Welcome to Nassau Presbyterian Church

This is an online community created for participants in Nassau Church’s Adult Education programs.  The first installment will be
Shirley Guthrie’s classic work Christian Doctrine.

The Series begins on February 1st and ends on March 1st

More on the Barth/Brunner Debate on Natural Theology

As was mentioned in today’s class on the doctrine of general revelation, there was an important debate that occurred between Swiss theologians Emil Brunner and Karl Barth on the place of natural theology in the Church. Brunner believed that it was important for Christian theology to reflect on the problem of the relationship between Reason and Revelation. Brunner felt that he and Barth desired the same things and that Barth had simply misunderstood him. For Brunner, general revelation is a foundation, a bit like a trapezoid, upon which special revelation can and must be added to correct and perfect our knowledge of God. Brunner argues that his own view is in line with Calvin’s and distinct from a Roman Catholic understanding of natural theology. He closes his essay with a suggestion that natural theology is of decisive important for the dealings of Christians with unbelievers.

In response to Brunner’s essay, Barth issues back a resounding “Nein!” Barth is wary of Brunner’s position, although he finds it to be close to his own in some ways. His concern is that natural theology leads to a disintegration of the Church’s allegiance to Christ. In the front of Barth’s mind were the horrors of the so-called “German Christian” movement, which was claiming that God’s will was made known in “blood and soil.” Barth’s proposal is to rethink completely that problem of natural theology by developing the meaning of revelation according to the key Reformation insights of solus Christus (Christ alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and sola fide (faith alone). Barth concludes that nature and grace do not merely exist on the same plane, nor do they differ only by a matter of degree. Nothing short of a miracle is needed to repair fallen humanity to their unfallen condition. Only the miracle of Christ’s resurrection made present and real to us here and now by the power of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of Scripture can accomplish such a feat.