Systematic Theology by Wolfhart Pannenberg

I just finished volume 3 of Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology, and for the third year in a row it will reign as "the best book I read this year." Pannenberg is brilliant. I will be digesting this work for a long time. He ends the three-volume book:

On the whole path from the beginning of creation by way of reconciliation to the eschatological future of salvation, the march of the divine economy of salvation is an expression of the incursion of the eternal future of God to the salvation of creatures and thus a manifestation of the divine love. Here is the eternal basis for God's coming forth from the immanence of the divine life as the economic Trinity and of the incorporation of creatures, mediated thereby, into the unity of the trinitarian life. The distinction and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity constitute the heartbeat of the divine love, and with a single such heartbeat this love encompasses the whole world of creatures. (Systematic Theology, 3, 646.)

Three years ago I would have read that and said, "What?" Now, I read it and say, "Sweet."

I have sketched an outline of how Pannenberg's theology can provide a way forward for "Big Tent Evangelicalism" to work together for the Gospel. I hope to put something together for Scot McKnight's blog. More on that soon.