Brunner, Emil
BRUNNER, EMIL (1889–1966), Swiss Protestant theologian. Brunner was a critic of liberalism and secularism. His writing on knowledge and faith was influenced by Kant; his stress on religious experience by Kierkegaard and Husserl; and his stress on God's transcendence and the need for vigorous social and political action by Luther and Calvin.
Brunner anticipated Martin Buber's notion of the I-Thou relationship, elucidating throughout his Dogmatics the encounter between humanity and God as humanity's most significant existential experience. In The Divine Imperative, Brunner argues that the source of Christian ethics lies in God's imperative. He deemed personhood to be the center of human-divine interaction, deploring the reductionism of positivism and behaviorism. Although sympathetic to philosophy, he opposed its attempts to stand in judgment of theology, as well as attempts by Paul Tillich and others to use such philosophical terms as being and ground of being in reference to God. In contrast to Barth, Brunner asserted that even sinful man can attain some knowledge of God but that, apart from the Christian revelation, this knowledge has no salvific value.
Brunner's theology is rich in the areas of ethics and sociopolitical thought. We are told in his The Divine Imperative, Christianity and Civilization, and Justice and the Social Order that God's command is to love and that the person who has faith in Jesus Christ responds to God's love by living a life of hope and love in "orders of creation"—the family, the economy, the state, the culture, and the church. Though the New Testament contains no blueprint for a socio-economic-political order, Brunner believed that human institutions could be informed by love and by justice in the service of God.
Bibliography
Brunner's three-volume Dogmatics (Zurich, 1946–1960) is the definitive statement of his theology. The first two volumes have been translated into English by Olive Wyon, and the third by David Cairns and T. H. L. Parker (Philadelphia, 1950–1962). Crucial to an understanding of Brunner's ethics and his Reformed stance is Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (Tübingen, 1932), translated by Olive Wyon as The Divine Imperative (Philadelphia, 1947). The existentialist and personal aspects of Brunner's thought are best exhibited in Wahrheit als Begegnung (Berlin, 1938), translated by Amandus W. Loos as The Divine-Human Encounter (Philadelphia, 1943), and Der Mittler (Tübingen, 1927), translated by Olive Wyon as The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Philadelphia, 1947). For a critical evaluation of all Brunner's works, see my The Theology of Emil Brunner (New York, 1962). This volume contains works by Brunner, interpretative essays, replies to these essays by Brunner, and a complete bibliography.
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