Emil Brunner: The Mediator

About a hundred years ago there was a revolt in Continental Evangelical (Protestant) theology.  Many reasons have been given for it, but a generation of students found that the Liberal and Mediating theology taught them did not speak to their concerns.  Instead, they found that the Bible and the Reformers seemed more honest and, well, practical than what they had been taught.

It was a wide and diverse movement.  In various ways Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, the Niebuhr brothers, and Paul Tillich were all spokespeople for this, and are still studied today.  But in some respects, it was Emil Brunner who introduced English speakers to this theological movement because his works were translated early and because he spoke at various lectureships in English between the wars.

And yet when I went to school in the 1990's, we never had any Brunner assigned.  I can't really speak for many of my professors about why, but I strongly suggest that this is because he was "too much" like Karl Barth (both were Swiss Reformed) and those who wanted us to see that perspective sent us to Barth essays or the Church Dogmatics.

This may be one of the reason that many of his works appear to have slipped into the Public Domain.  I think it was NB who pointed this out here on the forums, and while I was not that personally influenced by Brunner, I recognized the name and recognized that his works had at least enough value to see if I could create a PB.

I picked his early Christological monograph.  The German is from 1927, and the English translation is from the early 1930's.  The edition on Internet Archive I used was from 1947, but appears to have no updates from the initial one.

In general, Brunner seems more "balanced" than the early "Prophetic" Barth, and more succinct than the Barth of his Dogmatics, and so I can see how he was valuable as an introduction to the theological movement - a purpose he can still serve today.  A full evaluation of his work would be well beyond the forum guidelines, but the movement to which he witnesses has been influential throughout the church...

About the pb edition.  I took the text and tagged pages according to the print edition.  Some links have been added, especially to other pages in this work as well as many ancient texts.  I have not tried to find links to the more recent texts which he references in the German originals (eg. Schliermacher, Ritschl, Harnack) even if it does exist in English in the Logos ecosystem.  I ask that if you add to this work, I do ask you to please share your additions with us...

SDG

Ken McGuire