BRUNNER, EMIL (1889–1966), Swiss Protestant theologian. Brunner was a critic of liberalism and secularism. His writing on knowledge and faith was influenced by Kant; his stress on religious experience by Kierkegaard and Husserl; and his stress on God's transcendence and the need for vigorous social and political action by Luther and Calvin.

Brunner anticipated Martin Buber's notion of the I-Thou relationship, elucidating throughout his Dogmatics the encounter between humanity and God as humanity's most significant existential experience. In The Divine Imperative, Brunner argues that the source of Christian ethics lies in God's imperative. He deemed personhood to be the center of human-divine interaction, deploring the reductionism of positivism and behaviorism. Although sympathetic to philosophy, he opposed its attempts to stand in judgment of theology, as well as attempts by Paul Tillich and others to use such philosophical terms as being and ground of being in reference to...