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Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology
and Biblical Studies

THE FALL OF HUMANKIND

AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
ENGAGEMENTS WITH EMIL BRUNNER
Arttu Mäkipää
The Fall of Humankind and Social
Progress

This book investigates the link between human capabilities and the precondi-
tions for social progress through an engagement with the theological anthro-
pology of Swiss theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966). It places Brunner’s
thought in dialogue with selected contributors from the contemporary social
sciences, examining approaches from economics, sociology and philosophy
as put forward by Gary S. Becker, Christian Smith and Martha Nussbaum.
This dialogic format helps to crystallise both agreements and differences and
thus facilitate greater understanding between theology and other disciplines.
Questions explored in the discussion relate to the emergence of human na-
ture (the person) and the capabilities human beings possess, as well as how
these develop in a social context. The author focuses in particular on the
impact of sin (the Fall) and considers the mixed blessings of economic pro-
gress. By providing pointers on how to bring back the human person in so-
cial disciplines, the book hopes to contribute to improved understanding of
the ethical dimension of social progress and human flourishing. It will be of
particular interest to scholars of analytic and systematic theology, but also
scholars from economics and social sciences with openness to theological
engagement.

Arttu Mäkipää is an affiliated researcher in the Department of System-

atic Theology at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit (ETF) in Leuven,
Belgium. Trained in both economics and theology, he has also worked as a
European Union official for a number of years and has extensive experience
in the international policy field.
Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology
and Biblical Studies

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Edited by Michael S. Northcott and Steven C. van den Heuvel

Misusing Scripture
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The Fall of Humankind and Social Progress

Engagements with Emil Brunner
Arttu Mäkipää

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The Fall of Humankind
and Social Progress
Engagements with Emil Brunner

Arttu Mäkipää
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 Arttu Mäkipää
The right of Arttu Mäkipää to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781032434094 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032434117 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003367178 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003367178

Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
To Sara, Mira, Matias and Lilja
Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Copyrighted Material ix

1 Introduction1

PART I
The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging
Emil Brunner17
2 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology19
3 Economics: The Human Being and Human Capital65
4 Development: The Capabilities Approach  99
5 Sociology: The Person in Social Sciences130

PART II
The Fall and Social Progress: Who Is in Control?159
6 Sin and Moral Evil in the Social Realm161
7 Imbalanced Social Progress?184
8 The Paradox of Economic Progress210
9 Conclusion  255

Index262
Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to Steven van den Heuvel for his encouragement and
guidance over many years as well as to Martin Webber for providing invalu-
able comments improving the language of the manuscript. I am also very
grateful for the friendship and numerous discussions with Gordon Menzies,
Donald Hay and Peter Eckley and other members of the Economic Human-
ists network that have considerably improved various key arguments in this
book. This book is a revised version of my PhD dissertation. I also thank
Patrick Nullens, Paul Oslington, Govert Buijs, Ron Michener and Nico den
Bok, as well as other colleagues at the Evangelical Theological Faculty in
Leuven, for their helpful comments on that earlier version. Finally, I stand in
deep gratitude for the unwavering love and support of wife Sara; my children
Mira, Matias and Lilja; my parents Pekka and Paula and my parents-in-law
Auke and Els van Slooten. Without them, this book would not have been
written.
Kraainem, Belgium, May 2023
Copyrighted Material

Figure 1.1 reprinted under the open access Creative Commons BY License of
author Max Roser of Our World in Data.
Figure 3.1 Copyright by the CFA Institute. Reprinted with permission.
Figure 5.1 Copyright by the University of Chicago Press, 2010. Reprinted
with permission.
Figures 6.1, 6.2 and 6.4 copyright by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Group, reprinted with permission.
Figure 8.1 Copyright by Ricardo Hausmann, C. Hidalgo, S. Bustos, M. Coscia,
S. Chung, J. Jimenez, A. Simoes, M. Yildirim. The Atlas of Economic Com-
plexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.
Reprinted with permission.
1 Introduction

The evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson observed in 2009 that “the real prob-
lem of humanity is the following: we have palaeolithic emotions; medieval
institutions; and god-like technology.”1 This statement opens the moral im-
agination around the question whether there may well be a basic asymmetry
within the path of human development and progress: while technology de-
velops at a lightning speed, has the human being substantially changed over
time? And how does any notion of human progress relate to social progress?
In this book, I explore this question from the perspective of a theological
understanding of human nature: in short, theological anthropology. In doing
so, I am very well aware of venturing onto the slippery terrain of an interdis-
ciplinary argument engaging social sciences with theology. A popular preju-
dice about bringing theological reasoning to bear on other subjects is that
to do so one would have to subject oneself to faith-based propositions, and
“leave reason at the door.” However, what if contemporary social sciences
have not been as successful and effective as sometimes assumed, in terms
of their ability to capture and understand human nature and social reality?
Could theology help give insights into issues that social sciences may miss?
It would be a rather big statement already at the beginning of the book to
answer that question with a resounding “yes.” Allow me to be more mod-
est and ask that theology should at least be given a chance. It is my con-
viction that, while safeguarding their legitimate differences, both academic
paradigms (theology and social sciences) can do much more together than
commonly assumed: social sciences can help theology to form a better un-
derstanding of the social nature of human existence in its contemporary ex-
pression, while theology can help social sciences dig deeper into the human
condition.2
Nonetheless, accepting this conviction does not make the encounter
straightforward. While theology asks the God-question by definition, social
sciences are at least methodologically secular, if not atheist. Due to significant
paradigmatic and epistemic differences between the disciplines, some sort of
a common ground is needed on the object of study, or else even disagreement
will not make sense. The anthropological question of the human being and
human nature lends itself very well for this purpose. Through the lens of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003367178-1
2 Introduction

theological anthropology and its rich understanding of human beings, this

book investigates the anthropological link between human capabilities (and
capacities), on the one hand, and preconditions for social progress on the
other. In other words, its central concern is what the human being is capable
of being and becoming, individually and socially, and where any possible
limits lie.
Against this background, in this book, I put the theological anthropology
of the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) in dialogue with selected
contributors from contemporary social sciences and social philosophy, all of
whom share a focus on human capacity within their discipline. Depending
on the discipline, the equivalents of capacity are also capability, ability or
capital. I conduct a series of engagements with economics (Gary S. Becker –
Human Capital), sociology (Christian Smith – What is a Person?) and de-
velopment (Martha Nussbaum – the Capabilities Approach). These authors
provide an insightful range of distance from a Christian understanding of
human nature, ranging from ignorance (Becker), through agnostic points of
contact (Nussbaum) to proximity in the form of a sociology based on Catho-
lic Social Thought (Smith). In the engagements, I ask the question of the
emergence of human nature (the person) and the capacities/capabilities this
human being possesses, as well as how these capacities evolve and develop in
a social context.
Why Emil Brunner? In his relatively recent theological reappraisal of Brun-
ner’s thought, Alister McGrath writes that “[t]he time has come to reconsider
his significance for the challenges facing both the academic discipline of the-
ology and the needs of the churches in the twenty-first century.”3 Beyond the
motive of helping resuscitate him in the academy, Brunner is a particularly
suitable choice given his explicit interest in ideological debating and wran-
gling (eristic theology, from erizein – “to wrangle”) with other academic
subjects. Due to this interest, he tends to speak a clear language that other
disciplines understand. Moreover, his rich understanding of human capaci-
ties seems well suited for an interdisciplinary engagement of the kind under-
taken here. Finally, as a dialectical4 neo-orthodox theologian of the early
twentieth century, Brunner is also uncompromising in his Christocentric the-
ology, with the Word of God as the only valid source of anthropology.5 This
strong theological imprint makes the engagement both more challenging as
well as more rewarding as the dialectic is unpacked. It also helps avoid the
pitfall of theology trying desperately to legitimate itself by building upon
social scientific conclusions.6
Working with Brunner allows theology to stay theology, and from that
starting point, to try to uncover hidden metaphysics and implicit anthropolo-
gies within social sciences, thus creating space for the transcendent and the
spiritual human condition as potentially relevant factors.7
The hypothesis is that Brunner’s thinking can help one better understand
fundamental notions of human capability, including its possibilities and limi-
tations, so as to relate these also to relational and social outcomes. In all
 Introduction 3

this, I will specifically focus on the impact of sin (the Fall) on human and
social capabilities. Thus, this book aims to contribute to improving the qual-
ity of dialogue between theology and social sciences in the interest of an
improved understanding of the ethical dimension of economic growth and
human flourishing. Asking and answering these questions will not recon-
cile the paradigmatic differences: contradictions and paradoxes will remain;
however, the hope is that one learns from them.

1.1 Faith in Progress: Shaken, But Very Much Alive

The history of the idea of “progress” is long and multifaceted.8 For most of
its early history, the notion of progress emerged from Christian worldviews.9
In the early modern period, during and after the Enlightenment and the “Age
of Reason,” its context gradually changed as the idea of progress was severed
from Christian roots. Coined by Auguste Comte in the nineteenth century,
the term social progress became popular, thus also making the idea of pro-
gress central to the very birth of social sciences. However, the march towards
gradual betterment of human beings and societies failed to deliver on its
high expectations. The mood turned sour and more pessimistic shortly after
the First World War. As this happened, the notion of social progress did not
disappear but rather mutated into a less ideological, more implicit and per-
haps more pragmatic mode. Nowadays, social progress is equated with the
notion of increased satisfaction of material or immaterial human needs. Its
measurement is increasingly through an evolving set of income, well-being
and happiness indicators.
The process leading to this situation has been gradual. While some notion
of economic betterment has been part and parcel of ideas of progress for
centuries, during the last century, the metric of national income as gross do-
mestic product moved to centre stage in the measurement of social progress.
More recently, several worthy initiatives have complemented this metric with
other relevant indicators of human well-being, including education, health,
environment and (in)equality, to name some of the key factors believed to
influence social well-being and progress. What these new measures have in
common is the determination that real “quality of life” is a matter that can-
not be measured by economic indicators alone.10 Thus, the contemporary
importance of social progress is perhaps best exemplified by the large-scale
work carried out for the recently completed report by the renowned Inter-
national Panel on Social Progress (IPSP).11 Its authors abstain from offer-
ing a strict definition of social progress, presumably due to the multifaceted
and interdisciplinary nature of the exercise. However, they posit the need for
“social change.” In contrast to nineteenth-century definitions of social pro-
gress, which they criticise as elitist and ideological, the panel offers a multi-
dimensional concept where “key values and principles underlying the idea
of social progress include: equal dignity, basic rights, democracy, the rule
of law, pluralism, well-being, freedom, nonalienation, solidarity, esteem and
4 Introduction

recognition, cultural goods, environmental values, distributive justice, trans-

parency and accountability.”12 The road to this better state runs very much
through democratic mechanisms of participatory governance.
Building on this status quo, social progress through the lens of theological
anthropology is an equally multifaceted phenomenon. The notion of progress
in the social realm is reducible neither to the human/individual dimension
nor to any mere technological progress. It may well be something in between,
or perhaps even sui generis. A relatively undisputed fact is that, historically,
improvements in technology, driven by scientific progress, have been cen-
tral contributors to an improvement in the quality of life. For sure, human
capacities lie at the heart of any technological progress. However, whether
this is tantamount to a parallel betterment of the human being alongside
technological conditions is an open question. Has the human being really
progressed over time? Seen historically, the humanist legacy of post-Enlight-
enment modernity carries the objective of achieving social progress through
human progress.
Today, the term social progress is no longer in frequent use in contempo-
rary academia, even though on a more popular level, according to certain
studies, faith in progress has perhaps even become the dominant religion
in the world.13 This optimistic view of the fruits of progress continues to
have convincing apologists.14 In some ways, this faith in progress also inher-
ently feeds the contemporary economic system built on “trust” and “credit,”
and, eventually, ever-increasing economic growth. Moreover, the fact that
real improvement in human living conditions over a long-term perspective
of centuries has taken place is undisputed. The following table of graphs il-
lustrates this for a number of central economic, health and education indica-
tors commonly believed to influence human well-being and living conditions
(Figure 1.1).
While successes are evident and progress has clearly taken place, the state
of the world today and at the very least recent, history prohibits simple con-
clusions. A survey in 2015 found that very few people believe the world is
getting better. Sweden was in the top of the list where 10% thought this was
the case, while the US and Germany stood at 6%.15 Although incomes and liv-
ing conditions have grown in many parts of the world, poverty and inequal-
ity remain high. Moreover, the world has not been able to reap unequivocal
social benefits from technological progress, and according to certain views,
unfettered technological progress now endangers the very survival of human-
ity.16 Furthermore, the illustration of the “Doughnut” concept shows how
humanity is in danger of overstepping crucial social, ecological and planetary
boundaries with its current economic model.17 These factors threaten the un-
interrupted march of social progress, as measured by mere nominal economic
expansion. To underline the point empirically, life expectancy has been found
to have deteriorated recently in the US and in the UK, the alleged heartlands
of scientific progress.18 The IPSP chastises both socialism and capitalism for
having fundamentally failed to deliver, and having left a “general sense of
 Introduction 5
Figure 1.1 The world as 100 people over the last two centuries19
Source: Reprinted under the open access Creative Commons BY License of author Max Roser of Our World in Data.
6 Introduction

disarray and disorientation.”20 In summary, whatever the final validity of

these theories and views, at the very least, simple conclusions about the path
of social progress and unfettered economic expansion are unwarranted.

