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).

Moving on from Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth (see the previous six posts entitled In The Beginning) we now consider his first published monograph dedicated entirely to a criticism of “the Theology of Crisis” in The New Modernism (1946).[1] The overall contention of the book is that the Reformed Faith is no friend of “the Theology of Crisis,” but rather its mortal enemy (p. ix; p. 3). Everything he says about Crisis Theology will seek to substantiate that basic contention. Also it is worth our noting how The New Modernism differs from his second monograph on Barth in 1962, Christianity and Barthianism. There, taking his lead from J. Gresham Machen’s well-known Christianity and Liberalism, Van Til argues that Barthianism is not a legitimate expression of Christianity but another religion altogether. Whereas in his earlier volume he sets the Theology of Crisis over against the Reformed Faith, in the latter he sets Barthianism over against Christianity as such.

But for now, let’s stick with The New Modernism. In particular, I would like to highlight how Van Til opens the book. Whatever you think of his thesis that the Theology of Crisis and the Reformed Faith are enemies, careful attention must be given to how Van Til understands Barth and Brunner’s theology. It is assumed today by many that Van Til “got Barth wrong.” That seems to me an unhelpful sweeping claim. Did he get anything right about Barth?  If so, which parts did he get right and which ones wrong? Furthermore, it strikes me as an easy way to dismiss Van Til’s critique. What is needed, however, is a thoughtful and close read of Van Til’s critique.

So, in the spirit of trying to set the record straight I believe it is helpful to distinguish between Van Til’s thesis about Barth on the one hand and his understanding of Barth on the other. We’ve already said what his thesis is: the Reformed Faith is the enemy of the Theology of Crisis. Now, that is a big claim. But a claim that cannot be agreed with or disagreed with until one first grapples with Van Til’s understanding of Barth. Until one evaluates his understanding of Barth one cannot evaluate if his thesis is correct.

So, what I would like to do here is highlight how Van Til understood Barth (and Brunner). We will unpack the details in a future post as we work our way through The New Modernism. But for now Van Til gives us a summary of how he understands Crisis Theology right at the beginning of the book:

For purposes of orientation, we might first consider certain constantly recurring emphases of the Crisis theologians. There are three such emphases. First, both Barth and Brunner have rebelled against Schleiermacher, the “father of modern theology.” Their hostility to what they call “modern Protestantism” is very bitter. Second, both are severe critics of the analogia entis theology of Rome. Third, both are set against what they call the historicism and psychologism of post-Reformation orthodoxy. What is it that the Crisis theologians withstand in modern Protestantism, in Romanism, and in traditional orthodoxy? Significantly enough, it is the same thing in each instance. It is the theology of the beati possidentes that they attack in Schleiermacher, in Thomas Aquinas and in Herman Bavinck. All theologians who claim in any sense to possess the truth are thrown on the theological scrap heap. The dialectical blowtorch is applied to them all.[2]

Notice Van Til describes the whole Crisis program as one of protest. They have protested against liberalism, catholicism, and Reformed orthodoxy. But, according to Van Til, there is one thing that holds these three targets of protest together: the beati possidentes.[3]

But what is the beati possidentes? It means literally “the blessed possessors.”[4] It refers to those systems of theology which believe that man has the capacity for receiving God’s revelation. So, for instance, for liberalism God reveals himself in man’s feelings of absolute dependence. In Reformed orthodoxy God can be known by man in and through his revelation in both creation and Scripture. But Barth rejects these systems because they all believe man has the capacity for receiving directly from God his own self-disclosure. For Van Til, the denial of direct revelation is what lies at the heart of the Crisis Theology. This denial will have a rippling effect throughout Barth’s theology. And that is what Van Til will unpack in the rest of the book.

Now, immediately we need to ask: is Van Til wrong here? Is he wrong that Barth targets those three theological systems for their commitment to the beati possidentes? If he is wrong about that, then the rest of his critique should be called into question. But if Van Til is correct about this, then it seems to me he should at least get a further hearing. Certainly if Van Til got this right he cannot legitimately (with any level of intellectual honesty) be dismissed out of hand.

Now, let’s wrap up with this. That Van Til got at least this one thing right should be easy enough to substantiate. It really is a non-controversial point, even among current Barth interpreters.[5] The idea that man has no capacity for revelation is a frequent claim in Barth’s famous Nein! to Brunner. Furthermore, take for instance Trevor Hart’s excellent way of describing Barth’s rejection of direct revelation in saying that revelation is not a “commodity” that can be “handed over” to man to make his own possession.[6] This is what Van Til means when he says that God’s revelation is always and only indirect in Barth’s theology. And that seems to be a fairly uncontroversial claim. And if we can agree that Van Til got that right, then we need to move on to further consider how Van Til understands Barth.

[1] It should be noted that Van Til takes aim at both Barth and Brunner in this volume.  

[2] Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner, 2.

[3] This is language Van Til uses also in The New Synthesis (1975, pp. 8 and 11), which I document and briefly unpack in another Essential Van Til.

[4] Van Til notes this in a footnote on this page.

[5] I am familiar with Bruce McCormack’s “Afterword: Reflections on Van Til’s Critique of Barth” in Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism. However, I will reserve engaging with that piece for another time.

[6]Trevor Hart, “Revelation,” in John Webster, ed.  The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 45.

At long last we have come to the end of the beginning (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We have reviewed Van Til’s opening salvo against Barth’s theology as it appeared in the form of a book review. This last part of Van Til’s critique is a kind of parting shot, and prognostication concerning the future of Barthianism. He takes his lead from another American reader of Barth:

Professor McGiffert of Chicago predicted last summer that Barthianism would not last because it was really a recrudescence of Calvinism. If we might venture a prediction it would be that Barthianism may last a long time because it is really Modernism, but that neither Barthianism nor Modernism will last in the end because they are not Calvinism, that is, consistent Christianity.

Van Til here predicts the “success” of Barthianism. However, Barthianism will last long not because it is good but precisely because it is not Calvinism. Barthianism is not a real break from Modernism. And while Van Til does not explicitly say why he believes that Modernism has “legs” to last a long time, we can venture a guess here.

First, Modernism is a synonym for theological liberalism (we understand that Modernism has a much broader meaning outside of the field of theology). And Van Til understood the draw of liberalism. He understood why it gained such wide allegiance. It did so because it imbibed the zeitgeist of the 19th and early 20th century.

A brief on liberalism is in order here. Liberalism was not at its heart a denial of orthodox doctrine – though it did do that. But liberalism, at its heart, was unbelief driven by fear. The fear was that Christianity would lose its place in the world, its hegemony over Western culture. How could Christianity withstand the tide of the waxing influence of modern philosophy, science and the cultured intelligentsia? It either had to make adjustments or die and lose its grip on the world which it enjoyed for over a millennium. Christian doctrine had to be adjusted to adhere to the standards and demands of modernity. In other words, it had to make itself acceptable to the times.

Second, according to Van Til Barth did not break with this tradition. Rather, he channeled the spirit of Schleiermacher. He disagreed with his liberal forefathers in many respects. But he did not disagree with them that Christian doctrine had to be non-offensive to the age. He only disagreed with them on how to make Christian doctrine accede to the terms of modernity (particularly as modernity was changing in his day). He could not, for example, go back to liberalism’s commitment to the rejection of scholastic metaphysics. Kant has taught us too well. We cannot go back to the deus absconditus or the logos asarkos because that would mean resorting back to the metaphysics which funded those doctrines. No, in keeping with the times, we must focus not on static being but on dynamic notions like time and act. These sentiments are already in the air in neo-Kantianism, Hegel and Heidegger. Granted, while Barth did confess to doing some “Hegeling,” he is no Hegelian nor is he an existentialist (at least not his Church Dogmatics). But he strikes chords which resonate with his generation of youthful intellectuals who would never have supported the Kaiser.

