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).

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.