1.2 What Can We Expect from the Engagement?

John Milbank’s acclaimed work on Theology and Social Theory, originally
published in 1991, had the objective to help theology rid itself of its “false
humility” and to “disclose the possibility of a sceptical demolition of mod-
ern, secular social theory from a perspective […] of Christianity.”21 In mild
contrast to Milbank’s relative epistemic arrogance, this book aims to take the
chosen discussion partners as equals in the dialogical engagement, while it
shares with Milbank the conviction that the substantial ideological backdrop
to the genesis of contemporary social sciences cannot be ignored.
Perhaps the three most important philosophically relevant underlying
streams that so far have had an impact on contemporary social sciences are
rational choice theory, evolutionary psychology and social theory. These
schools of thought, or combinations thereof, have a tight grip on the contem-
porary praxis of social science.22 While they have their undisputable benefits
in modelling human behaviour in social contexts, they also carry with them
strong presuppositions and (necessarily) reductionist views on understanding
human beings. These implicitly normative understandings have real conse-
quences in terms of the explanations and proposals advanced, also but not
exclusively in terms of (social) progress. Two of these schools, namely ra-
tional choice and social theory, will be dealt with more closely in this book.
Moreover, it is insightful to place the dialogues and discussions in the con-
text of contemporary descriptive ethics. Rather than concentrating on lofty
ethical or even “metaethical” theories, more recent approaches require ethi-
cal theory that it be attuned to life as lived, including the reality of lived expe-
rience. This approach can be exemplified by the work of Nora Hämäläinen.23
In this line of thinking, the task of ethics includes asking simple and humble
questions about locating moral evil within reality and lived experience. The
sociologist Andrew Sayer has also recently suggested that social sciences have
suffered from difficulty in “acknowledging that people’s relation to the world
is one of concern.”24 The other side of capability and flourishing is vulner-
ability to loss and suffering. According to Sayer, social science has become
accustomed to theorising away real suffering. Given the focus of this book on
the impact of sin and evil, this congruent view on the side of contemporary
ethics is especially welcome.
As mentioned earlier, I engage Brunner’s theological anthropology with
three representative authors in contemporary social policy and social sci-
ences, all of whom share a focus on the capabilities or capacities of human
beings. First, I take a closer look at economics with a classic labour econo-
mist, Gary S. Becker (1930–2014), known for his broad use of “rational
choice” methodology. For Becker, education drives human capital, which in
 Introduction 7

turn drives progress. Looking for a representative from within economics for
an engagement with the theological anthropology of Emil Brunner, I chose
Gary S. Becker for two reasons. First, Becker stands like no other for con-
temporary economic inquiry into human capital, a concept with direct points
of contact to notions of capability and capacity. Becker’s work on the eco-
nomics of human capital is widely regarded as the most comprehensive treat-
ment of the concept in an economic model where returns on human capital
investment are measured throughout people’s lifespan. Second, Becker is a
prominent representative of the neo-classical school of economic inquiry. He
is also known for developing the “economic way of looking at life,” largely
based on rational choice, and extending the methodology to all areas of hu-
man life and society.25 For this work, of which the human capital analysis
forms an integral part, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in
1992.26 Nowadays, Becker is remembered for ground-breaking work on the
economics of the family, fertility and marriage markets, among many other
areas. Much of Becker’s legacy remains controversial within and outside
the remit of economic sciences, because he was instrumental in setting off
“imperialist” tendencies of economics, expressly seeking to bring all of life
under its analytical remit. Nonetheless, Becker’s work remains important,
even though more recent streams of economics have departed from some of
his central assumptions. During his academic career, defining contributions
in terms of human capital are mainly part of Becker’s early academic career.27
His major contributions to this field are summarised in Human Capital, orig-
inally published in 1964 and passing through two further editions before
arriving at the most recent in 1993.28
Second, human capabilities are analysed in dialogue with development
studies (Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen – the Capabilities Approach).
This dialogue engages with such topics as basic human relationality and so-
ciality, the impact of sin and evil, and the degree of human autonomy and
freedom. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen developed the Capabilities
Approach (CA) and established it in academia.29 In my earlier work on the
subject, I stated that “the core contribution that theology can make to this of-
ten rather political and philosophical debate [on the CA] is precisely anthro-
pological in nature. The question most often underrated or even negated in
large parts of the socio-philosophical literature is precisely the fundamental
question of the human beings. It is here that theology can help by providing
original insights.”30 Nussbaum’s version of the CA has received more atten-
tion in philosophical and humanities literature than Sen’s. This may be due to
the fact that in comparison to Sen, Nussbaum’s CA is more (philosophically)
concrete and less analytical, not least in mathematical language. Sen remains
the founder of the CA tradition and his legacy, particularly in development
economics, remains substantial. Today, the CA is widely credited as being a
consensual and multi-dimensional approach to human development that can
be put in the service of policy. Following Sen’s ground-breaking work on the
economics of human capabilities, the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq
8 Introduction

embarked on operationalisation of the concept and created the Human De-

velopment Index (HDI). Since then, the HDI has found a prominent place in
relevant reports of the United Nations Development Programme, under the
umbrella of the Human Development Approach.31 The universal strengths of
the CA are mainly to be seen in its conceptual richness, not in its ability to
develop policy applications, in particular the CA’s ability to combine a num-
ber of philosophical traditions. John M. Alexander sees the strength of the
CA precisely in its “ecumenism,” namely its capacity to bring together tradi-
tions and philosophers that were thought incompatible.32 Overall, Martha
Nussbaum’s impact on the philosophical and social science literature around
the CA has been extensive and continues until today, both with and without
her own involvement.33
Thirdly, the capacities that make up a “person” are looked at in dialogue
with the sociologist Christian Smith, who represents a distinct type of sociol-
ogy, seeing society from the “person up.” This chapter proposes to concen-
trate on a comparative understanding of the person through natural human
capacities, while also drawing out interesting insights as regards the sin and
evil. In ordering the engagements in this way, I deliberately move from the
most “distant” to the “closest” engagement. I do so in order to crystallise
any remaining paradigmatic differences among the authors, including those
that remain even when the dialogue partner from sociology (Christian Smith)
takes a de facto Christian anthropology as his basis. I specifically focus on
Smith’s two books on the subject, namely What is a Person?34 And To Flour-
ish or Destruct.35 Smith’s personalist approach is complemented by a “critical
realist” stance towards reality that presents a non-reductive view of both hu-
man beings and reality at large. Even though he abstains from theological or
metaphysical argumentation, the proximity to a (Roman Catholic) Christian
theological anthropology cannot be missed.36 In What Is a Person?, Smith
admits a proximity to the European tradition of personalism. The European
school of personalism arose in the early twentieth century through figures
such as Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain.37 Smith has attempted
to separate his personal faith commitment from his academic work in termi-
nological and methodological terms, having publicly documented in a non-
academic publication his faith journey from evangelicalism towards Roman
Catholicism.38 Through his adoption of this personalist approach, Smith
demonstrates a proximity to theological anthropology that makes the en-
gagement with Emil Brunner especially promising. Here, similarities between
the two authors promise to crystallise remaining differences in an insightful
way.
Finally, for the purposes of the argument in this book, the possibilities and
limits of social progress are explored in the second part of the book. On the
one hand, as argued above, literature on the idea of progress, including social
progress, abounds.39 On the other hand, a narrowing of specific focus to an-
thropological preconditions of social progress necessarily relatively narrows
the selection. This book focuses particularly on the notion of knowledge
 Introduction 9

accumulation in the social realm. The sociologist James B. Rule argued in his
book Theory and Progress in Social Science in 1997 that substantial objec-
tive progress over time cannot be observed in social sciences as a whole, only
within individual schools and paradigms.40 The beginnings of my own con-
tribution to this debate, with a similar yet independent argument, were initi-
ated recently.41 Historian of science Peter Harrison has also addressed this
question in some detail,42 as has Bob Goudzwaard for its specific application
to economics.43 In the final chapters of this book, I will narrow the analysis
down to economics, looking at how well economics is able to distinguish the
person within the natural order. On this basis, I will discuss these contribu-
tions and offer my own interpretation of Brunner’s anthropology.

1.3 Methodological Remarks

In an interdisciplinary dialogue, epistemic differences between the disciplines
can be potentially sizeable. As mentioned at the outset, for any agreement or
even disagreement to make sense, some sort of an agreement on a common
ground is needed. That common ground here is the question of human be-
ings and human nature. It is a question that bears relevance for both theology
and social sciences due to the centrality of the human being across all these
disciplines. Asking this question in dialogue with the other disciplines, I seek
to establish correlations. In practice, the precise correlations look different in
each dialogue.
Throughout the analysis, another challenge that presents itself is the
proper contextualisation of statements. This applies especially to Emil Brun-
ner, whose work and life are situated in a different world, compared to to-
day’s. I will interpret Brunner in his proper context, considering his whole
work and life, thus also reading his theology in the light of his biography.
When taking this approach, the philosophical and theological currents of the
post-World War I reality in Europe and in the US play a role and need to be
considered. It is this overall context with which I intend to remain in critical
dialogue throughout this book.
I use the method of correlation as first formulated by Paul Tillich, and
further developed by others.44 The method of correlation is relatively widely
used in systematic theology, as exemplified by David Tracy’s general defi-
nition of theology: “Theology is the attempt to establish mutually critical
correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an in-
terpretation of the contemporary situation.”45 While its origins reach back
to the nineteenth-century tradition of Vermittlungstheologie in Germany
(Friedrich Schleiermacher) seeking to relate theological method to human
experience, the first systematic formulation of the method stems from Paul
Tillich. He declares that “systematic theology uses the method of correla-
tion. It has always done so, sometimes more, sometimes less consciously, and
must do so consciously and outspokenly, especially if the apologetic point
of view is to prevail. The method of correlation explains the contents of
10 Introduction

the Christian faith through existential questions and theological answers in

mutual interdependence.”46 The method can be likened to a cognitive circle
where theology asks questions relevant to human existence, and formulates
the answers based on revelation in a contextual and situational manner. As
the circle closes in, it “drives man to a point where question and answer are
not separated.”47
In the context of the arguments made in this book, the method of correla-
tion promises to uncover crucial yet hidden anthropological presuppositions
in the economic and social science discourses, relating those to the theologi-
cal anthropology of Emil Brunner. In addition, the method is also relevant
for the second part of the book, where the event or metaphor of the Fall is
examined for its relevance for social scientific phenomena. Here, as well, a
large distance between the two disciplines remains, as social sciences are un-
likely to accept the transcendental presuppositions inherent in theology. At
this point, close similarities between the correlation method, as formulated
by Tillich, and Brunner’s own eristic method become visible. Brunner’s eristic
task of theology is especially aware that any theological deliberation takes
place within history and encounters people within certain social contexts.
As there is resistance, theology needs to “conquer” and “fight for space,”
seeking to lay bare the sorry state and deficits of human nature. The eristic
method, as the main tool of this other task, can thus be described as a con-
frontational debating approach that seeks to lay bare the weaknesses of the
opposing (rationalist, secular) argument as well as the related illusion of the
autonomy of the human being. Brunner calls on theology to attack the false
peace of the contemporary worldview that it faces. He even goes as far as
to say the following: “Theology can only be an attack on the human being,
never defence.”48 For Brunner, as for Tillich, the only common ground that
exists between theology and other disciplines is the existential anthropologi-
cal question.49 The proximity here is hardly surprising; after all, Tillich refer-
ences Brunner’s thought in the outline of his methodological argument.50
I undertake all engagements using the works of the authors in their respec-
tive original languages wherever reasonably feasible. While this is English for
Nussbaum, Becker and Smith, I translate the relevant works of Brunner here
from the original German language into English, copying the German original
in the endnotes.51 I do this for two reasons: firstly, original texts are deemed
to be truer to the purpose of establishing the original voices for the dialogue.
Secondly, the sub-optimality of the English translations of Brunner’s work that
mostly originate in the 1950s and 60s has been identified and lamented by oth-
ers, most recently by Alister McGrath.52 The inadequacy of the English transla-
tion is most striking in Brunner’s main work on theological anthropology, Der
Mensch im Widerspruch, which in English has been translated Man in Revolt,
somewhat modifying the meaning. While revolt (or rebellion) may be part of
the anthropological consequences of the inner Widerspruch (contradiction or
conflict), the translation nonetheless takes excessive liberty in rendering the
term. I therefore choose to undertake my own translations.
 Introduction 11

Following this introductory chapter, I will present Emil Brunner’s theo-

logical anthropology in Chapter 2. In Chapters 3–5, I engage Brunner with
the different authors from social sciences, concretely economics (Chapter 3),
development (Chapter 4) and sociology (Chapter 5). This will consti-
tute the first part of the book. In the second, follow-up part, I will test the
main insights from the dialogues as regards their resonance with reality in
Chapter 6. Chapter 7 will look at a possible link between the Fall and the
patterns of social progress, while Chapter 8 will discuss economic progress
from both a positive and a normative perspective, depicting it as a paradox.
Chapter 9 concludes.

Notes
1 Edward O. Wilson and James Watson, “An Intellectual Entente,” harvardmagazine.
com, 10 September 2009, accessed 10 July 2020, https://harvardmagazine.com/
breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente.
2 This is what Barnes calls a “symbiotic relationship.” See Michael Horace Barnes,
Theology and the Social Sciences (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001).
3 Alister E. McGrath, Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell,
2014), xii.
4 Dialectical theology originally refers to theological principles of Karl Barth and
his understanding of the transcendence of God which cannot be understood by
formulaic and rationalistic methods of inquiry. See F. L. Cross and Elizabeth
A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), as quoted in “Dialectical Theology,”
Oxford Reference, accessed September 16, 2020, https://www.oxfordreference.
com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810104742416.
5 Emil Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch: Die christliche Lehre vom wahren
und vom wirklichen Menschen, 3rd ed. (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1941).
6 This warning was perhaps best formulated by John Milbank, Theology and Social
Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2006).
7 For Brunner, Christian agency in the world involves creating “space” for God,
“Es besteht darin, Raum zu schaffen für Gott,” Emil Brunner, Der Mittler: Zur
Besinnung über den Christusglauben 4th ed. (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1947), 562;
for a discussion on this point, see McGrath, Emil Brunner, 50.
8 Robert A. Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge,
1994), Kindle.
9 Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, 352, Kindle.
10 See indicators such as the Human Development Index (HDI), http://hdr.undp.
org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi, or the Social Progress Index (SPI),
https://www.socialprogress.org/.
11 Rethinking Society for the 21st Century: Report of the International Panel on
Social Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), accessed June
14, 2020, https://www.ipsp.org/resources.
12 Rethinking Society for the 21st Century, 5.
13 Ephrat Livni, “To Be Happier, Pray at the Altar of Progress and Put Your Faith
in Technology,” Quartz, 2 November 2016, accessed February 18, 2019, https://
qz.com/824736/faith-in-technology-and-progress-makes-you-happier-than-
religion-and-belief-in-god/.
14 See e.g. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Hu-
manism and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018); or Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten
Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (London: Oneworld Publications, 2016).
12 Introduction

15 YouGov survey from 2015 asking the question “All things considered, do you
think the world is getting better or worse, or neither getting better nor worse?,”
quoted from Our World in Data, accessed September 18, 2022, https://our-
worldindata.org/uploads/2016/12/Optimistic-about-the-future-2.png.
16 This is also the main conclusion of Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History
of Humankind (London: Vintage, 2015).
17 Kate Raeworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century
Economist (Chelsea: Chelsea Green, 2017).
18 See Lisa Rapaport, “Life Expectancy Declines seen in US and Other High Income
Countries, Reuters,” 22 August 2018, accessed February 18, 2019, https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-health-lifeexpectancy/life-expectancy-declines-seen-in-u-s-
and-other-high-income-countries-idUSKCN1L723R.
19 Figure reproduced under the open access Creative Commons BY License of au-
thor Max Roser of Our World in Data, accessed September 18, 2022, https://
ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts.
20 Rethinking Society for the 21st Century, 3.
21 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 1.
22 Donald Hay, “What Does It Mean to Be Human? Christian and Social Scientific
Understanding of Human Beings in Society” (unpublished manuscript, March
2016).
23 Nora Hämäläinen, Descriptive Ethics: What Does Moral Philosophy Know
About Morality? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
24 R. Andrew Sayer, Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethi-
cal Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1, Kindle.
25 Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago, IL: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1978), Kindle.
26 Gary S. Becker, “The Economic Way of Looking at Life” (Nobel Lecture, Stock-
holm, December 1992), accessed September 3, 2019, https://www.nobelprize.org/
prizes/economic-sciences/1992/becker/lecture/.
27 Pedro N. Teixeira, “Gary Becker’s Early Work on Human Capital – Collabora-
tions and Distinctiveness,” IZA Journal of Labor Economics 3, no. 1 (2014).
28 Gary S. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with
Special Reference to Education, 3rd ed. (Chicago, London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1993), Kindle.
29 Among many contributions, see Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, The
Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; and Martha C. Nussbaum, Cre-
ating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2011).
30 Arttu Mäkipää, “What is Human Flourishing? Insights from a Dialogue Between
Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach and Emil Brunner’s Theological An-
thropology” (Th.M. thesis, ETF, 2017), 3.
31 United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports: Hu-
man Development Index, accessed December 10, 2016, http://hdr.undp.org/en/
content/human-development-index-hdi.
32 This incompatibility that the CA is credited with overcoming pertains to the rela-
tionship between the “good”-based traditions and those that deny the existence
of such (see John Alexander, “Social Justice and Nussbaum’s Concept of the Per-
son,” in Comim; Nussbaum, Capabilities, Gender, Equality, 434).
33 E.g. most recently Flavio Comim and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Capabilities,
Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014).
34 Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the
Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
 Introduction 13

35 Christian Smith, To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods,

Motivations, Failure, and Evil (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015),
Kindle.
36 C. Smith has confirmed this to me in an informal communication: Christian
Smith, Email to Arttu Mäkipää, 27 February 2020.
37 Thomas D. Williams and Jan O. Bengtsson, “Personalism,” The Stanford Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy, accessed December 20, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/personalism, see section 3 on European Personalism; and Juan Manuel
Burgos, An Introduction to Personalism, trans. R.T. Allen (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2018).
38 Christian Smith, How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed
Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011),
Kindle.
39 See the overview in Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, Kindle.
40 James B. Rule, Theory and Progress in Social Sciences (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
41 Arttu Mäkipää, “Sin and the Limits of (Social) Progress: Insights from Emil Brun-
ner’s Theological Anthropology for Economics and Other Social Sciences,” in
Driven by Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue, ed. Steven C. van den
Heuvel and Patrick Nullens (Leuven, 2018).
42 Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2015), Kindle.
43 Bob Goudzwaard, Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society, ed.
and trans. Josina van Nuis Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979).
44 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1951); see also David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology
and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM Press, 1981).
45 David Tracy, “Theological Method,” in Christian Theology: An Introduction to
Its Traditions and Tasks, edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert King, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 36.
46 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1951), 60.
47 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 61.
48 “Theologie kann immer nur Angriff auf den Menschen, nie Verteidigung sein.”
Emil Brunner, “Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie,” in Ein offenes Wort: Vorträge
und Aufsätze 1917–1962. Band 1, ed. Emil Brunner and Rudolf Wehrli (Zürich:
Theologischer Verlag, 1981), 174.
49 Brunner argues that within the anthropological realm, theology does not
run the risk of entering a non-existential ground, namely that of supposedly
objective or rational(ist) theory. This is because one can prove to the
human being with methods of reason that he is not what he would like to
be – without leaving the existential realm. Brunner, “Die andere Aufgabe der
Theologie,” 178.
50 Tillich, Systematic Theology, 61.
51 The only exception to this is Emil Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, 2nd
ed. (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1961). Here, also due to its frequent use and ci-
tation in English-language theological literature, I use the English translation
by Olive Wyon, Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doc-
trine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Wake Forest, NC: Chanti-
cleer, 1946). Note that Brunner also occasionally wrote in English, such as in
the case of Emil Brunner, Theology of Crisis (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1929).
52 McGrath, Emil Brunner, xiii.
14 Introduction

Bibliography
Barnes, Michael Horace. Theology and the Social Sciences. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2001.
Becker, Gary S. The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1978. Kindle.
———. “The Economic Way of Looking at Life.” Nobel Lecture, Stockholm,
December 1992. Accessed September 3, 2019. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/
economic-sciences/1992/becker/lecture/.
———. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Refer-
ence to Education. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL; and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1993. [Kindle]
Brunner, Emil. “Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie.” In Ein offenes Wort: Vorträge
und Aufsätze 1917–1962. Band 1, edited by Emil Brunner and Rudolf Wehrli,
171–93. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981.
———. Der Mensch im Widerspruch: Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom
wirklichen Menschen. 3rd ed. Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1941.
———. Der Mittler: Zur Besinnung über den Christusglauben. 4th ed. Zürich:
Zwingli Verlag, 1947.
———. Offenbarung und Vernunft. 2nd ed. Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1961.
———. Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge.
Translated by Olive Wyon. Wake Forest, NC: Chanticleer, 1946.
———. Theology of Crisis. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.
Brunner, Emil, and Rudolf Wehrli, eds. Ein offenes Wort: Vorträge und Aufsätze
1917–1962. Band 2. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981.
Burgos, Juan Manuel. An Introduction to Personalism. Translated by R.T. Allen.
Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018.
Comim, Flavio, and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. Capabilities, Gender, Equality: To-
wards Fundamental Entitlements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Cross, F. L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church. 3rd ed. rev. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Goudzwaard, Bob. Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society. Edited
and translated by Josina van Nuis Zylstra. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979.
Hämäläinen, Nora. Descriptive Ethics: What Does Moral Philosophy Know About
Morality? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Harari, Yuval N. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. London: Vintage, 2015.
Harrison, Peter. The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kindle.
Hay, Donald. “What Does It Mean to Be Human? Christian and Social Scientific Un-
derstanding of Human Beings in Society.” Unpublished manuscript, March 2016.
Mäkipää, Arttu. “Sin and the Limits of (Social) Progress: Insights from Emil Brunner’s
Theological Anthropology for Economics and Other Social Sciences.” In Driven by
Hope: Economics and Theology in Dialogue, edited by Steven C. van den Heuvel
and Patrick Nullens, 121–36. Leuven: Peeters, 2018.
———. “What Is Human Flourishing? Insights from a Dialogue Between Martha
Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach and Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropol-
ogy.” Th.M. thesis, ETF, 2017.
McGrath, Alister E. Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. Chich-
ester: Wiley Blackwell, 2006.
 Introduction 15

Norberg, Johan. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. London:
Oneworld Publications, 2016.
Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2011.
Nussbaum, Martha C., and Amartya Sen, eds. The Quality of Life. Helsinki: UNU-
WIDER, 1993.
Nisbet, Robert A. History of the Idea of Progress. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1994.
Kindle.
Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and
Progress. New York: Viking, 2018.
Raeworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century
Economist. Chelsea: Chelsea Green, 2017.
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Century: Report of the International Panel on Social Progress. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018. Accessed June 14, 2020. https://www.ipsp.org/resources.
Rule, James B. Theory and Progress in Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Sayer, R. Andrew. Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical
Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Kindle.
Smith, Christian. How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catho-
lic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011. Kindle.
———. To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motiva-
tions, Failure, and Evil. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Kindle.
———. What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good
from the Person up. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
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tions and Distinctiveness.” IZA Journal of Labor Economics 3, no. 1 (2014): 1–20.
Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of
Pluralism. London: SCM Press, 1981.
———. “Theological Method.” In Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its
Traditions and Tasks, edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert King, 2nd ed.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.
Williams, Thomas D., and Jan O. Bengtsson. “Personalism.” In The Stanford Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy. Accessed December 20, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/personalism.
Part I

The Fall and Contemporary

Social Sciences
Engaging Emil Brunner
2 Emil Brunner’s Theological
Anthropology

In this chapter, I introduce both work of Emil Brunner over his lifetime rel-
evant for understanding his theological anthropology (including personalism
and human capacities) and its relevant applications in community and soci-
ety, a necessarily selective presentation. I am particularly indebted to Alister
McGrath’s recent comprehensive theological appraisal of Brunner, calling
for a reconsideration of Brunner’s importance for twentieth-century theol-
ogy.1 Several times in the present chapter, I begin by referencing McGrath’s
interpretation, before adding my own thoughts when engaging with
Brunner’s work.

2.1 Brunner’s Life and Work in Context

The Emergence of a Dialectical Theologian

Emil Brunner (1889–1966) is often counted among the most important theo-
logians of the first half of the twentieth century.2 Brunner was a Swiss na-
tional who studied Protestant theology (Evangelische Theologie) in Zurich,
was ordained in 1912 and obtained his doctorate in 1913. As required in
the German-speaking university system, he obtained his Habilitation at the
University of Zurich in 1921, allowing him to teach at university as a Privat-
dozent. In 1924, Brunner became a professor of systematic and practical the-
ology in Zurich. He remained based in Zurich, except for short professional
stays abroad, until his retirement and death in 1966.
As with any historical figure, it is important to read Emil Brunner in the
context of his life and times. In his case, this involves political and social
developments of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as his per-
sonal life journey. In comparison with German theologians of his time, Brun-
ner was fluent in English, travelling extensively in the US and the UK. This
earned him a certain reputation in the Anglo-Saxon world. Later in life, he
also ventured into teaching in Asia, spending long periods of time in Japan.
In terms of his theology, different phases of his life mark his work in dif-
ferent ways. Brunner had been trained in the tradition of German histori-
cism and idealism and sympathised with this thought early on, fully in line

DOI: 10.4324/9781003367178-3
20 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

with the pre-war liberal consensus in theology.3 Before World War I, he was
equally attracted to ideas of religious socialism, especially through his teach-
ers, Leonhard Ragaz (1868–1945) and Hermann Kutter (1863–1931). “I
am a socialist, because I believe in God,” Emil Brunner wrote as a 29-year-
old pastor in 1918.4 However, in line with post World War I pessimism in
Europe, Brunner gradually moved away from such passionate political views.
Breaking with theological historicism, Brunner turned towards a different
kind of theology, later known as neo-orthodox or dialectical. In this effort,
he became academically engaged with his contemporary and compatriot Karl
Barth, an involvement that lasted throughout his life. Although their relation-
ship was not always easy, initially the two got along very well and Brunner
was happy to follow Barth in re-establishing a dialectical theology as a theol-
ogy based on the Word of God. In 1918, Brunner wrote a highly favourable
review of Barth’s famous Römerbrief commentary.5 However, he experienced
a certain unease with Barth’s views soon after in 1922 in the second edition
of the said commentary. Brunner grew more and more uncomfortable with
the strict Barthian “No” and uncompromising “wholly other”-type of Chris-
tology. In contrast, Brunner became convinced that theology needed to have
something constructive to say, that a “Yes” needed to co-exist more explicitly
with the “No” as theology engaged with the world and with culture.
From then on, Brunner’s own brand of dialectical theology started to
emerge. On the one hand, he agreed with Barth’s rejection of the histori-
cist and romanticist consensus of late nineteenth-century German theology.
Brunner shared Barth’s objective of seeking to free theology and God from
historical immanence, reemphasising transcendence and divine revelation in
Jesus Christ. However, Brunner added his own brand of anthropology to dia-
lectical theology. He went as far as to state that theology had to be dialecti-
cal, picking human beings up where they are, always showcasing the paradox
they live under. He even defined dialectical as “depicting the contradiction”
that human beings were subjected to.6 Thus, in contrast to Barth, Brunner
always remained distinctly more anthropological in his thought, asking the
existential question of human identity and purpose.
In his Theology of Crisis (1929), published only in English, Brunner in-
troduced dialectical theology to an American audience.7 While in Europe a
pessimistic atmosphere had set in after the devastating experience of World
War I, American theology remained more optimistic for most of the 1920s.
Shortly after the publication of this lecture series, this attitude radically
changed with the Wall Street crash in 1929. In this work, Brunner argued
against excessive optimism in the developmental path of humanity, ground-
ing his anthropological realism in the same kind of “contradiction” within
human nature. Around the same time, in Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie/
The Other Task of Theology (1929), Brunner gave theology two main tasks:
firstly, the standard task of reflection on the Word of God, dogmatics, and
secondly, the other task of eristic theology, involving a debating and ques-
tioning role. In this second role, theology needed to challenge prevailing
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 21

ideologies and worldviews in an intellectual fashion. This eristic method had

an anthropological focus. The reason for this was that Brunner considered
the anthropological space as the only one safely shared between theology and
other disciplines, since it was the only place where the existential question
(“Who am I?”) could be formulated. With this existential question, Brunner
hoped to loosen the grip of the “delusion of reason” (Vernunftwahn) upon
the other disciplines. However, reason as a key epistemological faculty was
still important for Brunner. It merely needed liberation from its own self-
inflicted seclusion, and a big part of this was about recognising its limits. For
Brunner, the existential question was most naturally asked via the negative,
as it is possible to “prove” to the human being that he is not what he could
be, i.e. via the gap within.
During the 1930s, Brunner entered his most productive phase, writing ma-
jor theological monographs on theological anthropology and ethics. I shall
present the most relevant ones in the following section. After World War II,
Brunner’s interest turned to matters of implementation and application of his
theology. He renewed his interest in matters of social justice, the economy
and work. By doing so, under the influence of both World Wars, he became
distinctly more pessimistic and conservative in his views in comparison with
the Christian socialism of his early career.8 His most influential work in this
regard, Gerechtigkeit/Justice, his magnum opus on social policy and justice,
was published in 1943.9 Here, he presented an overall critique of the unhelp-
ful heritage of the Reformation that he termed legal positivism, manifest in
acceptance of any worldly order as God-given. The totalitarian experience of
Nazi Germany undoubtedly contributed to sharpening this focus. Hence, in
this book Brunner painted the path of failure of a notion of justice not tied
to God as its source. His focus on Christianity as a source and inspiration for
questions around culture and civilisation continued, and in 1947–8 Brunner
was invited to give the Gifford Lectures in Scotland on the broad topic of
Christianity and Civilization, later published in two parts, Foundations10 and
Specific Problems.11
By the 1950s, his major theological work lay behind him. From then on,
Brunner continued writing, working on his trilogy in systematic theology
Dogmatik/Dogmatics which, however, produced no new insights but was
rather summative in nature.12 Thereafter, he gained a reputation as a lecturer
and preacher, a public theologian, making a number of smaller contributions.
He accepted an invitation to work in Asia, and settled in Japan for some
years. Brunner passed away in 1966, shortly after reconciling with Karl Barth
through an exchange of correspondence.

Major Contributions in Theological Anthropology and Ethics

Brunner’s distinct dialectical anthropology that emerged in the second half of

the 1920s soon led him to ethical questions. In his early monograph, Das Gebot
und die Ordnungen/The Divine Imperative of 1932, Brunner developed
22 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

his approach to ethics, including a critique of natural morality built on the

Lutheran duality between the divine command and orders of creation (Schöp-
fungsordnungen).13 Brunner denied the existence of any objective principle
of the “good,” rather developing a relational and situational approach to
ethics based on love rooted in God. To aid its application in reality, orders
of creation such as the family and the state help humanity to place proper
frameworks within which the good is to be sought, but also within which
the impact of sin can be best restricted. Thus, any ethical system had to be
built on Christian revelation, and it is God’s grace and his provision that
underlie any notion of the “good.” Among other concepts, Brunner also de-
veloped here the notion of “usefulness to life” (Lebensdienlichkeit), a theme
developed further by his doctoral student and successor at the University of
Zürich, Arthur Rich.14 With life as the guiding objective, the orders of crea-
tion (e.g. marriage, economy, state) attain a proper purpose and can be seen
as reformable (and ultimately: redeemable), despite being tainted by sin.
Brunner’s distinct anthropology led him to explore personalism as a basis
for Christian ethics in greater depth. From this, Wahrheit als Begegnung/
Truth as Encounter (1937) emerged as a treatise on objectivity and subjectiv-
ity, and on the question of the knowledge of truth.15 McGrath presents an
insightful analysis of how Brunner – with help from the personalist philoso-
phers Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber – posited a spiritual significance
of human existence in which an I-Thou encounter (Begegnung) takes place
with God, as a kind of middle position between the Cartesian “truth as ob-
jectivity” and Kierkegaard’s “truth as subjectivity.”16 For Brunner, faith is
in essence an encounter with Jesus Christ in whom truth becomes visible.
This encounter with Christ is a relational encounter in which God simulta-
neously reaches out to man (Gott-zum-Menschen-hin), but man also places
himself more clearly into a kind of anthropological deductibility from God
(Menschen-von-Gott-her).17 This plea for the relational identity of human
beings remains an important overarching idea in Brunner’s theology.
So heavily was Brunner’s theology grounded in his anthropology that
Karl Barth accused him of making theology (and God’s self-revelation) de-
pendent on anthropology. Natur und Gnade/Nature and Grace (1934) was
an assertion of Brunner’s idea of natural law, at the centre of which is his
idea of a “point of contact” (Anknüpfungspunkt) between God and man.
Brunner’s notion of natural law is not one that questions the primacy of the
self-revelation of God, but rather one where, in the Reformed tradition (e.g.
Calvin’s sensus divinitatis), there is a degree of natural knowledge in human
beings created in the imago Dei. However, this knowledge is distorted. Alis-
ter McGrath paraphrases Brunner’s view with a metaphor stating how “…
human beings in God’s creation are like dogs in an art gallery: they ‘see’ the
paintings in one sense, yet totally fail to appreciate them in another.”18 While
strongly denying any Pelagian notions, Brunner wished to make the point of
the addressability (Ansprechbarkeit) of humanity, meaning that humanity is
addressable by God. This point-of-contact-idea assumes a certain degree of
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 23

natural knowledge of God, which for Brunner was, in a sense, necessary for
performing the second task of theology – the eristic process of helping hu-
manity answer its own question about God.19 In this debate, the distinctive-
ness of Brunner’s own brand of dialectical theology came to fruition.
Following his ideas on (human) capacities, and as a continuation of the
response to Barth, Der Mensch im Widerspruch/Man in Contradiction, first
published in 1937, represents the most important contribution to his an-
thropology.20 As McGrath observes, Brunner wrote this central contribution
to anthropology at a time when he was facing two fronts: Karl Barth, on
the one hand, and the strongly empirical imprint of the anthropology of the
time that excluded theology entirely, on the other hand. In Der Mensch im
Widerspruch, Brunner develops an anthropology that answered both types
of opposition.21 As his perhaps most lasting idea, he developed a regulative
and flexible anthropological framing strategy in the “law of closeness of re-
lation,” sometimes also called “law of contiguity” (Gesetz der Beziehung-
snähe). The idea is that sin darkens reason and innate human capacities,
but to different degrees in different areas depending on the proximity of the
question to the centre of human existence (Personkern). McGrath observes
how Brunner thus creates “conceptual space for revelational perspectives”
in a diverse range of matters.22 In Offenbarung und Vernunft/Revelation and
Reason of 1941, Brunner formulated the law of closeness of relation as an
anthropological framing strategy in its clearest version to date.

A Contemporary Assessment of Emil Brunner

As far as contemporary readers are concerned, the name of Emil Brunner has
vanished into relative oblivion. Thus, today for many writers he is often little
more than a mere footnote in references to Karl Barth. Exploring the reasons
for this in their textbook on twentieth-century theology, Stanley J. Grenz and
Roger E. Olson write:

It is not unusual in any field of scholarship to find a true giant over-

shadowed by the colossi. Emil Brunner’s stature and influence in twen-
tieth-century theology would be indisputable were it not for Barth and
Bultmann who overshadowed him. Together these three formed a tri-
umvirate of dialectical theologians who revolutionized the discipline
by reasserting the classical themes of the Protestant Reformation in the
twentieth-century context.23

The 1930s’ natural theology debate between Barth and Brunner is perhaps
the single most famous theological discussion for which Brunner is remem-
bered today. While Brunner left this relationship as the scathed party, more
recently his role has been reinterpreted in a more positive light. Marcelo
Wall summarised the outcome by stating that while “Barth offered two con-
tradicting parties, Brunner offered dialogue with the Bible as the ‘louder’
24 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

voice.”24 Furthermore, Paul Tillich credited Brunner with a special grasp of

biblical and existentialist theology by which, through a new epistemology, he
succeeded in creating intellectual room for interaction between science and
theology.25
Several commentators have remarked that Brunner wrote with grace and
clarity, and Grenz and Olson go so far as to assert that “many theologians
secretly prefer Brunner to Barth because of the clarity of his writing and the
breadth of his vision of Christian truth.”26 It can certainly be stated that with
his approach to theology, Brunner was a man of the via media, a reconciler
of different positions. With a balanced approach, he succeeded in bringing
together the strengths of other theologies, “even at the potential cost of pres-
tige.”27 This via media approach may have well come at a cost of his own
prestige, driving Brunner’s name into relative oblivion. Mark McKim argues
that subsequent generations tend to remember extreme positions and forget
the reconcilers in the middle.28 This is what may have happened to Brunner.
Brunner’s theology has also been subjected to more substantive criticism.
McGrath observes that his relative decline from the theological scene after
his death was of Brunner’s own making for various reasons.29 For one, he
criticises Brunner for not working exegetically enough, as his engagement
with the Bible remains shallow throughout his works. Brunner’s theological
and philosophical constructs and categorisations can also be seen as complex
and too loosely founded on the Bible. As another possible reason, McGrath
mentions Brunner’s dismissive style when it came to opponents.
Research on Brunner’s theology peaked towards the end of his life in the
1960s, and was followed by a gap.30 Only more recently has new Brunner
research emerged. In addition to McGrath’s contributions, in 2013 David
Andrew Gilland wrote an extensive study on Brunner’s early dialectical the-
ology.31 Furthermore, in 2015 Cynthia Bennett Brown wrote a book on his
theological method in which she credits Brunner’s theology as “thoroughly
biblical (if non-biblicist), warmly pastoral, carefully intellectual, and insistently
Christocentric, offering an exposition of the Christian faith that is truly worth
our time.”32 Most recently, Michael Berra wrote on Brunner’s relational theol-
ogy, engaging it in a discussion with contemporary relationship science.33
Time will tell whether the recent resurgence in Brunner research, to which
this book seeks to contribute, will be long-lasting and re-establish Brunner’s
reputation in the academy. Brunner deserves credit for his role as an acces-
sible interpreter and communicator of the gospel, with a strong Christology
at its core. His eristic approach has also allowed the cultivation of an exis-
tential-anthropological take on any contemporary issue relating to society
and culture at large. In short, Brunner’s value as a dialogue partner for so-
cial sciences is worth rediscovering. McGrath concludes his reappraisal with
the following words: “Whatever his weaknesses, Brunner offers a theological
platform with considerable potential for the engagement of contemporary
cultural concerns. It would be madness not to make better use of it.”34 This
is precisely where this book picks up the baton.
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 25

2.2 Personal Being

The Becoming of the Person (Personwerden)

Emil Brunner’s theology gives a very distinctive place to human beings, rec-
ognising them as the crowns of creation, set above the rest of creation.35
Man is neither God nor animal, but “this ‘middle’ that man is, and how he
is that ‘middle’, cannot be deducted from any general principles.”36 This is
why a biblical Christian view of man is necessary. Moreover, this man is not
the centre of the universe, but he is at the centre of the universe, by virtue
of being created through God’s Word. The result could be described as some
type of empirical anthropocentrism. For Brunner, man is a microcosm in
whom all forms of being in the world are present, namely the organic, the
inorganic, the vital and the animal. The human being “is a physical being, a
conglomerate of chemical compounds, a zoon with a vegetative and a sen-
sory motoric system, he belongs to the species of a large tribe of mammals;
he is also a homo faber, a tool maker – what a monstrous tool he has created
for himself in modern technology!”37 Most importantly, Brunner states that
the human being is a “person” (humanum) which is the highest stage in the
order of being. It is as a person that the human being is able to reach beyond
mere physical existence and become a speaking, creating and reality-shaping
being, as well as a cultural and relational being. Thus, Brunner puts forward
a layered and hierarchical system constituting the human being, the pinnacle
of which is the human person.
For science, as Brunner puts it, man is a primate homo sapiens in the verti-
cal classification of the Linnaean system,38 and in the horizontal time-series
of evolution, the most and recent and most developed among the mammals.
This development can be measured through the size of the brain externally,
and internally through increased consciousness. Interestingly, Brunner as-
serts that the human being came about in a (not precisely identifiable) mo-
ment when consciousness turned into self-consciousness. “The human being
appears as a human being in that – not precisely definable – moment as the
step is taken from consciousness to self-consciousness.”39 This transition is
a creative act of God, and it is the same self-consciousness that God draws
on when speaking.40 In other words, the self-consciousness becomes the “I”
when spoken to by God, and that “I” is then able to respond (response-
ability). As such, the speech and the response become the very definition
of the humanum, the person. In this vein, the essence of human beings is
not based on their thinking, but on the person’s Verantwortlichkeit, his
or her capacity to respond. Brunner also calls this “responsory actuality”
(responsorische Aktualität); it is responsory as it responds, it is not in it-
self the original substance of the act, but a reaction to the speech initiated
by God.41
Evidently, this anthropology and the definition of the person are deeply
theological. They are also elegant from the perspective of a dialogue with
26 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

