Christianity Outside the Church

Book excerpt: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s understanding of “public,” based on his view of revelation as history, is that everything is potentially a theology. Of course, a public theology of everything is impossible; therefore, Jae Yang develops a Pannenbergian public theology by correlating Pannenberg’s theological methods (postfoundational, eschatological, and trinitarian) with the aims and methods of public theology, and second, with Pannenberg’s views on various spheres, arguing that Pannenberg’s public theology engages not just the academic world, but also the political, economic, familial, religious, and cultural ones. This book argues that Pannenberg is a public theologian because the public purpose of his theology is not to coerce or inject a Christian agenda onto the public (political theology), challenge and subvert unjust structures (liberation theology), or substitute overtly Christian religion with a publicly palatable secular and vaguely religious one (civil religion), but to cooperate and dialogue with the established order under the presumption of a “Christianity outside the church.”