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Dogmatics
Dogmatics: Volume III - Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith & the Consummation
Short The first of the three volumes of Brunner?
Paperback
First published September 19, 2002
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About the author
Emil Brunner
184 books11 followersHeinrich Emil Brunner was a Protestant theologian and Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Zurich.
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June 29, 2024
THE THIRD VOLUME OF BRUNNER’S MAGNUM OPUS
Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889-1966) was a Swiss Reformed theologian, who (along with Karl Barth) was the leader of the Neo-Orthodox theology movement. [NOTE; page numbers below refer to a 457-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1960 book, “[I] owe my readers an explanation of the reasons for the delay in the appearance of this present and final volume… I became aware that the problems of eschatology required a clarification which would free them from traditional ideas and place them in direction relation to the center of the Biblical faith… The chief concern of this concluding volume is to vindicate the Biblical concept of faith in contrast to that supplied by the tradition of the creed.”
He states, “This last volume deals with [Christ’s] people and the new life, life in fellowship with God in the Holy Spirit and its consummation. How God chooses and creates a people for Himself, and is present in His people; this is its first theme, the doctrine of the Ekklesia.” (Pg. 3) He continues, “We have just described the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as a historical event, as something which happened, at that time and at that place, for all men… But how it possible to know about this event which happened nineteen hundred years ago?... the bridge that spans … is the proclamation of the Church… The Church is in the first place merely the instrument, the bearer, of the proclamation. Everything that serves this proclamation is Church, and it is this function and nothing else which makes the Church the Church: a ‘proclaiming existence’ as the historical continuum of the revelation.” (Pg. 4)
He observes, “We can and must clarify the same point from another side. Revelation and faith---this is our principal article of belief which determines all else---are personal encounter.” (Pg. 11) He continues, “When we say ‘Holy Spirit’ we mean that mode of God’s being by which He is present within us, and operates in our spirit and heart. His first and decisive activity is this, that He makes Christ present to us, who stands over against us as a fact of the past in the Word, in the witness to Jesus as the Christ (John 14-16) Only when we do not merely confront the Word of the past, but this Word as a Word present, and operative in us today, is it true that faith is personal encounter.” (Pg. 12)
He notes, “even the Apostle [Paul] himself has no other authority in the Ekklesia than that of the primary witness to Christ and of the Holy Spirit… The more mature a Christian community it is, the less is the Apostle an authority for it, the more he is simply a brother in Christ.” (Pg. 49) He asserts, “none of the Churches which have come into being in the course of the centuries is the Ekklesia of the New Testament. The transformation of the Ekklesia into the Roman Catholic Church has made it into something fundamentally different… But even the Churches of the Reformation… did not attain their goal… By calling themselves Churches they have assimilated into their nature the character of an institution and have to that extent lost the character of brotherhood in Christ.” (Pg. 85)
He asserts, “The Church must decide whether with the Apostles it is to think of itself in personal categories or with the Catholic Church in sacramental categories. There is no third possibility. It is in fact impossible to place an equal emphasis on ‘Word and Sacrament.’ One of the most urgent requirements of a Church that wishes to be apostolic in the New Testament sense is that it should be free from sacramental thinking. That only by such a procedure would Baptism and the Lord’s Supper regain their true significance, we have already shown in an earlier discussion.” (Pg. 125)
He points out, “Thus no ‘guiltless’ person encounters Christ but a man who through this encounter becomes aware that his precious existence was unbelief, and that means rebellion against God. Only in the encounter with Jesus Christ can the unbeliever recognize himself as such, since outside this encounter he uses religion or morals to protect him against the judgment of God and ‘makes his boast’ of it. Only when Christ is known, can man really understand that the final choice is between faith and unbelief, and why it should be so.” (Pg. 150-151)