other sciences and disciplines, since, due to the strong existential overtones,
ample room is left for e.g. biological or physiological processes of evolu-
tion to operate. The person comes about at the moment God speaks to him
and establishes the relational connection. But until such time, Brunner agrees
that biology has already been active in evolutionary processes establishing
the very organic, inorganic, vegetal and animal “matter” out of which the
human being is otherwise composed. Evolutionary processes continue after
such time as well. He calls all Christians and theologians to abstain from false
contradictions between the theory of evolution and the gospel. Christians
should accept evolution, and not see it as endangering the gospel. “The Bible
cannot establish a claim to specific revealed knowledge about the history of
coming-into-being of humanity in the empirical sense; conversely, empirical
science of the coming-into-being of man cannot solve the puzzle (Rätsel) of
the becoming of the – individual or general – person.”42 Brunner criticises the
fact that, in the modern mind, the concept of coming-into-being (Werden)
and understanding the genesis/origin of man have become the same thing. In
this, the evolutionary genesis of human existence is forcibly identified with
the origin and purpose of human existence. However, for Brunner this natu-
ralist explanation is clearly insufficient, for “…only where the understanding
of the matter in itself fails, one starts to study its genesis. That which makes
sense (das Sinnvolle) is not understood from the genesis, but from its sense,
the logos.”43 This logos that Brunner is thinking of here is not a timeless
ahistorical logos-reason as in Hellenic thought but rather God’s communica-
tive word. Hence, also the true person is not a thought, but communication
(of the self).44 This for Brunner is also the true meaning of the beginning of
Gospel of John 1:1, which declares that in the beginning was the logos. The
origin of the human being lies is this very logos. For Brunner, “in order to
understand what the human being [Mensch] is, one has to start from the
divine principium, not the chronological initium; not of the humanization of
the pre-human, but of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.”45 The mystery
(Geheimnis) of the person is only unveiled through the Word (of God), both
the one who speaks as well as the one who responds.
By combining a deeply Christological anthropology with evolutionary
possibilities on lower levels, Brunner thus opens an innovative eristic space
for dialogue with other disciplines. His method allows encounter with other
sciences, in this case most relevantly biology or chemistry, in their proper
epistemic cultures operating under the “genetic postulate.”46 At the same
time, it challenges these other disciplines to think further, and to explore
the limits of their epistemologies as regards human existence. The key ele-
ment in Brunner’s understanding of the human person is that human per-
sons need to be defined first in their origins before any further descriptive
deconstruction can take place. For Brunner, this origin lies in Creator
God, and hence he states that the “human being needs to be first theo-
logically defined, and only then the philosopher, the psychologist and the
biologist may speak.”47 From this highest point in the hierarchy of being
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 27

represented in the person, the rest of the human being becomes visible and
knowable; however, the opposite is not possible as one cannot work one’s
way up from the biological and psychological constitution of human beings
towards the person (humanum). As a result, for a true understanding of the
human being personhood becomes ontologically primary (and foundational)
in Brunner’s theological anthropology. This means that the person needs to
be understood “top-down,” rather than “bottom up.”48 In other words, the
constitutive elements do not make up a person, even though the person con-
tains constitutive elements. What matters primarily is not the flesh and blood,
but the responsory actuality of humans’ existence with their origin in God.
The relationship to and origin in God is constitutive of human existence.
Through faith manifested in it, this relationship becomes the most “personal
of personals” (Persönlichste vom Persönlichstem).49 As it is an encounter be-
tween persons, for Brunner the study of “personalism” does not really fit
into philosophy or science since “you cannot think a person.”50 “The person
is that which cannot be generalized or put in the abstract; and it alone is the
radically non-abstract.”51 The boldest word and message of personalism can
be summarised as “God is love.” Since God is a personal being, the very es-
sence of personhood for Brunner becomes being-in-love (Sein-in-Liebe). This
biblical truth can be received (revealed), but never (autonomously) thought.

The Unity of the Person (Personeinheit)

Even though he did not use this term to describe himself, Brunner can be de-
scribed as a personalist due to his high regard for the relational dimension in
his anthropology. This is complemented by his engagement with Martin Bu-
ber as well as Ferdinand Ebner.52 Like Buber and Ebner, in his thinking Brun-
ner gives a central role to the “I-Thou encounter” between human beings
and God. This encounter is, for Brunner, the strongest determinant of truth
(hence also literally Wahrheit als Begegnung), and also provides the model
for Christian ethics. However, Brunner goes beyond the strict “I-Thou” by
introducing a differentiated classification, in line with the stratification in
his law of closeness of relation related to the capacity of rational percep-
tion (Vernunfterkenntnis). This capacity, Brunner argued, is strong for the
impersonal in the absence of revelation, while it is weak to non-existent for
the personal, i.e. knowledge of the core of the human being (Personkern). In
line with this continuum of personal to impersonal, every human being has
personal as well as objective (sachlich, dinglich) dimensions. The objective
encompasses inter alia the physical and material, but also parts of the psy-
chological dimensions of human beings, while the personal constitutes the
true relational identity. Consequently, before the “I-Thou,” there is an im-
personal “someone-something” (Jemand-Etwas) that represents the objective
dimension of the human being; the “Thou” (personal Du) is only applicable
to the person. One reaches the Thou only when persons reveal themselves to
the other, an act of self-giving takes place.53 Here the subject-object relation
28 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

turns into one of “personal correspondence.” Habitual human communi-

cation is a mix between the two, between the personal and the objective
(Personhaften und Sachenhaften) where, as mentioned before, the personal
enlightens the impersonal, or objective. A certain radicality of love is neces-
sary to move to the “I-Thou” level.54 Finally, in this context it is noteworthy
that, for Brunner, in line with the original definition of the concept, one can
only be a person in community, i.e. there is a clear social manifestation of
personhood.55
This continuum between the personal and the impersonal permeates Brun-
ner’s anthropology, and is therefore also necessary to understand his thought
on the constitutive elements of personal being such as spirit (Geist), soul and
body. Even though Brunner observes that the Bible uses the terms soul and
spirit interchangeably, he defines the soul as an underlying capacity shared
with animal life, while the spirit belongs exclusively to human beings. The
spirit contains “acts of senses” (Sinnakte, geistige Akte) that operate on the
basis of the soul.56 There is nothing prima facie exclusively Christian or rev-
elational about either soul or spirit, as one can conceive of them psychologi-
cally. However, to fully understand them, the personal dimension is required.
Personal being (Personsein) is rooted in the spirit. The spirit carries the gen-
eral human capacities to will, think and feel, capacities shared by all humani-
tas. As such, it forms the basis of personal being (Personsein), the vessel by
which the man’s “divine destiny” becomes understandable. Even though uni-
versal, the “spiritual capacities” to will, think and feel only attain a meaning-
ful (sinngebend) and normative purpose when understood from their origin.
It is God who actively “breathes his spirit” (Gen. 2:7) into human beings.57
For Brunner, this divine act of breathing the spirit stands in contrast to the
body which is materially pre-existent in the “dust of the ground.”58 The spirit
is also responsible for transmitting the realisation of personal unity to the
body. This means that while anthropologically the spirit is a correlate of the
body, it is superior to it in the order of being.
Important for the arguments made in this book, for Brunner the capac-
ity for rational perception is part of the spirit.59 In the absence of God and
the personal, human spirit is susceptible to fall for the “delusion of reason”
(Vernunftwahn). However, the autonomous product of this thought is mere
objectification by the human being as a “brained animal” (Gehirntier), who
is “able to do nothing better than to build machines and identify mecha-
nisms.”60 Natural man thus posits a kind of soulless rationality. The spirit,
when recipient of personal revelation, can rise above the “irrational self-­
sufficiency of reason.”61 Doing so does not imply any antithesis of “truths of
reason” vs. “truths of revelation.” Rather, revelation opens up and enlightens
the rational sphere to be able to free reason from its own shackles.
The body and the spirit combine to an indivisible unity of the person
(leiblich-geistige Personeinheit). This unity is located, biblically speaking, in
the heart. The heart is the centre of faith and love (Rom. 10:10, Mt. 22:37).
The heart exemplifies how the highest vantage point necessary to understand
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 29

the nature of this unity is above the spirit, namely in the relationship to God.
For Brunner, being a person is an act of totality, a Totalitätsakt, with body,
spirit and soul present in one unity. As explained above, the original essence
of being a human person (Personsein) in relationship to God is being-in-
love (Sein-in-Liebe), including a distinctly spiritual and relational character
of personal existence. In this, the true and original person is also the true
soul.62 “The unity of the person can never be an object of science,”63 Brunner
contends. The closest scientific inquiry can get to understanding the person is
to understand the causal (as opposed to personal) elements of human beings.
The remainder belongs to the realm of ignoramus ignorabimus (“we do not
and will not know,” a saying attributed to Emil du Bois-Reymond).64 True
scientists cannot succumb to “romantic organology,” but have to defend the
principle of causality. But since in the case of persons this will not suffice as
an explanation, therefore, effectively, it is here that science reaches the limits
of its explanatory powers.

Sin: Disintegration and Contradiction

In line with standard Reformed theology, sin is a serious matter for Brun-
ner, having universal and original significance. However, he does not have
much sympathy for certain traditional explanations, including Augustine’s
hereditary transmission doctrine. Rather, he defines sin relationally: it is that
which stands at the origin of the contradiction and weak self-knowledge of
human beings who no longer know where they come from. At its root, for
Brunner “…sin is the desire for the autonomy of man, […] it is the denial of
God and self-deification: it is getting rid of the Lord God, and the proclama-
tion of self-sovereignty.”65 Also in line with standard Reformed theology,
for Brunner sin is a fundamentally incomprehensible issue. Simply put, “any
explanation of sin makes sin into a mere fate.”66 The fundamental incom-
prehensibility is matched with the prominence that Brunner assigns to sin in
his theological anthropology, as is evident from this quotation: “The word
of Christ reveals to us not only the grandeur, but also the misery of man.”67
This misery-induced separation from the Creator is real and ontological, and
not merely moral. More simply put, human beings not only commit sins,
but they are sinners. The state of the person is fully affected as “…sin is
not a dark spot somewhere but is the total character of our personal exist-
ence, the character of all our personal acts.”68 For Brunner, echoing Lutheran
theology of paradoxes in human nature, sin is simultaneously total and
universal (seinsmässig-schicksalshaft) as it is a product of personal willing
(willensmässig-personhaft). This means that it is at the same time both ines-
capable and a consequence of free human choice. He compares the situation
to having boarded the wrong train, headed in the wrong direction. On this
train, there may be people doing good things, and people doing bad things,
but essentially all are on the wrong train.69 Brunner calls the human con-
stitution a Dauer-Revolution, permanent revolt. Within this Totalitätsakt,
30 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

there are individual acts (Einzelakten) with different cardinalities, smaller

and bigger sins, all manifestations of rebellion. Through the notion of rela-
tive cardinality of acts within the human character, relativity is introduced,
also allowing layers of depth of personality to be distinguished (Schichten
der Persontiefe). Interestingly, for Brunner, the human spirit is the initiator of
the Fall. Consequently, the spirit alone is responsible for the disintegration of
human integrality. In a kind of second round effect, material reality, includ-
ing the body itself is also negatively affected in its functionalities, leading to
human vulnerability.
In order to be able to describe the real state of affairs where the Fall has
grave consequences without entirely losing the connection, Brunner adopts
his own interpretation of the impact of the Fall. Initially, in Natur und
Gnade, he distinguishes two aspects of the image of God in which humans
are created, namely a formal (not fallen) and a material (fallen) aspect, which
both simultaneously describe and circumscribe the entire human being.70 The
formal aspect of the imago Dei provides for a distinction between humanity
and the rest of creation, it is essentially “responsibility” or “responsible be-
ing” (verantwortliches Sein). This formal aspect is still given. The content,
the material aspect of the imago, being-in-love (Sein-in-Liebe) is distorted by
the Fall and lost, which means that the autonomous capacity of humans to
initiate a relationship with God is no longer given. However, this distinction
proved especially provocative to Karl Barth who regarded it “as intellectually
unsustainable and theologically valueless.”71 Later, in Der Mensch im Wider-
spruch, Brunner retained the idea but no longer controversially distinguished
between formal and material, rather placing his thinking about the imago
Dei more comprehensively within a Christological framework. McGrath re-
interprets and renames the distinction in perhaps more helpful terms as onto-
logical versus relational dimensions in the imago Dei.72 While the ontological
is untainted by sin, the relational aspect is marred.73
As a result, for Brunner personal being is not fully lost as a result of the
Fall, but strongly distorted and disintegrated. The Fall has the effect that the
human beings’ actual and true selves live in contradiction (Widerspruch) to
each other, their Verantwortlichkeit and their Sein-in-Liebe fall apart. When
human responsibility rids itself of love, what is left is an empty shell of the
imperative, law or legalism. The being-in-love, Sein-in-Liebe, is lost. As the
human being loses full connection to God, the unity of the person is also
broken. Spirituality loses its personal character and becomes impersonal, ob-
jective, oriented towards the “I” of autonomous reason. The best this spirit
can come up with are “ideas” (of the good, even of God), but the loving rela-
tionality has disintegrated. The distinction between heart and spirit is equally
introduced through the same contradiction. “The spirit becomes heartless
and the heart spiritless.”74 When spirit and emotion are detached from their
common origin, they are turned over to the world of the senses. However,
they do not find proper purpose in the rational world of the “ought,” but
turn to melancholy, suffering and strife. The existence detached from God is
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 31

