Description
“What ought we to do?” is the guiding question of Emil Brunner’s The Divine Imperative. Here this age-old question is taken up by Brunner and is answered in light of his Reformed Christian theology. Dubbed a “Protestant Ethic”, The Divine Imperative is a systematic ethical treatise, and for Brunner the first to be centred around the Reformed faith.
Here Brunner lays the groundwork for a Christian conception of the moral life in a world where morality itself is often doubted or denied. Animated by the need to respond to an encroaching moral relativism, where many believe that there is no true Right nor Wrong, no true Good nor Evil, Brunner provides an answer to the problem of ethics and morality in the modern age.
In doing so, Brunner engages with a wide range of theoretical and practical issues: from philosophy’s rationalisation of morality, to the crisis of marriage, to the task of the Christian living under capitalism.
About the Author
Emil Brunner (1889-1966) was one of the leading theologians of the twentieth century, and helped pave the course of modern Protestant theology.
He was Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Zürich and lectured around the world. His extensive writings published by James Clarke & Co. include The Letter to the Romans and Dogmatics.
Contents
Author’s Preface (to the German edition)
Translator’s Note
BOOK 1
THE PROBLEM
Section 1: Natural Morality
1. The Problem of the Good: an Imperative Challenge
2. The Phases of the Immanent Moral Understanding of the Self
3. Morality and the Religions of the World
4. The Rationalization of the Moral in Philosophical Ethics
5. The Deepening of the Problem by the Deepening of the Contradiction
Section 2: The Christian Message and Natural Morality and Ethics
6. The Christian Message as the Revelation of the Good
7. The Christian Interpretation of the Contradiction as Sin
8. Justification by Grace alone as the Removal of the Contradiction and the Foundation of the Good
9. The Definition of the Christian Ethic
10. The Christian Ethic: Past and Present
BOOK 2
THE DIVINE COMMAND
Section 1: The Will of God as the Basis and the Norm of the Good
11. The Divine Command as Gift and Demand
12. The Command of the Creator and Redeemer
13. The Unity and the Variety of the Divine Command
14. The Threefold Meaning of the Law
Section 2: The New Man
15. The New Man, as Created and Claimed by God
16. Goodness and the “Virtues”
17. Self- Affirmation and Self- Denial
18. The Better Righ teousness
Section 3: The Neighbour
19. Service
20. The Calling
21. The Natural Orders and the Kingdom of God
22. Service as an “Office” and as a Personal Relation
Section 4: The Works of Love
23. The Active Life as a Gift and a Demand
24. The Hallowing of the Means by the End
25. Autonomy, Natural Law, and Love
26. Success and Progress
BOOK 3
THE ORDERS
Introduction
Section 1: The Individual, the Community, and the Orders of Society
27. The Individual and the Community
28. Religious and Moral Practice as Limiting Cases of the Moral
a. Our Relation to God in the ethical sense: Religious Practice
b. The Relation to the Self: Moral Practice
29. Life in Love
30. The Natural Forms of Community
Section 2: The Community of Life: Marriage and the Family
31. The Fundamental Problem of Marriage
1. The Crisis of Marriage
2. The Argument for Monogamy: the Creation
3. Marriage as it is in Reality
32. Individual Problems Connected with Marriage
1. Marriage, Love, and Law
2. Divorce and Celibacy
3. Marriage and Children
4. Marriage and the Economic Question
5. The Emancipation of Woman, and the Relation between the Sexes apart from Marriage
Section 3: The Community of Labour
33. Labour and Civilization
34. The Nature and the Task of the Economic Order
1. The Economic Order as a Prob lem of Ethics
2. Economic Life as an Infringement of the original Order of Creation
3. The Norm of the Economic Order
4. The Evil in the Economic Order
5. The Individual Economic Factors from the Ethical Point of View
35. The Christian in the Pre sent Economic Order
1. The Christian and the Capitalist System
2. The Search for a Better Order
3. The Task of the Christian within the Present Economic System
4. The Task of the Church in the Economic Struggle of the Present Day
Section 4: The Community of the People and of Law
36. The Nature of the State
1. The Riddle of the State
2. The State as a God- given Order of Sinful Reality
3. The Power of the State
4. The Law
5. Law and Force
6. The Nation and the State
7. The State in its Relation to the other Forms of Community
37. The Acting Christian in the Acting State
1. The Attitude of the Christian towards the State
2. The Christian and “Reasons of State”
3. The Christian and the Form of the State
4. The Christian and Force: the Prob lem of War
5. The Christian and the Penal Law
Section 5: The Community of Culture
38. The Christian in the Community of Culture
39. Science
40. Art
41. Education
42. The Free Forms of Community
Section 6: The Community of Faith
43. The Nature of the Church
1. The Church of Faith
2. The Church as both Divine and Human
44. The Church in Action
1. The Church and the Churches
2. Church Order and Church Law
3. State Church, National Church, Free Church
4. Church and State
45. The Action of the Church
1. The Functions of the Church and the Offices of the Church
2. False and True Ecclesiasticism
Notes and Appendices
Index
