The Greek Logos vs. the Evangelical Logos: The Awesomeness of Emil Brunner’s Moral Realism

Brunner with his wife and their first son

In The Mediator (1927), Emil Brunner has an excellent discussion on the similarities and differences between the Greek concept of Logos and the Christian/Johannine usage of Logos. He faults Ritschl for going too far in his criticism of Greek metaphysical intrusion into the pure moral positivism of the Gospel. Against Ritschl and his followers, Brunner recognizes a valid aspect of the Greek conception, namely the necessity for an “unconditional” from which our reason has its bearings and from which our language has meaning (“the principle of all meaning of intelligible speech” and “the principle through which alone we are able to distinguish invention from truth,” p. 207). But, as a principle of logic, the Logos is a mere Law standing outside ourselves — an impersonal Idea, unable to elicit or demand obedience. Invariably, this lack of “moral depth” avails the prejudices and laxity of each individual, who forms, rather than is formed by, the Logos. The Christian usage of Logos, however, includes a personal address by Christ, the Logos. There is a call and a response. The Word stands over-against us as the true form, for our understanding of God and of ourselves, received in faith (obedience). This is Brunner’s characteristic “I-Thou” emphasis, similar to Martin Buber’s Ich und Du and Friedrich Gogarten’s Von Glauben und Offenbarung, both published in 1923.

Here is Brunner’s contrast of the Greek-philosophical Logos (including Moral Law) with the Christian Logos of personal address and assent:

In the very nature of the “Law” or of abstract thought lies the impossibility of its ever becoming actual and personal. The speculative character of thought is opposed to the concrete character of personal volition. This shows its connection with objective thought. Even the moral idea of the Good is a mere idea; it is no real imperative. The Moral Law conceived as an a priori, as a principle of immanence, does not create a real sense of responsibility. I am still alone with myself. I am still engaged in a monologue. Conversation has not yet begun. For in true conversation — in real responsibility — it is essential that I should receive something from without: a real word, the Logos as a Logos which is altogether apart from my own thought, something over which I have no control. This means, however, that the Logos comes to me in an irrational way, along the path of actuality, as a word that is given. Otherwise even morality is only intercourse with oneself, Icheinsamkeit (solitude of the self), as Ferdinand Ebner so aptly puts it; it is self-love, self-regard. Nothing save a real relation to a real “Thou” can dispel this solitude of the soul; only a real conversation, in which we are actually addressed by another person, can make us responsible; this alone would be absolutely timely, personal, and therefore wholly serious. (pp. 208-209)

And there is this gem:

The abstract, a priori Moral Law addresses us as though our minds were still unsullied by experience of any kind. Hence, although it speaks of duty, it fills us at the same time with an inspiring sense of freedom and autonomy. Thus it deceives us, and we do not perceive that our minds are no longer like blank pages in a book; we do not realize that we are not free. The moral superficiality of the Moral Law from the point of view of Immanence is this: that it does not permit us to realize that we are real human beings, but that it regards us as hypothetical “subjects,” or as individuals who are still free to deal with the claims of the Good as they please. This assumes that we possess a dignity which in reality we lost long ago…. (pp. 209-210)

I think this serves as a compelling argument against the validity of a non-theistic moral realism, such as found in Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good (an otherwise excellent little book) and, of course, in Kant’s deontological basis for a universal imperative.

[Quotations are taken from the translation of Olive Wyon, first published in 1934 by Lutterworth Press in England and later published in the United States by Westminster Press in 1947.]