God, the Future, and the Fundamentum of History in Wolfhart Pannenberg

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between Wolfhart Pannenberg's idea of God and his conception of history, with the intention of determining the precise nature of the link that, in his view, connects both philosophical and the theological reflection on the meaning of history. We shall first analyze Pannenberg's response to the traditional criticism of Christianity as an anthropomorphic projection of the human being. Then we shall pay attention to the features of any possible fundamentum of history. We will show that, according to Pannenberg, a transition from a philosophical into a theological consideration of history is needed in order to provide a rationally acceptable foundation for both the unity and the meaning of universal history