Emil Brunner's political and social ethics

Although I have been rather throroughly influenced by the neo-Calvinism of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd, near the end of my book, when I look for examples of ways to flesh out the principle of sphere sovereignty, or differentiated responsibility, I found myself looking to the writings of Swiss theologian Emil Brunner. Two books are especially significant: The Divine Imperative and Justice and the Social Order.

In the latter book he has chapters on, not only "Justice in the Political Order," but justice in marriage and family, in the economic order, and in the international order. This is in recognition that, although the jural aspect is not the decisive aspect in, say, marriage and family, nevertheless it does play a significant role in these institutions. Unlike his colleague Karl Barth, who attempted to make all ethics christological, Brunner affirms an ethic rooted in creation. Of marriage he writes:

Marriage is an order of creation, that is, man is so created that, his personality being embedded in a sexual nature, he can only fulfil his double purpose as a sexual being and a person in a union which is monogamous and lifelong.... Justice appears in marriage as the prohibition of adultery in any form (Justice and the Social Order, pp. 142-143).

Brunner may not be a neo-Calvinist as such, but he is certainly Reformed in the larger sense, and his writings on ethics affirm differentiated responsibility in all but name.