Pannenberg quote on an explanation for theology; also, the predictive value of book titles

I was discussing with a friend the question of why the discipline of theology developed so fully and pervasively in the Christian world, in contrast with other religious systems. There is nothing comparable to Christian theology in world faiths; the closest system might be in Islam, which was of course heavily influenced by Christendom. Many world and historical faiths can be more accurately described as having a cosmology. Anyway, here is a Wolfhart Pannenberg quote my friend sent me relating to the question:

The problem that is involved in this situation becomes sharpened when we consider that it is precisely the Jewish God, the God of the Hebrew Bible, whom the Christian believes and confesses to be truly God. What in the world should motivate a person to embrace the God of another nation? We may say it is Jesus and his teaching. But Jesus was a Jew himself, and most Christians are not. To a Jew it may be natural to honor the God of his or her forebears, though even that is not a condition for being a Jew. In the case of the Christian, however, whose background is Gentile and who only becomes a member of the Christian community by confessing to the God of Israel, why should such a person do so?

Here we are at the core of our subject, the need for systematic theology, because it all depends on the question of truth. If we suppose that the God of Israel and of Jesus is the one and only true God, then and only then is there sufficient reason for believing in that God, even if one is not a Jew. … In being a Christian, everything depends upon the reality of God. This explains the fundamental importance not only of belief and dogma but also of theology in the history of the Christian church (An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991, pages 4-5).

I find it very plausible to suggest that Christian theology is needed precisely because of the peculiar and basically unparalleled position in which Christians found themselves: worshiping the god of another people. There are other contributing explanations I like, but this one is my new favorite.

Speaking of Pannenberg, has anyone read this book? It has one of my favorite titles I’ve heard in a long time. I tend to judge books not by their covers but by their titles. For example, the only reason I happen to have read Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood is because the elegant title commanded my immediate assent to what I correctly predicted would be his thesis. No surprise to me, the book was excellent, and made me read another book of his with a worse title, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, but of comparable quality. Another book you can know is good just by the title is Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, by Marilyn McCord Adams. The title suggests that it is vastly superior to all other books on the philosophical problem of evil… and voila, it is!

Other books whose excellent titles give you a justified true belief in their goodness:

1) Raids on the Unspeakable
2) The Varieties of Religious Experience*
3) I Am America (And So Can You!)
4) The Abolition of Man
5) A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
6) Principia Discordia: or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate Of Malaclypse The Younger, Wherein is Explained Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything.
7) East of Eden
8 ) The Sickness Unto Death
9) Loitering With Intent (by Peter O’Toole, not Muriel Sparks)
10) One Hundred Years of Solitude

If you can think of more titles which necessitate the quality of their respective books, let me know.

A recent favorite of mine which fails to make the list due to its silly subtitle is Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang. Why Chang chooses such a crazy lefty-seeming subtitle is beyond me. Sure, the content is super lefty, but not crazy lefty. Anyway, I find the “bad samaritan” image to be a particularly clever way of framing the advice of free market economists to the third world.

*Some may be surprised to see this one on the list. But that’s just because you’re too used to it, and there are derivative titles, which always makes a title seem formulaic. If you think about it, it’s a great title.