Brunner's Existentialism

   If you have been reading this little blog, you will notice that a theme is starting to develop. Or at least a few themes are developing. First of all, everything is problematic. Brunner holds that the majority of Christians have deficient views of who God is, who we are, and how both act in the world. This, however, is only secondary.

   The main theme of Brunner's work is existentialism. You have probably noticed by now that everything is about communion and relationship. For Brunner, this is the key to the entirety of Revelation. Without focusing on relationship and it's aspects, we lose the meaning of the Revelation.

   I thought I'd take a second and post what James W. Sire (in The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalogue) says about Existential Theism, which Brunner seems to follow pretty closely. In Sire's book, he says that Existential Theism is all about personalizing theology, and trying to correct a perceived error of traditional religion that is de-personal.

   For traditional theism, sin is breaking a rule, repentance is admitting guilt, forgiveness is canceling a penalty, faith is believing a set of propositions and the Christian life is about obeying rules. In contrast, Existential theism states that sin is betraying a relationship, repentance is sorrowing over personal betrayal, forgiveness is renewing fellowship, faith is committing oneself to a person, and the Christian Life is about pleasing the Lord, who is a Person. (pg. 131)

  The main traits of existential theism are that: "1. Human beings are personal beings, who, when they come to full consciousness, find themselves in an alien universe; whether or not God exists is a tough question to be solved not by reason but by faith." (pg. 128) "2 The personal is valuable" (pg. 129) "3. Knowledge is subjectivity, the whole truth is often paradoxical" (pg. 132) "4. History as a record of events is uncertain and unimportant, but history as a model or type of myth to be made present and lived is of supreme importance." (pg. 135) 


   In reading my commentary on Brunner's work, I think that all of these are highlighted, especially the first three. I am not saying that this is the way to believe, I am just trying to shed some more light on the background on Brunner's work. Brunner is largely indebted to the Christian Existentialist Kierkegaard who tried to combat dead theism and dead orthodoxy. In doing so, Kierkegaard changed the focus of Christianity from "sheer morality" (Sire, pg. 139) taking it on a "subjectivist turn" trying to lift "religion from history" and focus it "on inner meaning." (Sire, 139)  This is Brunner's project: to take Christianity out of the sphere of history and reason and to personalize it, to make it focus on relationship instead of proofs. Even though he might go over-board sometimes in his existentialism, I think we can and should learn from some of his teachings.

 

The Problem of God's Will

   "For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not calamity to give you a future and a hope." (Jer. 29:11, NASB) These are the words of the prophet of Jeremiah which have lead many Christians astray towards a false view of the future. From this passage, I heard many people claim that God had a personal blueprint of their lives drawn up, and that they were following the blueprint. Yet, this is a  perverted view of the Scriptures. John Calvin, in his Commentary on Jeremiah (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom19.xii.xi.html) makes this commonly held view look ridiculous. He states that  "He therefore says, I know the thoughts which I think towards you Some think that God claims here, as what peculiarly belongs to him, the foreknowledge of future things; but this is foreign to the Prophet’s meaning. There is here, on the contrary, an implied contrast between the certain counsel of God, and the vain imaginations in which the Jews indulged themselves. The same thing is meant when Isaiah says,

“As far as the heavens are from the earth, so far are my thoughts from your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:9)

for they were wont absurdly to measure God by their own ideas. When anything was promised, they reasoned about its validity, and looked on all surrounding circumstances; and thus they consulted only their own brains. Hence God reproved them, and shewed how preposterously they acted, and said, that his thoughts were as remote from their thoughts as heaven is from the earth. So also in this place, though the two parts are not here expressed; the Prophet’s object was no other than to shew, that the Jews ought to have surrendered themselves to God, and not to seek to be so acute as to understand how this or that would be done, but to feel convinced that what God had decreed could not be changed." (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom19.xii.xi.html)

  With Calvin's view in mind, that we are wont to understand God's will, and in doing so, project our thoughts onto Him, and try to change His decrees into our decrees, we must examine more in depth the problem of us trying to comprehend God's Will.

The problem with understanding God's Will for us is that it is so simple. Too simplistic for us to fully grasp. We want something more, something more in depth, something that sounds more in line with our thoughts, our plans, our actions. For, according to St. Augustine, following the will of God is the toughest easy thing we can ever do. In his In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos, "dilige et quod vis fac". Love God and do what you will. It's that easy, yet that hard.

