The thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg follows in the tradition of twentieth-century German systematic theology in replying to the secularizing nature of post-Enlightenment thought. Pannenberg's writings, however, unlike those of his near contemporaries, most notably Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, do not reject the characteristic intellectual developments of Enlightenment thought. Rather, Pannenberg seeks to incorporate many of the key components of the Enlightenment into his comprehensive theological world view. Born in 1928, Pannenberg began his education as the University of Berlin. In 1950 he studied theology under Barth in Basle, and in 1951 he moved to Heidelberg where he completed his doctoral studies on the doctrine of predestination in Duns Scotus. Following this, he took up a teaching post at Heidelberg, later becoming Professor of Systematic Theology successively at Wuppertal, Mainz, and finally, in 1968, Munich.

Pannenberg's philosophical development was transformed by what he has described as an "intellectual...