What does Brunner say?
Regarding the Fall, Brunner accuses Barth of asserting that the imago Dei was completely obliterated through sin. He paraphrases Barth thus: Since man is a sinner who can be saved only by grace, the image of God in which he was created is obliterated entirely, i.e. without remnant. Man’s rational nature, his capacity for culture and his humanity, none of which can be denied, contain no traces or remnants whatever of that lost image of God. Brunner responds by drawing a distinction between the formal image, or humanum, and the material image. The formal aspect is that which distinguishes human beings from animals and the inanimate creation. Keeping with the Augustinian, Thomistic and Reformed traditions, Brunner argues that the human creature is a rational, responsible creature, and that this special status, which includes ‘his reason, his conscience, his capacity for receiving and giving rational discourse – his capacity for the Word’ is ‘not only not abolished by sin; rather it is the
