Emil Brunner

Makers of the Modern Theological Mind

by J. Edward Humphrey

Book by Humphrey, J. Edward

Genres: Theology, Biography

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some months ago, I committed to either reading or re-reading most of the volumes in the “Makers of the Modern Theological Mind” series. Makers of the Modern Theological Mind: Emil Brunner was written by my Systematic Theology professor from seminary and affected me similarly in reading it as when I attended class. One of my frustrations with the class was that Dr. Humphrey seemed merely to organize and summarize Brunner’s thought without engaging the theology of this conservative theologian critically. As such, it was a good summary (the course and the book) without really illuminating the context of Brunner’s thought or his engagement with other theologians. Even so, Makers of the Modern Theological Mind: Emil Brunner is a useful volume for pulling together the Swiss theologian’s thought, but it isn’t very useful in terms of an exercise in critical thinking.

The beautiful factor concerning Brunner’s theology is that it is, like Karl Barth’s, so focused on God’s Revelation in Christ that Brunner doesn’t even want to deal with traditional vocabulary and formulations. Brunner thinks that many theologians (or even believers) are thinking in terms of stale philosophical terms rather than dealing with the God Who reveals Himself in a relationship of love and holiness. Hence, we cannot understand “omnipotence” as an abstraction, but only in terms of God’s holiness and love impacting humanity. God’s “omnipresence” can easily be misconstrued in the cold conceptions of pantheism, but we can understand God’s presence in the intensive, qualitative, and non-spatial sense that He reveals Himself to us (see p. 61). The “all-knowing” God expresses, to Brunner, an idea of “omniscience” that is so undifferentiated and objective that it doesn’t reflect the intimate, personal knowing of Go toward humanity. Hence (again on p. 61), the insistence on omniscience in the traditional sense works against a relational understanding of what Go knows and does. This was a helpful discussion in that I believe I paid insufficient attention to what Brunner meant by rejecting such terms when I read both his three-volume Dogmatics and his The Divine Imperative many decades ago. In addition, many of my peers were offended that Brunner seemed to think the idea of an “infallible” Bible was not useful. Humphrey does a good job of pointing out that Brunner’s concern was that by focusing the Bible as an objective document, we find ourselves in danger of overlooking the One to Whom the document attested (p. 130). Simplistically put, it’s a lot like paying so much reference to the deed to your house that you never actually move in.

But Brunner doesn’t simply express concern with the idea that right-wing evangelicals might substitute dogma or scriptural document for the Living Savior and a relationship with that Living Savior, he also challenges the post-Enlightenment tendency to use more appealing vocabulary from a human perspective to describe God rather than focus the realities of sin and divine wrath as indicating the human predicament (pp. 96-97). Nor does Brunner want his readers so smitten by an unfocused idea of natural revelation that they would ignore the specific revelation of the cross. “Revelation reaches its highest intensity in the atonement at the cross.” (p. 07)

Such a position is right in line with his dual emphasis which has sometimes (erroneously) been taken as universalism. Brunner believes that the New Testament simultaneously teaches the universal availability of the Kingdom alongside the necessity of the individual reception of eternal life (p. 148). This dynamic reflects Brunner’s thought on the Providence versus Free Will debates as “both-and” rather than “either-or.” In a similar way, Brunner sees the reception of personal salvation as being a human response to the divine act of God which, with God’s help, is continued and fulfilled in the ongoing response of sanctification (p. 136).

As a result of reading Makers of the Modern Theological Mind: Emil Brunner, I find several points clarified and have ended up going back to read various sections of the three-volume set of his “dogmatics.” I certainly plan to continue my ongoing plan to visit and re-visit this entire series.

[Chandler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a terribly written work by J. Edward Humphrey. In this book, Humphrey seeks to introduce the reader to Emil Brunner’s life and key theological views. Humphrey summarizes how “Brunner builds his whole system around certain dynamic concepts, such as personhood, personal correspondence, truth as encounter, divine orders of creation, and ecclesia as fellowship.” Yet, Humphrey seems to be allergic to quotations in this book as I only counted like 3 quotes in the entire book, and even then it was just brief quotes of certain phrases used by Brunner. This is awful practice for a work in historical theology. Humphrey elects to do strict summary or paraphrase of Brunner’s thought, so I have no idea where Brunner’s ideas end and Humphrey’s words begin. Each chapter also lacks an introduction or conclusion paragraph. Humphrey just abruptly begins and ends each section. Not to mention how dry of a writer is, boy is it dry. The only reason I give two stars rather than one is because the chapters on Brunner’s views about God and Christ did contain some helpful info in spite of Humphrey’s bland presentation of these doctrines. In the future, if find that Humphrey has written on another theologian I am interested in, I will keep searching for a better work on the person of interest.

[Ryan Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great introduction to Brunner’s thought, but would have been better if it had allowed Brunner to speak in his own words.