And it is for these reasons that Van Til predicted the “success” and long lasting influence of Barthianism. It too is making adjustments to Christianity to make it “fit in” and non-offensive to a modern (and then post-modern) people. It purports to solve the problems in the older liberal theology which could support a tyrannical war effort while at the same time refusing to return to the older orthodoxy. Barth gave a fresh voice to a new generation. Once again, and in a different way, he made Christianity palatable to the cultured despisers. But biblical Christianity, for Van Til, is not acceptable to the “natural man.” The natural man and the modern person seek a faith that won’t be mocked and that is “reasonable” (to our natural mind). True Christianity, as it comes to its most mature expression in the Reformed faith, is offensive to the natural and (post?) modern mind. But, it will at long last prevail because it is true and consistent Christianity.

But until then the Reformed faith will be the Christianity of the despised and marginalized. Concurrently, all the new theologies that play to the whims of the times will preserve the shell of Christianity. But like Schleiermacher’s innovations the new will be shown to be inconsistent folly and at long last go the way of all flesh. And remaining will be God’s people who faithfully cling to his promises, not being overcome by the spirit of the ages which, like Ishmael toward Isaac, mock them. By grace they will not be overcome, for they will not fear Ishmael. Rather, they will fix their eyes on the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. And they will bear witness to him in love to their neighbors believing that this old story of Jesus and his love is sufficient to save today no less than in generations past.

Van Til now turns to Barth’s doctrine of creation.

Barth denies that creation as it came forth from the hand of God was good, and was to have a genuine significance. Instead, Barth’s doctrine resembles that of paganism which held that the spatial-temporal world was somehow existing independently of God and was evil in itself. Accordingly Barth has a very low conception of sin. Man is not really responsible for sin and is not really guilty inasmuch as sin or evil was already in the world. Hence Barth has a very low view of redemption. The whole of objective redemption is reduced to the prosaic level of setting the ideal of the eternal before man.

Van Til believes that Barth has a low view of both sin and redemption. Why is that? It flows from his view of creation. Reformed theology has held to the inherent goodness of creation. Creation is, according to the Reformed, made “from the hand of God” as unfallen and very good. This view stands over against the Roman view of Thomas who asserted that creation was made with an inherent defect called concupiscence. This is a natural drag inherent in creation in general, and humanity in particular, that pulls it “downward” toward non-being. God then gave the “super-added gift,” the donum superadditum, in order to keep humanity from “sliding” into sin and non-being.  Concupiscence is not sin itself, to be sure. But it is an undesirable tendency in creation, and as such negates the biblical witness that creation was made “very good.” The Reformed rejected this medieval move and affirmed the goodness and non-deficiency of the original creation.

For Barth, however, creation is in itself fallen by virtue of that fact that it is not-God. Creation is deficient. What is more, it is against God. Van Til says that this resembles paganism. Perhaps what he has in mind is gnostic conceptions that regarded the physical world as being inherently deficient and even evil. Perhaps Van Til sees this as being part and parcel of the Aristotelian system picked up by medieval metaphysicians. Be that as it may, Barth denies that creation was made sinless and without corruption. He further denies that creation only subsequent to the act of creation fell in real-time history through an act of one man, Adam. To use the language of later criticisms of Barth, there is no transition from a state of grace to a state of sin (just as there is no transition from wrath to grace in Barth’s doctrine of redemption).

If creation – inclusive of humanity – is inherently fallen, then we cannot be blamed for our sin and rebellion. This produces a low view of sin. Certainly it mitigates the culpability of sin to some extent (and to a full extent if carried to its logical conclusion). This, therefore, produces a low view of redemption. Redemption is not so much ethical as it is ontological. That is because sin is not so much ethical as it is ontological. Sin is me not being eternal. It is a condition in which I find myself, not one brought about by my own culpable rebellion. My rebellion flows from my fallen ontological condition, and not vice versa. Redemption then is me becoming eternalized in Jesus Christ who is the eternalized man in union with the eternal God. It is not a moment when I am transitioned from an estate of sin into a new estate of grace and glory. This mitigates the fully ethical and covenantal nature of the atonement, and that is what Van Til means when he says that Barth has a low view of redemption.

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.

Van Til used the word “scholasticism” (or its other variations) as shorthand for Thomistic dualism (and with it the medieval synthesis of Christian and pagan thought). In short Thomistic dualism is the idea that there are two sources of knowledge: reason and revelation. Knowledge that comes from reason can be gained by man on reason’s own terms, quite independent of revelation. I am aware that this understanding of Thomas is disputed. But that dispute need not distract us here. However, for our purposes, when Van Til criticizes “scholasticism” he is attacking Thomistic epistemology, as he understands it. So, for example:

But the essentially scholastic or Romanist procedure on the matter of the application of some abstract system of logic to the facts of experience is followed even by some Reformed theologians. This is done particularly in the field of apologetics. We therefore touch on the matter very briefly here. (Introduction to Systematic Theology, 301)

Perhaps we can clarify this whole matter by contrasting the scholastic procedure, with respect to finding knowledge of God, to that which we have here advocated as being the consistently Christian procedure. To do this, we may conveniently turn to the work of a modern Catholic philosopher. We take the work of P. Coffey on Ontology, in order to see what he says with respect to the being-of God. We quote a portion of his chapter, “Being and Its Primary Determinations.” (ibid, 328)

Scholastic theology indulged its speculative tendency when it spoke of a lumen gloriae by which man is supposed to be lifted out of his creatural limitations in the life hereafter in order that he may have a large measure of insight into the very being of God. (ibid, 370)

These are just three examples from one text of Van Til’s writings, but they are fairly representative. This means that Van Til was not against or critical of “scholasticism” as such. Scholasticism, rightly demonstrated by the Muller school, is primarily a method of organizing and presenting content. It need not necessarily carry with it particular content. So for example Thomas was a scholastic in that he organized his material in a systematic way and in a way that was intended to instruct and convince. Francis Turretin was a scholastic in this same way. Yet no one in their right mind would ever confuse Turretin for Thomas in terms of context. Turretin and Thomas both used a scholastic method, but their theology couldn’t be more different.

What Van Til goes after are medieval theological systems which compromise Christianity with pagan thought. He does not go after “scholasticism” as such, much less Reformed scholasticism. For him to have done so would have been to bite the hand that feeds him. After all, no one influenced Van Til’s theology more than Vos and Bavinck. And Vos and Bavinck were very dependent upon Reformed scholasticism for their theological insights. They generally do not adopt the scholastic method, but they do adopt Reformed scholastic theological content. We may speak similarly about Old Princeton. Old Princeton feasted upon the meat of Francis Turretin’s great systematic theology Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Van Til received that theology from his professors at Princeton. As we have noted in a previous post Van Til disagreed with his professors’ apologetic, but not their theology. He believed that their apologetic was too influenced by a synthesis with modern thought which was reminiscent of Thomas’s synthesis with Aristotle. It is that synthesis which he often dubs “scholastic.”

But it must be made clear that Van Til in no way rejected, but rather upheld, Reformed scholasticism (also called Reformed orthodoxy). Van Til often criticized other systems of thought over against Reformed scholasticism/Reformed orthodoxy. Reformed orthodoxy stood with Calvin’s thought over against Rome and Barthianism, so he can say: “There is less appreciation for Barth’s Christ as act in Calvin and in Reformed orthodoxy than there is in Romanism” (Christianity & Barthianism, 89).

This is just one example among others. But the idea is finally and ultimately established by how Van Til uses the expression “Reformed orthodoxy” in his criticisms of Karl Barth. Where he quotes Barth and polemicizes against him (see for example footnote 25 in A Christian Theory of Knowledge, pp. 363-365) Barth uses the language of Reformed orthodoxy and Reformed scholasticism interchangeably to describe the same theological phenomenon, namely Reformed theology in the 17th century. It is the Reformed scholasticism of the 17th century that Barth attacks and which Van Til defends. Again, Van Til is not concerned to defend Reformed scholasticism’s method (Van Til himself did not use this method), but rather Reformed scholasticism’s theological content.

