"God is never to be seen in continuity with the hierarchy of the created world... There is not transition between created and the non-created being, God alone has non-created divine reality, and all creation has merely dependent, created reality. Between these two there are no intermediates... No continuity whatever is left but sharp opposition: Godhead on the one hand, the world's creatureliness on the other." (BC&C, 20-21).
However, Brunner points out,
"this transcendence of God's being should never be confused with a transcendence of God's activity. The transcendent God -- that is, the God who has the monopoly of divinity -- is not separated from His creation. Distinction is not separation. God's being is distinguished from that of the world but the world exists by His sustaining presence and activity... He is the One by Whose will and action it (the world) is real and remains in existence, and without Whose presence and sustaining activity it would fall into nothingness." (BC&C, 21).It must also be noted here that the world, even if it is creaturely being and is not the truly real as the materialist would assert, the created world is no mere appearance as idealism would assert.
"It is reality. God has called it to be real. Its being is not stamped with the mark of nothingness or degeneracy. What God has created, that is, even if it is not independent but dependent being. It is God Himself who gives it the weight of reality." (BC&C, 20).Now in the world there are laws. From the Christian point of view these
"natural laws themselves are created. They are, as we have it in the German language, Ge-setze, i.e. 'settings.' God set them to be. Now this conception of setting is ambiguous or ambivalent... On the one hand, God's settings, orders, laws, Gesetze, are thought of a permanent, static structures, as stable dependable traits of the God-created Universe. You can rely upon these orders being maintained; you can count on them; there is no disorder and arbitrariness in this world; it is an orderly world." (BC&C, 23-24).On the other hand, God in His freedom is above all settings or laws. They are limitations for our freedom, but not for His.
"Natural laws are not ultimates, they are instrumental to God's purposes. They do not determine his purposes. They are organs, servants of His will... The law in every sense of the word has a subordinate, although a very important and indispensable function in God's economy... All laws, whether natural or moral, belong to the created world. God's own will can never be expressed ultimately in terms of law, because the freedom of His love as well as of His holiness is above them." (BC&C, 24).Let us bring our discussion of this point to close with a summary statement in Brunner's own words.
"The Christian conception of God as Creator, and of the world as His creation, is neither that of naive realism nor that of speculative idealism; in structure as in origin it is different from both. God, Who is spirit, is the primary original being and the world is dependent secondary being. That is say that world has objective reality, not in itself, but through the thought and will of the Creator. It is, but it is what God thought and willed to be before it was. Everything which objectively is, is (1) an idea of God, (2) a realization of His will, and therefore has reality only because it God's idea and will." (BC&C, 26).
"an unbridgeable contrast between the Christian and the Neoplatonic idea of being. The Neoplatonic -- and we may say also the idealistic and mystical conception of being -- is impersonal, the Christian idea of personal. The Neoplatonic is static; the Christian is active and dynamic. God's being is the being of the Lord who posits everything and is not posited... God is therefore never object, but always subject; never something -- it, substance -- but He, or rather Thou. God is absolutely free will, free in such a way that the world, His creation, is at every moment conditioned by His will." (BC&C, 18-19).In this passage, which Brunner points up this distinguishing mark of the Christian concept of God, we are introduced to the contrast between subject and object, person and non-person. This contrast is fundamental in Brunner's thinking about God and man.
"God is Person; He is not an 'IT'; He is our primary 'Thou'." (BCDG, 121).By an object Brunner means both an ontological object, a thing, and an epistemological object, something which is known."The 'Thou' is something other than the 'Not-I'; the 'Not-I' is the world, the sum-total of objects. But the 'Thou' is that 'Not-I' which is an ‘I’ (or a Self) as I am myself, of which I only become aware when it is not thought by my own efforts, or perceived as an object, but when it makes itself known to me as self-active, self-speaking, as 'I-over-against me'." (BCDG, 122).
"That which we can think and know by our own efforts is always an object of thought and knowledge, some thing which has been thought, some thing which is known, therefore it is never 'Person'." (BCDG, 121).It is for this reason that all philosophical conceptions of God are to be rejected. The God's conceived by the philosophers are its, objects of thought.
"The God with Whom we have to do in faith, is not a Being who has been discussed, or 'conceived' (by man); He is not an Ens, a 'substance', like the Godhead of metaphysical speculation; He is not an object of thought -- even though in a sublimated and abstract form -- but the Subject who as ‘I’ addresses us a 'thou'. God is the Personality who speaks, acts, disclosing to us Himself and His will." (BCDG, 139)."In extreme cases a man can 'think' a personal God; theistic philosophy is a genuine, even if an extreme possibility. But this personal God who has been conceived by man remains some-thing which has been thought, the object of our thought-world. He does not break through the barriers of my thought-world, acting, speaking, manifesting Himself -- He does not meet me as a 'Thou', and is therefore is not a real 'Thou'. He is something which I have thought, my function, my positing; He is not the One who addresses me, and in this 'address' reveals Himself to me as the One who is quite independent of me."
"The God who is merely thought to be personal is not truly personal; the 'Living God' who enters my sphere of thought and experience from beyond my thought, in the act of making Himself known to me, by Himself naming His Name -- He alone is truly personal." (BCDG, 122).
Some have raised objections to the use of the ideas of "personality" or "person" in the formulation of the Idea of God, on the ground that it is anthropomorphic.
"'Who', they ask, 'gives us the right to take the conception of personality, derived from our own human experience, and to apply it to God?' They contend that to do so makes the Idea of God finite, which is entirely improper; for even though we may intensify the concept of personality to the highest degree possible, this Idea of God still makes Him too human, creaturely, and earthly. The "Personal God" is a naive idea, unworthy of the Divinity, a product of the imagination which delights in creating myths." (BCDG, 139).Brunner attempts to meet these objections. He first of all points out that all the alternatives to the Idea of a Personal God are attenuated conception of an "object" weakened by abstraction.
"If we ask: -- 'what are the alternatives to the idea of the Personal God?' -- then all the answers that are given, however, they may be expressed, finally say the same thing; God is an 'It', not an ‘I’; He is an Object of thought, something that is constructed in thought, not One who Himself speaks, but a Neuter -- an ens a se, ens subsistens per se, the Absolute, the Inexpressible, the absolute Substance, etc." (BCDG, 139).Then Brunner asks,
"Can we really think that a Supreme Object gained by a process of abstraction is a more worthy conception of God than the concept of Person? The highest that we know is not the 'it', the 'thing', but the person." (BCDG, 139-140).How can we think of God as being less than we are? God must be at least a person, in view of the fact that we are persons.
Brunner has a second answer to these objections. From the Biblical point of view, the question whether the application of the idea of "person" to God is anthropomorphism is backwards. "The question is not whether God is person, but whether man is." From the Biblical point of view,
"it is not the personal being of God which is 'anthropomorphic,' but, conversely, the personal being of man is a 'theomorphism.' God alone is Person; man is only person a symbolic way, as a reflection of God, as the Imago Dei. God is only Subject, He is not also Object; He is the absolute Subject, subject in the unconditional, unlimited sense. Man, however, is a subject which is also an object. The Self of man, is a subject which is also an object. The Self of man, indeed, is enclosed in a body, in a material form which fills space; it is therefore and an 'it'; he is personal and impersonal at one the same time. Hence man is only 'person' in a parabolic, symbolic sense, 'person' who is at the same time 'not-person', a 'thing'. God is pure personality; man is not." (BCDG, 140).Thus it is that the question of whether the application of the idea of "person" to God is an anthropomorphism turns out to be a pseudo question for those who start with revelation and the knowledge of God as the Absolute Subject.
Before we go on to the third element in the foundation of Brunner's ethics let us try to determine just what he means by person or subject in contrast to non-person, object, or thing. That which constitutes the nature of the 'subject' in contradistinction to that of 'object' is "freedom, positing and not being posited, thinking and not being thought, that which is absolutely spontaneous, that which is only active and not at the same time passive, that which only gives and does not at the same time receive." (BCDG, 140). Thus to be a person is to be capable of self-determination, that is, freedom. This shall be further clarified in our discussion of the third element in the foundation of Brunner's ethics.
"He, the Absolute Subject creates a being which is also 'subject', and in this 'existence or being as subject' is 'like' God." (BCDG, 177).God has created man, in His own image or likeness. However,
"man is absolutely unlike God in the fact that he is a created, conditioned, limited subject, whereas God is absolute Subject. He creates in man a creative nature, and one which is capable of dominion, and fitted for dominion -- once more, like God. But man is absolutely unlike God in the fact that his creative activity is always connected with that which is given him, and that his dominion is limited by his responsibility toward Him to whom he owes an account for the use he makes of his powers. In all that makes man like God, man remains absolutely unlike Him, in the fact that all that he has received from God, and that for all that he does he is responsible, so that his very freedom can be realized in absolute obedience to God; thus human freedom itself shows both man's 'likeness' to God, and his 'un-likeness' -- an 'unlikeness' which is an abiding fact." (BCDG, 177).The fact that man has been created in God's own image is the basis of Brunner's social ethics as well as private ethics.
"That conception of justice by which all human beings, old or young, man or woman, bond or free, have equal rights in the sense they ought to be treated alike, is in essence derived from the revelation of Scripture, according to which God created man 'in his image'" (BJSO, 34).We shall consider this further when we deal with Brunner's social ethics.
From another point of view revelation is the address of God, to which man responds in faith. This address is the Word of God. Now in this address God does not say something but says himself; He discloses Himself. (BDHE, 86). The address of God is God's self-communication; He communicates Himself. For this reason the Word of God in the Scripture is a person (John 1:2) in contrast to the Stoic concept of the Word which is impersonal. The Word of God is God's communication of Himself to men. Now the Word of God is understood, known in the act of faith. Knowledge of God is essentially an act, a decision on man's part, in response to God's address. Believing is knowing.
With this concept of revelation the Bible to be only a witness, a pointer to God in His self-disclosure. The Bible is not the Word of God but only a witness to the Word of God. Theology is thinking about God from the standpoint of revelation. Theology has its basis in the situation of the encounter: revelation-faith. The Scriptures are the primary guide for theology and ethics.
In order to clarify man's relation to God it is necessary for us to go back to beginning and the creation of man in God's image. The personal God that has created man in his own image is a God of love. "God is love." (I John 4:16) This love is of a unique nature. It
"asks no questions about the nature of that which is to be loved... It is always love all-the-same, never love because. It is a loving born simply of the will to love, not of the nature of the beloved. It is not a love which judges worth but a love which bestows worth. Neither Aristotle nor any other pagan knew this love; it is identical with the message of Scripture" (BJSO, 125-6).Now this
"God wills a creature which is not only, like other creatures, a mere object of His will, as if it were a reflector of His glory as Creator. He desires from us an active and spontaneous response in our 'reflecting'; He who creates through the Word, who as Spirit creates in freedom, wills to have a 'reflex' which is more than a 'reflex', which is an answer to His Word, a free spiritual act, a correspondence to His speaking. Only thus can His love really impart itself as love. For love can only impart itself where it is received in love. Hence the heart of the creaturely existence of man is freedom, selfhood, to be an ‘I’, a person. Only an ‘I’ can answer a 'Thou', only a Self which is self-determining can freely answer God. An automaton does not respond; an animal in contradistinction from an automaton, may indeed re-act, but it cannot re-spond. It is not capable of speech, of free self-determination, it cannot stand at a distance from itself, and is therefore not re-sponsible." (BCDCR, 55-6).Thus it is that the personal God whose name is love creates a counterpart who may love in response to His love. Love is free in that it is spontaneous and not compelled by anything in the nature of the beloved to love it. Thus it is that only a personal God can love; the essence of a person or subject is freedom, self-determination. However, it is only a being like God, a person, that can respond to God's love.
However, it is presupposed in the idea of being "person" that man may not respond to God's love in reverent, grateful love. It is the message of the Scriptures that the right response has not been given to God's love.
"A quite different one has been given instead, in which the glory is not given to God, but to men and to creatures, in which man does not live in the love of God, but seeks himself." (BCDCR, 58).This wrong response is sin. Sin is not impersonal but personal -- an act directed against God. Sin is disobedience to and defiance of God."Almost all non-Biblical definitions of sin -- if not all -- are impersonal. Evil is 'something'. It is part of our being, of our nature, or it is a negatively moral act -- that is, a non-moral act, an injury committed by something or someone. It may be the transgression of a law. But in any case it is not directly, and above all not exclusively, related to God." (BCDCR, 92).Man's destiny is to be "like God," a person, freedom. God created man in His own image, like Himself. This image or likeness is being a person, freedom."Evil, understood as sin, is a change in man's relation to God; it is the break in communion with God, due to distrust and defiance." (BCDCR, 92).
"Man is intended to be free, to be like God; but now man wants to have both apart from dependence upon God." (BCDCR, 92).Man wants to be free but free in sense of independence and emancipation from God. He also wants to be like God but in the sense of self-deification, the proclamation of the self as sovereign. The deepest root of sin is this independence and autonomy of man. Here, therefore, the fact that man has been "made in the image of God" is spoken of as having been lost. The image is lost in the sense that man responded wrongly and thus has failed to fulfil his destiny for which he was created."When the heart of man no longer reflects the love of God, but himself and the world, he no longer bears the 'Image of God,' which simply consists in the fact that God's love is reflected in the human heart." (BCDCR, 59).Man is still like God, a person, subject, freedom -- this is the formal image of God -- but man has failed to respond correctly in his freedom -- this is the material image which has been lost. (BCDCR, 57).Now the message of the Bible would not be complete with just the lost of the image of God but with the restoration of the image.
"It is restored through Him, through whom God glorifies and gives Himself: through Jesus Christ. The restoration of the Imago Dei, the new creation of the original image of God in man, is identical with the gift of God in Jesus Christ received by faith...Jesus Christ is the true Imago Dei, which man regains when through faith he is 'in Jesus Christ.' Faith in Jesus Christ is therefore the restauratio imaginis, because He restores to us that existence in the Word of God which we had lost through sin. When man enters into the love of God revealed in Christ he becomes truly human. True human existence is existence in the love of God. Thus also the true freedom of man is complete dependence upon God... True humanity is not genius but love, that love which man does not possess from or in himself but which he receives from God, who is love. True humanity does not spring from the full development of human potentialities, but arises through the reception, the perception, and the acceptance of the love of God, and it develops and is preserved by abiding in communion with God who reveals Himself as Love." (BCDCR, 58-9).What is the significance of this restoration of the image, being in love, for the relation of a man to his fellowman? Just this, that the man to whom the image has been restored does not exist in and by himself. With the restoration of the image in many individuals a community is formed. While dealing with man's vertical relation to God we have more or less been dealing with man as individuals isolated from each other. However that must not be considered to be the whole picture. For the restoration of the image comes about through a community and the restoration of the image is the basis of the community. This community of believers is called the Church. Here, Brunner points out, a misunderstanding about the Church must be avoided."When the man in the street today hears about the Church -- be he Catholic or Protestant or what not -- he thinks of an institution, a something that similarly to the state (even though in a different way) hovers over the individual, which has its own law and its own importance; a something which men use for specific purposes or which they serve with a particular aim; a something impersonal that, however, has significance for persons and their lives, and so forth.... The New Testament knows nothing of a church as institution. In the New Testament 'church' means only one thing: the people of God, the community of the holy, the elected, the gathering of believers, believers gathered together....Church is a concept understood purely and without exception as personal. Church in never anything else than the persons who through Christ, through fellowship with the living Lord, are themselves bound together into a living fellowship." (BTAE, 168).This concept of the church is deeply engrained into our religious thinking."The attempt is to justify the institutional understanding of the church by appealing to its offices and sacraments, and to the Word of God given to the church. This is entirely incorrect. To be sure, the community has offices and sacraments and must have them necessarily; but they are not the church, anymore than I myself am an instrument which I have and use -- even though it be an instrument of the utmost importance to life itself and given to me by God. The church has offices, it uses sacraments; it therefore has institutions -- if one wishes to place offices and sacraments into this category -- but it is no institution. The church also has its rules and needs them; but the church is no set of rules, and the rules of the church do not constitute the church. In the New Testament the church is never anything else than the community of those who belong to Christ through faith, whom through his Word and Spirit he has constituted the community." (BTAE, 169).Through faith which is also obedience Jesus becomes a person's Lord. But through faith also Jesus becomes Lord over the fellowship of man with man. This Lordship of Jesus over the fellowship of believers with believers is expressed in the New Testament by means of the simile of the body and its members. Jesus, the Lord is the head and the believers are His body."Between the community and Christ obtains a relation sui generis; namely, that of trusting obedience and of responding love, even as this same relation obtains among the members, that one serve the other in love." (BTAE, 170-1).A believing man inescapably bond into a fellowship with his believing fellow man."Faith is nothing other than to become a member in the body of Christ. While the individual is released from his I-isolation, out of the sin which estranges him from God and man, he is taken into fellowship with God and at the same time with man. And, contrariwise, he will be released in any other way from his I-isolation, except as he is taken into the concrete fellowship." (BTAE, 170).
- Social Ethics
As we indicated in the previous section of this paper, under the title of Social Ethics we intend to discuss what Emil Brunner says about man's relation with his fellowman. Here the key concept is justice in contrast to love which was the key concept in the discussion of his individual ethics."From time immemorial the principle of justice has been defined as sum cuique -- the rendering to each man his due.... Who or whatever renders to every man his due, that person or thing is just; an attitude, an institution, a law, a relationship, in which every man is given his due is just." (BJSO, 17).However, this definition does not tell us what is due. To do this will necessitate outlining the Christian idea of justice. Here there are two things to be mentioned. First the basis of the idea of justice, that is, what is the standard or criterion of justice, of what is due to everyman. The Christian answer is the orders of creation. This is in contrast to the Greco-Roman concept of Lex Naturae which is pantheistic:"nature is God and God is nature; therefore the law of nature is the law of God, and the law of God is the law of nature. This pantheistic equation is, of course, dissolved in Christian thought. The idea of nature is, one might say, split into two parts: God, the Creator, and His creation, with its God-given order. That is to say, God is above the order of creation. Hence justice, being imnanent in this creation-order, is not the highest, not the ultimate principle; the highest ultimate principle is love. For God is love in Himself, He is not justice in Himself. Love is His own essence; justice, however, is His will as it refers to the order of His created world." (BC&C, 116)."This does not mean that justice and love are two independent principles... justice is a manifestation of love. Justice is that love which is applied to order; love, as it can be realized within order or structure or institution. The origin of all orders, and hence also the origin of justice, is like the origin of creation as such: it is God's love." (BC&C, 116).
The second concerns the content of the idea of justice.
"In the Christian idea of justice...equality has its supreme importance. All men are created by God equally in His image. They all share in this original dignity of person conferred by God. They all have the same essential rights, based on the human dignity of God's creation." (BC&C, 117).However, the element of inequality or unlikeness has its due place alongside that of equality."God has created all equally in His image, but He has not created them alike; on the contrary, He has created each one different from the rest, with his own individuality... The difference between human beings are therefore not irrelevant, casual, immaterial, but just as much God's will and creation as the equality of personal dignity." (BC&C, 118).These two elements of equality and unlikeness do not stand on the same level and thus are not in competition with each other and do not limit each other."Men are equal in their relation to God, and therefore in their dignity. They are unlike in their individuality, and therefore in their function in the created world." (BC&C, 119).These two are not the same level. The element of unlikeness, inequality, is the pre-condition of the natural community of men. (The church is spiritual community.)"By these inequalities men become mutually dependent; each needs the other, they are predestinated to mutual exchange and mutual completion.... For the ultimate meaning of human existence is...life in love... Fellowship is the thing for which he was created. Thus the natural forms of community... are primal ordinances of the Creator, institutions which are preformed in the diversity of each man's natural gifts." (BJSO, 66).Thus "society is thought of as a community of unlike individuals, who are bond to each other by the necessity of mutual completion and united by mutual respect for their equal dignity." (BC&C, 120). It is on the basis of these unlikenesses, the diversity of each man's natural gifts, as these form the natural forms of community, that each individual receives his due, though that "due" may differ in every case. Justice is not just to each the same but rather to each the same according to his condition of unlikeness. Thus in the Christian concept of justice both equality of dignity and inequality of function in society are combined.
BCDG
Brunner, Emil. The Christian Doctrine of God,
Dogmatics, Vol. I.
London: Lutterworth Press, 1949.
BCDCR
Brunner, Emil. The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption,
Dogmatics, Vol. II.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1952.
BCDCFC
Brunner, Emil. The Christian Doctrine of Chruch, Faith,
and the Consummation,
Dogmatics, Vol. III.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.
BC&C
Brunner, Emil. Christianity and Civilization,
First Part: Foundations.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.
BC&CII
Brunner, Emil. Christianity and Civilization,
Second Part: Specific Problems.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949.
BDI
Brunner, Emil. Divine Imperative.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 19??.
BJSO
Brunner, Emil. Justice and Social Order.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945.
BPR
Brunner, Emil. The Philosophy of Religion,
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937.
BR&R
Brunner, Emil. Revelation and Reason.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1946.
BSC
Brunner, Emil. The Scandal of Christianity.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1951.
BTAE
Brunner, Emil. Truth as Encounter,
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964.
A New Edition, Much Enlarged, of
BDHE
The Divine-Human Encounter.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1943.