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).

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.

In Episode 45 we continue our new series on the Book of Revelation.

Your hosts, Rob and Bob, continue to discuss the Book of Revelation chapter 5.

The second vision of the Book of Revelation brings us into the throne room of God where all the realms of creation both in heaven and on earth do nothing but give glory to God day and night. John sees a continual and repetitious act of all of creation demonstrating its reverence for their Creator. They cry out glory, glory, glory to Him who was and is and is to come. And as the elders fall off of their thrones prostrate before the throne they cast their crown before the throne demonstrating that though the church reigns with Christ we are humble before the slain Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. As we work our way through the vision questions remain. What does the scroll and the seals mean? Why does John weep and what role is Christ taking upon Himself?

We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound.

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Your hosts, Rob and Bob, begin a new series on the Book of Revelation with an introduction to the book as a whole using the opening chapter.

As one of us said somewhere at sometime, “The Book of Revelation has often made people either obsess over the details of the book or else close their eyes, hide in a corner and pretend it doesn’t exist. Should we just shrug our shoulders and wait till we can ask Jesus about it in Heaven? Do we need to devise secret codes in order to break the cipher of the book or is it to be seen as a literal future historical journal?”

We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In Episode 39 we discuss Righteous Lot, the nephew of Abraham.

Your hosts, Rob and Bob, consider another portion of Genesis. This one dealing with the biblical character of Lot. Is Lot meant to be used as an example of how not to live your life He lived in the wrong place, he didn’t raise his children right, and his wife leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. But, listening ears want to know, was Lot really such a bad guy? How many people today live like Lot? Can Lot in some way be used as an example to inspire us?

We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound.

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Episode 38 deals with Jesus’ teachings to his disciples in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 commonly called the Olivet Discourse.

Your hosts, Rob and Bob, following up on their series considering Dispensationalism and jump right into a familiar, but often times misunderstood portion of God’s word.

Why is this passage so important to Dispensationalists? Why is their approach to it inadequate? What is Jesus talking about? Why is the Temple so central to Jesus teaching here? And why would the disciples be concerned about the Temple? Why would the destruction of the Temple be so devastating to the disciples? When would these things take place and how does this affect Christians today? How do Reformed folk understand this passage as a whole?

We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound.

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In episode 25, your hosts Rob and Bob, pick up our discussion of Dispensationalism. Today we discuss the hermeneutics of Dispensational Theology and some of the differences with Covenant Theology.

What is hermeneutics? How do Dispensationalist interpret the Bible? How does that differ from Covenant Theology? How do we misunderstand Dispensationalism? How do Dispensationalists misunderstand those who call themselves Reformed? Why do we continue to misunderstand each other?

We’ll discuss these and other related questions in this episode of Theology Simply Profound.

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace.

Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Panel Members

• Jim Cassidy
• Jeff Waddington
• Camden Bucey

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy