Paying Attention To The Sky

Heinrich Emil Brunner (December 23, 1889 – April 6, 1966) was a Swiss Protestant (Reformed) theologian. Along with Karl Barth, he is commonly associated with neo-orthodoxy or the dialectical theology movement.

But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.
I CORINTHIANS 1:23

WHY IS IT THAT PAUL describes the gospel as a folly and a scandal and that worldly wisdom feels so repelled by it?

The wisdom of this world gives us occasion to be proud of our own achievement. Even the Jewish religion with its piety holds that it is still we who must do the decisive thing in order to win the good pleasure of God. This applies still more to oriental and mystical religions. The latter do not mortify human nature nor expose human sin, but bypass it. But the message of the cross proclaims to each one of us, even the best and most pious: You are a sinner, you are in a wrong relationship with God and hence with your neighbor also. You are seeking yourself. You wish to appear clever, and to attain the highest by means of your own intrinsic powers.

But why, you may ask, must we make so much ado about human sin? It is because in our inmost being we have each gone astray: I am godless, loveless, self-seeking, God-escaping. This is not manifested merely in those obvious weaknesses and vices that everyone condemns and with which, to a very large extent, we ourselves can deal. No, sin — the corruption of our nature — lies much deeper and is manifest even when we are occupied with the highest and holiest things.

The message of the cross goes to the root of our ills, and it alone can cure them radically. Just for that reason it spells folly and scandal. How? In the Bible it is not we who find a way to God; it is God who comes to us. It says nothing about practicing mystical introspection, of otherworldliness, of cultivating the interior life, with a view to reaching ultimately the divine ground of the soul. It is not a question of our own performances and exercises as a result of which we might hope to become pious and well-pleasing to God. That, in the last analysis, is self-praise. The central point of scripture is that God has mercy on us who are stuck so fast in the mire — if I maybe pardoned the expression — that we cannot help ourselves.

We know why so many refuse to hear this message and why they can make neither head nor tail of it. The person for whom his reasoning power furnishes the supreme criterion of truth cannot believe that truth exists which does not flow from his own intellectual activity; truth which we cannot, by our own powers of recognition, apprehend, or by our powers of reason demonstrate; truth which does not dovetail into our own systems of thought and which lies entirely beyond the reach of our capacities. All this clashes greatly with our pride.

Still more serious than its folly is the offensiveness of the gospel’s message. The Greeks sought after wisdom; the Jews desired by their good works to merit favor with God, Has not the thought come to you: Well, what then remains for us to do? What room is there for our own exertions, our own sense of responsibility?

Look once again at the revolt of our natural pride, this time not the pride of reason, but pride in our moral powers and in our determination to get things done for ourselves. Consider once more what it is that God bestows upon us. He imparts to us his love, communion with himself, and the fact that sin, which causes the deepest, most inward separation from him, is done away. How could the person who truly appropriates that gift become frivolous and irresponsible? Can one really receive the love of God without henceforth living in the strength of that love?

ALL MAN-MADE RELIGION stands in opposition to the gospel. It is an ascent toward the eternal, perfect God. Up, up — that is its call. God is high above, we are down below; and now we shall soar by means of our moral, spiritual, and religious endeavors out of the earthly, human depths into the divine heights.

God is too high and the evil in us too deep for us to teach the goal this way. Our souls become crippled and cramped by trying to rise to the highest height. The end is despair, or a self-righteousness that leaves room neither for love of God nor for love of others.

So if we are honest, we have to say that we cannot reach the goal. We cannot become what we ought to become, true men and women. Many let the matter rest there; they confess it, but take no action. They make themselves satisfied with half because they cannot have the whole. God demands all, not just half. And this “all” we are not capable of giving. What is impossible for us is what God wants — all love to him and to our fellow humans. If this is true, it would seem that we can have no good conscience, no trusting relationship with God, no inner peace, and no freedom of the soul.

But God has in his mercy shown us a different way. “You cannot come up to me, so I will come down to you.” And God descends to us human beings. This act of becoming one of us begins at Christmas and ends on Good Friday.

God goes to the end. He reaches the goal. To be sure, this end is exactly the opposite of what we fix as our goal. We wish to climb up to heaven; God, however, descends — down to where? To death on the cross. This is why Jesus Christ had to descend into hell. He had to go the way to its very end. Our rightful end is hell, that is, banishment from God — godforsakenness. Only there has God completely come to us, there where he has taken upon himself everything, even the cursed end of our way. Jesus Christ has gone into hell in order to get us out of there. For with everything he does, that is his goal, that he may get us out, reconcile us with God, and fill us with God’s Spirit. He had to despair of God for us (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) so that we do not have to despair of God. He has taken this upon himself so that we may become free of it.