I often receive questions about Barth’s views on the Bible, which admittedly is a challenging topic. According to Karl Barth, the Bible is not revelation. The Bible is one of three modes of Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God.…
The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy and the Spirit of Schleiermacher
It is a great strength of our Presbyterian and Reformed ethos that we are historically conscious. We enjoy history and pride ourselves on being self-consciously rooted in the past. Confessional and conservative Presbyterians very much have their identity wrapped up in the…
The Essential Van Til – Connecting the Dots
Part of a good transcendental critique must be drawing the lines between the dots for people to see clearly. If I have any critique of Van Til, it is that he could have done better connecting those dots. He observes…
The Essential Van Til – Aquinas and Barth: Their Common Core
“Yet the Aristotelianism of Rome, with its idea of potentiality, offers, we are bound to think, a point of contact with the underlying philosophy of Dialecticism. Rome occupies an intermediary position.”[1] What has Basel to do with Rome? In the…
The Victorious Soldier
Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus (2 Tim 2:3). Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim 3:12). The identity of the Christian, which is found in Jesus Christ, includes…
The Essential Van Til – What is Dialectical Theology?
In The New Modernism Van Til identifies the Theology of Crisis with “dialectical theology.” But what is dialectical theology? Van Til explains that dialectical theology is “at bottom activistic and positivistic.” But what in the world does that mean? He…
The Essential Van Til – The Beati Possidentes
Moving on from Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth (see the previous six posts entitled In The Beginning) we now consider his first published monograph dedicated entirely to a criticism of “the Theology of Crisis” in The New Modernism…
The Essential Van Til – In the Beginning (Part 6)
At long last we have come to the end of the beginning (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We have reviewed Van Til’s opening salvo against Barth’s theology as it appeared in the form of a book review. This last…
The Essential Van Til – In the Beginning (Part 5)
Van Til now turns to Barth’s doctrine of creation. Barth denies that creation as it came forth from the hand of God was good, and was to have a genuine significance. Instead, Barth’s doctrine resembles that of paganism which held…
The Essential Van Til — In the Beginning (Part 4)
As we continue to unpack Van Til’s review of Zerbe’s book we come to the second part of the review, which concerns Barth’s epistemology. Van Til opens with an absurd claim, and then unpacks what he means: [Barth] has no…
