Reviews Of Books -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 10:1 (Nov 1947)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous


Reviews Of Books

Emil Brunner: Revelation and Reason. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1946. xii, 440. $4.50.

Fashions are not confined to the area of milady’s wardrobe. While there is considerably less rapidity of movement we are aware of changing fashion in the fields of education, sociology, natural science and politics. And even in theology the fashion does change. The prevailing theological fashion certainly differs markedly from that of a generation ago. Readers of this Journal are well aware that the older liberalism with its immanentistic theology, its optimistic view of man, its activistic depreciation of doctrine and its cheerful faith that we could “build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land” is no longer the fashion even in America which tends to lag behind Europe in its adoption of new theological styles. It has been supplanted by the Dialectical Theology of Barth and Brunner. This book by Emil Brunner, first published in German in 1941 and now translated into English, must therefore be taken into account by anyone who would be up-to-date in his theological thinking.

Revelation and Reason is a work in Apologetics. It aims to set forth the Christian doctrine of Revelation and its relation to reason. “We do not begin our inquiry with reason and then work up to revelation, but, as a believing Church, we begin our inquiry with revelation and then work outwards to reason” (p. ix). Brunner wishes to present the case for Christianity to the modern unbeliever who assumes, more or less naively, the autonomy of the human reason. However, since the way to the Christian faith is blocked by faults and errors in the teaching of the Church itself, a further purpose of the book is to present a Christian Faith freed from such deterring elements.

Brunner begins by making revelation basic to the message of the Church. All that she has, she has received. “Hence the divine revelation alone is both the ground and the norm, as well as the content of her message” (p. 3). The Church must reflect on this revelation and be prepared to give a clear theological statement concerning it. This is particularly true today because the present age is distinguished from earlier periods in history by “the almost complete disappearance of the sense of transcendance and the

consciousness of revelation” (p. 4). Brunner is not prepared to compromise with a secular culture which trusts only the perception of the senses and the conclusions of logic. “The Christian claim to revelation stands in the sharpest possible opposition to this conception of truth” (pp. 5f.). However, the Church has not given an adequate statement of the nature of revelation because it becam...

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