Bücher von Emil Brunner

Describing his objective in writing Eternal Hope, Emil Brunner boldly claimed that ¿a church that has nothing to teach concerning the future and the life of the world to come is bankrupt¿. Several decades later, such a challenge might still be levied. Against this backdrop, Brunner offers a way forward that remains closely tied scripture, yet is nevertheless pastorally sensitive. Indeed, one of the central tenets of his approach is that the Gospel offers no comfort to the individual that is not at the same time a promise for the future of humanity as a whole. He proceeds systematically through the promises and mysteries that the Christian faith maintains surrounding death, while holding the hope of eternity as a constant goal.A precursor to his more rigorous Dogmatics, and partly in preparation for the second assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1954, Eternal Hope was also written just a year after the tragic death of Brunner¿s son. It is therefore no surprise that he combines the vulnerability of his personal encounter with death, and a theological outlook that has universal implications.

Faith, hope, and love are central tropes in Christian teaching, and indeed are increasingly common in general vernacular, yet Swiss theologian Emil Brunner found the triad lacked the thorough theological study they demanded. These three words, Brunner argues, represent the totality of what it means to be Christian: faith as a receptable of God¿s timeless love, hope as our faith in what God has done in Christ, and the giving of love which makes humans truly human. To Brunner, faith, hope, and love are essential and total, reflecting the relation to Jesus in the three dimensions of time - the past, present, and future. Faith, Hope, and Love, originally delivered as the Earl Lectures in Berkeley, California, in 1955, therefore represents Brunner¿s accomplished expression on the significance and importance of these three values to Christians.

Emil Brunner discusses the importance of revelation as the foundation of Christian theology in relation to reason as the basis of Western civilization.

In this little book, which has become a classic, Emil Brunner, one of the twentieth century's leading Reformed theologians, introduces the basics of the Christian faith.