the Misunderstanding of Church

Emil Brunner’s investigation into the nature of Church and ‘churches’ using New Testament research. Emil Brunner’s investigation into the nature of Church and ‘churches’ using New Testament research. ‘What is the Church?’ Emil Brunner asks in his searching preface. Within Protestantism, the relationship between the Church as a living community of faith and the institutions conventionally called “churches” has long remained unclear. By contrast, the Roman Catholic tradition faces a different tension: how is the living Ecclesia of the New Testament to be understood in relation to the papal Church? In The Misunderstanding of the Church, Brunner confronts this ambiguity head-on. Drawing on the insights of New Testament scholarship, he examines the deep disharmony between the vibrant, Spirit-filled fellowship of early Christianity and the institutional forms that now bear its name. With characteristic clarity and urgency, he asks a further pressing question: what has gone wrong with the churches? Brunner’s exploration reveals a problem that is at once theological and historical, conceptual and practical. The very title of the book reflects this complexity: is the Church guilty of misunderstanding, the victim of it, or even its product? The ambiguity, Brunner suggests, lies not in the wording but in the nature of the issue itself. A significant contribution to ecumenical debate, this work embodies Brunner’s enduring concern to uncover why a true resolution of the problem of the Church has remained so elusive—and what might yet be required to rediscover its authentic form.

Brunner sees St Paul's Epistle to the Romans as 'the chapter of destiny of the Christian Church'. Here, in Luther's words, is the 'purest gospel' upon which the very existence of the Christian faith depends and from which it draws its life. Concentrated, decisive and instructive, nothing within the New Testament is more closely argued both theological and personal. Out of his years of scholarly wisdom Brunner meditates on the great Question: What is wrong with the Churches? Brunner finds an answer in the contrast between the virile Spirit-filled fellowship of the New Testament and the institutions which are now called 'churches'. He writes in his preface: 'The title of the book, The Misunderstanding of the Church, is equivocal. Is it a question of a misunderstanding of which the Church is guilty, or of a misunderstanding of which it is the victim? Or is it that the Church itself, as such, is perhaps the product of a misunderstanding? The author is not responsible for this ambiguity; it is intrinsic in the theme itself.'