He argues, “There can thus be no question of [the believer’s] having FIRST to believe in a fact, and then on the strength of that being able to believe… He does not owe his Jesus, the Christ, to the historian, but to the man who bore witness to him about Jesus as the Christ, so that in penitence and faith he recognized Jesus as such through the same Spirit in which He had been preached to him. Therefore his faith is not first a faith in facts, but, from the beginning, vital faith in Christ. The believer knows nothing of a faith in facts which would have to precede his genuine faith.” (Pg. 187)
He asserts, “Today there are but few theologians left who believe in the theory of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. In spite of this the completely different character of this so-called faith from justifying faith is not yet rightly understood. The error is not so much that its advocates do not see and concede the inaccuracies and human fallibility of the holy Book---that is the argument of the Enlightenment, which is indeed right, but does not touch the central point. The error is that through this (aprioristic) Bible faith, faith has been transformed into something fundamentally different from what the Bible itself means … The result of our reflections is thus as follows: Aprioristic bible faith is not Biblical but stems from precisely the Jewish legalistic thought which was transcended by justifying faith.” (Pg. 190)
He acknowledges, “Not everything written in the Bible has this character of divine self-disclosure and disclosure of man’s nature. Much of the Bible is narrative of the kind that is found in history books, chronicles and the annals of the nations… But this ‘profane’ material cannot be distinguished simply from relevant matter dealing with God or man. For right in the middle of information on purely profane matters the beam of divine revelation can break forth, while on the other hand it may not perhaps be visible in theological passages. Just for this reason it may not be possible to delimit and earmark the ‘Word of God in the Bible’ as such.” (Pg. 245-246) He adds, “It is equally clear that we can never return to the old doctrine of scripture, and that not only on grounds of scholarship, but just as much, or even more, for reasons of faith.” (Pg. 249)
He asserts, “Marxism must be regarded as a judgment of God upon empirical Christianity. It is, so to speak, a deficiency disease, which can be explained only in terms of an actual deficiency. And for this deficiency a great part of the blame is borne by the Christian Church---more or less in all its forms.” (Pg. 359)
He says, “History is not a Biblical concept. The Bible does not speak of history. And yet it is the most historical of books. Christian faith, Biblical faith in general, is historical existence in the highest sense of the word.” (Pg. 367)
After quoting 1 Thess 4:16-17, he comments, “To the question whether the Apostle meant all this literally we cannot answer with a confident ‘Yes’ or with a confident ‘No.’ He can hardly have pictured God as blowing a trumpet. But for the rest we must not postulate too clear a consciousness of the symbolic and inadequate character of these expressions in Paul the writer or in the contemporary readers of this Epistle. The reader of today ‘demythologizes’ willy-nilly… even if he is a fundamentalist. What is in question is only the amount of this demythologizing. We find, in a word, that here the world picture of the Bible conflicts with our world picture. But at the same time everyone who has understood the central importance of the Parousia-expectation sees that here there is no other possibility of expression than the symbolic.” (Pg. 396-397)
This book is “must reading” for anyone seriously studying Christian theology.
Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889-1966) was a Swiss Reformed theologian, who (along with Karl Barth) was the leader of the Neo-Orthodox theology movement. [NOTE; page numbers below refer to a 457-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1960 book, “[I] owe my readers an explanation of the reasons for the delay in the appearance of this present and final volume… I became aware that the problems of eschatology required a clarification which would free them from traditional ideas and place them in direction relation to the center of the Biblical faith… The chief concern of this concluding volume is to vindicate the Biblical concept of faith in contrast to that supplied by the tradition of the creed.”
