Justice and Social Order

by Emil Brunner

Book cover: Justice and Social Order

Extent: 215 pages

Publisher: James Clarke & Co

Subjects: Religious Studies

Language: English

Paperback (No longer our product)

(July 2025)

ISBN: 9780227180716

Price: $38.00

In stock

PDF (No longer our product)

(July 2025)

ISBN: 9780227180693

Price: $31.00

Emil Brunner’s assessment of Justice, law, and equality in the aftermath of the Second World War.


First published in 1945, in the wake of potent suffering, injustice, and the social and international upheaval of World War II, Justice and Social Order is Emil Brunner’s impassioned assessment of Protestant Christianity’s irresoluteness on various social issues, including the social order, politics, law, and international law. Brunner argues that the totalitarian State was the inevitable result of the slow disintegration and dissolution of the idea of justice in the Western World, which left Western humanity in its own wreckage in the twentieth century. Part one, ‘Principles’, presents the principles of justice, such as law, equality, and justice, proceeding with a description of the essential nature of these principles and where justice lies with the sphere of ethics. In the second part, ‘Practice’, Brunner explains the application of the principles described in part one to the practice of justice. In Justice and Social Order, Brunner elucidates his belief that it is the duty of theologians, philosophers, and jurists to comprehend and clarify the idea of justice to reconstruct just institutions and cure humanity’s ‘chronic disease’: the absence of the intention of justice.

Emil Brunner (1889-1966) was one of the leading theologians of the twentieth century, and helped pave the course of modern Protestant theology. He was Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Zurich and lectured around the world. His extensive writings published by James Clarke & Co. include Dogmatics and The Misunderstanding of the Church.

  • By (author) Emil Brunner