What is the upshot of all this? Van Til should not be used by us today to reject “scholasticism” as such and with a sweeping wave of the hand. Nor should we blame Van Til for today’s depreciation of scholasticism. And what is more, perhaps, we should not think that “Calvin and the Calvinists” appropriated pagan sources the same way medieval scholastics did. Van Til was very critical of how the medievals synthesized Christianity and pagan thought, but did not see the same kind (or the same level) of synthesis among Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy. Van Til, after all, is dependent (albeit mediated by others) upon the theology of Reformed scholasticism, even as he is critical of medieval forms of scholasticism.

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.

Van Til is a master at exegeting unbelief. This is helpful for apologetics. If we do not understand the unbeliever in a biblical way, inevitably our approach to defending the faith will be unbiblical.[1]

Therefore, it is very important to know how the unbeliever thinks about reality (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology). In terms of the former, consider this quote from An Introduction to Systematic Theology:

They have thought of God either as enveloped in the universe or as removed from it so far that it really existed independently of him. (p. 142)

Van Til concisely underscores the two modes of ontology found in unbelief. I say here two, but really they are one. On the one hand, the unbeliever begins with a god that is “enveloped” in the universe. Obvious examples of this mode is found in pantheism, Hegelianism, process theologies, etc. Less obvious, however, is analogia entis forms of thinking. Van Til typically (though by no means exclusively) finds this in Roman Catholicism, especially in the metaphysics of Aquinas. For Van Til Aquinas believes in a chain of being between God and the rest of creation. In this system “being” is an abstraction. That means being takes on a life of its own, sort of speak, which “envelops” both the Creator and the creature. Being is something that is absolute, and as such is shared by both God and man. Of course, Van Til is not saying Aquinas is an “unbeliever,” rather the charge is that he adopts an unbelieving mode of ontology into his thinking. This is the mode of thinking which Van Til calls “rationalism.”[2]

On the other hand, the unbeliever so separates God from creation, creation ends up having an independent existence all its own. Obvious examples of this mode is found in deism, Kantianism, etc. Less obvious, it would also be found in Karl Barth. We’ll unpack that idea in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that this mode of thinking is what Van Til calls “irrationalism.”

But here’s the zinger: the second mode, no less than the first, ultimately envelops God within the created order. This is how. If God is so removed from the creation, i.e., “wholly other,” and he has not revealed himself directly to us, then he is ultimately unknowable (this is what Van Til calls a “non-Christian view of mystery”). And if God is ultimately unknowable, then we must exercise our “would-be” independence and autonomy to interpret the world around us quite apart from God. This move turns our irrationalism into rationalism, and it (in effect) exalts “would-be autonomous man” to become god-like. Deism turns into pantheism! The unbeliever inevitably looks to something in creation to be the final arbiter of what is true. This final arbiter becomes, for the unbeliever, not only the decoder ring (my metaphor, not Van Til’s) for understanding reality, but also the judge and jury over God himself. To use an expression of C. S. Lewis, on this approach God is placed “in the dock.” He is on trial, and the creature will judge the Creator. So, Van Til’s observation:

Whether in science, in philosophy or in religion, the non-Christian always seeks for a daysman betwixt or above God and himself, as the final court of appeal. (Common Grace and the Gospel, 11)

I love this quote for many reasons. But particularly for its use of “daysman.” It comes from the King James translation of Job 9:33, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.” For comparison, here is the ESV translation: “There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” I would urge the reader to go and read that verse in context, its quite profound. I won’t exegete it here, but will only say that Van Til’s allusion to it is brilliant. God is God and he will not be put on trial by his creatures. And that is the essence of unbelief. Unbelief is the creature putting the Creator on trial by invoking a “daysman” from within the very creation of the Creator to judge Him.

At the end of the day, this is where all unbelief ends. It all ends with a violation of the Creator-creature distinction. It is all—whether pantheism or deism—an attempt to exalt the creature above the Creator. It is an attempt to make God not God. It is an act of cosmic treason, which is idolatry.

[1] For a helpful “exegesis” of unbelief in the tradition of Van Til, see the lectures on the anatomy of unbelief by K. Scott Oliphint found here.

[2] I am aware of recent protestations against Van Til’s understanding and critique of Aquinas. For an answer to those protests, an answer I find absolutely compelling, see K. Scott Oliphint’s lectures on Aquinas here.

Following Kuyper and Bavinck, Van Til so emphasized the antithesis between believer and unbeliever that many have concluded that Van Til cuts the unbeliever off from any point of contact whatsoever. Van Til’s system has been caricatured as one in which the believer and unbeliever inhabit two different worlds from which they can only shout their own particular claims at each other, but can never engage in any meaningful way at any point.[1] The charge is that, for Van Til, the believer and unbeliever live in two antithetical, hermetically sealed, worlds.

But that is only a caricature of Van Til’s thought. For instance, he says in Common Grace and the Gospel:

Metaphysically, both parties have all things in common, while epistemologically they have nothing in common. (p. 9).

The believer and the unbeliever both inhabit the same creation. Both stand in God’s world. Both are recipients of God’s self-disclosure “in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). Furthermore, both the believer and unbeliever bear the imago dei. As such their conscience, informed by the “works of the law written on their hearts,” bears witness against all people of their sin and rebellion (Romans 2:15). In other words, when an unbeliever becomes a believer it is not as if he metaphysically becomes something other than what he was before. Rather, his covenantal status has changed from a child of wrath to a child of the Father. And with the transforming work of the Spirit, who works faith in the unbeliever-become-believer, we have received “the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).[2]

So, not only is the covenantal status of the believer antithetical to that of the unbeliever, but so is his whole way of thinking. The believer, alone, has the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). It is true the believer still has indwelling sin, and so his mind needs to be progressively transformed (Romans 12:2). Nevertheless, the believer no longer knows God, the world, or himself in exactly the same way he did before the regenerating work of the Spirit. In fact, it is not just a matter of the believer thinking better, but he thinks differently now that he seeks to “think God’s thoughts after him.” In other words, the manner in which the believer knows is not quantitatively different than the unbeliever (the unbeliever may know a whole lot more than the believer about science, math, history, or even the Bible), but rather the difference is qualitative. The unbeliever cannot think truly about anything (because all his thoughts are darkened and informed by rebellion against the Creator). He has no capacity for true thinking about the world, himself, or God. Only the believer can think truly about the world, himself, and God. Of course, that does not mean the unbeliever cannot make a valid calculation (he can add two plus two), but he cannot think truly (in a way that takes “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” 2 Cor. 10:5) about this valid calculation.

It is in this sense that Van Til can say that the believer and unbeliever have nothing in common epistemologically. At the same time, every area of life becomes a potential point of contact with the unbeliever because both live in God’s world as his creatures. This, of course, makes evangelism and apologetics both imperative and possible.

Finally, now with an eye toward Barth, there are significant ontological and epistemological differences between Van Til and Barth which can be pointed up over the issue of the point of contact. Barth denies a point of contact, but Van Til affirms it. The question is: why? Answer that question and you are well on your way toward understanding the foundational difference between the two thinkers. And here is a hint for my Barthian friends: the difference is not because Van Til adopts an analogia entis metaphysic. In fact, he does not. And that will be an issue to address in a future blog post. Stay tuned!

[1] See John Warwick Montgomery, “Once Upon an Apriori,” in ed. E.R. Geehan Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til (Nutley, NJ: P&R, 1971), 380-92.

[2] See the very helpful exegetical comments on this verse in Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Some Epistemological Reflections on 1 Cor 2:6-16,” in Westminster Theological Journal 57:1 (1995), 103ff.

“There can be no Christian truth which does not, from the very first, contain within itself as its basis the fact that from and to all eternity God is the electing God. There can be no tenet of Christian doctrine which, if it is to be a Christian tenet, does not reflect both in form and content this divine electing. … There is no height or depth in which God can be God in any other way” (CD II/2, p. 77).

