In 1974(!), in a wee second-hand bookshop in Woodlands Road Glasgow, I bought Emil Brunner's Our Faith, in the small SCM Religiious Book Club edition. Ever since I've valued and gone on learning from the writings of Emil Brunner. Others like to dip into Barth and come away with a recovered sense of the importance of things, and of God. I do that sometimes, and it works for me as well.
But reading Brunner is different – not only because Brunner is usually easier to read, but for myself there is a stronger sense of being personally addressed by this writer, of being taken into the confidence of someone for whom to encounter the transcendent God is to find oneself identified, defined and called into a new being.
Here is a long sentence (typed out on that old manual typewriter – and the punctuation is Brunner's) describing the self-discovery of each individual called into being and purpose by the Creator God. This is theology not quite rising to doxology, but certainly embedding anthropology and the human future in the eternal election of God. In Brunner's hands, divine election (predestination) is not the negation, but the context of human responsiveness to God's call and offer of grace. Has a theology of assurance ever been more warmly stated and rooted in the good purposes of God?
I, as this particular person,
cannot be exchanged for any other,
simply and solely because God,
the Self-personal, knows me,
this person as this person,
because he called me by my name,
when He created me,
because he loves me,
not as an example of a species,
but as this particular human being,
from all eternity,
and destines me,
not humanity as a whole,
for an eternal goal,
namely, for a personal end,
for communion with Himself, the Creator,
because he values me unconditionally
and will never exchange me for any other,
because he never confuses me with any other,
nor depreciates me at the cost of someone else,
because he gives me this supremely personal life
in His supremely personal Word of election.
In the electing Word of God
I have my person, my self.
Emil Bruner, Man in Revolt, (London:Lutterworth, 1957), page 283
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