dominated by an empty Weltschmerz, vainly searching for purpose and filled

with a bad conscience. The human being surrenders and feels “thrown” into
this state (ins Dasein “geworfen”).75
This state of thrownness, essentially the contradiction, is a natural state
experienced by all human beings. In other words, the gap between is and
ought, the rift between how things are and how they should be is a yearning
felt by humanitas as whole. From this basis, humans have questions. “The
asking of God is identical with humanity. If the human being did not have
to ask this question, there would be no need for salvation, and the word
would be within him [the human] already.”76 Brunner uses the particular
examples of naturalism and idealism to illustrate the case. He starts by as-
serting that both ideologies give correct insights, but also go too far: idealism
correctly touches on the human capacity to remember a certain original state
(Urstand), but then mistakes this for the reality and succumbs to the illusion
that a return is possible. Naturalism, in contrast, sees parts of the misère de
l’homme that idealism misses, but does not correctly discern the depth of the
problem and makes a mistake by interpreting this within the framework of
natural objectification. In other words, naturalism reinterprets sin as nature.
It is the fundamental task of Christian eristics to point the way to an inter-
pretation of these contradictory states as sin.77
For Brunner, in post-lapsarian reality there is a crucial difference between
the actual and the true human being (der wahre und der wirkliche Mensch).
As a result of the Fall, humans no longer know themselves, as they remain
question marks to themselves. Awareness of the full contradiction, or inner
conflict, is only possible through faith. In this vein, resolving the contradic-
tion starts by acknowledging it in faith as “Jesus Christ means the abolish-
ment of the contradiction, i.e. reconciliation.” This is the beginning of escape
from the contradiction, but during the process it is a simultaneous “standing
beyond the contradiction while still standing in it.”78 This faith-induced act
of response to God means humans giving up certain human capabilities as
“in faith the human being finally renounces the self-indulgence, the self-being
and the ability of the self; in this faith he receives life as a gift.”79 Since in
the relational determination of personhood human essence is identical with
the standing before God, when the connection is re-established, the contra-
diction is removed and the image is restored. In this way, through faith, the
actual human being converges back with the true human being. Faith is thus
that element providing the ticket home from that Augustinian restlessness of
the heart – the Cor meum inquietum donec requiescat in Te, Domine.

2.3 Human Capacities and Capabilities

Fundamental Capacities: Speech and Response

Brunner’s concept of capacity, specifically expressed by the term Mächtigkeit,

requires some unpacking. It is key because it helps in understanding both
32 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

Brunner’s disagreement with Karl Barth at the time as well as the correct ap-
plication of the terminology in this book. Its meaning seems ambiguous, as
Mächtigkeit (capacity) is very closely related to Fähigkeit (capability), with
meaning often blurred both in German and in English. It can effectively range
from an active (human autonomous) capacity/capability, to a passive under-
standing of human receptivity. Trevor Hart makes the point that the Barth–
Brunner misunderstanding may be related to simple semantics.80 According
to Hart, while Brunner meant a passive notion of capacity, Barth understood
this in an active sense. Whether this interpretation is correct or not, this ques-
tion underscores the importance of semantics in this analysis.
For Brunner, two human capacities stand out, and can be seen as organ-
ising principles, “basic capacities” of sorts. Firstly, the capacity for words,
Wortmächtigkeit, is to be understood rather literally, as Brunner explains “I
created a noun from the common expression that man is ‘capable of words,’
equipped with the gift of speech and understanding. The two have an iden-
tical meaning.”81 The capacity for words makes the human a true subject
(Subjektsein). In Natur und Gnade, Brunner often speaks of the human be-
ing simply as “subject.” In this way, Brunner creates the necessary space for
a (cor)relation between the Word of God and the human word.82 Secondly,
adding to the first, humanity also bears a capacity/ability to respond, through
responsibility, namely Verantwortlichkeit. This Verantwortlichkeit has also
been translated as responsibility. However, what Brunner means at this point
is simply a “capacity to respond.”83 Humanity’s capacity to speak words has
the direct correlate of humanity being able to be addressed and being able
to respond. However, this capacity does not guarantee right hearing and re-
sponding, or hearing in faith. It merely implies a formal capacity for words in
humanity, into which God can tap for responses and which does not require
God to recreate it anew every time he speaks.84 These first two fundamen-
tal capacities are best summed up in the following statement by Brunner,
underlining the importance of the “capacity to respond” or responsibility
(Verantwortlichkeit):

The human being trumps all other creation in one tremendous way,
namely that even though a sinner, he has one thing in common with
God: both are subjects, reasoning beings. Even as sinner he does not
cease to be a subject. Even as sinner, he does not cease to be some-
one who can be spoken to, with whom God can speak. And precisely
therein – in responsibility – lies the foundation of human being.85

So fundamental is Verantwortlichkeit for Brunner that for him it is not just

an aspect of human beings, but this fundamental capacity in itself constitutes
their very being. Even though this is a natural capacity, and in itself not
directly dependent on faith, it very much originates in the relational God
and not in some idea or ideology of God, because “a God-neuter does not
make a claim; he can be viewed. Worldview instead of faith means aesthetic
 Emil Brunner’s Theological Anthropology 33

pleasure instead of obedience.”86 This origin makes the fundamental central

capacities highly relational, arising from within an archetypal dialogue of the
humanum with God.
Finally, not featuring on Brunner’s central capacity list, but to some extent
linked to them through the notion of imago Dei, is the “permanent capac-
ity for revelation” which God bestows upon humanity (dauernde Offenb-
arungsmächtigkeit). Barth misunderstood this term as a kind of subjective
human “capacity for revelation” (Offenbarungsmächtigkeit des Menschen).
However, Brunner strongly denies ever having used the term in this manner.
In fact, talking about the objective-divine versus subjective human under-
standing of the natural or of nature, Brunner says the following in the only
instance he uses the term in Natur und Gnade:

Nature can signify that permanent capacity of revelation which God

bestows upon his creation, in which he reveals the traits of his own be-
ing. Nature can also signify that which the human sinner – discerning
or not – makes of that. In human nature it can also mean that which
God has placed in the human being in his likeness; indestructible, but
always darkened through sin.87

The above quotation exemplifies the complexity of Brunner’s concept of

nature/natural. The Catholic understanding of theologia naturalis is simpler –
as no problem exists in a Thomist understanding of imago Dei to grant hu-
man reason also as a subjective capacity of revelation.88 In contrast, Brun-
ner’s dialectical natural theology, always operating within the contradiction,
needs to maintain the subjective-objective distinction.

Intellectual and Creative Capacities

The relational capacities of speech and responsibility (capacity to respond) to

God are the defining characteristics of human persons. Through “preserving
grace” (erhaltende Gnade)89 human beings are able to know and discern the
world around them, as they receive capacities of observation and interpreta-
tion.90 In this vein, a capacity of rational perception is given to humans in
creation, beginning with the call to name the animals and nature (Gen. 1:17,
2:19). Thus, human beings have been created for lordship, autonomy and
superiority. To be able to rule over creation, humankind also received both
creative and intellectual capacities (schöpferisches und denkerisches Vermö-
gen) from God.91 These capacities stay closely tied to the fundamental capaci-
ties, often making the latter more concrete.
The concept of reason (Vernunft) is one that Brunner discusses exten-
sively and which recurs at many places in his thought. In this context, reason
is meant in the active sense of rational perception.92 Brunner uses a num-
ber of related concepts of reason, most importantly to point to the central
“capacity of perception” which has been granted to human beings exclusively.
34 The Fall and Contemporary Social Sciences: Engaging Emil Brunner

In the context of the freedom of his creative work, Brunner argues that “the
Creator, when he created man, gave to him – and to him alone of all crea-
tures known to us – the capacity to know this world as it is, in the way in
which it has been established according to the Creation. This capacity we call
the power of rational perception.”93 [italics added] Importantly, this natural
and universal capacity is shared by all humanity and in no way restricted
to Christians. Brunner states that there is a natural knowledge (natürliches
Wissen) in all human beings based on which this operates.
However, sin is an inescapable reality in all of human existence, also as
regards the capacity of rational perception. As a result of the Fall, humans
no longer know themselves, and live in a contradiction between their actual
and true selves. Also, they now confuse their role with that of God (Abbild
als Urbild). Under the impact of sin, capacity thus has the potential to turn
to incapacity or vulnerability. For Brunner, all of this operates through the
concept of human responsibility (Verantwortlichkeit) that he recognises as
entailing enormous (ungeheuer) capacity, but also sometimes intense tender-
ness (Zartheit) and fragility. Concretely, sin introduces a distortion and dis-
turbance, short of total elimination, to the power of human perception and
human sensory capacity. While thus far this insight is relatively standard the-
ology, the interesting innovation of Brunner is how this comes about. Brun-
ner proposes a dialectic and graduated contemplation of the matter which
revolves around the proximity to the core, to the centre of the human being.

The nearer anything lies to that centre of existence [Personkern] in which

we are concerned with its totality – that is our relation to God, and our
personal existence – the greater the disruption of rational knowledge
through sin. The further that something lies from this centre, the less the
impact of this disrupting factor, with a corresponding reduction in the
difference between the knowledge of the believer and the unbeliever.94

Thus, the disruption of rational knowledge becomes a function of the prox-

imity to the personal core, which allows for differentiation along a stratified
continuum. The core of existence is where the personal totality (personale
Totalität des Menschen) is at stake. Here, the distortionary power of sin
on correct and autonomous rational perception is at its maximum. In this
“personal core of human existence” (Personkern der menschlichen Existenz),
autonomous reason (Vernunft) will inevitably stumble. Brunner goes on to
explain how the law of closeness of relation operates and what can be posi-
tively discerned.

The discerning capability of reason (Vernunft) is graduated: reason is

more capable of discerning the world, than man; it is more capable of
knowing man by his bodily than by his spiritual constitution; detached
from God’s word reason is unable to know true human existence as this
is not possible without the knowledge of the true nature of God.95
Another random document with
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 I often wonder if any one has noticed the following peculiarity.
When fish show an unusual tenacity of life, that is, after being gutted
and cleaned, exhibit strong muscular action for some time after, that
this phenomenon invariably precedes a change of some kind in the
weather, usually more wind or heavier sea. This at least is my
experience from several years’ observations.
The remaining patches of white whelk ova now appear flaccid and
empty. Brushing the hand over the apparently empty capsules, a
granular deposit adheres to the skin, which on close examination is
seen to be minute whelks. Even with the aid of the lens the sulci or
furrow, through which boring operations are conducted, is not yet
apparent, but which later is common to this species. The rocks at
present are thickly sewn with these juveniles, and myriads of adults
are busy clearing the rocks of barnacles and immature mussels. As
late as 28th July a solitary paidle-cock was seen guarding its nest;
this is unusually late, as they are generally finished nursing by the
end of June.
The middle of July brought us our first young tern, and towards
the close of the month several were in attendance. A large school of
bottle-nose whales crossed the reef on the last Sunday of July, their
puffing and blowing being quite audible as they headed north,
probably after herring.
Pleasure steamers from Dundee have been frequently round the
Rock during June and July, some of the trippers evidently enjoying
the sail, others emphatically not. One of the passengers, as the
steamer got to windward of us, favoured us with a cornet solo, which
we gratefully acknowledged with a dip of our flag. On several
evenings an hour’s fishing was given the passengers, but their
catches could scarcely be expected to have any appreciable
influence on the market. Broken weather, excessive rain, with
occasional thunderstorms, describes the weather we have been
having, the seasonable days of sunshine and warmth being few and
far between.
 AUGUST 1903.

A month of variable weather, much rain and heavy seas

occasionally compelling the boats engaged in the herring fishing to
run for it. Dearly bought indeed is their silvery freight as they thresh
their way homewards followed by a stiff sou’-easter, their oilskins
glistening with repeated drenchings, and twelve miles’ ploughing and
a doubtful bar yet to be negotiated ere safety is reached. How
different! no running for home with us; here we remain secure and
comfortable amid the hurly-burly, and trust to the stability of the
grand old building for our safety. Right well does it merit our
confidence. After a century’s buffetings with the elements, not a
single sign of weakening in the never ceasing conflict is evident.
Surely a creditable testimony to the honesty of the labour employed
in its erection.
That herring are occasionally in our vicinity is evidenced by the
industrious diving of the gannets, accompanied by large flocks of
gulls and terns, and also by the presence of whales snorting and
puffing close to the Rock. At low water the reef is covered with gulls
and terns resting from their labours of the tide. Scorning such
relaxment, the gannets, wheeling and diving, maintain their
ceaseless chase, establishing their kinship with that bird of the
Ancient Mariner, the tireless albatross. A skua or robber-gull has
billeted himself amongst the gulls and terns, and is frequently seen
harrying them of their legitimate prey. It is surprising that the terns at
least, with their needle-pointed bills and belligerent propensities,
suffer themselves to be so despoiled, and make no attempt to
combine and drive off this pirate on the fruits of their industry. On the
contrary, after a fruitless twisting and doubling in mid-air, in which
they are invariably worsted, they seem to accept these periodic
attacks of the skua as a matter of course.
 Amateur fishers have been but seldom in evidence here this
summer; even the lobsters have enjoyed a season of comparative
rest. Possibly the uncertain state of the weather prevented their
usual visits. Towards the close of the month a trio of amateurs cast
anchor—or rather what does duty as such—within hail of our kitchen
window, a favourite spot of theirs. Lines were no sooner down than a
brisk business began in cod, varied by an occasional poddley which
has little or no market value, but which to us here is always
acceptable, and forms the principal part of our catches. Several good
catches of these have been taken here during the month. What
appears to be whitings two inches in length is seen to be their food
at present. The terns also are seen to be on similar diet, and though
engaged in conveying a mouthful to their young ones, it in no way
impedes their full flow of language, nor muffles in the slightest
degree their strident throat notes.
During the unusually low tides occurring this month an opportunity
was afforded of examining a most peculiar form of animal life of
which I have nowhere seen any account. Attached to the rocks
amongst groups of corallines this curious object[2] has all the
semblance of a bird’s claw. Imagine the leg of a bird amputated at
the knee, firmly fastened to the rock by the cut end, and imbued with
life, and you have a fair idea of this animal. About half an inch in
length, the “leg” is seen to be composed of segments, and
terminates in three toes, furnished with sharp, curved claws, which
keep up a constant clutching—at what is not apparent; but the action
strongly reminds one of a similar effect produced by juveniles who
have become the proud possessor of a hen’s foot, and for a piece of
slate pencil—the usual juvenile currency—demonstrate to admiring
companions the utility of the extensor muscles.
Last month we had the unique experience of being serenaded by
the Dundee trippers with a cornet solo, but the last Saturday of this
month fairly eclipsed this performance. As we were about to sit down
to tea we were somewhat startled to hear the regular beat of a drum
and the unmistakeable music of the bagpipes. A hasty survey from
the kitchen window sent us flying to the balcony, there to witness the
novel sight of a ship, manned by boys—a training brig evidently,
bound for Dundee. Bearing down upon us from the eastward, she
approached close to the Tower, the tide being about full. Flag
courtesies being exchanged, crowds of juvenile faces were seen
lining the rail, while midships pipers discoursed some lively music,
including the “Cock o’ the North.” The wind being light, the vessel
made but little way, and as she slowly crossed the reef the
youngsters lustily cheered us, which we returned as best we could.
Breaking into song, the whole ship’s company favoured us with
“Poor Cock Robin,” the youthful voices having a most pleasing effect
in the stillness of a really beautiful summer’s evening. Applauding
our loudest, cheers were again exchanged as she slowly drifted
beyond our hearing, the whole scene strongly reminiscent of “H.M.S.
Pinafore.”

[2] Whale-louse.
 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1903.

The man that pours the water out has certainly been paying attention
to his business, and in conjunction with the puffy bellower of storms
favoured us with weather anything but peaceful. Unlike the farmers,
we have little cause of complaint. No sodden fields or ruined crops
appal the eye, for even after a “regular snorter” things here remain
pretty much as they were. True, the aspect changes as the season
advances. The whitewashed appearance of the rock surface in
summer, due to the presence of the acorn barnacle, has now
vanished—thanks to the voracity of the white whelk—and the rocks
appear in their natural colour, a reddish-brown. The “sere and
yellow” is well represented in the once luxuriant crops of heavy
tangles, but lately swaying on the surface with a freshness and
beauty peculiarly their own, now storm-tossed, frayed and abraded,
denuded of their palm-like fronds, they appear but a vestige of their
former selves. The turbulent state of the weather interferes seriously
with our fishing, keeping the poddlies at a respectful distance from
our door; indeed, any approach in our direction at present would
certainly denote suicidal mania on their part. At a safe distance
outside the breakers, they are to be seen playing on the surface in
the early morning and evening, so that our expectations are still high
should the weather but abate.
The eider ducks, which on the 20th September were represented
by a solitary individual—the first arrival—now number over a
hundred. The longtails are still awanting to complete our list, but their
advent may be looked for early next month. On suitable nights for
the past two months we have always had some feathered visitors
“becking and booing” to us through the lantern. On 4th October an
extremely rare visitor—here at least—made its appearance, namely,
the ring-ousel, the first I have seen. In size, shape, and general
colouring, this migrant might easily be mistaken for a hen blackbird,
but for the conspicuous white crescent across the throat, in this
instance somewhat faint, but well defined, owing possibly to the bird
being in immature plumage. On the morning of the 24th October
over two dozen tiny gold-crest wrens were circling round our lantern,
jostling and tumbling over each other in frantic efforts to keep in line
with the white flash, the red flash evidently having no attraction for
them. A skylark and robin were also of the company, as well as
several redwings. The robin always seems to have a truer sense of
his position than any other of our visitors. While the others clamour
futilely against the glass he maintains an aloofness and self-
possession truly remarkable. His eyes seem to be everywhere, and
only with difficulty and the exercise of a little strategy is his capture
effected. Of course, our captures are but temporary, and merely for
the sake of a few minutes’ examination.
We had rather a disappointing experience with the Channel Fleet
while cruising in these waters last month (September). Passing north
in the dark, we were quite unaware of their presence, the Sutlej
alone being seen later steaming north at 6 p.m. on the 21st, nearer
to Arbroath than to us. On returning south a string of brilliant lights
passing three miles outside of us at two o’clock in the morning was
all we saw of the procession.
On 29th October a flock of thirteen field-fares passed at 9 a.m.,
flying towards Arbroath. This is the first arrival here of these birds,
and earlier than usual.
On examining a lark which had been killed on the lantern the
other night, a small land shell was found adhering to the feathers on
the under part of the body. Arguing from this instance, the
assumption that they also are imbued with the migratory instinct and
adopt this mode of travelling would probably be considered far-
fetched. That there is much undreamt of in our philosophy is as
pregnant as when uttered, and possibly the connection between
mollusc and bird was due to circumstances other than purely
accidental.
 NOVEMBER 1903.

Sunday, 1st.—A flat calm. A pleasant change, indeed, after our

recent experience, and one which has fortunately continued for the
greater part of the month. Fish, which had maintained a safe
distance during the turmoil of last month, now ventured within
catching distance, and several good takes were had. After the
middle of the month heavy seas again drove them out of reach into
deep water. Those that were caught were seen to be gorged with soil
half an inch in length, resembling a piece of white thread with a black
dot on either side at one end representing the eyes. Amongst the
first that were taken the small jellyfish—cydippe pileus—seemed to
have been their principal diet, but latterly the soil appeared to be
preferred to the medusae. Outside the breakers they are still
occasionally seen playing on the surface in the evenings. “Playing” is
scarcely correct, as their play is, in reality, strict attention to
business, and their appearance on the surface merely denotes their
having overleaped themselves in pursuit of their legitimate prey. Our
flock of eider ducks, much larger than it has been for several years
back, now numbers 120. Amongst the smothering breakers they
seem to be in their glory, and are busily engaged in clearing off the
immature mussels that have escaped the voracity of the white
whelks. On the 2nd, the first two longtails were seen, exactly a week
earlier than last year, but their numbers are being but tardily
reinforced, as they only totalled six at the end of the month. Though
the main body of the solan geese or gannets left their breeding
haunts on the Bass Rock on the 5th of the month for the fishing
grounds—in the Mediterranean it is said—occasional stragglers are
still seen in our vicinity.
On the night of the 8th we had a few migrants on the lantern, ten
blackbirds—three only of which were males—and three fieldfares.
Several of them appeared much fatigued, and after a few preliminary
hops round the lantern, settled down on the lee side to have a nap. A
fresh breeze blowing at the time, those still on the move were
frequently hustled by the wind against the sleepers, who, thus rudely
awakened, vigorously resented what they no doubt considered a
deliberate attempt to assault, with the result that all hands were at
times engaged in a battle royal; the hen “blackies” only engaging
with those of their own sex, while the cocks and fieldfares tackled all
comers indiscriminately. It was rather amusing to witness the finish
between a pair thus engaged. Edging round the narrow pathway in
their struggle, they gradually came under the influence of the wind
sweeping round the lantern, when suddenly one of them would be
wheeled off its feet away into the darkness, its opponent peering
after it in evident astonishment, and probably congratulating itself on
its prowess. The haze, responsible for their appearance here,
clearing after midnight, before 3 a.m. they had all resumed their
journey shoreward. On the 20th, a pair of grey crows passed, going
east, and on the 22nd a heron was seen travelling in the same
direction. Again, on the night of the 27th, three hen blackbirds and a
starling had the lantern all to themselves.
The white whelks have now gone into winter quarters, and only a
few are to be seen lingering among patches of immature mussels.
The black edible whelk, or periwinkle, whose vegetarian habits
demand a more inshore life, is here conspicuous by its absence.
Occasionally, during the summer months, a very close search
reveals a few solitary specimens. Two different varieties of slugs
have been much in evidence among the rocks here of late. One of
them (Doris coccinea), resembling in shape and colour a section of
an orange, I have already described; the other somewhat resembles
the common snail. Furnished with anterior horns and fleshy spines,
ranged along the back, it curls itself up when out of water like a
hedgehog. Earlier in the season they were mostly of a beautiful
bluish colour, now they appear quite red. Without any visible means
of defence, one can fancy these shell-less molluscs furnishing a
delectable tit-bit for a hungry cod.
Turning over some loose stones in the shallow pools numbers of
young paidle-fish are seen adhering to the under sides by means of
their breast suckers, and when taken in the hand readily adhere to
the fingers. I lately saw an illustration in which the paidle “hen” was
depicted as leading a brood of about two dozen juveniles after the
manner of the domestic fowl. This is stretching the simile with a
vengeance, and not in accordance with facts. The “hen,” on
depositing the ova, takes no further interest in it, and the “cock”
alone guards the nest till the young are hatched out, when he also
disappears, neither of them being seen till the following season.
Considering that each nest probably contains millions of embryos,
one can imagine the maternal anxiety in “airing” such a brood.
Cooped indoors so long, one is glad to take advantage of the
quiet weather and the absence of the tide to enjoy a spin along the
gratings, even though at night and in darkness. At first the darkness
seems to preclude all possibility of holding a straight course along
the narrow path, but as the eyes get accustomed to it the twenty
steps and a round turn can be accomplished with wonderful
precision. Should the round turn be omitted, however, you will
probably be reminded of it by coming a cropper on the Bell Rock,
which, though historical, is not at all sympathetic. A similar omission
at the other end meets with more sympathy, if such sentiment can be
said to enter Neptune’s embrace. The flash from the lantern
overhead sheds no light below, though some fugitive rays escaping
between the flashes illuminate the outlying perches or boat-guides.
Any attention to these wandering rays occasions a halting tendency
in one’s steps and a disposition to lurch laterally, demanding our
undivided attention. The night is clear and dark and the various lights
along the coast, which on moonlight nights are partially eclipsed,
now show to the best advantage. Fifteen miles to the sou’-west the
powerful electric light of the Isle of May flings its quadruple flash with
startling brilliancy, a faint bar of light travelling athwart the base of
our tower with each flash similar to what would be produced by a
lighted carriage passing at a few yards distance. This light is said to
be of three million candle-power and is of the arc type, using carbons
one and a-half inch in diameter. To a stranger entering the light-room
while the light is in action a somewhat disagreeable sound is heard.
This is occasioned by the tremendous current bridging the arc
between the carbons, and for all the world resembles the sound
made by a circular saw passing through exceedingly knotty timber.
The Bass Rock emerges from the right shoulder of the “May,” and
prevents us seeing the light lately erected on its south side. A little to
the right of the “May,” the eye encounters the fixed white light of the
North Carr Lightship, three miles off Fife Ness, and distant from us
nine miles. This light consists of six small argand lamps, set in
silvered reflectors and enclosed in a lantern encircling the mast half-
way up. Colza oil was the illuminant used until recently in the North
Carr Lightship, as it was formerly in all the Northern lighthouses,
where it had ousted the more expensive sperm, but which in turn has
been superseded by paraffin. The lamps are hung on gimbals to
obviate as much as possible the pitching and rolling of the vessel.
With due allowance for the exaggeration that a penny piece placed
on the deck shows “heads” or “tails” at the vessel’s own sweet will,
one can understand that the motion in bad weather must be
considerable. Table guards, though retaining the dishes on the table,
do not in the slightest restrain the liberty of their contents, which find
lodgment as they list. On such occasions the men resort to the
expedient of squatting on the deck of their quarters with their backs
against the bulkhead and their outstretched feet firmly opposed to
those of their opposite neighbour, and only thus, plate in hand, are
they enabled to discuss their soup with any degree of certainty.
Further to the right, in line with the town of Crail—landlocked from
us—a dull red glare in the sky marks the position of Edinburgh,
distant forty miles as the crow flies. Following the loom of the Fife
coast, the twinkling lights of St Andrews next meet the eye, while
further up the Firth the two fixed lights of Tayport greet their doubles
of Buddonness on the opposite side. Midway between the lights of
Tayport and Buddon a single flash every half minute marks the
position of the Abertay Lightship. Unlike the other lights here
mentioned, the three last named are under the control of the Dundee
Corporation. Journeying northwards till almost at right angles to our
starting point, the next visible are the lights of Arbroath, twelve miles
distant. Viewed through the telescope how dreary and desolate they
appear, without the usual accompanying signs of life, a feeble cluster
in the vicinity of the harbour dwindling away to the Victoria Park in a
solitary line. Further north the occulting light of Montrose Ness
catches the eye with its thirty seconds of light followed by thirty
seconds’ darkness. Northwards still, twenty-five miles from us, the
light of Tod Head, near Bervie, limits our view in that direction. Only
in exceptionally clear weather is it visible from here, and then only
from the elevation of our balcony. The characteristics of this light are
six white flashes in quick succession during fifteen seconds, followed
by fifteen seconds’ darkness. Returning to our starting point, the Isle
of May, and journeying till thirty miles due south from here, our view
is again limited by St Abb’s Head, showing a white flash every ten
seconds. About midway between the latter light and the “May” the
light of Barns Ness, near Dunbar, is, like St Abb’s and Tod Head,
only occasionally seen, its characteristic being a triple white flash
every thirty seconds. The presence of these lights makes our coasts
as safely navigable by night as by day, and the demand is still for
more—a fact which drew from a facetious old “salt” the remark that
“sailors nowadays want a hand-rail along the coast.”
 DECEMBER 1903.

