Emil Brunner

   Emil Brunner is the John Paul Jones of theology.

   He's a guy whose influence has been felt by millions of Christians around the world today. His books line the shelves of theology libraries throughout the globe, and it's entirely likely that whoever your favourite theologian of the past century is, they've probably been molded or shaped by Brunner to at least some extent.

   And yet, if you mention him, you'll probably be met with reactions like “He's that German guy, right?” or “Ohhh, Brunner! Didn't he have something to do with Barth?” or possibly “My doctor thought I had Brunner once, but it ended up being mono.” Of course, this is assuming that they've even heard the name at all, when it's entirely likely that this is not the case.

   Which is a shame, really.

   Like John Paul Jones, Brunner isn't overlooked because he isn't all that memorable. He's overlooked because as great as he was, he's surrounded by people who were even greater. Stanley Grenz once referred to him as “a giant overshadowed by colossi” and that's a pretty good way of putting it. The man was constantly in the shadow of the titans who surrounded him – most notably Karl Barth. Of course, there's nothing particularly special about that, as every Christian authour in the past century is overshadowed by Barth, but Brunner feels it especially keenly since he was a close friend and peer of Barth who argued for roughly similar positions during the same time frame.

   In fact, Brunner was almost never mentioned outside of references to Barth. Brunner ended up in a lot of ways playing the Robin to Barth's Batman, the Ben Affleck to Barth's Matt Damon, the John Paul Jones to – wait, I made that reference already. But Brunner was more than Barth's sidekick. He had his own distinct life, arguments, and perspectives.

So, who is Brunner?

   Brunner was a Swiss theologian born in 1889 just outside of Zurich. He studied at the University of Zurich and eventually ended up completing doctoral studies in theology at the University of Berlin in 1913, and as a result of his studies received awards and honorary degrees from universities throughout Europe and the United States. From there he went on to teach high school in England until 1914, when he returned to Switzerland to serve in the militia during the first World War. After that, he ended up serving as vicar (which is like a priest or pastor, only they make less money. Like an old-fashioned word for “intern”), then pastoring a church in Obstaldan, after which he went on to have a long life where he worked as both pastor as well as a professor and scholar at the University of Zurich.

   Okay, so now that we've got that info dump (which I'm sure you're all very thankful for), what do we make of it? Why should we care about this man?

   Well, there's a couple of interesting things about Brunner that are worth taking a look at.

   A huge concept for Brunner was the I-Thou thing. A Jewish philosopher from the early twentieth century named Martin Buber developed this idea that relationships can basically be divided into two categories: “I-It” relationships, and “I-Thou” relationships. I'm gonna try and summarize these concepts, but bear in mind that in doing so I can't really do them justice. Buber said that we basically interact with the world around us in two ways: As though it were human (an I-Thou relationship) or as though it were inanimate (an I-It relationship). Brunner read this and thought, “Alright, hang on, the way we talk about God – isn't that usually in an I-It way? But shouldn't it be an I-Thou relationship?”

   In other words, Brunner took this idea and ran with it, leading to something called “Biblical personalism.” God wasn't a truth-claim that we have an opinion about. No, to Brunner, God was a person that we interact with (or don't interact with, as the case may be). This obviously isn't a new idea, but it injected the conversation about God with a certain sort of immediacy that wasn't there before. When we look at some of the rhetoric that's used by some Christians today, like talking about having a personal relationship with Christ, these are ideas that come, in part, from Brunner's work.

   (Note if you're like me and are weird and read this and think “Man, that's interesting, I want to know more about this whole I-Thou thing” then check this out: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/#DiaITho. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great peer-reviewed, online source that can give you all the information you want and then some).

Okay, so what does this mean? 

   Well, it's actually pretty important. It's remarkably easy for us to look at our relationship with God in an I-It framework. We distance ourselves personally from God and instead start to see him as an object: A vending machine who gives us what we want, or a stuffed animal that we can hug and tell our secrets to, or an impersonal tool of justice or wrath that we need to hide from when we've done something wrong. These perspectives fail to accurately describe God as a person.

   Unfortunately, I'm just about out of space. This summary of Brunner and his life is tragically incomplete (I mean, I'm not even scratching the surface) but hopefully it will provoke some of you to go look up his works and spend some time reading, digesting, and critiquing the concepts that he puts forward.