Brunner extrapolates on this, saying: "It is not the will of God that I should "do" something, but He wills that I should love Hi with my whole heart, and in so doing also love my neighbour as myself/" (pg. 223) We want to use the Will of God as instructions, telling us what to do at every turning point and for every decision. Thankfully, and frustratingly, this is not so. The Holy Scripture is not a guidebook to life, it does not tell us the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything Else. ( For that, see Douglas Adam's classic Nihilistic Text, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) "Love never says what we are to do; it does not the Good Samaritan what he ought to do for the poor man who fell among robbers. All it says is this: Here and now do do everything you ca do for him!" (pg. 225) We are not told how to live our lives in detail. We are told to go out and love both God and neighbor. This is the most basic formulation of God' will. Again, "God does not will "something"; He wants "me for Himself"." (pg. 223) God does not need our actions, but wants our communion with Him. 

This communion, is not a command. For "One who is filled with the love of God does not need to be commanded to love God....The Commandment of Love, since it emphasizes the whole meaning of all the commandments, eliminates itself as commandment. Love can only be present where it is given, not where it is commanded." (pg. 224)  Since we are given Love, we should respond in Love. This is the Christian Faith in essence. Loving God and doing what we will to show and share that love. 

The (non) Problem of Evil

  "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Rom. 8:28) In this statement the Apostle Paul makes the modern reader ask a question: If I love God, then why do I suffer? We seek the answer in what the scholars term theodicy, that is the Justification of God (See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14569a.htm). How could a Good God allow me to suffer is the key question in this line of thought (As shown in Rabbi Kushner's work When Bad Things Happen to Good People). If God is Good, and if I love Him, why do I suffer?

  Yet, we have to object to this question on two fronts. Is God good? And then we have to call into question Rabbi Kushner's thesis that there is such a thing as a good person. We want to believe that God is good instead of believing that God is Just. Due to our misunderstanding, we ask a question that cannot be asked.

  "The theologian can support this view (that the line of questioning is invalid) by two facts; first, the human arrogance implied in the very idea of a theodicy - the attempt to "justify the ways of God to man" - and secondly, the fact that the question is never explicitly raised in the New Testament." (pg. 176-177) Brunner continues his thought, saying that "those who really believe in Jesus Christ, this question of theodicy cannot be raised." (pg. 177)  We shall focus, for the sake of this post, to focus on the first point, that the question of why does evil exist is solely based on human arrogance and pride, and not on Biblical foundations.

   We believe, in our arrogance and piety, that if we love God we will no longer have to suffer. If God loves us, and is a God of Love, then why does He allow us, His faithful to suffer? In asking this, we negate the central message of the Christian Narrative. We negate the Cross. Let me explain through Brunner. "If Jesus the Son of God was crucified, owing to the most terrible miscarriage of justice and judicial murder in the history of the world, as a sacrifice to the most incredible blindness and malice, can any of His disciples expect to receive a guarantee that nothing of that kind will happen to him?" (pg. 158)  In our perverted sense of self-worth, we answer this question with a resounding Yes! Christ had to suffer, yet I do not have to. We want the disciple to be above his Lord. (pg. 158) We understand that Christ had to suffer, but we expect  God, in His Death, "to remove all difficulties and constantly" turn "everything into good." (pg. 158) Our pride, sadly does not stop there. We have "the arrogance that God "ought" to allow Himself to be measured by our standard of justice." (pg. 184) The long and short of it is that we want to be in a special position, where we need not suffer.

    Yet, "The Good Shepherd does permit His sheep to go through the Dark Valley." (pg. 158) Why? Not because He is a Good God, but due to His nature; due to His being a Just God. Evil "is the product of apostasy from God, of the perversion of the divine order of Creation. It is the product of the misused gift of human freedom." (pg. 181) Evil is a result of the great No that human answers God with. It is not because God is cruel that there is evil. It is because we are cruel.

  It is then not up to us to solve the problem. It is "here, in the centre of the revelation, the problem of theodicy is solved, but not in theory (as in those theories of the philosophers and the theologians), but "existentially", and practically. (pg. 182) (When we try solve the problem, we create more. Our trying to understand through theory continues our rejection and rebellion from God.)  It is in the Cross that the problem of evil is solved. It is God breaking through to us, revealing Himself to us, and subjecting Himself to "death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8) Brunner continues, "we stand before the Cross...not as innocent or neutral spectators, who gaze with horror into an obyss outside themselves which appears with the world, with all its injustice and pain, but we ourselves stand in the midst of the abyss." (pg. 182) Going back a little bit, we want to view ourselves as Good People, in Rabbi Kushner's words. we want to thing that we are either innocent or neutral and that we play no role in the Cross. This is a false view taken from a prideful stance. We are the one's that made God undertake an "opus alienum", a strange work that is alien to who He is.

  The problem of evil cannot have an answer. It is mysterious to us, because we do not want to admit culpability in it. We want to "make God responsible for something that men do." (pg. 177) The friends of Job tried in vain to answer the question of why Job is suffering, but those answers, those "smooth solutions...seemed to (Job) to be futile excuses." (pg. 178) There are no smooth solutions, and the only "solution" is the Cross of Christ.

   It is here, at the Cross that "it becomes evident that evil is that which God does not will, and does not do, and at the same time, that God has such power over this evil, which He does not will, that He is able to perceive the unity of the mercy, the righteousness...of God. At this point is granted to us to have a glimpse into the mystery of the divine government of the world; the impenetrable darkness which otherwise lies upon it, is lifted like a curtain before our eyes. As soon as we look away from the Cross and try to explain world history ourselves in theological terms, the curtain falls once more, and we are left gazing into impenetrable darkness." (pg. 182) It is only through the Cross that "the real solution of the problem of theodicy" is revealed. And that solution is redemption.

  

   We then need to change the question. The question is now: Why do we reject God and create Evil?
 

Existence-in-Relaton

  Brunner has, through his exegesis of the problem of sin, begun to define what humanity is. His basic argument is that we are "existence-in-relation" and that without relation, we do not have existence. He defends this by saying that "The fact that man has been created by God means that his whole existence is determined by his relation to God,, His existence, as we have seen, is that of a "subject-in-relation", or responsible existence." (pg. 118) Our existence is not only relationally qualified to each other, but to God. If we do not have a relationship with both, we no longer (truly) exist.

   Our relationship to God goes in "two directions. this relation of man to God is based on freedom; first of all, the freedom of the generous love of God, which calls man to love Him in return and in so doing calls him to communion with Himself; secondly the freedom of man, who has to respond to this call (the call of Creation to join in communion with God). (pg. 118)

   We have the freedom to reject this call, which we discussed in the last post. When we reject the call of God, we find ourselves not outside of relation to God, but in relation of a different sort. "To the sinful man God is present as the Holy God, who allows the disobedient man to feel His resistance...Instead of God attracting man (calling man into relationship), he now repels him; this is the negative form of the original love of God." (pg. 118)  


  By "eating of the tree of knowledge and of life, the infringement of the divine preserve, is the effort to achieve autonomy, to be entirely self-centered; it means exchanging the a Deo esse for an impossible a se esse. If man had not yielded to this temptation, he would have lived in communion with God; he would have received life as a gift; daily he would have received it as a gift at the hands of God." (pg. 120) By entering into sin, we have exchanged the essence from God for an unachievable essence from ourselves. Instead of getting the gift of life from God, we try to create for ourselves a life; an ultimately futile project.

   Brunner holds that this 'exchange' of essences is futile. He states "No moral or religious effort will enable us to break through this barrier of the non posse non peccare (non-possibility to not sin). This is the true meaning of the servum arbitrium (sentence of slavery)." (pg. 122) Our natures have turned from liberum arbitrium (sentence of freedom) to the servum arbitrium (sentence of slavery). However, it is not God that enslaves us, but (according to Brunner) we enslave ourselves. We try to find a way to sin no more outside of the Love of God, and instead chain ourselves up in moral and religious systems.

  In our attitude of enslavement, we try to revolt, but not against ourselves. Instead of realizing that we are "the divided self" of Platonism and Neoplatonism or that we are "the sick soul" of psychology, we think that  we need to revolt against God, which in turn means revolting against ourselves. "The sinner is in revolt within himself -that is is his chronic disease, whether he knows it or not, whether he is conscious of the contradiction or not. Sin is being divided not merely from God but also...within himself." (pg. 124) We have not only given up God in our sin, but we have also given up ourselves.