Karl Barth’s theology defies glib appropriations. One could say, Dr. Shao Kai Tseng’s book, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology,^[1] highlights how complex and layered Barth’s lapsarian theology really is. Does Tseng really intend on overturning what has been generally accepted as a truism in Barth studies,^[2] namely, that Karl Barth was a Supralapsarian? Dr. Tseng marshals an impressive amount of evidence for this claim (evidence spanning from Romerbrief II through CD IV/1), and even offers a painstaking survey of the Reformed lapsarian debates as he argues that Barth inadvertently went astray at a few key points.

In the following review article I will trace out Tseng’s central argument (that Karl Barth holds to an essentially Infralapsarian view of the object of predestination with Supralapsarian elements) and, in my conclusion, offer an appraisal of the tenability of Tseng’s conclusion. Overall Tseng’s work deserves to be commended. His contribution to the Trinity debate, in Barth scholarship, is interesting to say the least. And while I disagree with some of his moves, I doubt many will find fault with the breadth of Tseng’s research. It is for that reason alone that I believe George Hunsinger may be right that Tseng’s contribution in the present volume will prove to be a lasting one.

Because Tseng’s work is so comprehensive, an adequate summary of the contents of this book would prove to be taxing on the patience of any reader. For that reason I will only offer a detailed summary of few sections, offering a cursory summary of others. I will be looking at chapters 1-2 because they contain the definitions and history necessary to understand the complex discussions that take place in chapters 3-8. I will then conclude with some critical remarks.

Chapter 1: Definitions

This section of the book came as an unexpected treat. Tseng carefully and clearly delineates the differences between the Infralapsarian and Supralapsarian camps in a way that prepares the reader to properly assess Barth’s own read on the tradition. The historiographical work in this chapter will no doubt draw many disparate readers.

The Lapsarian debates of the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods are not always easy to follow. Tseng comments, “The lapsarian controversy was essentially a theodicy inquiry” (Tseng, 47). The question being, how are we to understand God’s relationship to the “eternal decrees of double predestination, creation and permission of the fall” (Ibid.), in light of a commitment to His sovereignty and holiness? The search for an answer among the Reformed and Post-Reformed theologians is exacerbated by the variety of positions held.

To begin with, both Infra and Supralapsarian schools agree “that all humankind’s actual fall in history was eternally decreed by God, thus Adam’s sin was part of God’s eternal plan rather than a surprise to God” (Tseng, 48). The difference between the two positions lay in their placement of the Fall with regards to the decree of election. In other words, for the Supralapsarian “humankind’s fall presupposes election and reprobation” whereas for the Infralapsarian “election and reprobation presuppose the divine decree of the Fall” (Ibid.). So the truly distinguishing aspect of the two camps is their conception how they answer the question, “who is the object of [God’s] predestination [obiectum praedestinationis]?” (Ibid.) For the Infralapsarian, the obiectum is fallen humanity, while for the Supralapsarian the obiectum is unfallen humanity.

Tseng helpfully notes that these definitions (man as obiectum praedestinationis) do not refer to “humans in created actuality” but to “God’s eternal conception of the object of predestination” (Tseng, 53). Therefore, the decree does not come as a response to human sin on the Infralapsarian account. Tseng explains, “God’s foresight, Quodam-modo [in a certain respect], is strictly within God’s eternal predestination. … [Man as fallen] is strictly God’s eternal conception of the object of election-reprobation in God’s mind” (Tseng, 54).

Predictably, the differing conceptions of the object of predestination leads to a different “ordo decretorum” (order of decrees). For the Infralapsarian, the decree to create precedes the decree of the Fall of mankind. For the Supralapsarian, the decrees of election and reprobation precede even the decree to create.

These basic categories are employed throughout the book as Tseng, in meticulous detail, charts Barth’s theological development. Barth’s appropriation of elements from both Infra- and Supralapsarianism is complex and at times difficult to follow, but Tseng serves as a reliable guide, having himself trod the well worn paths of Barth’s major theological works. But he doesn’t stick merely to the old paths—he does seek to make a significant (though not earth shattering) adjustment, arguing that Barth is basically an Infralapsarian. He then attempts to bring this insight to bear in the current debate (which has cooled significantly) over the relationship between Trinity and election in Barth’s theology.

Chapter 2: Barth’s Lapsarian Position Reassessed

Barth’s extended footnote in CD II/2 §33 contains a lengthy engagement with the Reformed lapsarian debates. Tseng summarizes Barth’s position as Supralapsarian with regard to the ordo decretorum, but not with regard to the obiectum, which he conceives to be unfallen (Tseng, 63). He even candidly remarks, “as far as the object of election is concerned, it would be fair to say that he [Barth] is basically though not simply infralapsarian” (Tseng, 62).

While the Supra/infralapsarian controversy may retain some room for conversation within Barth studies, one thing is undisputed: Barth had no place for a decretum absolutum or any decree that is located outside of the decree of God to be for humanity in Christ. But, as is well known, Barth is unwilling to totally jettison the idea of double predestination. The problem with both lapsarian camps, for Barth, was their inchoate natural theology. Barth’s solution is to absorb supralapsarianism and recalibrate it along Christological lines. “In a nutshell, Barth’s mature understanding of double-predestination is that election is in Christ—it is by him and with him” (Tseng, 64).

This leads Barth to adopt a (basically) supralapsarian position (with regards to the ordo), due to the “teleological priority of election-reprobation over all other divine decrees,” that exists at the very center of supralapsarianism (Tseng, 65). In other words, Barth adopts Supralapsarianism (with the intent to recalibrate/purify it) because “[e]lection is the sum of the Gospel” (CD II/2, 3).

Throughout this chapter, Tseng identifies several weak points and inaccuracies in Barth’s understanding of the Reformed lapsarian positions. But most interesting is his handling of John Owen’s own flavor of infralapsarianism. Briefly, Owen holds to a sort of Christological infralapsarianism whereby, “all the decrees are centered on God’s works in Christ [so] that predestination is designed to manifest God’s self-giving glory in the incarnate Son” (Tseng, 73). One of Tseng’s most interesting contributions is his bringing Barth and the English Puritans into conversation with one another.

Tseng also engages contemporary interpretations of Barth, particularly that of Edwin Van Driel who argues that “since election on Barth’s view is God’s decision to become incarnate, Barth’s doctrine of election is also supralapsarian” (Tseng, 75). Van Driel suggests a sort of Christological supralapsarianism in which “God had motives to become incarnate that were not contingent upon sin” (Tseng, 74-75). The problem with this view, according to Tseng, is it fails to yield sufficient attention to the infralapsarian elements of Barth’s theology. In other words, Van Driel’s interpretation is not sufficiently dialectical in that it does not recognize that election in Christ presupposes sin, but sin could not exist apart from God’s decision to elect in Christ (Tseng, 76).

While Tseng wishes to argue vigorously for the basically infralapsarian character of Barth’s doctrine of election, he carefully sets up a couple of provisos: First, Barth’s infralapsarianism is closer to supralapsarianism to the extent that it places an “emphasis on the teleological priority of election-in-Christ is closer to supralapsarianism” (Tseng, 79), and second, “[w]ith regard to the obiectum praedestinationis, Barth is also not simply infralapsarian, because he identifies Christ, who is without sin in himself, as the proper object of election; sinful humanity becomes the object of election only by partaking of Christ” (Tseng, 79). What Tseng is trying to avoid is any undialectical, straightforward assertion that fails to do justice to the complexity of Barth’s dialectical theology.

Chapter 3: Römerbrief II

“This possibility, described with the most paradoxical expression ‘impossible-possibility,’ is conceived as something foreign to the reality of the world, an alien power whose potency can in no way derive from the energy (as the Greeks called reality) of the world; it is indeed impossible within the context of the world” (Jungel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, 66).

The second edition of Barth’s Romans commentary was the “clearing away of debris (aufraumungsarbeit)” (McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936, 245) created by the publication of the first edition in 1918. And as anyone who’s ever made an attempt on the Römerbrief knows, Barth’s writing style can be frustrating to follow. Barth’s form was “expressionistic” and “Kierkegaardian,” often “indirect,” not intending “to convince the reader of an argument as it does to clear away obstacles to the Spirit’s work of making her to be a witness to the truth” (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 243).