He states, “This last volume deals with [Christ’s] people and the new life, life in fellowship with God in the Holy Spirit and its consummation. How God chooses and creates a people for Himself, and is present in His people; this is its first theme, the doctrine of the Ekklesia.” (Pg. 3) He continues, “We have just described the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as a historical event, as something which happened, at that time and at that place, for all men… But how it possible to know about this event which happened nineteen hundred years ago?... the bridge that spans … is the proclamation of the Church… The Church is in the first place merely the instrument, the bearer, of the proclamation. Everything that serves this proclamation is Church, and it is this function and nothing else which makes the Church the Church: a ‘proclaiming existence’ as the historical continuum of the revelation.” (Pg. 4)
He observes, “We can and must clarify the same point from another side. Revelation and faith---this is our principal article of belief which determines all else---are personal encounter.” (Pg. 11) He continues, “When we say ‘Holy Spirit’ we mean that mode of God’s being by which He is present within us, and operates in our spirit and heart. His first and decisive activity is this, that He makes Christ present to us, who stands over against us as a fact of the past in the Word, in the witness to Jesus as the Christ (John 14-16) Only when we do not merely confront the Word of the past, but this Word as a Word present, and operative in us today, is it true that faith is personal encounter.” (Pg. 12)
He notes, “even the Apostle [Paul] himself has no other authority in the Ekklesia than that of the primary witness to Christ and of the Holy Spirit… The more mature a Christian community it is, the less is the Apostle an authority for it, the more he is simply a brother in Christ.” (Pg. 49) He asserts, “none of the Churches which have come into being in the course of the centuries is the Ekklesia of the New Testament. The transformation of the Ekklesia into the Roman Catholic Church has made it into something fundamentally different… But even the Churches of the Reformation… did not attain their goal… By calling themselves Churches they have assimilated into their nature the character of an institution and have to that extent lost the character of brotherhood in Christ.” (Pg. 85)
He asserts, “The Church must decide whether with the Apostles it is to think of itself in personal categories or with the Catholic Church in sacramental categories. There is no third possibility. It is in fact impossible to place an equal emphasis on ‘Word and Sacrament.’ One of the most urgent requirements of a Church that wishes to be apostolic in the New Testament sense is that it should be free from sacramental thinking. That only by such a procedure would Baptism and the Lord’s Supper regain their true significance, we have already shown in an earlier discussion.” (Pg. 125)
He points out, “Thus no ‘guiltless’ person encounters Christ but a man who through this encounter becomes aware that his precious existence was unbelief, and that means rebellion against God. Only in the encounter with Jesus Christ can the unbeliever recognize himself as such, since outside this encounter he uses religion or morals to protect him against the judgment of God and ‘makes his boast’ of it. Only when Christ is known, can man really understand that the final choice is between faith and unbelief, and why it should be so.” (Pg. 150-151)
He argues, “There can thus be no question of [the believer’s] having FIRST to believe in a fact, and then on the strength of that being able to believe… He does not owe his Jesus, the Christ, to the historian, but to the man who bore witness to him about Jesus as the Christ, so that in penitence and faith he recognized Jesus as such through the same Spirit in which He had been preached to him. Therefore his faith is not first a faith in facts, but, from the beginning, vital faith in Christ. The believer knows nothing of a faith in facts which would have to precede his genuine faith.” (Pg. 187)
He asserts, “Today there are but few theologians left who believe in the theory of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. In spite of this the completely different character of this so-called faith from justifying faith is not yet rightly understood. The error is not so much that its advocates do not see and concede the inaccuracies and human fallibility of the holy Book---that is the argument of the Enlightenment, which is indeed right, but does not touch the central point. The error is that through this (aprioristic) Bible faith, faith has been transformed into something fundamentally different from what the Bible itself means … The result of our reflections is thus as follows: Aprioristic bible faith is not Biblical but stems from precisely the Jewish legalistic thought which was transcended by justifying faith.” (Pg. 190)
He acknowledges, “Not everything written in the Bible has this character of divine self-disclosure and disclosure of man’s nature. Much of the Bible is narrative of the kind that is found in history books, chronicles and the annals of the nations… But this ‘profane’ material cannot be distinguished simply from relevant matter dealing with God or man. For right in the middle of information on purely profane matters the beam of divine revelation can break forth, while on the other hand it may not perhaps be visible in theological passages. Just for this reason it may not be possible to delimit and earmark the ‘Word of God in the Bible’ as such.” (Pg. 245-246) He adds, “It is equally clear that we can never return to the old doctrine of scripture, and that not only on grounds of scholarship, but just as much, or even more, for reasons of faith.” (Pg. 249)
He asserts, “Marxism must be regarded as a judgment of God upon empirical Christianity. It is, so to speak, a deficiency disease, which can be explained only in terms of an actual deficiency. And for this deficiency a great part of the blame is borne by the Christian Church---more or less in all its forms.” (Pg. 359)
He says, “History is not a Biblical concept. The Bible does not speak of history. And yet it is the most historical of books. Christian faith, Biblical faith in general, is historical existence in the highest sense of the word.” (Pg. 367)
After quoting 1 Thess 4:16-17, he comments, “To the question whether the Apostle meant all this literally we cannot answer with a confident ‘Yes’ or with a confident ‘No.’ He can hardly have pictured God as blowing a trumpet. But for the rest we must not postulate too clear a consciousness of the symbolic and inadequate character of these expressions in Paul the writer or in the contemporary readers of this Epistle. The reader of today ‘demythologizes’ willy-nilly… even if he is a fundamentalist. What is in question is only the amount of this demythologizing. We find, in a word, that here the world picture of the Bible conflicts with our world picture. But at the same time everyone who has understood the central importance of the Parousia-expectation sees that here there is no other possibility of expression than the symbolic.” (Pg. 396-397)
This book is “must reading” for anyone seriously studying Christian theology.
