While teaching that nothing less than the whole of reality is the proper horizon of theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg (born 1928) insisted that the resurrection of Jesus provides the best key for understanding that reality. His broad interests and creativity distinguished him as one of Germany's most important Protestant theologians of the 20th century.

Wolfhart Pannenberg was born in 1928 in the city of Stettin (today part of Poland). Growing up during the Nazi era, he was pressed into military service during the final days of the Third Reich--an experience which helps account for his wariness of all ideological and political promises. His interest in religion developed after the war as the result of study and reflection during his university days, first at Berlin, then at Gottingen, Basel, and Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1953, writing on the idea of predestination in the thought of Duns Scotus. In 1958 he was...