In this chapter Tseng argues that this stage of Barth’s theological development bears evidence of a lean towards infralapsarianism. While Barth’s doctrine of election could still be described as basically Supralapsarian, the infralapsarian elements are undeniably present. This infralapsarian trajectory is made possible by the “impossible-possiblity” dialectic that holds together the theology of Romans II (Tseng, 86).

To guide the reader, Tsung notes “[s]even impossible possibilities,” human impossibilities which are overcome by the gracious act of God in the “process of Aufhebung^[3]” (Tseng, 87). These impossibilities do not correspond to man’s sin, but to “God and God’s act” (Tseng, 88). It is revelation rendered subjectively impossible by the Fall that must be overcome. Tseng explains, “Given that God has revealed Godself to enable human knowledge of God, what is it that made this impossibility possible?”^[4] (Tseng, 88). That is to say, man as sinner cannot know God. Sin has destroyed the immediacy with God enjoyed by our prelapsarian parents. Sin brought death and death brought time. We have passed from Creation^[5] (unfallen) to world (fallen), and the result was a profound noetic rupture (Tseng, 90).^[6]

But Barth, as we noted earlier, presupposes the possibility of revelation. Or more precisely, he understands revelation not as “an uncritical, straightforward possibility,” but as an “impossible made possible and yet remaining impossible in this world” (Tseng, 89).^[7] Mankind in its unfallen state had no need of revelation because “human knowledge of God was immediate because God was directly intuitable to humanity [emphasis mine]” (Tseng, 90). This state is designated by Barth as “Creation,” which as such is “beyond our observation” (Ibid.). Therefore, revelation, “the event central to which is God’s act of election” necessitates an understanding of mankind as Fallen (Tseng, 89). Now the infralapsarian elements become a bit clearer. The “impossible-possible” dialectic presupposes a fallen world and humanity (Tseng, 91). If revelation presupposes a fallen humanity, and election is at the center of revelation, election for Barth must presuppose (at this phase of his development) a fallen humanity.

Given the thesis of this book, the 7th “impossible-possibility,” namely election, is of particular interest. The decree of election (not a hidden “decretum absolutum”) originates in the freedom of God, so that “an individuals faith or unbelief depends entirely on God’s sovereign decision” (Tseng, 103). But for Barth, election is the overcoming of temporality, not for some, but for all. Double predestination therefore refers to humanity en toto. This means, election is predicated upon the rejection (reprobation) of mankind. Tseng notes, the reprobation/election dialectic corresponds to the faith/unbelief of all mankind. He explains, “[Barth’s] predestinarian thinking on this level is clearly supralapsarian: ‘election in Christ’ precedes ‘the divine predestination of men to destruction,’ and it is for the purpose of election that God predestined the fall” (Tseng, 106). Humanity is, in pre-temporal eternity, rejected (reprobated) for the sake of election. But as Tseng again notes, “Barth’s formulation of double predestination on the present-actualistic level does not fit neatly into any lapsarian theory of Reformed theology, even in the minimalist sense” (Tseng, 107). With this in mind Tseng argues that Barth still had infralapsarian “patterns of thought” (Ibid.) present during this phase of his theological development. These patterns are most clearly manifested in the “impossible-possibility” dialectic, which in and of itself is not enough to overcome the supralapsarian elements.^[8]

Chapter 4: The Göttingen-Münster Period

After the publication of the Römerbrief Barth was called to Göttingen to serve as the professor of Reformed theology, but it is at Göttingen that Barth encountered Reformed orthodoxy and discovered the “pneumatological ordo salutis” as well as the “anhypostatic–enhypostatic” distinctions (Tseng, 114-115). These two breakthroughs had a significant impact on Barth’s doctrine of revelation. The pneumatological insights culled were used to formulate a doctrine of revelation that simultaneously affirms its (revelation’s) possibility with God and impossibility with man. It is a “pneumatologically charged” doctrine of revelation (Tseng, 116.) These Christological and pneumatological discoveries will shape Barth’s understanding of the objective and subjective possibilities of revelation.

During this period, Barth produced a significant work entitled the Göttingen Dogmatics [GD], and while there is sharp discontinuity between the GD and the Römerbrief, there is some continuity as well. This continuity is particularly noticeable, according to Tseng, in the assumption of the givenness of revelation, that is, as an “a posteriori given” (Tseng, 122). In other words, the consideration of the possibility of revelation presupposes the reality of revelation (Ibid.). Tseng explains, “For Barth the central significance of the enhypostatic–anhypostatic union is again epistemological: it is the only way in which revelation is possible” (Tseng, 126). The impossible-possibility dialectic is replaced with the question, how do we encounter God without ceasing to be human (temporal) and how does God reveal Himself without ceasing to be who He is (eternal)? The answer is found in the union of eternity and temporality in the Incarnation. This means, Barth’s Christology at this stage is not “primarily soteriological” (Tseng, 127), but is intended to bridge the “epistemological gap” caused by sin, that exists between God and humankind (Ibid.). This implies that the Incarnation was a response to the Fall. Tseng explains, “God’s decision to become incarnate logically follows God’s decision to reverse the fall, thus his Christology during this period leans very clearly toward infralapsarianism, even more so than in his mature Christocentric doctrine of election, in which he claims that Christ eternally incarnandus is the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Tseng, 128).

In addition to the retrieval of a two nature Christology, Barth acquired (from Calvin and the Reformed orthodox) the “notion of faith as the Holy Spirit’s work to effect the subjective possibility [of revelation]” (Tseng, 130). This entails an understanding of humanity as fallen and thus incapable of discerning or responding to the Gospel. The inward work (call) of the Holy Spirit, however, makes the saving response of faith and obedience possible. For Barth, this means, the Holy Spirit ensures that revelation is not only objectively possible but subjectively possible as well (Tseng, 131). “A sinner has no choice between faith and unbelief apart from God since unbelief is inherent to fallen humanity” (Tseng, 134). This means, both belief and unbelief are grounded in God’s veiling and unveiling (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 250) and so are only conceivable with reference to God’s free decision to conceal and reveal (Tseng, 135). This move by Barth involves a shift towards an actualistic doctrine of predestination, whereby, God’s decree of election is understood to occur in eternity, with eternity understood as “eternity in actuality” (Tseng, 136). Now this has some import for Tseng’s thesis, in that, Barth’s infralapsarian argument only applies to God’s eternal decretive will insofar as it is “manifested in present actualities” (Tseng, 141); it does not speak to a static (as Barth would understand it) conception of election and reprobation before the foundation of the world” (Ibid.). In other words, God’s will to overcome sin is the sole foundation for the Incarnation, which clearly leans in the direction of infralapsarianism.

Chapter 5: The Bonn Years

In chapter 5 Tseng examines Barth’s Christology and doctrine of predestination in light of Bruce McCormack’s magisterial work, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936. The first half of the chapter includes a brief summary and exposition of McCormack’s thesis^[9] and exposition of Barth’s work, Anselm: Fides Querns Intellectum. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to CD I/1-2. In the first half Tseng argues that Barth’s work on Anselm is “generally unconcerned with the lapsarian question” (Tseng, 149). The second half argues that Barth’s doctrine of election in CDI/1 continues to move in an infralapsarian direction (Tseng, 163).

According to Tseng, CD I/1 “is the opus that best represents Barth’s theology in 1930-1935” for it is during this period that he hones in on “the Word of God itself (rather than the subjective-objective distinction),” which causes Barth’s doctrines of “Christology and predestination” to “become much more closely interwoven” (Tseng, 160). Furthermore, it is in the context of CD I/1 that we see a shift in emphasis for Barth. Now the emphasis lay in answering the question, “How can theology as human talk be truly talk about God?” (Tseng, 163). Barth answers, it is only possible “on the basis of divine election” (Tseng, 164). Election makes this speech possible insofar as “God Himself acts towards men” (Tseng, 165) and so gathers men and women into the Church. The act of election is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when God creates what is lacking in man (a relationship with his creator) via “His own presence in that creature” so that God in man establishes the divine relationship. God is therefore “the life of the creature” (CD I/1, 450; Tseng, 165). This is the work of election. God makes man capable and willing to receive revelation by creating faith in man, closing any gap between revelation and reconciliation (Tseng, 167). Tseng argues that this indicates an infralapsarian leaning in that the word of God itself (revelation/reconciliation) assumes the supposition of man’s sinfulness (Ibid.).

Tseng also appeals to Barth’s famous threefold distinction of the Word of God,^[10] in particular the word as “proclaimed” (Tseng, 167), as additional evidence of a basically infralapsarian orientation. “Proclamation and the church are earthly media that are inherently secular because believers are sinners” (Ibid.). Scripture is indirect and secular, only becoming revelation through God’s gracious act. Revelation is the logos ensarkos (Tseng, 169). Revelation is incarnation for it bridges the gap between God and man, restoring a once-lost immediacy (Ibid.). And so, according to Tseng, Barth’s basically infralapsarian bent surfaces in the form of the “infralapsarian orientation of Barth’s Christology.” He explains, “God’s will to become incarnate presupposes God’s intention to confront humanity’s sin, without which God’s speech to humanity would have been direct, and the Word incarnate would not have been necessary for human knowledge of God” (Tseng, 171).

Chapter 6: Gottes Gnadenwahl

“Gottes Gnadenwahl” (God’s gracious election) was understood by Bruce McCormack to signal the decisive shift^[11] in Barth’s doctrine of election, but as Tseng points out, McCormack adjusts his thesis a bit, indicating the change “was not immediate but gradual” (Tseng, 177). Tseng’s own contribution includes an examination of “the marriage of Christology and predestination in Gottes Gnadenwahl – the decisively new idea – in relation to Barth’s lapsarian treatment of the two doctrines” (Tseng, 179). Basically, Tseng sets forth a very in depth read of Gottes Gnadenwahl in which he argues that reprobation and election must be understood as mutually interdependent ideas, “in election the purpose and rationality of reprobation are fulfilled and preserved” (Tseng, 202).

In short, in this chapter Tseng demonstrates how Barth’s “Christology and doctrine of election converge throughout his treatment of the reprobation and election of all humankind in Christ as a process of Aufhebung” (Tseng, 210). In other words, in the event of the Incarnation, God becomes human without ceasing to be God and endures reprobation vicariously for all humanity so that all may be elect in Christ (Tseng, 211). This is God’s “act of election.” Obviously, this “act of election” presupposes a fallen humanity. Tseng explains, in “speaking of God as being-in-act, [Barth] begins not with the immanent Trinity, but with the particular person and work of Christ as God’s act of election, which mediates and reveals God to sinners, and since this act of election is to take care of the problem of sin, it carries a deeply infralapsarian aspect” (Tseng, 211).

Chapter 7: CD II/2

What becomes increasingly apparent in this important chapter of Tseng’s work, is a motivation of Barth’s that drove his revision of the classical Reformed categories of “infra” and “supralapsarianism.” By applying a radically actualistic Christocentrism to his doctrine of election, Barth is seeking to jettison any vestige of (what he considers) caprice in the counsel of God (Tseng, 234). This is, in part what led Barth to abolish the decretum absolutum^[12] of Reformed orthodoxy in favor of a doctrine of the Incarnation in which God is wholly revealed as being eternally Deus pro nobis, “the One who loves in freedom” (CD II/2, 3).

It is in the second half volume of the Church Dogmatics that Barth finally puts to paper his famous statement that Jesus Christ “is both the electing God and the elected man in One” (CD II/2, 3). Tseng explains, “Since the incarnate one, who is the electing decree of God, is himself the electing God, to know Jesus is to know the God who elects” (Tseng, 215). Not only do we know the electing God solely through Christ, “human beings are united to Christ on the basis of their consubstantiality with Christ” (Ibid.).^[13] But even in His act of election, according to Tseng, God remains in Himself immutably and eternally what He “is in [His] eternal trinitarian act ad intra” (Tseng, 216).

From the outset Tseng has rightly argued that Barth sought to free the love of God from an “arbitrary” hidden decree. Tseng argues that for Barth, God’s love is founded upon His eternal Triunity and aseity. “God’s covenantal love [with mankind] perfectly corresponds to the intratrinitarian love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this love draws the creature into union with God in Christ” (Tseng, 219). In other words, according to Tseng, God’s ability to love the creature in freedom is a possibility only because of His aseity (Tseng, 217), though we have no access to this idea of God in Himself abstracted from His sovereign decision to be for mankind (Tseng, 218). Tseng notes, this understanding of God’s freedom implies a freedom even from aseity (Tseng, 219). This lack of constraint is what allows God to be for mankind. Additionally, it means that even in God’s decision to take the form of a servant, He still remains “utterly free” (Ibid.). So on this understanding, Deus pro nobis is understood as an act of “self-determination” not “self-constitution” (Tseng, 220).

All of these considerations touch upon Barth’s lapsarian thinking to the extent that Barth understood Incarnation to serve “the purpose of God’s will to seek and create fellowship with the creature” (Tseng, 224). At face-value this would seem to be supralapsarian (unfallen humanity as the object of predestination), but there is more: “this seeking and creating of fellowship already began with creation, and the incarnation, which is for the ‘reconciliation of fallen man,’ is not a continuation but a supersession of the work of creation” (Ibid.). The humanity sought by God is fallen, which indicates a lean towards infralapsarianism.

If we’re to follow Barth as he seeks to purge his doctrine of election of any vestige of arbitrariness or abstract speculation, we are to, according to Tseng, understand Christ Himself to be the “loving covenant with humankind” (Tseng, 225). The concrete expression of God’s love for us, and the “immutable decree” that so determines His being that “He could not be God without it” (Tseng, 226). To say it another way, God could not act “apart from Christ the God man-proleptically present in pretemporal eternity by virtue of divine election to be the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Ibid.). So Christ is the decree of election, but He is also the electing God (Subject) and elected humanity (Object). But the truly revolutionary nature of this formulation is in, according to Tseng, “Barth’s identification of Jesus Christ as electing God” as it applies not only to the Logos asarkos, but to the “Incarnate God-man” (Logos incarnatus) who is “the beginning of all God’s ways and works from and to all eternity” (Tseng, 227).

By using the concept of prolepsis, Tseng (following Hunsinger) argues for an “abiding distinction between Christ’s two natures and thus the subject and object of election in the Person of Christ” (Tseng, 228). And just as Jesus as electing God signaled a significant re-calibration of Reformed Christianity, so does the formulation of Christ as “object of election” represent a dramatic shift as this entails “that the Son of God, and not merely the human Jesus, is the object of election” (Ibid.).

Returning again to the matter of Barth’s lapsarian thinking, Tseng notes that Barth’s Christological formulation reflects a pull towards infralapsarianism with regards to “the logical relations between election and creation” (Ibid.). For election, in this instance, involves the union of humanity with Christ with reference to creation, contra to the supralapsarian position “that election does not presuppose God’s decree of creation” (Tseng, 229). Tseng goes on to argue, along these lines that, “election-in-Christ includes within itself reprobation and judgement” (Tseng, 230). In one sense, Christ is the only reprobate man, but in another sense by way of humanity’s participation in Christ, “the reprobation that Christ alone suffered also applies to all humankind that is in Him” (Tseng, 231). So election was for the purpose of “negating humanity’s sin that negates God” (Tseng, 232). This process of Aufhebung is basically infralapsarian in structure as it envisages humanity’s sin as that which is to be overcome via election. (Ibid.) That said, there is also a supralapsarian aspect present in that “reprobation serves the purpose of election” (Ibid.). To say it another way, “God’s Yes-because it is Aufhebung – presupposes God’s No” (Tseng, 234).

