Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal

Alister E. McGrath. Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. XIV, 246 pp. $99.95/£45.99

The needs and purposes of scholarship, along with the peculiarities of the history of theology, have resulted in a hodge-podge collection of secondary literature on 20th century Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner (1889-1966); there are indeed a number of excellent and interesting works, but virtually none, apart from Frank Jehle's extensive and as yet untranslated 2006 biography, that provide a developmental overview and introduction to the man and his work in English. Alister McGrath's new Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal fills this glaring gap admirably. Presenting neither a fully fledged biography, nor a general introduction, McGrath traces the development of Brunner's theological thought with ease and clarity; he provides a sweeping historical overview to contextualize Brunner's thought where needed, yet also capably fills in theological and contextual detail where necessary. As a result, the reader not only benefits from an excellent overview of Brunner's life and the development of his thought, but receives a glimpse into the inner workings and history of a significant episode within Christian systematic theology in the 20th century as well. In terms of tone, McGrath's assessment of Brunner's work and thought is both sympathetic and sober, yet always respectful and appreciative. In the end, McGrath's Brunner is neither simply a product of his times, nor an outdated philosophical theologian, but rather an internationally engaged churchman, theologian, missionary and public intellectual whose work is still relevant for theology today. 

McGrath begins with Brunner's early life, his years in full-time pastoral ministry and the ups and downs of his early academic career, material which also covers Brunner's first encounters with American theology and ultimately his emergence to international recognition as one of the leaders in the dialectical theology movement variously associated with Karl Barth, Eduard Thurneysen and Friedrich Gogarten and Rudolf Bultmann. At this point McGrath helpfully provides brief assessments of Brunner's notoriously difficult and still untranslated earlier works. Whereas the specialist reader looking for substantial detail about Brunner's earlier writings might be left slightly disappointed here, McGrath makes what is likely to be the more popular choice to pass by these obscure texts quickly so as to devote more extensive attention to the works which came to define Brunner's career. Next comes a more or less topical account of Brunner's rising star in the mid to late 1920s, capped by a chapter on his controversial 1929 essay "The Other Task of Theology", which had argued that a mixture of apologetics and polemic (= eristic theology) is a necessary critical counterpart to constructive dogmatic work, as well as his first theological ethics (ET: The Divine Imperative), a set of important lectures in English (The Word and the World) and a significant but underappreciated early on the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the analysis McGrath does not let Brunner's relationship to Barth slip from view, but nonetheless also rightly emphasizes a number of significant material points that, once acknowledged, justify a reappraisal of what was once the traditional account of the nature of their interaction. These are, among others, the clear evidence for Brunner's theological individuality including his early independent engagement with theological ethics and the politically engaged nature of his earlier theology, his significant early international activity and reception in the UK and USA, as well as his interaction with various Christian organizations outside of the academy. In all this, McGrath reveals a Brunner who is at once both deeply engaged with the work of his 'friend' Karl Barth and yet also stubbornly independent and persistently critical of his Swiss compatriot. 

The analysis is undoubtedly correct in showing that Brunner and Barth were on a collision course both personally and intellectually from nearly the beginning of their relationship in 1916. McGrath also provides a detailed account of the political context of the nature/grace debate with the appropriate attention to Barth's precarious situation in Germany in 1934, without, however, either altogether reducing the debate to pre-war political posturing or neglecting Brunner's own explicitly stated political concerns at the time. As for the theological kernel of the debate, McGrath rightly indicates that Emil Brunner was quite simply not a proponent of an independent natural theology - especially the kind that could be used to devise proofs for the existence of God - but that he was also equally concerned by what he feared was Barth's wholesale rejection of the notion of creation as a self-communication of God. This rejection, Brunner feared, would have disastrous implications for a whole series of doctrinal and practical issues ranging from theological anthropology all the way to Christian mission and preaching. While it is also clear that this clarification did not and could not have satisfied the Barthian critique, it is nonetheless important for assessing Brunner's arguments against the background of the history of natural theology, not to mention simplistic understandings of Barth's own, negative, response. In this regard, it was a bit surprising that McGrath did not pause longer here to spell out Brunner's concerns in Nature and Grace in greater detail or highlight Brunner's intention to rely on on Calvin with greater clarity. However, it is also clear that McGrath did not want to give the episode more attention than it deserved within the overall scope of Brunner's life and work, especially since neither theologian appeared at their best in the debate, either personally or theologically. On the whole, McGrath's analysis is lucid and extremely helpful, and his identification of the partisanship characterizing the secondary literature produced in response to the original debate is certainly correct.

Following his treatment of Brunner's row with Barth over nature and grace comes what are probably the two most interesting and relevant sections of the book, McGrath's skillful overview of Brunner's anthropology and his attempt to circumnavigate the objectivist/subjectivist debates in modern theological and philosophical epistemology. Here, McGrath's Brunner comes into his own and appears as a competent, independent and original theologian who can still be of use to systematic theology today. On the one hand, Brunner's anthropology can be seen as an antidote to modern 'objective' and 'scientific' accounts of human nature that often rule in the academy and sideline the 'softer' contributions from theology, philosophy and sociology. On the other hand, Brunner can be seen as a substantial critique of late modern epistemology, both in its objectivist and subjectivist forms, while at the same time forging a relational account of truth in the encounter between humanity and God in Jesus Christ.

McGrath's treatment of Brunner after the war is especially helpful as interest in Brunner's career often seems to drop off after the 1934 debate with Barth and its immediate aftermath. Here, however, we see a Brunner making intellectual contributions to the rebuilding of Europe after the Second World War that were both substantial and particularly well received during his own lifetime. Finally, McGrath details Brunner's later years as a missionary and public intellectual, including an account of his regular preaching, public lecturing and his time in serving as a teacher and missionary in Japan - a task which Brunner himself saw as constituting not only the fulfillment of his own theological program, but the capstone of his life and work in the church.

On the whole, McGrath's Brunner will certainly serve as a countermeasure to those assessments clearly biased in favor of Barth while simultaneously also betraying a lack of basic familiarity with the details of Brunner's life and work. That said, however, it is also clear that McGrath has not chosen to write a hagiography. Rather, Brunner appears both in his strengths and weaknesses. Given that the book achieves its goals, and develops a balanced and warm but by no means uncritical portrait of Brunner, there is very little negative to say about McGrath's timely reappraisal. Those looking for a detailed account of Brunner's earlier and most difficult works or are particularly interested in the debate with Barth might wish for McGrath to have paused longer on these points, however the overall emphasis clearly corresponds to the most significant aspects of Brunner's published writings and career. 

While the lack of recent work on Brunner and the number of problematic or incomplete assessments of Brunner's work clearly indicate the value and necessity of McGrath's reappraisal, the question may still remain for some: Why a book on Brunner, why now? In this, as mentioned above, contemporary theologians may indeed be surprised to find that a number of Brunner's ideas either explicitly foreground or implicitly foreshadow many of the theological impulses considered seminal for contemporary Christian theology such as the linguistic turn, critiques of stark subjective/objective paradigms in epistemology, the 'contemporary' relevance of the theology of the Reformation and Christian theology's fight for a voice in the so-called 'secular' academy. In all of this, McGrath's reappraisal comes down to a point that is surely correct: Emil Brunner's work still deserves to be read and contemporary theology indeed has a great deal to learn from both its successes and mistakes.  

David Andrew Gilland, 

Leuphana Universität Lüneburg