Revelation and Reason by Emil Brunner

First published:Offenbarung und Vernunft: Die Lehre von der christlichen Glaubenserkenntnis, 1941 (English translation, 1946)

Edition(s) used:Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, translated by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1946

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Theology

Core issue(s): Knowledge; reason; revelation; truth

Overview

Emil Brunner defines the nature of revelation as a historical encounter. Revelation refers to the mystery of the sovereign God freely and uniquely manifesting himself as the eternal within historical time. Thus revelation is an objective encounter. However, it is also subjective, because revelation must reach its goal through acknowledgment by humans, who are the only beings created with capacity to receive the word of God and who are held responsible to respond and obey. As an “I-Thou” encounter, it is distinctively personal, despite the disparity between the eternal and the temporal. Because God is preeminently a person, we are made persons.

According to Brunner, revelation occurs mainly in the realm of history, through the promise of the Old Covenant, which through Jesus Christ reaches its climax. Jesus did not just “discover” or “convey” revelation, but is himself the word and presence of God. With that foundation established, Brunner can then look backward and forward for witnesses to this historical revelation. In every age, for example, Brunner finds a general revelation in creation, the world of nature. The natural world is not enough to bring salvation, which only Christ can do, but it does hint at God’s majesty and, more important, establishes human culpability when people invariably revolt against their Creator. (This meager provision for a natural theology prompted Karl Barth’s famous denunciation of Brunner.) To a secondary degree, revelation happens also in historical witnesses to the Word by the church, the Holy Spirit, and the human words of Scripture. However, every avenue to God remains dominated by Christ for Brunner.

What then about the truthfulness of this claim to revelation? Here Brunner defends the validity of human rationality. He argues that human are capable of using and understanding language and thus are able to receive the Word. Reason is a second mode of knowledge and, so long as it observes its proper boundaries, has no inherent conflict with revelation. Together they constitute two conceptions of truth, because humanity, even as grievously fallen sinner, has not been stripped of the formal structures of reasoning, but only of the material contents originally illumining Adam’s mind. However, reason yields a very different type of truth than does revelation. Rational knowledge always is impersonal, best suited to the timeless world of physical objects. Because reason reinforces isolation of the human self by holding the created realm at a distance, it cannot comprehend genuine love or self-impartation. Revelation, by contrast, is the truth that “happens” as one encounters the divine, so it is life giving, quintessentially personal, and beyond rational categorizing, and must be received through a surrender of one’s will.

If reason and revelation are so distinct, can they cooperate enough to generate a “Christian philosophy”? Brunner answers affirmatively and says that the entire range of human culture constitutes a middle ground between the extremes of formal logic and theology. On this vast continuum of everyday problems and issues, rationality and faith necessarily collaborate—but in each instance proportionate to the degree that wholeness and personhood are involved. Brunner calls this guiding principle his “law of the closeness of relation.” That is, “The nearer anything lies to that center of existence where we are concerned with the whole, that is, with man’s relation to God and the being of the person, the greater is the disturbance of rational knowledge by sin; the farther away anything lies from this center, the less is the disturbance felt, and the less difference is there between knowing as a believer or as an unbeliever.” This determines the proper epistemological mix of faith and reason.

Consequently Christians are freed to pursue or critique secular themes and to help build a humane society, but with the proviso that the more any topic deals with the human self, the more it must be called to respond to the Word. Suspicion is needed only toward autonomous reason, for by glorifying the ego it deepens our isolation by evading awareness of our misery and alienation from God’s majesty. However, Brunner welcomes rationality that submits to divine Lordship and thereby finds its proper role as Logos, illuminating new resources and preparing the heart for grace.

The Enlightenment critiqued religion as “mythical,” but Brunner insists that symbols remain essential for describing the biblical God who is transcendent yet enters space and time to disclose himself. Myth is cyclical and determined by fate, rather than sequential and consisting of personal decisions. However, truth as encounter between divine and human subjects requires history, not myth, for its framework. Because revelation is anchored in the histories of Israel and Jesus, biblical studies inevitably risk challenges. Brunner denounces any defensiveness against scientific investigation, such as positing an infallible Bible or authoritarian church, and he is confident that historical reason has not undermined any major point of Christian faith. Biblical inspiration does not depend, for example, on demonstrating a uniformity among all apostolic teachings or proving Jesus’ miracles, for Jesus himself is the miracle in that “He places us in the presence of the reality of God, as the reality of Him who lays His demand upon us, and who desires to give Himself to us.” Thus the living triunal God is himself the final guarantee of both revelation and reason.

Christian Themes

Brunner states that God cannot be objectified or conceived of as an object (even the supreme object) within finite time and space but is utterly transcendent, beyond the reach of human discovery. In his great love for his creation, however, God has chosen to communicate himself through the Word. This entails a merciful condescension and self-impartation to mortals in terms that they can understand. Divine sovereignty over the cosmos exists at the same time as God’s tender compassion toward humankind, and therein is exhibited the primordial self-definition of God as person. God’s self-giving toward his beloved creation extends partially to the world’s religions, but preeminently to Israel’s history, culminating in Christ, the Word in flesh.

Unlike other mortal life-forms, humanity is distinctively capable of hearing and obeying the word of God. This human capacity for language, including syntax and the formal structures of reason, has been distorted but not erased through humanity’s alienation from God, the Fall. It is only the material content of the image of God that has been devastated. The controversy notable in Brunner’s later life arose from this modest defense of a residual general revelation and natural theology.

The doctrine of human nature focuses on the will (as Saint Augustine taught), so our humanity is exemplified by the decision whether to attend to and obey the Word. Thus we show ourselves to be persons in this “I-Thou” encounter, responding to and partially reflecting the Creator’s personhood. Imago Dei (the image of God) is the traditional phrase for our kinship to God’s personhood. This includes Logos rationality and language ability, but even more important is humanity’s ability to form relationships. Here Brunner shows his indebtedness to Søren Kierkegaard’s existentialism by focusing on individual decision and also to the religious socialist movement in the early twentieth century by highlighting the horizontal dimension, our solidarity with fellow humans and with society.

Thus there are two modes of human knowledge, reason and revelation, which need not be antithetical so long as each takes its proper role. Brunner thereby attempts to preserve the Reformation heritage of Christocentrism and revealed grace but also has a pastoral concern for the church’s ability to influence the surrounding culture.

Sources for Further Study

Hart, John W. Karl Barth Versus Emil Brunner: The Formation and Dissolution of a Theological Alliance, 1916-1936. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Close examination of the controversy for which Brunner in later generations is best remembered.

Humphrey, J. Edward. Emil Brunner. Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1976. For general audiences the best introduction to Brunner’s thought. Sympathetic, fair, with brief biography, selected bibliography.

Kegley, Charles W., and Robert W. Bretall, eds. The Theology of Emil Brunner. Vol. 3 in The Library of Living Theology. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Definitive collection of essays by seventeen scholars on Brunner’s thought and influence, with a reply by Brunner and an autobiography.

Lovin, Robin. Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. A significant work on social ethics that positions Brunner’s thought with two other theological giants of his time.

McKim, Mark G. Emil Brunner: A Bibliography. ATLA Bibliographies 40. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Excellent brief introduction to Brunner’s life and thought, followed by an exhaustive bibliography of everything Brunner ever wrote, edited, coauthored, or reviewed; secondary sources listed.