Given this inner tension in Barth’s lapsarian theology, Tseng turns to answer the question: What is meant by “purified” supralapsarianism? (Tseng, 234-235). In short, Barth’s fear is that an “order of decrees” that is composed based on the economy of salvation will leave room for natural theology (Tseng, 235). Tseng contends that Barth mistakenly identified this incipient natural theology in infralapsarianism but not in supralapsarianism which he believed would “[allow] him to seek to know all God’s ways and works as finding their beginning in the election of Jesus Christ” (Ibid.). To say it another way, Barth “purifies” supralapsarianism by re-calibrating it along actualistic Christological lines: “Barth’s solution is that instead of considering election and its object in abstracto as he thinks Reformed orthodoxy does, he insists on treating them in concreto, which for him means in Christo” (Tseng, 237).

Tseng concludes this chapter with an important guiding observation, “Even with regard to the obiectum, however, Barth’s basic lapsarian thesis does not resonate with infralapsarianism in any simple way [emphasis mine]: for him the object of election is first and finally Jesus Christ, who is in himself without sin and became sin for us only by imputation and participation. Sinful humanity is the object of election only by participation in Christ” (Tseng, 240). This sentence is important for a few reasons, but most notably, for its implied hermeneutic. Barth defies formalism. By this I simply mean, Barth defies straightforward categorizations. This is made abundantly clear by Tseng throughout the entirety of his book, and it is in my opinion, one of the great strengths of the work. It presents a forthright argument that seeks to do justice to the complexity and dialectical nature and development of Barth’s theology.

Chapter 8: CD IV/1

“[T]he Trinity-election debate in recent Barth scholarship reflects at least a certain tension in Barth’s own theology.” (Tseng, 280)

For many, chapter 8 will prove to be the most engaging (and frankly enjoyable) section of this book as Tseng has reserved most of his critical remarks of the McCormack proposal for this chapter. Tseng’s approach differs slightly, however, from much of the contemporary secondary literature. Tseng explains, “While much secondary literature has been written on the Christology of §59 [“The Obedience of the Son of God”] in recent years, this chapter focuses instead on §60 in order to gain an understanding of the Christological doctrine of election underlying Barth’s development of the notion of human sin and fallenness” (Tseng, 242-43).

Working from Barth’s Christocentric doctrine of sin, Tseng argues that God’s response to sin “presupposes a basically infralapsarian Christology” (Tseng, 243), but equally as important, Tseng lays out Barth’s understanding of “sin” and “fallen humanity” and why it bears out his claim that Barth leans in a basically infralapsarian direction. He explains, for Barth, knowledge of Christ presupposes knowledge of sin (Ibid.), and our sin can only be understood in light of Christ’s obedience. Quoting R. Scott Rodin, “God did not positively will the fall…, but in His eternal election of Jesus Christ…the Fall is fully assumed as the state of humanity” (Tseng, 244). The infralapsarian contours are obvious. To borrow Barth’s own words, “Access to the knowledge that [man] is a sinner is lacking to man because he is a sinner” (CD IV/1, 360-361). Therefore, knowledge of sin and all that it implies is inextricably Christological (Tseng, 245), if it is to be possible at all. But even more fundamental, with regards to sin itself (according to Barth), is God’s lordship over sin in Christ, whereby God “impressed” sin into His service (while simultaneously rejecting it as an instrument), “contrary to its own nature” so that it “became necessarily an instrument of the divine triumph” (Tseng, 246). Tseng goes on to explain, “Nothingness ‘is not’- it negates God and creation – because God has negated it. Nothingness exists precisely because of God’s absolute rejection and could not have existed apart from God’s ‘nonwilling.’Paradoxically this divine nonwilling becomes the ground whereupon nothingness exists … God rejects nothingness absolutely, and only in rejecting it does God permit it” (Tseng, 246-47; emphasis mine) This understanding of sin as paradoxical and absurd (CD IV/1, 410) undergirds the rest of Barth’s harmartiology. (Tseng, 247) But the question remains, from whence came sin? Barth’s answer, according to Tseng, “It has no basis” or to marshal an earlier concept, it is an “impossible possibility” (Ibid.).^[14]

Returning again to the question of Barth’s lapsarian orientation, it is worth noting that for Barth God is fulfilled in the incarnation, that is, “in His act of choosing to be God with us … in the act of election God has eternally negated humankind’s sin by the incarnation” (Tseng, 248). Tseng explains, “The incarnation fulfills the concept of God because by the incarnation God rejects that which negates God and God’s covenant partner, and remains true to God’s absolute perfection.” (Ibid.) The incarnation, for Barth, was for the purpose of overcoming sin, as the “Aufhebung of reprobation presupposes the sin of all humankind communicated to Christ” (Tsung, 249).^[15]

By the end of the first half of the chapter, Tseng argues that the “Christ-Adam relation is basically infralapsarian in both the Christological and predestinarian senses” (Tseng, 269). That is, election in Christ and the Incarnation as “drawing Adam’s fallen race into participatio Christi” (Ibid.), each point to a basically infralapsarian priority in Barth’s theology.

Tseng asks the question, “How much and which aspects, if any, of traditional substantialist ontology” does Barth retain in his “historicized Christology”? (Tseng, 270). His primary conversation partners in this second half of chapter 8 are Bruce McCormack, George Hunsinger, Paul Nimmo, and Paul Dafyyd Jones. His interactions in this chapter track fairly closely with what has been called the “traditionalist”^[16] camp in Barth studies as he argues that Barth’s “antimetaphysical impulse” did not necessarily lead to the wholesale rejection of the substantialistic metaphysics found in the Chalcedonian Creed (Tseng, 270). He argues instead, with Hunsinger, that Chalcedon served as a regulative framework for Barth as he worked out his Christocentric actualism (Tseng, 271).

Tseng argues that Barth’s continued use of the term “nature”, even as late as CD IV/1, is evidence that he preserved at least certain aspects of substance metaphysics, which in turn even preserves such critical points as the Creator-creature distinction (Tseng, 271-72). Tseng comments, “It would be erroneous to think that Barth would simply reject or redefine everything in substantialist ontology and classical theism in constructing some modern sort of ‘ontology’” (Tseng, 273).^[17]

Tseng turns his attention specifically to McCormack’s proposal that “election-Incarnation constitutes God’s triune being: The Trinity is a function of and logically follows God’s decision to be incarnate” (Tseng, 274). This proposal, according to Tseng, “raises some difficult questions when we take into account what Barth has said about history” (Ibid.). But even more interesting, the difficulties notwithstanding, McCormack’s historicized Christology does seem to lean in an infralapsarian direction as “the incarnation is necessarily bound up with fallen history” (Tseng, 275). So that, “God’s electing grace could not have been apart from or without regard to the Fallen Adamic history that has been taken up into Christ and in which Christ participates” (Tseng, 276).

Tseng admits that those who hold to the “traditionalist” position in the Trinity-election debate may feel the pull of Christological Supralapsarianism (Tseng, 276-77) The problem is, as Tseng again recognizes, “if the covenant partner to whom God has pledged faithfulness, the obiectum praedestinationis, is sinful humankind – homo lapsus – would this not imply that by incarnation God actually took sin into God’s very own being-in-act? Does the incarnation not make the Son of God a sinner and a reprobate?” (Tseng, 277). Tseng finds the solution to this problem in positing a fully self-existent Trinity prior to the act of election, making election a free act (Ibid.). Furthermore, given the amount of evidence amassed in favor of his central thesis, Tseng concludes that election and incarnation must “presuppose the fallenness of humanity” (Tseng, 278).

In the final subsection of this chapter, Tseng offers a response to Paul Dafydd Jones’ work, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. While Tseng finds much to praise in Jones’ work, he does take issue with Jones’ dismissal of the term “nature” in Barth’s mature Christology (Tseng, 282). Tseng agrees with Hunsinger, that the central problem with Jones’ thesis is a historicization of God’s being that leads to the “contingent” properties of God modifying the “non-contingent” along with a historicization of “Christ’s human nature in much the same way as to render the notion of nature completely meaningless on its own apart from the notions of history and act” (Tseng, 283). He then goes on to criticize Jones for not interacting with §60 of the CD “The Pride and Fall of man” (CD IV/1, 358-478) and for failing to strike out a via media between a radically anti-metaphysical Barth and a qualified substantialist Barth (Tseng, 285), but positively, he recognizes that on Jones’ read of Barth, humanity’s sinfulness is presupposed in the act of election (Tseng, 286). Again, the infralapsarian orientation is obvious.

