Join Camden Bucey and Jim Cassidy in this special live-streamed episode of Christ the Center. From discussing the “first annual” Reformed Forum Christmas Extravaganza to regional meetups and exciting book releases, this episode highlights several ways we are seeking to connect with our community. As Jim and Camden take questions from listeners in the live chat, the conversation also explores theological questions, including Karl Barth’s doctrines, the nature of ministerial church membership, and practical advice for theological students. Don’t miss this rich blend of theological discussion, community updates, and some unnecessary sports talk.

Watch on YouTube and Vimeo.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:01:26 News, Updates, and Events
• 00:04:19 New Book: Order in the Offices (2nd ed.)
• 00:18:07 Which Denomination Is the “Best”?
• 00:29:56 Karl Barth’s Christology
• 00:35:25 Should I Study Karl Barth?
• 00:41:09 Advice for Research Students
• 00:52:33 Ministers as Members of Presbyteries vs. Local Churches
• 01:04:19 Three Favorite Systematic Theologies
• 01:05:45 Is Gordon Clark Worth Reading?
• 01:09:28 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

Ryan Noha and Camden Bucey discuss two new courses from Reformed Academy as well as the new online community and several upcoming events. Camden, Jim Cassidy, and Lane Tipton will be attending a meetup in Dallas on August 1, 2023 while Camden and Carlton Wynne will be present for a meetup in Atlanta on August 11. Reformed Forum will also be hosting an online symposium on Reformed Moral Theology on August 24, 2023. Information is available on our calendar.

After discussing all these matters, we include Jim Cassidy’s first lecture from a new course on Barth as well as a recording of a live Q&A session with Jim on the lecture.

Links

• The Gospel of John: A Study in the Truth (Chapters 1–10)
• Van Til and Barth: A Confessionally Reformed Critique

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:03:02 Course on 1 Peter with Kevin Chiarot
• 00:06:14 John 1–10: A Study in the Truth
• 00:10:02 Van Til and Barth: A Confessionally Reformed Critique
• 00:16:25 Our Online Community
• 00:18:02 Local Meetups in Dallas and Atlanta
• 00:21:37 Symposium on Reformed Moral Theology
• 00:31:12 Online Study Groups
• 00:35:09 Jim Cassidy, Karl Barth Lecture 1
• 01:19:15 Live Q&A with Jim Cassidy
• 02:05:02 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, Ryan Noha

On the heels of teaching a course on Cornelius Van Til’s interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, Lane Tipton speaks with Camden Bucey about Barth’s theology and the surprising architectonic similarities with features of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:11:59 Van Til and Barth
• 00:15:16 Including Barth in an Apologetics Curriculum
• 00:22:00 Learning More about Barth This Time Around
• 00:29:52 Ecumenical Possibilities between Barth and Post-Vatican II Catholicism
• 00:47:15 Definitional vs. Systemic Agreement on Justification and Thomas Aquinas
• 00:55:16 Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus the Confessor
• 01:02:47 White, Trinitarian Theology
• 01:07:25 Machen, the Presbyterian Conflict, and the Afscheiding
• 01:22:27 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Jim Cassidy and Camden Bucey bring in the New Year with a discussion of bible reading plans, tools, and strategies. They preview several of the projects that lay ahead at Reformed Forum, including a new course on the theology of Karl Barth. Dr. Cassidy introduces a list of recommended reading on Karl Barth and different interpretations of the theologian’s theology before speaking about Barth’s unique Christology.

Recommended Reading on Karl Barth

• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics
• Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief; The Epistle to the Romans
• Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism
• Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner
• James Cassidy, God’s Time for Us
• George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology
• Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936
• Bruce McCormack, “Grace and Being: The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth
• Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts
• Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (see also Christ the Center episode 730)
• Tyler J. Frick, Karl Barth’s Ontology of Divine Grace
• Bruce McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon
• Paul T. Nimmo, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision

Chapters

• 00:07 Introduction
• 03:34 Giving Update
• 08:46 Reading Plans for the New Year
• 21:44 Introducing Karl Barth
• 26:06 Recommended Reading on Barth
• 35:04 Interpretations of Barth
• 46:51 Barth’s Christology
• 58:35 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

You can contrast the deeper Modernist conception of Karl Barth to the deeper Protestant conception of Vos and the deeper Catholic conception of Aquinas. For Vos, Adam comes from God, wholly inclined toward God and in natural religious fellowship with God, standing in no need of grace. According to the deeper Catholic conception, Adam comes from God riddled with concupiscence and in need of ontologically re-proportioning and ethically re-proportioning grace.

For Barth in the deeper Modernist conception, when Adam is created, he is instantly the first sinner. This is concupiscence radicalized. Adam does not stand in need of a covenant according to the deeper Protestant conception, nor does he stand in need of ontologically infused and elevating grace according to the deeper Catholic conception, Adam stands in need of the Christ event.

What makes the deeper Modernist conception so distinctive is that Jesus Christ is not a promised future redeemer. He does not come in terms of redemptive history, coming out of heaven in the fullness of time to take to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, die for sin, and rise and ascend to heaven. For Barth, the Christ event is at the very beginning the alpha point of God’s relation to Creation in geschichte in a supra-temporal dimension, wholly hidden from history.

According to Barth, the Christ event has always been occurring. And when Adam was created, he was so defective and stained in sin, he needed that supra-temporal indirect Christ event. Barth has the lowest of all views of Adam as a creature and the most deviant of all views of Jesus Christ, because there is no history of special revelation of which Christ is the consummation. There is merely an abstract positive supernal Christ event to which man in history never has any direct access. It is the polar opposite of Vos’s deeper Protestant conception.

Adapted from a transcript of the video.

Dr. Christiane Tietz speaks about her tremendous biography, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Dr. Tietz is Professor for Systematic Theology at the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich. From 2008 until 2013 she was Professor for Systematic Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Mainz. She was visiting lecturer or research scholar in Cambridge, Chicago, Heidelberg, Jerusalem, New York, and Princeton. Dr. Tietz is a judge for the Karl Barth-Prize and a member of the Advisory Board of the Karl Barth-Foundation, Basel.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Christiane Tietz, Jim Cassidy

Jim Cassidy delivers a plenary address from the annual Reformed Forum Theology Conference, which was hosted October 8–9 at Providence OPC in Pflugerville, Texas.

Cassidy investigates the ontological assumptions which led Karl Barth to reject the doctrine of the covenant of works. He considers how Barth’s doctrine of God, with its actualistic ontology, is the ground for his rejection of the historic doctrine of classical federal theology. In the process of showing how his novel construction of the doctrine of God leads to his critique, Barth sets up—albeit unwittingly—how own kind of covenant of works whereby man today can ascend into “God’s time for us” to gain the knowledge of God.

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:28 “This Is a Myth”: Barth’s Rejection of the Covenant of Works
01:00:41 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

The following books are on our radar for April 15, 2021.

• Greidanus, Sidney. Preaching Christ from Leviticus: Foundations for Expository Sermons (Eerdmans, March 2021). 344 pages. $35.00. Paperback.
• Ryken, Leland and Mathes, Glenda Faye. Recovering the Lost Art of Reading: A Quest for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (Crossway, March 2021). 304 pages. 21.99. Paperback.
• Bredenhof, Reuben. Weak Pastor, Strong Christ: Developing a Christ-Shaped Gospel Ministry (Reformation Heritage Books, March 2021). 144 pages. $14.00. Paperback.
• Tietz, Christiane. Karl Barth: A Life of Conflict (Oxford University Press, April 2021). 448 pages. $32.95. Hardcover.
• Baucham Jr., Voddie T. Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem, April 2021). 270 pages. $24.99. Hardcover with jacket.
• Levering, Matthew & Plested, Marcus. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas (Oxford University Press, March 2021). 856 pages. $165.00. Hardcover.
• Nichols, Stephen J. R. C. Sproul: A Life (Crossway, March 2021). 400 pages. $34.99. Hardcover with jacket.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Ryan Noha

Jim Cassidy speaks about Karl Barth and his relationship with idealism. On the heels of Lane Tipton’s recent course, Introduction to the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, the panel compares and contrasts Barth’s ontology and doctrine of revelation in the Christ-event with Van Til’s critique of idealism and warnings of correlativism.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, Lane G. Tipton

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. While Barth can say that the Bible is the Word of God, he will not, however, affirm that it is the revelation of God. Only God’s act of grace in Jesus Christ is revelation. Scripture, like the church’s preaching, merely witnesses to the Word of God in revelation. Consequently, the Bible is not inerrant.