July 3, 2021
Quarantine-Book #17:
I just finished "The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation: Dogmatics Vol. 3," by Emil Brunner.
Much respect to Brunner for having written this last of three Dogmatics after a stroke eliminated the use of his right hand. Its thicker than the previous Dogmatics by at least 100 pp.
Brunner on Ecclesiology is awesome:
"The Ekklesia is this new humanity which is reconciled with God by God, and in which, therefore, each has fellowship with his brother, p 20."
Much love for him using "Ekklesia" over "Church" and driving the nail away from the architecturally inspired German Kirche. From further reading this Ekklesia/Church division is because he believes "Church" has much Roman residue while the Ekklesia has been left in the past. He dislikes the institutional structure of Rome, what the Reformed movement quickly became, and also the sacraments; the Ekklesia has meals to remember Jesus and baptisms which were signs of allegiance. Brunner finds much to admire in the non-institutional Anabaptists and even more communal groups.
"Faith in Christ gives rise to a fellowship in which men share their life, Ekklesia, but not to an institution, a church," p 43. This seems to say that we are living life together under the allegiance to Jesus, if we are to be known as or for anything then that's it.
Our misalignment from Ekklesia to church, and church as a sacred (salvific) institution via the sacraments, made faith a profession of belief: Orthodoxy over allegiance, or faith. And it on to faith which Brunner moves in part 2. He defines this as admission that we belong to another while rightly castrating the cognitive "belief" from faith (if faith is "right knowledge" we are all damned). Though he has yet to say it, i prefer allegiance.
"The singular thing about man is that he is one who has a false or a true sself understanding. The singular thing about the relation of God to man is that the purpose of God's self-communication is to determine man's self understanding, so that man's 'This is what I am' should be identical with God's 'This is who you are'," pp 204-205
His section on conversion began with a footnote that was great and also it validated some of the thoughts I've recently had: the Constantinian churches (Western high churches: Roman and those of the magisterial reformation) dont talk about conversion because that is done at birth. The free church movement in the U.S. has returned to the scriptural tradition of a historical conversion.
I think Brunner lost his profoundly Christological starting point. Also, this volume would have been a great place for a.proper Pneumatology; he didnt have one. Finally, the previous volumes ended each section with a bit of a historical theological overview which I found wonderful. He had one in here on Bultmann demythologizing eschatology.
"The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is simply the protest of world history against its invisible Lord who in Jesus Christ has entered into history, the protest against the Kingdom of God that has broken into it, though under concealment as yet. In the Easter event this incognito of the history of the Kingdom of God is as it were for an moment lifted. But there is no visible continuum of such lightning flashes, no demonstrable continuity in the humanization of man.... The Christian picture of world history bears clearly the theology of the cross," p 373.
The middle and concluding parts, Faith and the Consummation, were ok.
#EmilBrunner #Brunner #Dogmatics #NeoOrthodox #Ecclesiology #Pneumatology #Nein #RonaBook
I just finished "The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation: Dogmatics Vol. 3," by Emil Brunner.
Much respect to Brunner for having written this last of three Dogmatics after a stroke eliminated the use of his right hand. Its thicker than the previous Dogmatics by at least 100 pp.
Brunner on Ecclesiology is awesome:
"The Ekklesia is this new humanity which is reconciled with God by God, and in which, therefore, each has fellowship with his brother, p 20."
Much love for him using "Ekklesia" over "Church" and driving the nail away from the architecturally inspired German Kirche. From further reading this Ekklesia/Church division is because he believes "Church" has much Roman residue while the Ekklesia has been left in the past. He dislikes the institutional structure of Rome, what the Reformed movement quickly became, and also the sacraments; the Ekklesia has meals to remember Jesus and baptisms which were signs of allegiance. Brunner finds much to admire in the non-institutional Anabaptists and even more communal groups.
"Faith in Christ gives rise to a fellowship in which men share their life, Ekklesia, but not to an institution, a church," p 43. This seems to say that we are living life together under the allegiance to Jesus, if we are to be known as or for anything then that's it.
Our misalignment from Ekklesia to church, and church as a sacred (salvific) institution via the sacraments, made faith a profession of belief: Orthodoxy over allegiance, or faith. And it on to faith which Brunner moves in part 2. He defines this as admission that we belong to another while rightly castrating the cognitive "belief" from faith (if faith is "right knowledge" we are all damned). Though he has yet to say it, i prefer allegiance.
"The singular thing about man is that he is one who has a false or a true sself understanding. The singular thing about the relation of God to man is that the purpose of God's self-communication is to determine man's self understanding, so that man's 'This is what I am' should be identical with God's 'This is who you are'," pp 204-205
His section on conversion began with a footnote that was great and also it validated some of the thoughts I've recently had: the Constantinian churches (Western high churches: Roman and those of the magisterial reformation) dont talk about conversion because that is done at birth. The free church movement in the U.S. has returned to the scriptural tradition of a historical conversion.
I think Brunner lost his profoundly Christological starting point. Also, this volume would have been a great place for a.proper Pneumatology; he didnt have one. Finally, the previous volumes ended each section with a bit of a historical theological overview which I found wonderful. He had one in here on Bultmann demythologizing eschatology.
"The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is simply the protest of world history against its invisible Lord who in Jesus Christ has entered into history, the protest against the Kingdom of God that has broken into it, though under concealment as yet. In the Easter event this incognito of the history of the Kingdom of God is as it were for an moment lifted. But there is no visible continuum of such lightning flashes, no demonstrable continuity in the humanization of man.... The Christian picture of world history bears clearly the theology of the cross," p 373.
The middle and concluding parts, Faith and the Consummation, were ok.
#EmilBrunner #Brunner #Dogmatics #NeoOrthodox #Ecclesiology #Pneumatology #Nein #RonaBook
February 5, 2018
Compelling ecclesiology, underwhelming doctrine of the Word
July 2, 2013
Brunner's three-part work on Church Dogmatics is a theological classic... and I'm sorry it took me so long to finally get around to reading it. This is not "devotional" reading or light reflections on assorted religious ideas. It is a serious work of scholarship that will challenge even the most astute pastoral readers. It certainly challenged me! I confess that I did get lost a time or two, in the midst of some of Brunner's more far-ranging observations. But, on the whole, the book(s) were extremely helpful, and a very useful counterweight to Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion," which I read last year.
I was amazed at how current and "up to date" Brunner's thinking always seemed to be. This series was written back in the 50's and early 60's... yet Brunner's ideas, reflections, and arguments incorporated what we might call more "modern" understandings of science, biblical studies, and philosophy; which made his work all the more timely. Another way of putting it is to say that Brunner was clearly "ahead of his time" as a theologian. This work is still meaningful, helpful, and important even in the twenty-first century. I highly recommend it.
I was amazed at how current and "up to date" Brunner's thinking always seemed to be. This series was written back in the 50's and early 60's... yet Brunner's ideas, reflections, and arguments incorporated what we might call more "modern" understandings of science, biblical studies, and philosophy; which made his work all the more timely. Another way of putting it is to say that Brunner was clearly "ahead of his time" as a theologian. This work is still meaningful, helpful, and important even in the twenty-first century. I highly recommend it.
November 13, 2012
Probably of the three volumes in this set, this is the one I was least stimulated by and least motivate to finish... He has lots of good things to say, but volumes one and two are much more edifying and worth the effort. Still, see notes from previous volumes, Brunner is still very much worth the effort.
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