A month of dull, dark, unsettled weather, with scarcely any sunshine

to speak of, and admitting of but little heliographic communication
with the “shore,” a condition of things, by the way, preventing the
“shore station” proclaiming to anxious eyes the interesting advent of
another addition to the census. Quite a depressing effect is
experienced at such prolonged absence of the land, and the
reappearance of the Grampians, though swathed in winter
vestments, would be a welcome sight. Our fish supply ceased early
in the month, and its renewal need not be expected before the month
of May. Gulls are numerous at present, and evidently on short
rations considering their vigilant attention to the kitchen slops. Our
only feathered visitor for the month was a belated bullfinch, who
reached us only to die. The eiders and longtails continue in
evidence, and have now the company of four cormorants.
Star-fish are always plentiful here, though of course more
numerous in summer. All are of the five-rayed variety, including the
“brittle” star-fish, which, unlike its fellows, discards its rays on the
slightest irritation, and possesses a body no larger than a shirt
button, in ludicrous contrast with the squirming rays two inches in
length. In startling contrast with the latter was a specimen found in a
shallow pool early in the month, and which was quite new to us here.
Six inches in diameter, the stranger appeared all body, with very
short rays, of which there were twelve. Unlike the usual five-pointed
star shape, it might be better described as a deeply serrated disc,
the upper surface being richly coloured with concentric rings of
crimson. Another object of note at present is seen scattered about
the rocks, resembling small coils of ribbon, apparently the egg-cases
of some fish. These are white in colour, and somewhat resemble the
outline of the human ear. The enveloping membrane, of rubber-like
consistency, is quite transparent, and is seen to contain a frothy fluid.
The inner edge of each coil is furnished with an adhesive margin, by
means of which it is firmly fixed to the rock surface.
It is interesting to note the different modes adopted by fish to
ensure the propagation of their species. Some, apparently careless
of results, consign the spawn to the mercy of the waves, while others
conceal it from predatory neighbours in the soft, sandy bottom. The
skate family, adopting a different procedure with their egg cases—
those purse-like receptacles often seen cast up on our beaches—
moor them securely to the vegetation on the sea bottom by the long
elastic tendrils—prolongations of the four corners of the case.
Parental interest is, perhaps, better evinced in the case of the
“paidle-fish” standing guard over his nest with unwearied vigilance,
exhibiting all the care of a brooding hen for his future offspring.
Again, in the case of the dog-fish—the plague of fishermen—how
different. Here the young are brought forth, after the fashion of
mammals, fully developed. A common sight in fishing boats where
these pests are brought on board, is to see the finger-long juveniles
swimming briskly about in the bilge-water with the yolk-sac still
attached. In some parts it is customary to split and dry these fish for
winter consumption, though the flavour of roasted “dogs” would
scarcely recommend itself to anyone unaccustomed to its use, nor
its relationship to fish even be suspected. The liver at one time
supplied the natives of the Hebrides with lamp oil, and was also
considered a panacea for all bovine ailments, the method of
administering the dose being to keep the head of the cow elevated
while the mouth was forced open, and the entire liver, as removed
from the fish, slipped gently down the throat; no “sugar-coated pills”
about that!
Spring tides occurring at the “full” and “change” of the moon, and
our gratings consequently being then uncovered for a much longer
period each tide, the “reliefs” are so arranged as to fall on or about
these dates. Consequently, during the winter months, when the
reliefs are made after dark, there is always the chance of every
alternate relief being favoured with full moonlight. On the night of the
18th our final relief for the year was effected in comparatively quiet
weather. At relief times, providing the weather is quiet, the landing
gratings begin to uncover when the ebb has run four hours.
Whenever a footing is possible the keepers descend with the signal-
lamps, and by their colour—red, green, or white—indicate to the
relieving steamer the landing they consider it safest to attempt. Two
boats are immediately dispatched from the steamer in charge of the
first and second officers, and, guided by the steamer’s searchlight,
cautiously approach the landing signalled. Given quiet weather, the
narrow passages leading to the different landings are easily
negotiated, though to a stranger, even in quiet weather, the attempt
would be extremely hazardous. Should there be any surf on the
Rock, the boats take up a position as near the entrance as is prudent
with safety, and there wait the opportunity of a lull. This generally
occurring at the termination of three bigger waves than usual, the
officer gives the word, and the first boat shoots forward into the
boiling track. Talk about “shooting the rapids,” why, it isn’t a
circumstance to it. Swinging through “Johnny Gray” track on a dirty
night in mid-winter is quite “rapid” enough to satisfy the most morbid
desire for excitement. At times disaster lies beneath the very oars,
but the necessary impetus has already been given to the boat, and
she clears it with a rush, to be met the next moment with a drenching
sea on the port bow, which threatens to slew her upon the opposite
ledge, despite the strenuous resistance of the starboard oars, the
tips of which grate on the shelving ledge as they urge her through
the narrow channel into safety, the entire effort affording a splendid
demonstration of the necessity for doing the right thing at the right
moment. The seamen understand exactly what is expected of them,
and respond with alacrity to the officers’ orders. Despite the danger
attending such work, that no serious accident has ever been
recorded reflects much credit on all concerned, from the captain,
who, as a boy, began his career on board the vessel which he now
commands, downwards. Particularly is the second officer—a veteran
of forty years’ experience in this work—to be congratulated on the
possession of a “clean sheet” after such protracted service in what is
frequently an extremely hazardous calling.
 JANUARY 1904.

The weather continues dull and dark, but comparatively quiet—a

matter of much importance to us at relief times. We have no aversion
to a rousing gale between reliefs; then one can afford to appreciate
the grandeur of the warring elements; but as the appointed time
draws near, and no sign of abatement is evident, all hands become a
trifle uneasy, especially the man whose turn it is for shore duty. It is
rather tantalising to see the relief steamer cruising doubtfully round
the Rock, then finally take her departure, unable to effect a landing,
all on account of “that nasty swell,” which possibly a week ago we
were eulogising as “sublime!” It is a matter of remark here how
quickly the boisterous nor’-east seas are subdued by the westerly
wind. At times the morning presents a scene anything but peaceful,
the whole reef enveloped by shouting, tumbling seas, which bang
our domicile till the crockery rattles, and blind by their spray our
kitchen windows, seventy feet from the Rock—yet, let the wind but
freshen from the westward and the conflict immediately becomes
visible. The seas, now driving in the teeth of the wind, have their
curling crests whipped cleanly off and carried leeward like clouds of
steam. Perceptibly their force diminishes as they “lift and ’scend” in
the struggle for supremacy, till by evening tide a comparatively easy
relief may be effected. Home news and the doings of the outer world
are then at our disposal, as well as a welcome consignment of fresh
provisions. Considering his almost seven weeks’ confinement on the
Rock, the shore-going keeper may be pardoned a feeling of relief
and elation as he steps on board the relieving steamer—a feeling, by
the way, not at all to be confounded with that of the return journey.
As an instance how dissimilar the same object may appear from
different view-points, our lonely habitation never seems to assume
such a pleasing aspect as when seen vanishing astern. Verily, it is
we who appreciate the truth of the Irishman’s illogical remark that
“the best thing about going away from home is getting back again.”
 A round of the different fishing pools was made this month at low
water, resulting in the capture of a most unhealthy-looking specimen
of a poddley in the “Hospital” (Neill’s Pool). Long, lank, and lean, a
post-mortem revealed the liver attenuated to a mere thread. It is
most remarkable why these sickly fish should favour this pool alone.
About twenty feet in diameter and twelve feet deep, with the bottom
thickly strewn with rounded boulders, there is always a shallow wash
into it at the lowest state of the tide. Possibly its greater depth offers
a safer refuge for these convalescents than the other pools.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in this pool alone these
specimens are found; not only poddlies, but lythe and cod as well.
With the flying fish of the tropics we are more or less familiar, and of
tree-climbing fish and overland travellers we have the testimony of
travellers that such perverse specimens do exist. The ceratodus of
Queensland, for instance, which, with its peculiar respiratory
arrangement and ambulatory fins is enabled to transport itself over
swampy ground in migrating from pool to pool, a feat suggestive of
the Yankee’s shallow-draught steamer, to which an ordinary meadow
was easily navigable, providing there had been a heavy dewfall. The
cause of these reflections was the discovery of a small fish, some
four inches in length, on the cleaning path encircling our lantern,
over a hundred feet from its usual habitat. Of the “cobbler” variety,
the expanded pectoral fins might, with a little imagination, be imbued
with the powers of flight, but more than likely our visitor owed its
exalted position to some predatory gull, which, unable to bolt its
victim or escape from covetous neighbours, had dropped it where
found.
A solitary lapwing was our only feathered visitor for the mouth.
Apropos of these days of “retaliation,” there is an old Scottish Act of
Parliament of the time of Edward the First relating to this bird, in
which all its eggs are ordered to be broken when found, “in order that
Peesweeps may not go south, and become a delicious repast to our
unnatural enemies the English!”
A quiet night on the 31st seemed to augur favourably for our
relief, which was due the following evening; by that time, however,
the prospect was completely changed by a strong sou’-east wind,
and consequently heavy sea, which rendered landing extremely
doubtful. The following morning the Pharos made her appearance,
and attempted a landing at daybreak. The two boats despatched
from the steamer for this purpose, on approaching the Rock, found
the passage unsafe to attempt, and returned to the steamer.
Weighing anchor, the Pharos proceeded to the relief of the North
Carr Lightship, where, owing to the tempestuous state of the
weather, she broke the hawser by which she moors to the lightship
three times during the operation. Landing the relief men from the
lightship and Bass Rock—which had been relieved the previous
day—at North Berwick, and sheltering overnight at the Isle of May,
she returned to us on Wednesday morning and succeeded in
effecting the relief.
 FEBRUARY 1904.

Cormorants have been more in evidence here this month than

usual. At present a flock of thirteen is to be seen diving in the deep
water surrounding the reef. Scorning the crustaceans, molluscs, and
other ground game of the eiders and longtails, these birds subsist
entirely upon fish, in pursuit of which they are extremely dexterous.
The long sharp-pointed bill is excellently adapted for securing their
prey, the extremity of the upper mandible curving over the lower in a
sharp hook, the efficiency of which I once saw forcibly demonstrated.
One of these birds, while flying high overhead, was winged by a
gunshot, and on striking the ground disgorged a recently swallowed
poddley, some ten inches long. A boy of the party, having the
temerity to thrust his foot towards the bird, had the upper leather of
his boot pierced and the foot slightly wounded by the sharp hook-like
process of the upper mandible. During an exceedingly rigorous
winter in Orkney—in ’94, if I remember aright—hundreds of these
birds perished from hunger. In a roofless hut, a few yards from high-
water mark, I counted fourteen dying and dead. Rats were busy
devouring the dead, while the living stumbled weakly over the half-
eaten bodies of their comrades. In the most unlikely places they
were to be met with, coming right up to our doors as if begging for
shelter. One of them surprised me by waddling into the workshop,
passing over my boots as if unconscious of my presence, and
settling underneath the bench to die. Any food we could offer them
was always rejected. One evening my attention was drawn to our
poultry, which, instead of being on their roost, stood huddled about
the entrance. Thinking the entrance had been accidentally blocked
from within, I entered by the doorway to investigate. Judge my
astonishment at finding “Mister Phalacrocorax Carbo”—such is the
cormorant’s scientific title—standing Horatius-like holding the
diminutive passage against all comers. Wisps of feathers, with
shreds of skin adhering to them, lay strewn in front of him, while his
effective “hook” gleamed gory from the carnage. Needless to state,
his ejectment was summarily effected. When in pursuit of prey their
method of diving is conspicuously different from other birds of the
diving fraternity, and they may be identified at a long distance by this
peculiarity alone. Bracing themselves together, they spring forward
as if surmounting some imaginary obstacle on the surface, the entire
body assuming the form of an arc, reminding one of a fractious pony
in the act of “bucking.” The ducks, on the other hand, with wings half
open, merely topple over and under, turning on their own axis, so to
speak. Having secured a fish, it is brought to the surface, where,
after some preliminary adjustments to facilitate transit, it disappears
head first, the long neck denoting its course by “swelling wisibly.”
This is the bird which the Chinese train to fish for them. A ring is
placed on the bird’s neck, which prevents it appropriating its
earnings for its own use. Whenever a swollen neck appears the
owner is hauled on board the “sampan,” and the “swelling” reduced
by a rough and ready form of massage. Occasionally the constricting
ring is removed, and the bird permitted to enjoy its catch as a
stimulant to further exertions. History records the use of this bird for
similar purposes in our own country in the olden times, a leather
strap being used instead of the ring. Last year, fishermen in the
south of England petitioned for power to destroy these birds at all
seasons on the plea of the destruction caused by them amongst fish
in the estuaries. The cormorant measures three feet in length, and
belongs to the pelican family, of which we have but two other British
representatives—the shag, a smaller edition of the cormorant by
eight inches, and the gannet or solan goose.
On several occasions during the month a seal was observed
sporting amongst the breakers. The other evening he was seen
within a few yards of the tower, busy devouring a huge cod.
Mastication was entirely dispensed with; tilting his snout in the air,
each ragged mouthful disappeared at a single gulp. The fish was
allowed to sink after every mouthful; and two or three minutes would
be spent under water before bringing it to the surface for another
attack. In a remarkably short time the head and backbone alone
were left.
 Our feathered visitors for the month were represented by a couple
of skylarks, three song thrushes, a pair of carrion crows, and a
solitary starling. Eiders and longtails still continue in attendance, and
gannets are now plentiful. The latter arrived at their breeding haunt
on the Bass Rock from their southern sojourn on the 9th of last
month.
The month has been wet, cold, and stormy, exceptionally heavy
seas prevailing in the earlier half. The closing day of the month was
beautifully clear and sunny, but cold and frosty, our heliograph
intimating on that date a similar state of weather on shore.