   After the first sin, we are caught up in a dialect: the grandeur et misére de l'homme." (126) Humanity retains the created grandeur but has to it misery added. When we sin, when we sinned, we were left with a trace of our grandeur, but became miserable. The knowledge of our lost relation with God brings us to a three-fold misery: First there is the misery that drives man to despair in which "man cannot help misunderstanding himself and his relation to God." (pg. 126) 

   Secondly, is the phenomenon that St. Augustine speaks of in his famous words: "Cor meum inquietum donec requiescat in Te, domine." (quoted on pg. 127) We have an unquiet heart that is seeking rest in vain outside of God. This unquiet heart is "home-sickness...the pain of banishment, as the result of alienation from God." (pg. 127) We long to be at home, but are not, cannot be, without proper relationship with God and the rest of humanity being restored. (For more on this, see the essay "The Unsettling of America" or "People, Land and Community" in Wendell Berry's The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry)


  Thirdly, we have a "bad conscience". This bad conscience is the deep feeling of guilt and complete, total failure at relationship with God and Man. "It makes aware of the contrast between what we are and what we ought to be. It fills the whole of life with a certain pervading melancholy." (pg. 128) It is not that depression is a result of sin. What Brunner is saying here, through the existentialist (especially Sartre) is that our existence is now filled with a sense of un-fulfillment that is deep rooted. "It is a sign of the wrong relation between what we actually are and that for which we have been made, between the actuality and the possibility of our human nature." (pg. 128)

  Due to despairing un-quieted heart that fills us with guilt, "we cannot bear to be alone, that we shrink from solitude, it produces that profound ennui which Pascal describes so wonderfully with all its effects. It is not fear but Angst" that shows us "that we live under the wrath of God, until the conciling love of God is revealed to us." (pg. 128) We try to distract ourselves from this condition, but it fails. "Man invents all kinds of modifications of the truth, which tend to obscure it; he is very good at at making excuses, and even at shutting his eyes completely. Above all, man is a past master at silencing the voice(s)" of guilt, despair, and un-quietness. We fill our lives with distractions, evasions, and escapes, yet these all continue to plague us. No matter what we do, we cannot silence the voices. Only the Redemptive Love of Christ putting us in right relation with Himself can do that. Everything else is meaningless and vanity, a toiling under the sun. 

The Problem of Humanity

  The problem of humanity is that we are invited or called to worship God. There is no demand in Jesus Christ to worship Him. It is problematic for us that "this call of God...is to be understood in the light of Jesus Christ, not as a purely categorical imperative or a moral law, but as the call of God to communion with Him the Creator, and through Him to communion with" (pg. 73) the rest of humanity. The invitation to worship God through His Revelation would be much easier for us to accept if it was not a call at all.

   If God issued forth a categorical imperative instead of a hypothetical imperative, we would have no choice but to worship. For a categorical imperative is something that we have to do. It is an ontological ought (to continue in the language of Kant), a command that is innate in the core of our being that we have to follow. This would take away our choice, which we would protest, but at the same time, get rid of many difficulties.

   God's hypothetical imperative tells us that we should worship Him, not that we have (ought) to worship. The hypotheticalness of it tells us that it is up to us to decide how to answer. It places the responsibility on us, not on God. We would much rather be free of such responsibility than to have it. It is a burden that sometimes feels to heavy for us.

    We then, after hearing the call, have to respond. We can respond with a Yes and join in with communion with God (and thus the rest of the created order) OR we can respond with a No and reject community in favor of solitude. ( However, "this Either-Or", this Yes or No, "is not that of divine Creation; it is only as a result of the wrong answer, which is the result of sin, that this "Either-or" confronts us as an alternative." (pg. 73) When the individual answers No, he or she creates the Either-Or situation.Our freedom is not to choose, but it is a freedom to be "in the love God, which fills his whole life." (pg. 73) )

  Yet when we answer No to the call, we are not just answering No to God. We are answering No to ourselves. For " the true existence...can only be completed in the answering act of man." (pg. 73) When we deny the invitation to community and choose solitude, we also choose to be incomplete, to have an ontological lack (to use the language of St. Augustine). True human existence is only "existence-in-love" (pg. 73) and when we reject love, we reject true existence and become inauthentic, incomplete. "When man decides against this divine destiny he is in opposition, not only to an ideal destiny, but also to his own nature, and this self-contradiction is now within himself." (pg. 73)


   When humanity answers no, there is "a change in man's relation to God; it is the break in communion with God, due to distrust and defiance." (pg. 92) Out of this distrust and defiance, it is revealed that "the fundamental cause for this breach in communion" is humanity's "desire to be "as God". Man wants to be on level with God, and in doing so to become independent of Him." (pg. 92) However, we do not realize the mistake in breaking off relation with God. "Man's divine destiny means being "like God". freedom. Man is intended to be free, to be like God; but now man wants to have both apart from dependence upon God." (pg. 92) We were created to be free, but to be free in community, not in the solitude that we continually create.