Conclusion

In his conclusion to this fine work, Tseng comments that the lapsarian problem is not some relic of arid scholasticism,^[18] but has profound implications for the life of Christ’s Church as “it struggles with the perplexing reality of humankind’s fallenness in light of God’s universal sovereignty and immutable holiness” (Tseng, 295). This sentiment will likely deeply resonate with many who’re not content with the current state of much of evangelical theology. As a non-Barthian myself, I appreciated this book and the questions it raised. Not simply for the challenges it raises to my reading of Karl Barth, but for the challenges it raises to my understanding of what it means that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:4-5).

This is a densely argued and extremely detailed book. If you’re looking for a guide to help you work through some of Barth’s major works, this book may prove helpful. Tseng’s central thesis is also very interesting and provocative to say the least. And though Tseng does soften it a bit at the outset (Barth’s theology is only basically infralapsarian) the careful distinctions he introduces along the way are helpful in parsing out the trajectory of Barth’s theological development. Additionally this book will be of interest not only to those already invested in the study of Barth’s theology, but also for those who’re interested in the history of the lapidarian debates—they will find much to chew on in the first part of Tseng’s work.

But most interesting, to me at least, is the polemical edge this work has as it is an important foray into the Trinity-election debate in Barth circles. And while I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, particularly as he brings them to bear on the present discussion, he does make some interesting arguments that need to be engaged. While this book may not change the landscape of Barth studies, it will no doubt be a lasting contribution for the simple fact that Tseng is so comprehensive in his exposition of Barth’s theology, and detailed in his outlining of one of the “chief factors” driving Barth’s theological development.

^[1] Shao Kai Tseng, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology: Origins and Development 1920-1953 (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2016).

^[2] It is clear from his own historical work in the Church Dogmatics (particularly in CD II/2, 127-145) that Barth had no intention of merely receiving the title “Supralapsarian.”

^[3] The matter of how one ought to translate “Aufhebung” is notoriously difficult. Garrett Green has argued that Aufhebung be rendered as “sublimation” though even that translation brings with it certain difficulties (see Karl Barth, On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion, trans. Garret Green [New York: Continuum, 2006] vii-xi, 1-29).

^[4] McCormack in his Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 is particularly helpful. He remarks, “But for God to be known, in the sense that He’s possessable by His revelation, is impossible. For in that moment He would cease to be Lord over His revelation, He would cease to be God. In other words, “Revelation must remain distinct from its medium” (McCormack, 249). Therefore, God can only be known only indirectly (Ibid.). “He hides Himself and remains hidden in the medium of revelation” (Ibid.). The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” It is the event of revelation. It is an impossible possibility that the veil (means of concealing) becomes the medium (means of revelation). McCormack explains, “Revelation thus has the character of an event. That the veil is made transparent for faith, that it truly becomes a medium, requires an act of God. God is the Subject of revelation and must always remain so” (Ibid. 250).

^[5] “‘Creation’ denotes this prelapsarian state of humanity, which is its ‘Origin’ (Ursprung) that even today still ‘evokes in us a memory of our habitation with the Lord of heaven and earth’” (Tseng, 90).

^[6] Note the basically Kantian dualism between Creation and World, eternal and temporal.

^[7]The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” In other words, the means of concealing (veil) becomes the means of revealing (the medium). The Impossible-possible dialectic is itself “deeply eschatological” (Tseng, 101) due in part to the idea that the eternal (revelation for example) cannot be directly identified with the temporal. Therefore, “revelation is in history, but it is not of history.” See McCormack, Critically Realistic, pp. 241-88.

^[8] Tseng notes that at this phase of Barth’s development, it is impossible to clearly identify his lapsarian position in a straightforward manner given his lack of explicit dogmatic reflection on the Incarnation (Tseng, 110).

^[9] Tseng sums up the basic thrust of McCormack’s thesis nicely: “Part of McCormack’s paradigm is the thesis that Barth’s theology has always remained dialectical even after the so-called turn to analogy, and that the Anselm book with its emphasis on the analogia entis did not give rise to any essentially new methodology or theological material in Barth’s thinking” (Tseng, 150). But as Tseng goes on to argue, “To treat Anselm as a key to understanding the shifts in the methods and contents of Barth’s theology is thus to miss out a crucial aspect of his theological development” (Tseng, 159).

^[10] Preached, written, and revealed (CD I/1, 98-140).

^[11] The shift is Barth’s indentification of Jesus as “electing God” and the “correlation of election and reprobation with the crucifixion of Jesus” (Tseng, 178).

^[12] A decretum absolutum would entail a non-Christological (i.e. natural theological) revelation of God. That is a problem for Barth. Just as understanding humanity as the “obiectum praedestinationis” is to understand humanity in abstracto, and thus non-Christologically (Tseng, 236).

^[13] Tseng is here in agreement with George Hunsinger’s thesis that Barth’s Christology was “basically Chalcedonian.” While he does footnote Bruce McCormack’s essay, “Karl Barth’s Historicized Christology: Just how ‘Chalcedonian’ is it?” See Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 201-35. He does not spend much time interacting with its central claim that CD II/2 saw Barth discard the Greek metaphysical categories of “person,” “nature” in favor of his actualism and its decidedly anti-metaphysical bent (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 201-202). Tseng’s detailed critique of McCormack’s proposal appears in chapter 8.

^[14] Though by CD II/1 Barth’s doctrine of sin undergoes a significant revision and is understood as the “paradox of sin” (Tseng, 248).

^[15] The shape of the Incarnation, or the way in which if fulfills the “concept of God” is humility (Tseng, 250). And just as God is fulfilled through the humiliation of Christ, so the very “concept of man” (CD IV/1, 419; Tseng, 248) is contradicted by the pride of sin. There is an absurdity to the “human act of sin” (Tseng, 250). And so we know human pride only in light of Christ’s humility, this is how Barth conceives of the epistemic ground of our knowledge of sin. If Christ negates sin through His humble suffering, it was man’s pride (sin) which made the cross necessary in the first place.

^[16] Briefly, “traditionalist” and “revisionist” are terms coined by George Hunsinger to denote the two main approaches to Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity and election. This distinction has precedence primarily in T.F. Torrance’s differentiation of “evangelical” and “rationalistic” Calvinism with the “traditionalists” falling under the “evangelical calvinist” and the “revisionists” lumped in with the “rationalistic Calvinists.” For Hunsinger, the “traditionalist” approach is more faithful to the “actual textual Barth” while the “revisionist” relies upon deductive reasoning to arrive at conclusions alien to Barth’s dogmatic intent. For a critical review of Hunsinger’s proposal see Matthias Gockel, How to Read Karl Barth with Charity: A Critical Reply to George Hunsinger (Modern Theology 32:2 April 2016, 259–67).

^[17] Whether or not Barth did, in CD IV/1, historicize (or actualize) the category of “nature” is up for debate. But briefly consider the perspective of one of Tseng’s conversation partners, “The ‘essence’ of God therefore is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the divine humiliation which takes place in the history of Jesus Christ. And the “essence” of the human is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the exaltation that takes place in the history of Jesus Christ….God is what God does-and humanity is what Jesus does….And it can be this [the exaltation of humanity in the exaltation of Christ] because what it means to be human has been decided in eternity by means of our election in Jesus Christ [emphasis mine]. We are ‘chosen in Him’ – this is a statement pregnant with ontological significance” (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 239-40).

^[18] To borrow a term of recent vintage.

Panel Members

• Jim Cassidy
• Camden Bucey

Bibliography

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy