454.
  63. Grenz, TCG, 454; see also Stanley J. Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 226–33 (hereafter SGRS).
  64. Grenz, BF, 239–73.
  65. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christianity, Marxism, and Liberation Theology,” Christian Scholar’s Review 18, no. 3 (1989): 215–26; see also Wen, An ‘Open-Ended Distinctiveness’, 117–22, 168–81.
  66. See note 65 above.
  67. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Reich Gottes und Nationalismus. Vom politischen Sinn der christlichen Hoffnung,” Kontexte 1 (1965): 41–48, especially at 45–46.
  68. Pannenberg’s HNEH and ST3.
  69. See note 7 above.
  70. As articulated in NTK, Stackhouse’s main argument about vocation entails a “radical connection of vocation and epistemology” by which “we can count on God granting us knowledge only according to our vocation—only, as the saying goes, on a ‘need to know’ basis” (21, emphasis in original; see also 19–20).
  71. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 166, 202–3 and chapter 7; WYH, 42 and chapter 2; NTK, 81–2.
  72. See Stackhouse, MTBOI, 250 and WYH, 111–2.
  73. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 202; WYH, 42; NTK, 66–7.
  74. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 253; WYH, 118.
  75. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 202; cf. Pannenberg on kingdom (ST3, 97–8); Grenz and Franke on community (BF, 235 and note 117 below).
  76. See notes 71 and 72 above.
  77. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 166, emphasis mine.
  78. Stackhouse, NTK, 62, emphasis mine.
  79. Stackhouse, NTK, 81–2 (point 4).
  80. Stackhouse, MTBOI, chapter 7 and WYH, chapter 2.
  81. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 250; WYH, 112.
  82. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 176.
  83. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 202–3 and WYH, 42.
  84. Stackhouse, NTK, 185–6.
  85. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 228; WYH, 54–5.
  86. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 166
  87. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 231; WYH, 60–61, and 193.
  88. Stackhouse, NTK, 175–6; on this, see as an example Grenz and Franke, BF, 203–38. Prior to Grenz’s unexpected passing in 2005, Stackhouse and Grenz were colleagues at Regent College.
  89. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 177; on Grenz, see note 88 above.
  90. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 177; on Grenz, see note 88 above.
  91. Stackhouse, NTK, 184, emphasis in original.
  92. On this, see also Stackhouse, MTBOI, 227–8; WYH, 53–54.
  93. Stackhouse, NTK, 185.
  94. Glenn Tinder, The Fabric of Hope, An Essay (Scholars Press, 1999), 106, as cited in Stackhouse, NTK, 185 n. 89.
  95. Stackhouse, WYH, 112; MTBOI, 250.
  96. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 232; WYH, 61.
  97. Stackhouse, WYH, 61.
  98. Stackhouse, WYH, 112.
  99. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 177–8, emphases in original; NTK, 186.
  100. Stackhouse, NTK, 172–3.
  101. Stackhouse, NTK, 173.
  102. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 176.
  103. Stackhouse, NTK, 175.
  104. See notes 71 and 72 above.
  105. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Providence, God, and Eschatology,” in The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, ed. Niels Henrik Gregersen (Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), 49–60, at 59.
  106. While most of what Pannenberg and Grenz explicitly say about calling and vocation is conditioned by the usual soteriological and ecclesial discussions and categories (Pannenberg, ST3, 148, 229, 376–7, 394, 399–401, 447–56 and 483; Grenz, TCG, 413–4, 456 and 565–7), insofar as Israel and the church are paradigmatic examples of “election to community,” a possible theological extension that is especially highlighted by Pannenberg is the idea of divine calling and election taking place within history apart from Israel and the church for some sort of sovereignly-instituted yet communally-oriented divine purpose (e.g., of historical individuals, organizations, or even nations within “the world”—the example of Cyrus being a case in point; 2 Chronicles 36:23, Ezekiel 1:1–2). For an initial look at this “secular” or “public” doctrine of election which Pannenberg spoke of both positively and negatively with reference to covenantal responsibility and judgment, see his HNEH, 81, 96–7; ST3, 518–21.
  107. See note 67 above.
  108. In his later years, Grenz constructively sought to define “human vocation” along the anthropological lines of what it eschatologically means in the present “to be the imago dei” (SGRS, xi)—not only by way of human persons engaging in the task of “loving after the manner of the triune God” (320), but more importantly, also by way of a pneumatological participation in Christ (i.e., “in the trinitarian life of God”) (325), unto “the new humanity” of a relationally-constituted “ecclesial self” and all that such a “self” communally entails (see 312–36, especially 312). Pannenberg approved of Grenz’s overall proposal (SGRS, back cover).
  109. Stackhouse, NTK, 80–1.
  110. Stackhouse, NTK, 58.
  111. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 186, emphasis in original; WYH, 23.
  112. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 228; WYH, 55.
  113. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 228; WYH, 55.
  114. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 235, emphasis mine.
  115. Stackhouse, MTBOI, 203, emphasis mine; WYH, 43–4.
  116. See note 80 above.
  117. This, despite Grenz’s belief that “community” brought clarity to “the pervasive biblical term,” kingdom; see Grenz and Franke, BF, 235.
  118. Stackhouse, NTK, 67–8, emphases in original; MTBOI, 221–2.
  119. Stackhouse, NTK, 68–80.
  120. Stackhouse, WYH, 32, 274, 286; NTK, 123, 141, 242.
  121. Grenz, SGRS, 12.

Clement Y. Wen

Clement Yung Wen is Assistant Professor of systematic and historical theology and the Howard and Shirley Bentall Chair in Evangelical Thought at McMaster Divinity College in Canada

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