   "Sin", for Brunner, "is throwing off restraint, denial of responsibility hence emancipation from that which makes us responsible, in whose Word we have both our freedom and our bondage. Sin is the desire for the autonom of man, therefore, in the last resort, it is the denial of God and self-deification; it is getting rid of the Lord God, and the proclamation of self-sovereignty." (pg. 93)


   This has been the Modern philosophical project, to assert that Man is autonomous, a law unto itself, and that we can throw off the shackles of anything that limits us. The desire to be autonomous is the desire to be God.
 

The Desire to Be God

     "The best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God." (Essays In Existentialism, pg. 70) With this statement, Jean-Paul Sartre sets forth an essential truth. We, as humans, are trying not to encounter God, but to become God. We are not satisfied with being a creature, we want to be the Creator. We do not to have our being granted to us, we want to have être-en-soi or being-in-itself. 

    Even though we as Christians want to counter Sartre, he is on to something. Brunner states that creatureliness bring with it a "sense of weakness, of transience, of nothingness" (pg. 53) that we want to reject. We want to be strong, fixed, and something, yet our creatureliness shows that we are not. He continues to say, "This knowledge of, and this recognition of, our creatureliness is not something we can take for granted." (pg. 54) Once we take our creatureliness for granted, we lose how we are. We are not God, yet, we desperately want to be. (Thus we take our creatureliness for granted.)

  He continues by saying that "The more man is able to distinguish himself from the rest of creation, the more he becomes conscious of himself as subject as an 'I', to whom the whole world is Object, the more does he tend to confuse himself with God, to confuse his spirit with the Spirit of God." (pg. 54) And the more he confuses himself with God, the more he desires to be God. When we see ourselves as at the top of the Great Chain of Being (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being), we start to try to continue climbing the ladder until we are at the very top. 

   We may be tempted to say that we do not desire to be God. Yet, "only the man who has not yet become aware of his nature as a spiritual being, who still regards himself as one object among many others, who thinks it is easy to reject the temptation to become like God." (pg. 54) If we do not take our creatureliness seriously, not only do we not want to be God, but we do not want to become like God. We would rather be impersonal objects than personal subjects. 

Lastly on this subject, Brunner cautions us that "where man thinks God by his own efforts and does not meet the God who reals Himself, in the last resort cannot help" to have this desire to be God. (pg. 54) If we only think about God, we not only limit God, but we become God. If we do not encounter God, we only encounter ourselves. "It is only the encounter with the Living God which eliminates this error." (pg. 54) On top of this, it is only as a creature that we can met the Living God. Otherwise, we desire not only to be God, but to kill him. 

The Problem of Creation

  According to Dr. Brunner, we fall easily into error when we try to start talking about Creation from the Old Testament. This happens because we do not know how to read the Creation account of Genesis 1-2. When the modern reader looks at this text, we become confused. Why does it start out with a puzzling narrative about a 6 day creation culminating in a Sabbath? Why does it not speak of the origin of the Creator? Why is not compatible with our enlightened (through Science) view of the origins of the world?

  Brunner suggest that instead of reading "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1) we  should instead start by reading "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God." (John 1:1) When we start with Genesis, we start with an unknown God. this God could be "the Theos of Plato or Epictetus, the Rama of the Sikhs, or the Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism." (pg. 6) Yet, if we start with John 1, we start with a Revealed God, a God that is uniquely Christian.

    "Unfortunately", according to Brunner, "the uniqueness of this Christian doctrine of Creation and the Creator is continually being obscured by the fact that theologians (and us non-theologians) are so reluctant to begin their work with the New Testament; when they want to deal with the Creation they tend to begin with the Old Testament." (pg. 6) When we start with the Old Testament, we start with The Hidden God, but when we start with the New Testament, we start with the Revealed and Veiled God.

  By starting with the Revealed God, we no longer can turn Creation into Science. We are forced to admit that Creation is not about Cosmology, not about the origin of the World, but the beginning of the Revealed Word. "The magnificent presentation of the creatio ex nihilo, or -and it is the same thing - Creation by the Word" shows us that "The Creation is because God wills it; it has no other foundation...the Creation is the work of...His Holy Love." (pg. 13)

  Instead of a "polytheistic-mythical origin" found in Genesis, we find an origin that starts with the Revelation of the Word of God. Instead of a narrative about the origins of the Cosmos found in Genesis, we find a narrative about the origin of the relationship between God and His Creation in John.