Emil Brunner

Heinrich Emil Brunner (/ˈbrʊnər/; born December 23, 1889 in Winterthur, Switzerland; died April 6, 1966 in Zurich, Switzerland) was a Swiss Protestant (Reformed) theologian. Along with Karl Barth – see Relationship with Karl Barth below – he is commonly associated with neo-orthodoxy or the dialectical theology movement.

Biography

Emil Brunner was born in Winterthur, near Zurich, Switzerland.

He studied at the universities of Zurich and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in theology from Zurich in 1913, with a dissertation on The Symbolic Element in Religious Knowledge. Brunner served as pastor from 1916 to 1924 in the mountain village of Obstalden in the Swiss Canton of Glarus. In 1919–1920 he spent a year in the United States studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

In 1921, Brunner published his Habilitationsschrift (a post-doctoral dissertation traditionally required in many countries in order to attain the position of a fully tenured professor) on Experience, Knowledge and Faith and in 1922 was appointed a Privatdozent at the University of Zurich. Soon after, another book followed: Mysticism and the Word (1924), a critique of the liberal theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In 1924 Brunner was appointed Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Zurich, a post which he held until his retirement in 1953. In 1927 he published The Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Theology and second The Mediator.