Barth is also clear that there is a kind of becoming to the Bible as the Word of God. “The Word-of-Godness” (that’s my expression, not Barth’s) of Scripture is not inherent in Scripture itself. Rather, its “Word-of-Godness” is actualized “from above,” as it were, through God’s act of grace and self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. In other words, the “Word-of-Godness” that Scripture becomes arises not from Scripture itself, but from God.

Jim Cassidy delivers a plenary address at the Reformed Forum 2018 Theology Conference at Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grayslake, Illinois. Download the handout.

Participants: Jim Cassidy

Jim Cassidy previews his address at the 2018 Reformed Forum conference by speaking about Barth on the analogy of being and the analogy of faith and how his views relate to the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Jim and Camden also speak about Barth’s views of natural theology and how they relate to the views of Cornelius Van Til. This is in response to recent remarks from Dr. Michael Allen on the Credo Magazine podcast (around minute 37). If you’d like to jump directly to that portion of our discussion, you can watch it on YouTube.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

We have compiled a list of suggested reading to help those coming to the 2018 Theology Conference. We realize people like have neither the time nor financial budget to work through each of these titles in advance of the conference. Nonetheless, even a first-level reading of a few of these resources will help attendees make the most out of the conference. One of the things we love most about our events is the personal interaction. Working through the issues together is what makes the Reformed Forum community so special. Study and contemplate the deep mysteries of the God-man relationship and the future consummation. In October, let’s take the discussion to the next level.

Primary Sources

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics
  • CD I/2, section 14.
  • CD II/1, section 31.3
  • CD I/1, section 6
  • CD III/1, section 41.2
  • CD III/1, section 45.1
• Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Preface to the Second Edition
• Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Theology Proper
• Logos Resources
  • Barth’s Church Dogmatics: https://www.logos.com/product/5758/barths-church-dogmatics.
  • Vos: https://www.logos.com/product/48797/reformed-dogmatics
  • Van Til: https://www.logos.com/product/3994/the-works-of-cornelius-van-til

General Reading on the Beatific Vision

• Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition

Thomas Aquinas

• Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas
• Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters
• Levering and Dauphinais, eds., Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments

Karl Barth

• Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis
• McCormack and White, eds., Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue
• James J. Cassidy, God’s Time For Us: Barth on the Reconciliation of Eternity and Time in Jesus Christ

Catholicism and Protestantism

• Cornelius Van Til, The Confession of 1967
• Cornelius Van Til, The New Synthesis Theology of the Netherlands
• Cornelius Van Til, The Great Debate Today
• John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?
• William M. Shea, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America

* Check back for updates.

We discuss how a return to sola scriptura through confessional Reformed theology spares us from the errors of Roman Catholicism and modernism. Reformed covenant theology, broadly considered, is facing a crisis regarding what constitutes “reformed” theology. The situation currently is one of chaos and confusion. Some claim that the way forward is by way of retrieving the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor of the Roman Catholic church, in the service of a so-called “Reformed” apologetic. The line of this argument is that if you follow the Roman Catholic theology and method of Aquinas, you will arrive at Protestant conclusions. Others enlist Aquinas in conversation with the likes of John Webster and Karl Barth, in the interest of retrieving “catholic” tradition in the development of a reformed theological identity. Still others, outside of our reformed circles, are engaged in ecumenical dialogue between Thomas and Barth (Bruce McCormack and Thomas Joseph White’s Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Dialogue, or Keith Johnson’s Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis, which helpfully to my mind points out the significant points of convergence between the two theologians). It is very much worth pointing out that Van Til virtually predicted this in advance in his sadly neglected but highly important work Confession of 1967, where he says, “If now we live in a dialogical age and if only the church as ecumenical can meet the needs of such an age, then surely the Roman Catholic too must learn to see this fact. As Martin Marty says, “If Protestants and Roman Catholics wish to make possible a creative coexistence, to enrich our pluralistic society, and to profit from each other’s separate histories, they will have to participate in dialogue.…” And what does such “dialogue” look like? Again, Van Til says, “It was Hans Urs von Balthasar who, more than anyone else, has helped Barth to see that Roman Catholicism also begins its theology from the Christ-Event. Roman Catholicism, says von Balthasar, does not believe in direct revelation any more than does Barth. To be sure, Rome does speak of “faith and works,” of “nature and grace,” of “reason and revelation.” But this “and” is not, as Barth thinks, fatal to the idea of the primacy of Christ and of faith in Christ. The whole discussion between Barth and the Roman Catholic position may therefore start from the idea that revelation is revelation in hiddenness. ”The difference between Barth and Roman Catholicism will therefore be not of principle but of degree” (Confession, 119).

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, Lane G. Tipton

“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 above quotation Van Til is making a startling point. On the one hand earlier on in the paragraph he acknowledges that Rome has way too much orthodoxy in it for there to be an easy alignment with “the theology of Crisis.” Nevertheless, Rome’s theology and the theology of Basel are not devoid of all commonalities. So, when he speaks of “the Aristotelianism of Rome” he has in mind, of course, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Van Til, rightly or wrongly, always associates Roman Catholicism with Thomism. But what is most important here for our purposes is to identify what he means by Rome’s “idea of potentiality.” We need to be brief here (a fuller scholarly treatment of this subject is beyond our purview). But the idea of “potentiality” entails what some call a chain, or scale, of being. Potency is understood opposite of actuality. And every thing has potency, which means it has potential toward actualization. Only God is pure actuality, having no potency in himself. Everything else is on its way toward actualization. This idea is often connected with the idea of the analogia entis – or analogy of being. Things on the scale of being – God who is the greatest being, man as an actualizing agent – relate to one another analogically. While there is much dissimilarity between God and man – God is fully actualized, we are not – there is also a commonality as well: God and man are both beings. So, it is an analogy based on the fact of what God and man have in common: being. And while God and man differ quantitatively in their being they are not qualitatively different. So, what has this to do with Barth (here Van Til uses the broader term “Dialecticism,” but he has primarily Barth in mind)? After all, does Van Til not know that Barth absolutely rejected the analogia entis (goes so far as associating it with the anti-Christ)? Does Van Til not know that Barth speaks about the “qualitative difference between eternity and time?” Where in the world could Van Til find common cause between Aquinas and Barth? While it is true that Barth begins with the “qualitative difference between time and eternity” he does not stay there. Especially as his theology develops from the time of his Romans commentary, he recognizes that he cannot stop with the qualitative difference if God and man are ever to be reconciled. Somehow God and man, time and eternity, the Creator and creature must be brought together. At the same time his actualistic doctrine of God does not allow him to have a God who is eternal or timeless in the absolute sense. So he speaks about “God’s time.” For Barth God’s time is his time of grace in the eternal decree who is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is himself both the electing God and the elect man. With that, then, Jesus Christ is both the eternal God and the temporal man. And he is such in his eternal nature. There is for Barth no logos asarkos, that is a Christ who is ever understood as being without flesh and therefore without time. Jesus Christ is himself “God’s time for us.” That means that God and man, eternity and time, are co-terminus realities. The relationship between God and man is relative and not absolute. For God is forever and from all eternity this God who has time for us in Jesus Christ. To be sure, this is not the same thing exactly as Thomas’ analogy of being. It is more like an analogy of God’s time. And while the construction differs, what remains as a common ground between Thomas and Barth are their commitment to placing God and man in a relative relationship rather than an absolute one. Both Thomas and Barth then stand over against the Reformed understanding of how God and man relate. For the Reformed God and man relate covenantally. They both have a relationship in absolute distinction from the beginning. The way in which they relate, then, is not through some kind of ontological bond. Rather, the bond is covenantal. It is a relation established by God and guaranteed and sealed by divine fiat – not through bringing God and man in under a common ontological reality (being for Thomas, time for Barth). But there is one last commonality between Thomas and Barth, and it is based on the commitment to their respective views of analogy. And that is they both stand in antithesis to the Reformed Faith. Reformed theology will not allow this common sharing or an ontological bond between God and man. For the problem between God and man is not ontology. The problem is a matter of hamartiology. And the solution is soteriological and covenantal. And therein lies the difference between the Reformed Faith on the one hand and Thomas and Barth on the other.

[1] Van Til, C. (1947). The new modernism: an appraisal of the theology of Barth and Brunner. The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia. P. 8.

Jim Cassidy discusses Darren O. Sumner’s book, Karl Barth and the Incarnation: Christology and the Humility of God. Dr. Cassidy wrote a review article on the book in the Fall 2017 issue (Vol. 79, No. 2) of the Westminster Theological Journal.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

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 explains: “God’s being and God’s work are said to be one and the same” (p. 3). In other words, Barth’s theology is actualistic. “Actualism” is a distinctly modern approach to metaphysics, or the study of the nature of reality. It is the question of being qua being. Metaphysics seeks to discover what the essence of something or someone is. Standing over against dialectical theology – which Van Til equates with “modern theology” as a whole – is the Reformed Faith which is “non-activistic theology” (ibid). Continuing his thesis, dialectical theology (or, Crisis Theology) and Reformed Theology are opposed to one another. But how are they opposed? In order to answer that question we have to explain why it is that Van Til associates dialectical theology with modern theology. Modern thought, going back at least to Kant, rejects the older metaphysical tradition. That tradition is characterized by the influence of Greek metaphysical thought, especially as it influenced Western theology through Thomas Aquinas. This mode of metaphysics adheres to the idea that everything has its own particular static nature (i.e., a nature that does not change). In this mode of thinking God was understood, according to modern thinkers, as a static and abstract nature, essence, or substance. An example of this would be in the traditional doctrine of God’s immutability. Modern thinking said that this makes God out to be aloof, cold, unfeeling and abstract. He cannot change or adjust to situations. In short, he has nothing to do with us here and now. Modern thought with its rejection of medieval metaphysics proposed instead for us to think about being or ontology in dynamic terms. In this way we understand God not in terms of an abstract substance, but rather as a concrete, dynamic and living act. This is the actualism (or, more commonly used is the term “activism”) of which Van Til speaks. God’s identity, his being, is understood only in terms of his acts relative to us his creatures. Now, Van Til sees this approach to metaphysics, or ontology, as opposed to the older traditional approach. He says only in the Reformed Faith is God “wholly self-contained.”[1] What does that mean? It means, in short, that God is in no way identified or understood as existing in a way that is dependent upon the creature or his acts relative to it. This is in keeping with the older theology proper which understood God as being a se. God in himself does not progress or become. He is himself perfect in his being, pure act with no potentiality. That means his interaction with the creature is completely unnecessary to who he is. But standing over against this traditional view is Barth’s commitment to the terms for ontology set by modernity. Liberalism did not like the cold, aloof God of traditional theology. So they made God to draw near to man in an immanent relationship to the creature. Liberalism was committed to actualistic ontology, identifying God with his acts toward creature. Barth opposed liberalism and emphasized God’s transcendence. But – and this is Van Til’s great observation – while emphasizing God’s transcendence Barth at the same time refused to surrender the modern and liberal commitment to actualistic ontology. However, rather than God being identified with the creature in an immanent act, for Barth God is identified with his transcendent act of electing grace. For Barth God is necessarily gracious because in a transcendent act of his own freedom he chooses to always and everywhere be the God who forgives in Jesus Christ. Therefore, as I try to show in my book, God’s eternity is not a purely eternal attribute.[2] But his eternity is simultaneously his time for us in Jesus Christ. In other words, God from all of eternity is not “self-contained” but has his being identified with his act of grace for us in Christ. And so here – no less than in liberalism – God is dependent on the creature for his being. Creation and redemption (not to mention revelation) for Barth are not contingent acts of God, but necessary acts which give identity to the question of who he is. Actuality dictates ontology. And for the older orthodox Reformed view that is a completely contrary starting point for understanding God. For the older view, God’s being (ontology) dictates the activity of God in time. God’s acts are consistent with and flow from who he is in and of himself. Only this way can we say in any true and meaningful way that God acts in perfect freedom. As the answer to the children’s catechism goes: Can God do all things? Yes, God can do all his holy will. In these simple – yet profound – words we discover the reason why Van Til is so clear: Dialectical Theology and Reformed Theology are – and must be – sworn enemies. There is no common ground between them.

[1] When Van Til speaks about “the Reformed Faith” that is representative shorthand for Reformed orthodoxy. Particularly as it comes to expression in great Reformed church creeds and confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is certainly a legitimate criticism here that Van Til uses a term that is both too imprecise and narrow. To be sure, there is enough variety in the history of Reformed theology and Reformed confessions to say that “the Reformed faith” is not as monolithic as Van Til seems here to assume. While we may grant that point it is important to note that Van Til’s work is not so much concerned with historical theology and the nuances found in the Reformed tradition, rather his work is “frankly polemical” (p. 3). But the granted point need not detract us because despite all the variety that there is in the Reformed confessional tradition, one thing most certainly is not: actualistic ontology. [2] See God’s Time For Us: Barth’s Reconciliation of Eternity and Time in Jesus Christ (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2016).

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 room for revelation. At first blush it would seem as though the very opposite were the case. He says that only in the eternal is true knowledge. He says that all knowledge comes by revelation. …. Karl Barth says that all knowledge for man as well as for God is based upon analysis of the eternal truths that exist apart from time. The ideal of knowledge for man as well as for God is complete comprehension. Knowledge is no knowledge unless it is completely comprehensive. … God and man are engaged in a common analysis of principles that exist independently of both.

It is statements like “Barth has no room for revelation” that tend to get Van Til into trouble! The statement, on the surface anyhow, seems ridiculous. But Van Til is quick to acknowledge that his statement can seem absurd. He notes that a surface read (“at first blush”) of Barth would prove the absurdity. After all Barth says that “all knowledge comes by revelation.” Now, there are two points that need to be made here. One of the points Van Til says here, the other he does not. First, Van Til understands that for Barth for a person to know something that person must know it comprehensively. I think Van Til is on solid ground here. Barth will often indicate that man cannot know God because man as limited and the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. God is eternal, we are temporal and therefore we cannot know the eternal. This is what Van Til means by “eternal truths.” Truth is eternal, and therefore in order for there to be true knowledge of those truths one must likewise be eternal. And here only God qualifies because only he is eternal. The trouble here is that truth, eternal truth, is an abstraction. It is a kind of tertium quid which is neither God nor man. Truth is independent of both. It is an object, quite distinct from both God and man. It is only potentially known by either God and man (i.e., “all knowledge for man as well as for God is based upon analysis of the eternal truths that exist apart from time”). And only God has the kind of mind that qualifies for knowing eternal truths comprehensively. Therefore, only God can know, man cannot. The upshot to all this is that if there is going to be revelation at all it must be something that takes place in eternity (i.e., transcendentally). It must be an act that takes place quite apart from and above us. This means, for Van Til, Barth has no room for revelation as it has been traditionally conceived. Barth has a doctrine of revelation to be sure, but according to Van Til it is not a biblical doctrine of revelation. Second, the way in which Barth solves this problem is through Jesus Christ. Van Til does not say this here, though he will articulate it in his later writings. Jesus Christ alone is revelation. Revelation is not, therefore, a thing that can be grasped. It is not words captured on a page nor man’s experience of absolute dependence. It is God making himself known in a divine act of grace in Jesus Christ. Christ is himself both sides – the divine and human – of revelation. This is an eternal act that takes place quite transcendently relative to us living in the hear and now. Only in Jesus Christ is God made known, to himself in Jesus Christ, comprehensively. The problem with this view, according to Van Til, is twofold. First, God and man are in similar epistemological positions. Both are subject to eternal truths. However, God has an advantage; a qualitatively greater advantage. He can know those truths because he is himself eternal. Man cannot, because he is not eternal. But still, God and man both have the same object of their knowledge – eternal truths. Nevertheless, God is relativized by these eternal truths which he himself must know. In this way, as Van Til will later note, the universe is therefore superior to God. Because eternal truths and God are co-existent the creator-creature distinction is eliminated. To be sure, Barth would never say that. But that is what Van Til believes it amounts to. Coordinated with this problem is the fact that man cannot know God (nor can he know eternal truths). If man cannot know comprehensively then he cannot know truly. And he cannot know eternal truths comprehensively, and therefore not truly. He also cannot know God truly because he cannot know God comprehensively. At the end of the day man must be skeptical about God, and with his skepticism about God he must be skeptical about all things. At the end of the day Barth is both a a rationalist (because God and man have the same source and object of knowledge – eternal truths) and an irrationalist (because man cannot know God, or anything eternal for that matter). And because of this, Barth has no room for revelation as revelation has been historically and biblically understood in Reformed theology.

When I first heard about Barth’s concept of the “wholly other” God, it sounded perfectly orthodox. Barth’s emphasis on the qualitative difference between God and man struck me as nothing but good Reformed theology. In addition, I had heard that Barth protested against the Liberal idea of identifying God’s being with man’s subjective experience. Surely Barth is a friend of Reformed theology! And that would be the case if that was all Barth said about the relation between God and man. However, it was not. Barth understood that he couldn’t stop there. He had the Christian sense to know that one cannot stop with the absolute qualitative difference between God and man. Had he stopped there there would be no hope in his theology. There would only be separation between God and man. He knew somehow that he had to bring God and man together, even if but dialectically. Liberalism did that through identifying God with man in man’s experience. Barth, however, would take the opposite position. He would reconcile God and man in God’s experience. We continue to unpack Van Til’s initial salvo against Barth, which is a 1931 Christianity Today book review. Van Til also was grateful for Barth’s “wholly other” God. However, he was not so sanguine about how Barth brings God and man together:

Barth has made God to be highly exalted above time. For this we would be sincerely grateful. Only thus is God seen to be qualitatively distinct from man. Only thus can we stand strong against Modernism. But Barth has also made man to be highly exalted above time. For this we are sincerely sorry. By doing this Barth has completely neutralized the exaltation of God. By doing this God is no longer qualitatively distinct from man. Modern theology holds that both God and man are temporal. Barth holds that both God and man are eternal. The results are identical.[1]

For Barth the fundamental problem and presupposition of all theology is ontological: God and man are qualitatively different and therefore separate. Reconciliation is therefore also ontological. God and man are reconciled only in the God-man. And the God-man is an eternal act of grace by which God and man are made one. There never was a time when the God-man was not. The God-man, Jesus Christ, is the resolution of the ontological problem by virtue of the gracious decree of God who wills our salvation in absolute freedom. This means that man, the man Jesus, is just as much a necessary aspect of the being of God as is his divine nature. Both the human and the divine share in the same transcendent time-event of God’s grace for us. So, as in liberalism God and man were identified in man’s feeling of absolute dependence, in Barth God and man are identified in the transcendent event of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. This eternal act of grace is what Barth calls “God’s time for us.” In this way, time (“eternal time”) and act replace “being” in the older Thomistic theology. In Thomas “being” was a kind of independent entity in which both the Creator and creature participate. God has being and man has being. But God’s being is infinite while man’s is finite. But in Barth “act” and “time” become the transcendent reality in which both God and man relate in the God-man, Jesus Christ. This means that God and man share in a common quality or entity, as in liberalism. The difference is that in liberalism the mutual participation is immanent whereas in Barth it is transcendent. But, according to Van Til, the same theological problems persist.

[1] Van Til, C., & Sigward, E. H. (1997). Reviews by Cornelius Van Til (Electronic ed.). Labels Army Company: New York.

In the last post we began to consider Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth. It was set in the context of a book review.[1] There we underscored Van Til’s criticism that Barth’s “theology is based upon an antitheistic theory of reality.” We noted that it was “antitheistic” because it was a “correlative theory of reality.” We said, in short, this means that God and man exist on the same, eternal, “plane” with one other in Jesus Christ. God’s identity, in some sense, depends on the creature. Van Til goes on in the review to unpack the implications of Barth’s “theory of reality:”

[Barth] even denies the real significance of the temporal world. The whole of history is to be condemned as worthless. The eternal is said to be everything and the temporal is said to be nothing. Does not this seem as though Barth holds to a genuine transcendence of God? Does it not seem as though transcendence means everything for Barth? It does seem so—but it is not truly so. Barth holds that “the only real history takes place in eternity.” If then man and the temporal universe in general are to have any significance at all they must be an aspect of God and as such be really as eternal as God. Anything to be real, says Barth, must transcend time. Man is real only in so far as he transcends time. We are true personalities only in so far as we are experiences of God. We are not to say with Descartes, I think therefore I am, or even with Hocking, I think God therefore I am, but we are to say, I am thought by God therefore I am. Abraham’s faith takes place in eternity. Resurrection means eternity. The entire epistle of Paul to the Romans is said to bring this one message that we must be eternalized. To be saved means to be conscious of one’s eternity.

Before unpacking this criticism, a few words of observation about it are in order:

1. Zerbe’s book and Van Til’s article are very early. Zerbe interacts with the German works of Barth, but his research only goes up to 1929 (co-authored volume Zur Lehre vom Heiligen Geist).
2. We know Van Til read Barth’s Church Dogmatics in German before it was translated into English. But it is impossible to tell from this review if Van Til is criticizing Barth in accordance with his own reading of Barth’s corpus up to 1931 or if his criticism is entirely or in part mediated by Zerbe’s reading. Given that the themes we see in Van Til here persist throughout his critical writings on Barth points us in the direction that Van Til was already conversant with the same early German writings Zerbe was working from.
3. This is not Van Til at his most nuanced. At first blush we may think that he is charging Barth with denying the reality of the temporal world. That is an understandable reaction, but on a more careful read Van Til is not leveling such a charge. We’ll discuss this more below, but when reading Van Til here we have to understand that he is speaking in generalities and is not as precise in his wording as he could have been (English being his second language and all).

OK, those qualifications having been stated, let’s unpack Van Til’s claims. That first sentence needs careful exegesis. What Van Til is critical of here is Barth’s denial of the “real” meaning of reality. He is not saying that Barth is denying reality, as if the world and the things around us do not actually exist. Here the word “significance” is important to get Van Til’s meaning. “Significance” for Van Til means “meaning” or “interpretation.” What he is saying, in short, is that Barth denies the real (read: divine) interpretation of reality. Yet more needs to be said. Whatever we want to say concerning Barth’s later theology, his earlier theology is most certainly characterized by the “crisis” that exists between eternity and time, or between God and man. Given this great divide our reality, history and present experience are cut off from God and his revelation. God and his revelation are of eternity, we are of time (and the twain shall not meet!). But, for Van Til, God only by his revelation can give to us the true (i.e., real) meaning (i.e., significance) of reality. And since God/eternity and man/time are qualitatively different without overlap or contact, there is no way for man to know the true interpretation of his experience. As Van Til goes on to note, the only way man/time can have any real God-given significance (i.e., meaning/interpretation) is for God to lift man/time up into his eternity, destroy its old fallen meaning and make it new (this process is called Aufhebung in German). And that God does in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is an eternal event of grace in which man/time is lifted up, destroyed and united to God. That does mean, as Van Til rightly notes (even if in a somewhat un-nuanced way), that time (and everything which is of the warp and woof of this present age) is but fallen, sinful and nothing. The only place where reality is something is in the real man, Jesus Christ who alone is the transcendent act of God’s grace for us. Everything else is fallen nothingness. Now, this is the position which I believe Barth holds for the rest of his life, whatever we may think of the qualifications he brings to it via a modern version of the analogia. Barth’s later theology would become much more orderly and systematic. But his early work forms a foundation which he will not reform in any significant way. So much more can and should be said about that. But for now, I hope I have brought a small measure of clarity to Van Til’s critique. My experience is that for those who actually have read Van Til on Barth have exercised very little patience in accurately and charitably understanding his main point. Granted, to get there one must wade through what is often time clunky English prose. The interpretation of Barth given by Van Til above, while coming with an admittedly negative tone, is far from being idiosyncratic or even particularly controversial (even among some of Barth’s most ardent supporters today).[2] I wonder if now isn’t a good time for both friends and critics of Barth to set aside personal emotions and take up Van Til afresh and give him another chance to help us reappraise the theology of Karl Barth.

[1] Review of The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism, by Alvin S. Zerbe. Christianity Today 1/10 (Feb 1931): 13–14. The book reviewed is Alvin S. Zerbe, The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism (Cleveland: Central Publishing House, 1930). [2] I recognize fully the need to unpack this claim and substantiate it more comprehensively. I aim to do just that in future posts.

It is often assumed that The New Modernism (1946) is Van Til’s first published writing in which he evaluates Barth’s thought. Actually Van Til first published about Barth in a Christianity Today book review in 1931.[1] That was just two years after the opening of Westminster Seminary, and five years before the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It is also the year before Barth published the first part of his Kirchliche Dogmatik. As such it is a very early insight into how Van Til was evaluating Barth’s theology, albeit through the eyes of the author of the book he was reviewing. Van Til does not delay in delivering punches. After one sentence commending the book he is reviewing he says, “Karl Barth’s theology is based upon an antitheistic theory of reality.” That is a position he will hold for the rest of his career as a critic of Barth’s theology. Now, to be sure, that does not sound very charitable. In fact, it sounds kind of harsh, even brash. But what drives Van Til to this conclusion? Is he just an ill-tempered man? Does he revel in criticism? Or, does he have a legitimate point in view? Let’s begin with taking a deep breath, and looking carefully at what Van Til is saying. First, notice that Van Til is not attacking the man here. He does not say Barth, himself, is antitheistic. Nor, interestingly enough, does he say that Barth’s theology, itself, is antitheistic (though he will come to that conclusion elsewhere). What he is saying is that Barth’s theology rests upon a foundational “theory of reality” that is itself antitheistic. But what is that “theory of reality?” Van Til’s next two sentences are: “Barth has made God and man to be correlatives of one another. Barth has no genuine transcendence theory.” What does it mean to say that God and man are “correlatives” of one another? It means what James Dolezal, for example, calls “theistic mutualism.”[2] In other words, for Barth God has no being or identity apart from the man Jesus Christ. This, in effect, eternalizes man. It makes humanity – in the man Jesus – of equal and ultimate origin with God (i.e., eternal). But if God and man are both eternal, there is an ontological interdependence between. This is what Van Til means by “correlatives.” It is this “correlative theory of reality” which stands at the basis of Barth’s theology, and which Van Til finds to be antitheistic. And it is antitheistic precisely here: a correlative relationship between God and man relativizes God, rendering God somehow dependent upon the creature. Such a god cannot, in any meaningful way, be said to be absolute sovereign Lord over the creature. Despite everything that Barth says about God’s lordship elsewhere, this view makes God and humanity (in the humanity of Christ) co-equal. Such a god cannot be omnipotent and self-sufficient, but must take his place in and among the creation. That makes such a god no different than the gods of mythology. And such a god is antithetical to true Christian theism. Now, more can be said about this article, and we’ll say more in the weeks to come. But it is important for us to at least get this down pat before moving on and trying to understand the rest of Van Til’s critique.

[1] Christianity Today 1/10 (Feb 1931): 13–14. The book reviewed is Alvin S. Zerbe, The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism (Cleveland: Central Publishing House, 1930). [2] See his volume, All That is God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017).

Last week we talked about Barth’s “absolutely other” god. There we noted how Barth begins with an unknown and unknowable god. In other words, he begins with the god of modernism. But, as we also noted, he does not stop there. For Barth God makes himself known, and he does so through revelation. Revelation is found neither in “the things that have been made” nor in Scripture. Rather, revelation is act of God in Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ is himself the only revelation of God. And in Jesus Christ God is wholly revealed. Herein lies Barth’s dialectical method. God is at once both absolutely other and wholly revealed. Van Til notes:

On the other hand when the god of Barth does reveal himself he reveals himself wholly. For Barth God is exhaustively known if he is known at all. That is to say to the extent that this god is known he is nothing distinct from the principles that are operative in the universe. He is then wholly identical with man and his world. It appears then that when the god of Barth is wholly mysterious and as such should manifest himself by revelation only, he remains wholly mysterious and does not reveal himself. On the other hand when this god does reveal himself his revelation is identical with what man can know apart from such a revelation. (Christian Apologetics, 171)

In short, if God reveals himself wholly, then what man knows is not God but only “man and his world.” A God who is wholly given over and identified with creation cannot be known. He is as much hidden in his revelation as he is as “absolutely other.” Some more clarification is in order. Van Til here leaves some important things unsaid which would illuminate his point had he included them here (he does, however, makes these points elsewhere). First, for Barth God’s revelation only takes place in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not a medium of revelation – he is revelation. In Christ God is at the same time wholly revealed and wholly concealed. Jesus Christ is the dialectical relation between God’s act of veiling and unveiling. He is both simultaneously. Second, Barth is known for having said “God is Jesus Christ.” That is quite different, note, then saying “Jesus Christ is God.” In the former expression Barth is identifying God with Jesus Christ such that the incarnation becomes a dialectical relation between God and man – which is quite different than traditional Chalcedonian Christology. In Barth’s theology God then is wholly identified with Jesus Christ. In orthodox Christianity we would say the finite (humanity of Christ) cannot contain the infinite (divine nature). But for Barth God exhaustively reveals himself – in fact, gives himself over – in and by the God-man Jesus Christ. Third, if God’s revelation of himself is found only in Jesus Christ and not in nature and not in Scripture, that leaves man with a knowledge that is disconnected from revelation. And knowledge which is disconnected from revelation is, according to Van Til, autonomous and therefore rebellious knowledge – and thus no true knowledge at all. At the end of the day we are left with pure skepticism.

It is often said that Barth believed in a god who was “wholly other.” It’s an oft repeated phrase, but rarely understood. Van Til would say “absolutely other.” By that Van Til understood a modern conception of God. It was a modern assumption that if God exists he must exist quite separate and distinct from us. Van Til observes:

Sad to say, however, the “absolutely other” God of Barth is absolutely other only in the way that a sky-rocket is “absolutely other” to the mind of the child. Barth’s god has first been cast up into the heights by the projective activity of the would-be autonomous man. In all his thinking Barth is, in spite of his efforts to escape it, still controlled by some form of modern critical philosophy. And this means that the mind of man is always thought of as contributing something ultimate to all the information it has and receives. Accordingly the “absolutely other” god of Barth remains absolute just so long as he is absolutely unknown. In that case he is identical with the realm of mystery which the autonomous man admits of as existing beyond the reach of its thought. It then has no more content and significance than the vaguest conception of something indeterminate. There is no more meaning in the idea of God as Barth holds it than there was in the idea of the apeiron, the indefinite, of Anaximander the Greek philosopher. (Christian Apologetics, 170).

At first blush this may just look like Van Til’s own creator-creature distinction. But it is not. Why not? Simply put, while Barth begins with the qualitative difference between man and God, Van Til begins with the self-contained ontological Trinity. Barth begins with an unknown deity, Van Til begins with and presupposes the Triune God of Scripture. In other words, for Van Til there is never any place or any time that God is unknown. The Triune God of Scripture always and everywhere makes himself known in the things that have been made (Psalm 19; Romans 1). In summary, Barth begins with a god that is the product of the would-be autonomous modern man. To be sure Barth will speak about God making himself known in revelation. We will discuss that next week as we look at the paragraph following the one cited above. But suffice it to say for now, having begun with modern/critical assumptions about the unknowability of God is there any hope that Barth can produce anything other than a modern/critical understanding of the knowability of God in revelation? Barth will try to give a Christian answer on the basis of dialectical reasoning. But, as Van Til will go on to show, Barth fails to escape the web of modern criticism, which is a web of his own making.

Both Van Til and Barth rejected all forms of bare theism. That is, they denied a generic view of God. Both believed this “god” was an idol. This is the god of human autonomy and philosophy. It comes from an apologetic approach which seeks to first prove or show that there is “a god” before it seeks to prove that this god is in fact the Triune God of Christianity. The blame for this approach may, arguably, be placed at the feet of Thomas Aquinas who first seeks to prove “an unmoved mover” on the ground of reason before he moves to talk about the Trinity from divine revelation. The impression left is that there is validity to speaking about God in any other way than the Triune God of Scripture. Van Til says this about that idea:

It is accordingly no easier for sinners to accept God’s revelation in nature than to accept God’s revelation in Scripture. They are no more ready of themselves to do the one than to do the other. From the point of view of the sinner, theism is as objectionable as is Christianity. Theism that is worthy of the name is Christian theism. Christ said that no man can come to the Father but by him. No one can become a theist unless he becomes a Christian. Any god that is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not God but an idol. (Christian Apologetics, 79)

For Van Til the God of creation is the Triune God. The God of the Old Testament is also the Triune God. That unbelievers or the saints of the Old Testament do not articulate a Nicean doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that God is anything else or anything other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the one God who is at the same time three persons. The God who reveals himself in both nature and Scripture is the one Triune God. Van Til and Barth share a common anti-Scholasticism at this point. But, unfortunately, here the commonality ends. As we mentioned in an earlier post, Barth’s ontological starting part is actualism. That is, things are understand properly only by way of their acts and relations. So, for instance, there is no eternal Logos (i.e., the Word of John 1:1) who stands behind or apart from Jesus Christ as the Logos come in human flesh. So when he says the only God who is is the Christian God he is not affirming what Van Til is affirming. For Van Til the Triune God has always existed, even quite prior to and independent of the incarnation. What is more, the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – existed eternally and happily even prior to and independent of his decision to create and redeem by becoming the God-man in Jesus Christ. But for Barth the Triune God is who he is precisely because and only insomuch as he is the God who from all eternity has acted by way of a sovereign and free decision to become Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in and by Jesus Christ. To put it in very simple terms, for Barth God is dependent on creation (even the humanity of the incarnate Logos) to be (more accurately: to eternally become) a Trinity.[1] However, for Van Til the God of the Scriptures is “the self-contained ontological Trinity.” (see, for example, Christian Apologetics, p. 97). In other words, for Barth God’s act of grace toward his creatures in Christ becomes the constituting event which renders God as Trinity. For Van Til God does not need to be constituted as Trinity, for he is always and everywhere Trinity, and as Trinity the sovereign Lord over creation. Unfortunately, the logical conclusion to Barth’s approach is that creation is sovereign over his god. And that god is no Christian God. But for Van Til the Triune God is the Christian God—and the only God—precisely because he is not dependent on creation for his being or identity. If there never was a fall, there would be no incarnation. And still God would be Trinity. Perhaps the irony is that, according to Van Til, the Triune God does not need the incarnate Christ in order to be the Christian God. To say otherwise is to make God dependent on the creature. And a dependent God can in no way be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[1] I understand that whether or not, or to what extent, God’s act of electing grace in Christ constitutes his being as Triune is hotly debated among Barth scholars. I do not intend to engage that discussion here. I make this statement without prejudice to the current debate. I am simply speaking from within the context of how Van Til himself reads Barth.

Now we begin to make a definite turn toward Barth in Van Til’s writing. Thus far this blog series has been a smattering of topics arising from my rereading of Van Til. But the purpose of my research is to get to the heart of Van Til’s critique of Karl Barth. Did Van Til have a legitimate beef with the Swiss theologian, or was it all much ado about nothing? Before we get into some detail about Van Til’s critique of Barth it may be helpful to spend a blog post here talking about his method. How does Van Til approach Barth as he seeks to understand, analyze and criticize his thought? Van Til’s critique is unique among all critics of Barth’s theology. Most critics take issue with this doctrine or that doctrine. Evangelicals debated whether or not Barth affirms a historical resurrection. Others draw the line at his denial of inerrancy. Berkouwer was critical of the fact that Barth’s soteriology functionally denies a real transition of sinners from wrath to grace. Whatever you may think of these criticism, and Van Til was in agreement with them, they were only surface attacks. For Van Til his deepest concerns about Barth were not over this doctrine or that doctrine, but over his system as a whole. To attack Barth at the level of specific doctrinal formulations is to go after the symptoms, not the disease itself. Van Til wanted to go after the disease and get to its source. This is not only how Van Til approached Barth, but all forms of unbelief. He asked the question: what are the fundamental preconditions standing behind a system of thought which lead to its conclusions? Such a method seeks to also show that, given those pre-conditions, the system under review leads to irreconcilable contradictions which eventually destroy the system as a whole. The identity of those preconditions and drawing them out “by good and necessary consequence” to their logical conclusion is what we mean when by “transcendental critique.” Because of its Kantian baggage the term has its limitations. But those limitations can be easily lifted if we gut the lingo of its Kantian background and instill it with biblical and Reformed content. We will look at examples of how Van Til applies his transcendental critique to Barth in future posts. But for now I would like to briefly address a common critique of Van Til’s reading and analysis of Barth’s theology. It is often said that Van Til draws conclusions about Barth’s theology which Barth himself expressly denies. A quick example, an example we will be unable to unpack here, is the idea of God’s antecedent being. In short, antecedence means God’s self-contained being which stands back of his actions in creation and time. Van Til said that Barth’s system denies an antecedent God who stands back of creation and his acts in it. Barth, however, speaks very clearly about God’s antecedence. So, is Van Til being uncharitable toward Barth, imposing a belief on him that he did not hold to? Another example would be the charge of universalism. Barth expressly denies that he affirms universalism. Van Til, nevertheless, charges him with it. Is this an unfair critique? Van Til’s transcendental method helps to explain why he persists in pressing his charges even though he knows full well Barth’s denials. For Van Til, despite Barth’s affirmations to the contrary, he cannot possibly hold to that affirmation given his ontological presuppositions. Barth believes in the qualitative difference between God and the creature, very much in a modern kind of way. That means that the only way one can speak about God’s interface with creation is through act. Therefore, God is known to be who he is only in and by his act of grace in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself, for Barth, gives God the “form” he has. There is, therefore, no God back of Jesus Christ who is not himself identified with Jesus Christ. It is a clear and easy process of reasoning to conclude that there is no antecedent being of God in any commonly understood sense of the word. Van Til’s method points up something very important for us to understand about reading theologians. We must not read them in a strict, literalistic way. We know how dangerous that approach to reading the Bible can be. The Westminster divines were wise when they spoke about things expressly stated in the Scripture and that which can be deduced “by good and necessary consequence” (WCF 1.6). That’s a great principle of interpretation, not just for the Bible but also for reading theologians. Van Til refused to read Barth simplistically. He dug down deep into his system, to the roots of his thought. And he was able to consistently trace out the threads of Barth’s thinking to their logical conclusions. Barth doesn’t get to just deny those conclusions and walk away. He is obligated to either admit there is an inconsistency in his system, or go back and revise his pre-theoretical commitments. Barth did neither, and that is why Van Til’s critique must still be pressed today.

There is still a great deal of confusion out there concerning the difference between orthodox Reformed theology and the theology of Karl Barth. Are they not the same? Is Barth not just advancing the ground work established by the Reformed branch of the Reformation? For Van Til the answer is a clear and resounding “no.” In fact, far from advancing the cause of the Reformed faith Karl Barth militates against it at every turn. The history of Barth critics among evangelicals and Reformed has shown that there is still very little clarity on why Reformed Theology and Barthian Theology are contrary to one another. It is an oft repeated opinion that Barth is not orthodox. But when asked “why not?” very few have a good answer. I hope to give a good answer here, with the help of Van Til. Allow me to quote two passages from The New Synthesis.  I will simply cite them here, and then unpack them on the other side:

However, Barth did all this not because he had any intention of restoring orthodoxy to the theology of the “blessed possessors” (beati possidentes). On the contrary, his “nein” to Brunner came about because, together with Romanists and Protestant consciousness theologians, Brunner had not completely cleansed his thinking of the left-overs of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, and not merely that of the period’s Protestantism, but orthodoxy so far as it holds to the direct revelation of God in nature and in history, has been from beginning to end, Barth’s bete noir. He even observed remnants of a theology of possession in his own earliest major work, Romans, as also in the second one, Dogmatik 1(1927). Thus, when he opposed Brunner he was also, in effect, opposing his earlier works, in attempting to be self-critical in his criticism of others. Finally, Barth found himself in his book on Anselm and then, in 1932, commenced writing his Kirchliche Dogmatik on the principle of the Christ-Event alone. You have, he argued therein, a lie instead of the truth if you say as much as a single word about a God in himself. We know nothing about God unless this God be wholly revealed in and therefore wholly identical with Christ. And you also have a lie, instead of the truth, if you say as much as a single word about a man in himself. Historic as well as liberal Protestantism were thus guilty of speaking such lies. There is, to be sure, an absolute identification of God and man in Christ, but it is indirect. Jesus is God and the Bible is the Word of God but the “is” is, in both cases one of act not substance.

The first expression which helps us to understand Barth is “a theology of possession.” He rejects this kind of theology. For Barth, all classical modes of theology – including that found within liberalism – have the idea that the creature can possess or contain the Creator. In Thomas God was contained in the creation, whether in “being” or in the Mass. In Schleiermacher God was found in man’s feeling of absolute dependence. These are “theologies of possession” – theologies in which God reveals himself in, with, by and through the created order. Second, note the last sentence in the second quote, “one of act not substance.” In short, Barth’s theology is “actualistic.” God relates to the world only indirectly. He relates to the world only in and by a divine act. This act takes place not in, by, with or through the created order. Otherwise we would then have a “theology of possession.” Rather, God acts in, with, by and through God himself. God’s free act of grace is a transcendent event. It does not touch our world, but ever remains wholly other relative to it. So much more can and needs to be said about Barth’s theology. But this is it at its heart. Barth has an actualistic understanding of ontology. In theology we can only speak of God’s transcendent acts, but never his real entering into the created order. Contrary to this Reformed theology says that God – without losing any of his attributes, or without divinizing any part of the created order – condescends to his creation so that he is truly present in, with, by and through his ordained means. In this way, orthodox Reformed theology can truly say, without blushing, that the Bible is the Word of God. It is the Word of God come in a servant form. For Barth, revelation only takes place in a transcendent act of revelation in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Bible cannot be said to be the revelation, even though it can be said to be the Word of God. But, as Van Til points out, it is the Word of God only in an actualistic sense. God reveals himself, but only indirectly (i.e., to and by himself, never to or by his creature). While Reformed ontology differs greatly from that of Thomas and Schleiermacher, it also differs greatly from Barth. Like the former, Reformed theology begins with a “substance” ontology – albeit it of a very different sort. And that is precisely where Reformed theology and Barth part ways, and it is at the very foundation of theology. Reformed theology cannot be maintained on the basis of an actualistic ontology. Therefore, Barth’s “Reformedness” can only be nominal. In summary, what is the difference between Barth’s theology and Reformed Theology? It is the difference between actualistic ontology and Reformed substance ontology. From Barth’s ontology comes the idea that God’s revelation is only and always indirect, and never given directly to us in nature or the Bible. Everything else gets unpacked from there.

It is often assumed that Karl Barth’s thought is the antithesis of medieval scholasticism. It is true that Barth is exceedingly critical of Aquinas. But does Barth offer us a better theological program than that offered in Scholasticism? Van Til answers that question with a resounding no. For instance, in Common Grace and the Gospel Van Til says:

In the first place it means that we cannot join Karl Barth in reducing God as He is in Himself to a relation that He sustains to His people in the world. Barth virtually seeks to meet the objector’s charge that Christianity involves a basic contradiction by rejecting the idea of God as He is in Himself and of God’s counsel as controlling all things in the world. He says that Calvin’s doctrine of God’s counsel must be completely rejected. Only when it is rejected, is the grace of God permitted to flow freely upon mankind. And that means that God’s love envelops all men. To be sure, for Barth there is reprobation but it is reprobation in Christ. The final word of God for all men, says Barth, is Yes. It matters not that men have not heard of the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. For Jesus of Nazareth is not, as such, the Christ. All men are as men, of necessity in Christ. All grace is universal or common grace. From the historic Christian point of view this is simply to say that the concept of grace is so widened as no longer to be grace at all. How truly Herman Bavinck anticipated, as it were, this most heretical of heresies of our day when he pointed out that in the last analysis one must make his choice between Pelagius and Augustine. The grace of God as Barth presents it is no longer distinguishable from the natural powers of man. All men to be men, says Barth, must have been saved and glorified from all eternity in Christ. This is how Barth would meet the objection against the idea of the sovereign grace of God. There is no longer any sovereign God and therefore there is no longer any grace. (pp. 154-155)

What Van Til says here takes some unpacking. I will do so in several points. First, Van Til notes Barth’s rejection of Calvin’s view of God’s eternal decree (cf. CD II.2, 67-76). Calvin affirms an absolutum decretum. This is the view that God, from eternity past, has elected some onto eternal life and some unto eternal damnation (i.e., double predestination). Barth believed that this was abstract theology, beginning as it does with an abstract decree of God-in-himself. Barth proposes instead a thoroughly Christological revamping of God’s decree. The idea is that Jesus Christ himself forms the two sides of election. In his humanity he is the elected man, and in his divinity he is the electing God (CD II.2, 76). And it is this relation-in-act which constitutes God’s being as it is. As he will later say, God’s “being is decision;” i.e., his decision to elect humanity in Christ’s humanity (CD II.2, 175). Second, this means that God’s grace is to and for all of humanity in the humanity of Jesus Christ. The humanity of Jesus Christ, in the eternal decision of election, is the vicarious humanity of all humans. In other words, because his humanity is the object of God’s electing grace and since his humanity represents all of humanity, that means all of humanity receives the electing grace of God. All humans are elect. God’s grace is – as Van Til says above – permitted to flow to all mankind. That means that God’s grace is universal. Or, we might say, common. It is given to all men, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves Christians. Grace is common to all – believer as well as unbeliever. Third, Van Til says that Barth’s position is that God’s being as well as man’s being is constituted by relation to one another. There is no abstract God, or God-in-himself. God’s being is a being-in-relation (to man). Likewise, man’s being is a being-in-relation (to God). This relation is found in Jesus Christ who is himself the relation between man (his humanity) and God (his divinity). Man’s being then is a being of grace. Humanity is elected man and therefore is “full of grace.” This applies not just to his status as elect, but to his very being. Van Til is troubled by this, in part, because if everything is grace then nothing is grace. If every man is a recipient of grace then grace has lost its meaning. Grace can be understood as grace only over against condemnation. And while Barth affirms Christ is both the elect man and reprobate man, yet no man is actually reprobate. All are elect. That turns what Calvin regarded as special grace into common grace. Common grace and the Gospel are confused in Barth. Fourth, as he said earlier, this makes Barth’s position almost indistinguishable from the analogia entis of Scholasticism. Van Til notes

For it is of the essence of the analogy of faith … that the ideas of God and man be thought of as correlative to one another. God is then nothing but what He is in relation to man through Christ, and man is nothing but what he is in relation to God through Christ. If the idea of correlativity between God and man was already involved in the analogy of being, it came to its full and final expression in the idea of the analogy of faith. (Common Grace, 130)

In other words, just as man and God are related to one another by the common idea of being (something the two share), so likewise with Barth’s view of analogy. God and man are related, they are as Van Til says elsewhere, “correlative” to one another in the eternal decision of God in election in Christ. For Thomas it was being that served as a common ontological notion which God and man have in common. For Barth it is God’s act of electing grace which holds them in common. But in either scenario God becomes dependent on something other than himself in his existence. God’s being as the electing God depends on his relation to man, just as man depends on his relation to God in Christ for his being. In God’s Time for Us I argue that this relation occurs in the “time” of God’s grace in Christ. This “time” serves as a substitute for a metaphysical notion of being. But whether we are talking about time or being, either way there is an ontological tertium quid which serves as an abstract ontological commonality relating God and man. Barth, no less than Thomas, fails to properly maintain the creator-creature distinction. And with that, he – no less than Thomas – fails to properly maintain the antithesis between believer and unbeliever (since grace is common to all). This gives the unbeliever a certain kind of autonomy and libertarian freedom to believe as he wants about God. Barth, in some ways, out-scholasticizes and out-rationalizes even Thomas himself! If nature is grace for Barth then all theology is natural theology, even while it is at the same time gracious theology. If Barth were consistent with his theology, then there really could be no Nein! to natural theology, but only a full and unequivocal yes and amen.

In his writings, Van Til used what has now become a defunct moniker to describe an early 20th century theological movement surrounding Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. That moniker is “neo-orthodox.” Space prevents us from getting into a history of the term here, but suffice it to say that the expression has come under significant scrutiny today and has been all but abandoned by Barth scholarship. In Van Til’s day it was a helpful term to denote in a very broad fashion a group of theologians who – on the surface anyhow – seemed to have a good deal in common. I for one am glad the term is losing favor, especially when applied to Barth.[1] The term is more of a misnomer and does not accurately capture Barth’s very complex thought.[2] I’m not sure what label would be better instead, especially because Barth and Brunner (not to mention Bultmann) all went in very different directions as their lives and careers advanced through the years. I am unsure a catch term would be helpful, other than perhaps the most broad “20th century Protestant theology,” or whatnot. Barth’s thought is so sui generis I wonder if the best word we can use today is simply “Barthian” to describe his thought as that of those who followed him. I say all this because the next quote from Van Til I want to share uses the older term “neo-orthodox.” I preface the quote with the above to put at ease the minds of advocates of Barth’s theology that I am aware of the problematic nature of the term and that in quoting Van Til here I am in no way desirous of keeping the term alive. But also, for those who are reading this outside from the Barthian fold, you should be aware of the now defunct term so that, hopefully, you don’t use it in polite company and unduly offend your friends. This quote is from Van Til’s Common Grace and the Gospel:

The neo-orthodox view of the relation of God to man is based on the idea that since man cannot have a “systematic,” i.e., purely rationalist knowledge of God, he must, in purely irrationalist fashion, fall back on the notion that any “systematic” interpretation of God’s “revelation” is nothing more than a “pointer” toward something of which man knows nothing. That is to say, the neo-orthodox view of God’s relation to man is based on the modern, particularly the post-Kantian, philosophical notion of truth as being nothing but a limiting concept. Man is surrounded by an ultimate void and he must direct the “flashlight” of his intellect into impenetrable mist. (xlviii)

Allow me to put Van Til’s point in other words. The Barthian position is that since man cannot have comprehensive and infallible knowledge of God (since man is temporal, limited, and sinful) that means that man cannot have any direct knowledge of God at all. Because man cannot have rationalist knowledge of God (i.e., comprehensive and infallible) then he can only have knowledge of God in an “irrationalist” way. That irrationalist way is the way of “limiting concepts.” Van Til elsewhere will advocate for a proper, biblical view of limiting concepts. But here he is attacking what he sees as an anti-Christian view of limiting concepts. On that view God becomes a kind of unknown place holder in one’s pursuit of knowledge. According to Kant, and those around him, God is an unknown which we can know exists only because of our experiences. In other words, I have certain experiences which can be explained only if there is a God back of them. But I cannot know God directly, that is, by any direct reception of information about God from God. The best I can do is point the flashlight of my intellect into the darkness, and seeing only darkness conclude that because of the darkness there must be a God out there. But Barth is not as skeptical as Kant. For Barth God does reveal himself. But revelation is not something we ourselves have direct access to. Revelation is Jesus Christ and him alone. Man – in the humanity of Christ – has access to the knowledge of God only in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is himself both the divine giver of revelation and the human receiver of revelation. We can only see Jesus Christ by faith through the witness of Scripture and the church’s proclamation. My experience with revelation is only from afar, and at that only secondary and indirect. For Van Til this is an anti-Christian view of mystery. Van Til affirms mystery, over against rationalism. But he advocate a Christian and Reformed view of mystery. That view says God is not known to man unless and to the extent that God reveals himself to man. In this way, God is incomprehensible – that is, he cannot be known fully or on the basis of man’s intellect itself. But God is apprehensible, that is he can be known only through a sovereign and gracious act of condescension whereby he makes himself known to us. Barth (and others) rightly rejects the rationalist view of the knowledge of God (i.e., Aquinas, Gordon Clark, etc). But in their correct rejection they go to the opposite extreme and conclude that since we cannot know God rationalistically (i.e., comprehensively) then we cannot know God at all, at least not directly. We can only know him indirectly through limiting concepts (i.e., as a place holder that makes sense of my experience).

[1] Barth himself rejected the label, see CD III.3, xii. For more on why the label should be dismissed see Bruce McCormack’s Critically-Realistic, 24-28. [2] For more information about this see my blog post here at Reformed Forum.

Today we speak with Austin Reed about Karl Barth’s theology of election. Austin is a student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and walks us through a critical review of Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology: Origins and Development, 1920-1953 by Shao Kai Tseng. Tseng challenges the scholarly status quo, arguing that despite Barth’s stated favor of supralapsarianism, his mature lapsarian theology is complex and dialectical. It demonstrates elements of both supra- and infralapsarianism, though it favors the latter. In Tseng’s assessment, Barth’s theology is basically infralapsarian because he sees the object of election as fallen humankind and understands the incarnation as God’s act of taking on human nature in its condition of fallenness. Be sure to read Austin Reed’s review of Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutic Proposal by George Hunsinger.

Participants: Austin Reed, Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy