If I have any critique of Van Til, it is that he could have done better connecting those dots. He observes things in people’s thought with uncanny penetration and insight. And he will often state that their position entails something else, often an unwelcomed theological conclusion. And he seems to be right when he draws the dots. However, he often leaves us dangling and does not always connect the dots explicitly. If we can improve on Van Til anywhere it is here: connect the dots more explicitly, while penetrating deeply and critiquing transcendentally (as Van Til did).

An example of what I am talking about is found in his The Theology of James Daane. There Van Til says that Arminians cannot do justice to the idea of an infallible Bible (p. 24). On the surface that sounds absurd because many Arminians believe in infallibility. But his point is that once you deny an absolutely sovereign God who stands back of all history and events, direct inspiration and the assurance that human authors are kept from error fails. In other words, a god that is not absolutely sovereign cannot have contact with creation, and even if he could he cannot speak with any level of absolute certainly. But he does not write that large with explicit clarity. He does not walk us through the logic of why “A” necessarily entails “B” (not just in this instance, but in almost every system of thought he critiques).

I think that is how we can advance Van Til today. Not by changing or toning down what he said (as some “Van Tillians” would have it), but by making more explicit and lucid what he did say.

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).

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

Option #1: God’s sovereignty is limited by man’s freedom. Man’s moral and rational capacities are withdrawn from the eternal decree of God and given an independent and autonomous significance and existence.

Option #2: Man’s freedom is eliminated by God’s sovereignty. Man’s moral and rational capacities are wholly determined by the eternal decree of God and cease to have any real significance or existence at all.

The first option is correctly labeled “Arminianism.” The second option is often thought to be the teaching of “Calvinism,” but is actually in fundamental disagreement with Calvinism. It is a kind of fatalism or determinism, which Calvinism has properly rejected full force. Both options fail to maintain the basic Creator-creature distinction, which has led to the assumption that God’s freedom and man’s freedom are qualitatively the same. Hence, the zero-sum game. Accordingly, where one is free the other is not. So while options 1 and 2 seem to affirm totally opposite positions, they are actually both situated on the same rationalistic spectrum, just at opposite ends.

Calvinism rejects this rationalistic spectrum entirely and provides us with a third option that is most consistent and faithful to God’s revelation in Scripture.

Option #3: Man’s freedom is established by God’s sovereignty. Man’s moral and rational capacities are created and maintained within the eternal decree of God and therefore have real existence and significance.

Whereas options 1 and 2 begin with man’s reasoning, Calvinism begins with God’s Word. It does not claim to solve the mystery, but properly relates God’s sovereignty and human freedom as friends, not enemies. God’s sovereignty does not eliminate man’s freedom, nor does man’s freedom limit God’s sovereignty, instead God’s sovereignty establishes man’s freedom.

This is encapsulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (3.1).

Herman Bavinck also avoids the rationalism that would set God’s freedom and man’s freedom in opposition to one another, rather than understanding the former to “create” and “maintain” the latter.

“If God and his human creatures can only be conceived as competitors, and if the one can only retain his freedom and independence at the expense of the other, then God has to be increasingly restricted both in knowedge and in will. Pelagianism, accordingly, banishes God from his world. It leads both to Deism and atheism and enthrones human arbitrariness and folly. Therefore, the solution of the problem must be sought in another direction. It must be sought in the fact that God—because he is God and the universe is his creation—by the infinitely majestic activity of his knowing and willing, does not destroy but instead creates and maintains the freedom and independence of his creatures” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:376-77, emphasis mine).

“The fact that things and events, including the sinful thoughts and deeds of men, have been eternally known and fixed in that counsel of God does not rob them of their own character but rather establishes and guarantees them all, each in its own kind and nature and in its own context and circumstances. Included in that counsel of God are sin and punishment, but also freedom and responsibility, sense of duty and conscience, and law and justice” (The Wonderful Works of God, 145).

Geerhardus Vos likewise understands God’s sovereign decree not to destroy or limit but to establish and ground man’s freedom.

“God’s decree grounds the certainty of His free knowledge and likewise the occurring of free actions. Not foreknowledge as such but the decree on which it rests makes free actions certain” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:20).

“…God can realize His decrees with reference to His creatures without needing to limit their freedom in a deterministic manner. Their free acts are not uncertain and the certainty to which these acts are connected is not brought about by God in a materialistic, pantheistic, or rationalistic manner. As the omnipresent and omnipotent One, the personal One, He can so govern man that man can do nothing without His will and permission and still do everything of himself in full freedom. When God sanctifies someone, He is at work in the depths of his being where the issues of life are, and then the sanctified will acts of itself and unconstrained outwardly no less freely than if it never had been under the working of God. The work of God does not destroy the freedom of the creature but is precisely its foundation” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:90-91, emphasis mine).

Cornelius Van Til employs the archetype-ectype distinction and the Reformed covenantal structure to uphold both God’s freedom and man’s freedom in their proper relation.

“Our view of man as the spiritual production of God points to God as the archetype of all human freedom. Human freedom must be like God’s freedom, since man resembles God, and it must be different from God’s freedom since man is a finite creature. In God, then, lies the archetype of human freedom. … We are fashioned after God and our freedom after God’s freedom. But never ought we to lose sight of the fact that our freedom is distinguished from God’s freedom by reason of our finitude” (“Freedom,” 4).

“We found … that the Reformed covenant theology remained nearest to this Biblical position. Other theories of the will go off on either of two byways, namely, that of seeking an unwarranted independence for man, or otherwise of subjecting man to philosophical necessitarianism. Reformed theology attempts to steer clear of both these dangers; avoiding all forms of Pelagianizing and of Pantheizing thought. It thinks to have found in the covenant relation of God with creation the true presentation of the Biblical concept of the relation of God to man. Man is totally dependent upon God and exists with all creation for God. Yet his freedom is not therewith abridged but realized” (“The Will in Its Theological Relations,” 77, emphasis mine).

For more on this listen to this episode of Christ the Center in which we dive deeper into this topic with a consideration of Van Til’s representational principle.

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).

Irrationalism is modern critical thinking in the tradition of Kant. Irrationalism rejects any form of ultimate authority and therefore must have chance as its ultimate basis. If there is no God back of time and history whose plan is absolutely necessary then chance must rule. This is the logical descendant of the pre-Kantian (rationalistic) philosophy. Van Til explains:

It is this conception of the ultimacy of time and of pure factuality on which modern philosophy, particularly since the days of Kant, has laid such great stress. And it is because of the general recognition of the ultimacy of chance that rationalism of the sort that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz represented, is out of date. It has become customary to speak of post-Kantian philosophy as irrationalistic. It has been said that Kant limited reason so as to make room for faith. … In the first place the irrationalism of our day is the direct lineal descendent of the rationalism of previous days. The idea of pure chance has been inherent in every form of non-Christian thought in the past. It is the only logical alternative to the position of Christianity according to which the plan of God is back of all. (Christian Apologetics, 163-64).

It is often assumed that Kant provides a kind of Copernican revolution in the history of philosophy, overturning every Scholastic table that came before him. But Van Til does not see it that way. Kantian irrationalism is just another form of rationalism. Kant and Descartes are not enemies, but rather twins struggling in the womb of mother rationalism.

So, how then is irrationalism actually rationalism? Before we answer that, we first need to say more about what Van Til means by irrationalism understood in the tradition of Kant.[1] Another phrase we can use for this tradition is “critical thought” (hereafter CT). CT begins with a basic dualism between the noumenal and phenomenal realms. The phenomenal realm is everything we can perceive with the senses. We can only know this realm through the categories of the mind. Therefore, there is a “contribution” that man makes to knowing objective reality. What he can know is only that which is phenomenal. The noumenal realm is, however, directly unknowable by man. It contains things which cannot be perceived – the things of faith (God, being, etc.). In his critique of pure reason Kant, as Van Til says above, limited reason to make room for faith. Man can reason only according to what he can know in the phenomenal realm. Faith then is for those things in the noumenal realm which cannot be known.

It is with regard to the noumenal realm that Van Til speaks about irrationalism. Irrationalism does not mean that man does not use reason. Rather, irrationalism is the idea that there is a place (the noumenal realm) that reason cannot go. It is the realm of ineffable mystery. It is the realm of the unknown. The noumenal realm cannot be known, at least not directly.[2] This means that no source of ultimate authority can be accessed by us living in the here and now. The final arbiter of all truth is inaccessible to us.

Now we can begin to see how irrationalism is really just rationalism. If there is no access to the transcendent realm, then there is no direct knowledge of God or his revelation. That means that man along with his reason is completely on his own. He can speak about facts without any reference to an ultimate and final authority. In this way man is autonomous and is able to interpret reality quite apart from or without reference to God. Irrationalism “boxes out” the noumenal realm where transcendent truth is found. This allows fallen man to interpret reality according to his own sinful reason. Van Til gives a great illustration of this situation which is worth quoting at length here:

In the second place modern irrationalism has not in the least encroached upon the domain of the intellect as the natural man thinks of it. Irrationalism has merely taken possession of that which the intellect, by its own admission, cannot in any case control. Irrationalism has a secret treaty with rationalism by which the former cedes to the latter so much of its territory as the latter can at any given time find the forces to control. Kant’s realm of the noumenal has, as it were, agreed to yield so much of its area to the phenomenal, as the intellect by its newest weapons can manage to keep in control. Moreover, by the same treaty irrationalism has promised to keep out of its own territory any form of authority that might be objectionable to the autonomous intellect. The very idea of pure factuality or chance is the best guarantee that no true authority, such as that of God as the Creator and Judge of men, will ever confront man. If we compare the realm of the phenomenal as it has been ordered by the autonomous intellect to a clearing in a large forest we may compare the realm of the noumenal to that part of the same forest which has not yet been laid under contribution by the intellect. The realm of mystery is on this basis simply the realm of that which is not yet known. And the service of irrationalism to rationalism may be compared to that of some bold huntsman in the woods who keeps all lions and tigers away from the clearing. This bold huntsman covers the whole of the infinitely extended forest ever keeping away all danger from the clearing. This irrationalistic Robin Hood is so much of a rationalist that he virtually makes a universal negative statement about what can happen in all future time. In the secret treaty spoken of he has assured the intellect of the autonomous man that the God of Christianity cannot possibly exist and that no man therefore need to fear the coming of a judgment. If the whole course of history is, at least in part, controlled by chance, then there is no danger that the autonomous man will ever meet with the claims of authority as the Protestant believes in it. For the notion of authority is but the expression of the idea that God by his counsel controls all things that happen in the course of history. (Christian Apologetics, 164-65).

In short, irrationalism (or pushing all forms of ultimately authority, i.e., God, into an unknowable realm) serves rationalism by pleading ignorance (“makes a universal negative statement “) about time. It knows nothing about the meaning of history (because it does not know God whose plan stands back of history) nor does it know what the future holds (because it knows no God and his plan back of the future). The true meaning and significance of time (whether past or future) is inaccessible to man. Therefore time (whether past or future) only has the meaning that autonomous man would assign to it. That is to give to man’s mind a quasi-divine status, thus breaking down the distinction between the Creator and creature. And that is the heart and soul of rationalism.

[1] Before we get to that, it is necessary to briefly acknowledge that the interpretation of Kant is quite variegated. I am no Kant scholar, and neither was Van Til. So, here I recognize that what I am about to say can legitimately be quibbled with by Kant scholars who would argue on the lines of a different school of interpretation. Our purpose here, however, is not to enter those debates but simply to explain what Van Til understood by modern thought after Kant.

[2] The noumenal realm if it is to be known can be known only indirectly. That is, by way of deduction from what can be known.

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.

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.

In this chapter Van Til offers an acute criticism of Old Princeton on this issue. He likens the Old Princeton understanding of reason, and the mode of apologetics that flows from it, to Rome and Arminianism. He makes this connection under the sub-heading “Less Consistent Calvinism” (pp. 101ff).

It may help here to underscore what Van Til is not saying in this section. He is not attacking Hodge’s or Warfield’s (hereafter: H&W) theology or their epistemology, as such. This is evident in part by a section (pp. 94–97) in which he offers quote after quote from Hodge on his doctrine of the incapacity of the natural man to know God. He also offers a quote from Warfield to the same effect (pp. 101-102). To be clear, Van Til is not saying that H&W hold to an Arminian theology. Rather, what he is doing is pointing up an inconsistency between the Old Princeton theology (which he praises) and the Old Princeton apologetic (which he criticizes as being Arminian). In short, the criticism concerns what he perceives to be an inconsistency and incongruity between their theology and apologetic.

To narrow the focus of the criticism, the reason why Van Til charges H&W’s apologetic with Arminianism is because of how they relate reason to revelation. After a section where he praises H&W for their very Calvinian doctrine of man’s knowledge of God, Van Til turns to critique: “It would seem that we have dropped from this high plane to the level of evangelicalism when Hodge speaks of the office of reason in matters of religion” (p. 102). In other words, Hodge presents us with a way of relating reason to revelation that is more consistent with an Arminian view than a Calvinistic one. He goes on to explain:

First [Hodge] shows that reason is necessary as a tool for the reception of revelation. About this point there can be little cause for dispute. “Revelations cannot be made to brutes or to idiots.” Second, Hodge argues that “Reason must judge of the credibility of a revelation.” . . . Third, Hodge continues, “Reason must judge of the evidences of a revelation.” As “faith involves assent, and assent is conviction produced by evidence, it follows that faith without evidence is either irrational or impossible.” (pp. 102-103)

Van Til does not disagree with all that Hodge says here (evidenced in his comment in the first point). But Van Til does take exception to the idea of reason being a judge of revelation’s credibility and evidences. Therefore, the believer may not assume reason’s competency to judge revelation:

But the unbeliever does not accept the doctrine of his creation in the image of God. It is therefore impossible to appeal to the intellectual and moral nature of men, as men themselves interpret this nature, and say that it must judge of the credibility and evidence of revelation. For if this is done, we are virtually telling the natural man to accept just so much and no more of Christianity as, with his perverted concept of human nature, he cares to accept. (pp. 103-104)

Van Til’s point is simple: because the unbeliever does not accept the fact that he is created in the image of God, he is in no position to rightly interpret the evidence of revelation. What is worse, we are allowing the unbeliever to be the final judge over revelation, which means he will accept only what he wants to accept – and nothing more. If we allow him to use his own fallen reason the unbeliever “will certainly assume the position of judge with respect to the credibility and evidence of revelation, but he will also certainly find the Christian religion incredible because impossible and the evidence for it always inadequate” (p. 104).

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Van Til actually concedes that H&W believe this:

Hodge’s own teaching on the blindness and hardness of the natural man corroborates this fact. To attribute to the natural man the right to judge by means of his reason of what is possible or impossible, or to judge by means of his moral nature of what is good or evil, is virtually to deny the “particularism” which, as Hodge no less than Warfield, believes to be the very hall-mark of a truly biblical theology. (ibid.)

So, where is the rub? It is precisely here:

The main difficulty with the position of Hodge on this matter of the point of contact, then, is that it does not clearly distinguish between the original and the fallen nature of man. Basically, of course, it is Hodge’s intention to appeal to the original nature of man as it came forth from the hands of its creator. But he frequently argues as though that original nature can still be found as active in the “common consciousness” of men. (p. 105)

And then finally:

Now it is quite in accord with the genius of Hodge’s theology to appeal to the “old man” in the sinner and altogether out of accord with his theology to appeal to the “new man” in the sinner as though he would form a basically proper judgment on any question. Yet Hodge has failed to distinguish clearly between these two. Accordingly he does not clearly distinguish the Reformed from the evangelical and Roman Catholic views of the point of contact. (pp. 105-106)

In summary, Van Til is not lambasting the Old Princeton theology here. He is not even lambasting the Old Princeton epistemology. What he is critical of, however, is how H&W’s inconsistency in their apologetic approach and the question of a point of contact. On the theoretical level H&W are spot on about man’s fallen nature and the need for regeneration and special revelation to properly interpret all things. But, they fall to inconsistency in that they fail to apply their doctrine of man and sin appropriately to the post-fall use of reason. In short, the apologete cannot assume a “common consciousness” between believer and unbeliever.

H&W’s theology was so faithfully Calvinistic that we should be baffled over why they switch to an Arminian apologetic. At the same time, however, we should not think that Van Til is calling H&W Arminian. He is not. He is not even saying that they contained within their thinking a mixture of Calvinism and Arminianism. Van Til’s critique is not of their theology, nor of their epistemology (see my past post “No Critic of Old Princeton?”). The criticism is exclusively on the level of application; that is, the failure to consistently apply their (good) theology to their (inconsistent) apologetic.

A New Dualism: Cold Orthodoxy and Pietism

Herman Bavinck provides a helpful summary of the dichotomy that resulted,

On the one hand, a cold orthodoxy emerged that interpreted faith only in terms of doctrine, and on the other hand, a Pietism that valued devoutness above truth. This dualism in religion, church, and theology was strengthened by a twofold orientation of the newer philosophy, that, after Descartes and Bacon, eventually ended up in dogmatism and empiricism (“Philosophy of Religion (Faith),” 26).

This new dualism sat uncomfortably with many—but was a new reconciliation even possible within the system of Enlightenment thinking? The attempted solution by Immanuel Kant would argue, No.

Kant’s epistemology was especially influenced by the criticism of David Hume, so that “he turned his back on dogmatism and became convinced that rationalism in theology and metaphysics was untenable” (27). In turn, he divided reality into two worlds, the noumena and the phenomena. The noumena consisted of things as they are in themselves, while the phenomena, in distinction, included things as they are knowable by the senses. Kant argued that genuine scholarship and science was only possible in the world of the phenomena since it alone is accessible to the human mind. The transcendental and supernatural world of the noumena was inaccessible and all proofs adduced for it end up in an antinomy.

Kant’s (Unsuccessful) Attempt to Save Faith

But Kant did not want to surrender the supernatural, nor the concept of faith, yet he knew neither could rest on cogent reasons and proofs of rationalism. He needed another, firmer foundation, which he discovered in the writings of Rousseau, the father of Romanticism. Rousseau, conscious of the sharp contrast between nature and culture of his time, “became the enthusiastic preacher of the gospel of nature.” Bavinck goes on,

In [Rousseau’s] teaching about society and state, education and religion, he turned from the corrupt culture of his time to the truth and simplicity of nature. In all areas, the historical had to make room for what was originally given, [abandoning] society for innocent nature, positive Christianity for natural religion, the false reasons of the mind for the impulse of feeling. Certainty about the truths of religion was also to be found in feeling. … For him the final certainty of these truths of the faith [including the existence of God] are not to be found in the theoretical but in the practical sphere, in the original and immediate witness of feeling that is deeper and much more reliable than the reasoning mind. Each person is assured in his heart about a supersensory world (27).

This idea would have a tremendous influence on the philosophy of Kant (and the theology of feeling of Schleiermacher among others). Specifically what Kant learned from Rousseau was that “religious truths possess a different certainty for people than truths of the mind or reason, of science or philosophy.” Religion and morality contain their own kind of certainty, that is, a certainty that is distinct from the certainty of natural phenomena. With this being the case, “metaphysics does not need to provide all kinds of proofs for God’s existence, the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul. Moreover, science could then freely go its own way and be bound only by its own character and laws” (28). In short, the certainty of the noumena (religion) rests on a different foundation than the certainty of the phenomena (science). Herein is the dualism of Kant’s philosophy: there are two, separate foundations of a two-story reality constructed of the noumena and the phenomena.

Kant, however, does not adopt Rousseau’s idea that the foundation of the noumena is feeling; instead, he posits the foundation as “practical reason, the moral nature of man. In his conscience, man feels himself bound to a categorical, unconditional, absolute imperative” (28). The certainty of the world of the noumena rests on the foundation of man’s morality as he finds in himself the “thou shalt” of the moral law, which transcends all other powers in nature. From here, Kant argues, man can find certainty of other noumena realities: the freedom of his will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God.

If this moral world order is to be true reality and not an illusion, and if it is to triumph one day over all that is great and strong and mighty in this world, then man must be free in his actions and his soul must be immortal to receive his reward in the hereafter, and God must exist in order to reconcile in eternal harmony the terrible opposites between virtue and luck that exist on earth. These are not conclusions legitimately deduced from preceding scientific premises, but they are postulates put forth by man according to his moral nature. He cannot prove, he cannot demonstrate, that it is all true, but he is subjectively certain of it; he believes and acts as if it were true; he does not know, but he believes, and he has moral grounds for his belief” (28).

The Destruction of Faith in Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel

At this point, we have come far afield from the Reformation and biblical view of faith as including both knowledge and trust in an organic unity. Kant sought a safer place for faith by relinquishing all elements of knowledge about divine truth and relocating it solely to a supernatural order, but, ironically, in so doing he destroyed it.

Schleiermacher will move in a similar direction in theology, having basically the same epistemological commitments as Kant, but instead of a moral/ethical direction, he will move toward the mystical sense of absolute feeling. In distinction from Kant, Schleiermacher “held that willing and acting and knowing do not disclose the supersensible world, because this willing also moves in opposites and never reaches unity. This unity, enjoyed only in feeling, which precedes thinking and willing and is completely independent of absolute power” (29).

In the opposite direction of both Kant (ethical) and Schleiermacher (mystical) was the German Idealist, Hegel (speculative/rationalism). He elevated reason to a cosmic principle with the progress of history being the absolute Spirit or Mind realizing itself. Religion, then, is merely a developmental stage in the movement of absolute thought in history.

Van Til’s Critique of Kant

Cornelius Van Til wrote, “If Kant’s position were to be retained, both knowledge and faith would be destroyed.” That is, not only does Kant fail to arrive at any true knowledge in the realm of the noumena by way of practical reason and faith, but equally so he fails to arrive at any true knowledge in the realm of the phenomena by way of theoretical reason. Despite his desire to salvage God, morality, and all else that belongs to the noumena, he makes wreckage of the noumena along with the phenomena. After totaling both realms on the speedway of human autonomy, Kant is left with an irreparable theory of knowledge.

The reason for this totalizing failure is his starting point in man, rather than in God’s revelation. Kant imprisoned God to the noumena and made the link between the noumena and phenomena not God’s self-revelation but man’s sense of morality. Accordingly, God is ignorant of the phenomena and man is enthroned over the natural world as an autonomous interpreter of the facts of the phenomena. Both God and the world are man-contained, dependent on him and relative to him. Man does not think God’s thoughts after him, that is, in accordance with and submission to the comprehensive knowledge of God, but comes to the natural world as if it was comprised of uninterpreted, brute facts. Man has therefore replaced God in Kant’s theory as the world’s primary interpreter and definer. Van Til writes,

Knowledge and faith are not contradictories but complementaries. Kant did not make room for faith, because he destroyed the God on whom alone faith is to be fixed. It is true of course, that Kant spoke of a God as possibly existing. This God, however, could not be more than a finite God, since he at least did not have, or did not need to have, original knowledge of the phenomenal world. Kant thought that man could get along without God in the matter of scientific knowledge. It is thus that the representational principle which we saw to be the heart of the Christian theistic theory of knowledge is set aside. If man knows certain facts whether or not God knows these facts, as would be the case if the Kantian position were true, man’s knowledge would be done away with. Whatever sort of God may remain, on Kant’s view, he is not the supreme interpretive category of human experience (A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 109; see esp. pp. 106-13 for his full critique).

No One Can Serve Two Masters

On the basis of God’s self-revelation in Scripture, Bavinck counters the dualism of Kantian philosophy by returning to the central unity in man. He argues that Kant’s ethicisim, Schleiermacher’s mysticism and Hegel’s rationalism suffer from “a significant one-sidedness” and “diminish man’s universal character.” These anti-theistic systems divide man in two and separate what belongs together. The result is that true religion is lost since it is reduced to either moral duty or aesthetic emotion or a philosophic view. “But according to the Christian, confession [sic] religion is other than and higher than all those views; religion must not just be something in one’s life, but everything. Jesus demands that we love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. In our thinking and living, there can be no division between God and the world, between religion and culture; no one can serve two masters” (29).

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.

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.

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.

Paul does not discuss questions of “fact” and views of “logic” as such. For Paul, there are no facts as such and there is no logic as such. Paul does not ask the Greeks to consider whether the facts might not be considered as probably or even possibly pointing toward the teleology of Scripture rather than to a teleology such as Plato and Aristotle offer. In effect, Paul asserts on the authority of Christ that no facts of the space-time world can exist and no logic can function except on the presupposition that whatever things the triune God of Scripture says are true.

Classical modes of defending the faith, in general, seek to prove the faith on the basis of some (as it is supposed) given standard of truth which is agreeable to both believer and unbeliever. Classical Apologists (hereafter, CA) say, “what does the unbeliever demand in order to believe? Whatever it is, I will give it to him.” So, some unbelievers demand “evidence” for the belief in God’s existence. They want “just facts” and no spin.

CA are happy to oblige. Now, before we are critical of the CA, we have to acknowledge the good in their thinking. They believe that Christianity should be able to be defended by logic, facts, evidence, or history because the Christian’s God is the God of logic, history, evidence, and history. Christianity is a historical faith. It is based on facts. So, what is wrong with making a logical, historical, or evidential argument for the faith?

Van Til is not opposed to logic, evidence or history. Nor is he opposed to using such in the service of defending the faith. What he opposes, however, is thinking that facts, logic, etc. are things which exist “out there,” brute facts that both believer and unbeliever can use together to evaluate truth claims about Christianity.

But, for Van Til, to do that is to surrender the debate to the unbeliever at the outset.

This mode of thinking makes facts, logic, etc. into abstractions. And Paul, says Van Til, does not argue from abstractions. The Bible knows nothing of “facts” which are independent of God and the meaning he gives them in his Word.

But for CA abstractions become something akin to Platonic ideals which rule all of reality – from God to rocks. Furthermore, abstractions presuppose that both believer and unbeliever interpret them the same way. But they don’t. The unbeliever presupposes the Lordship of logic, facts, etc. over even God himself. The Christian, however, presupposes that God is the Lord over all things.

And so the failure of the classical mode is at once apparent. CA adopt the presuppositions of the unbeliever – i.e., that logic, facts, etc. are interpreted the same way between believer and unbeliever. CA start with an unbelieving philosophy of fact, which allows the unbeliever to place God in the dock, imposing abstract notions of facts, logic, etc. upon God. But God is not the kind of person that can be placed in the dock. God is judge and jury. He is the arbiter. Therefore, we must begin with the triune God. Without the self-attesting Christ of Scripture there is no logic, fact, etc. The Christian must challenge the unbeliever’s philosophy of fact, not grant it to him. And it is precisely here – at this compromise – that CA find their failure.

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 an attempt to stave off Arminianism (a commendable task!) deniers of common grace have reasoned that God could in no way have any favor toward the reprobate. To say that God favors the reprobate is to introduce a contradiction between the eternal will of God and his works in history. God would be “two-faced.” He would will one thing, but then do another. Therefore, God is not gracious toward the reprobate nor does God genuinely desire for the reprobate to believe the Gospel and be saved. In this mode of theology, consideration of the eternal decree trumps how we are to understand God’s works in history.

One of the prominent proponents of this position was Herman Hoeksema. Van Til has much to say against his denial of common grace, but central to his critique is the following:

Hoeksema never answered adequately the charge that on his view the elect can never in any sense have been under the wrath of God and Christ need not have died for them in history. Hoeksema took no note. (Common Grace and the Gospel, 251).

Van Til’s point is that if we identify God’s attitude toward man in time with God’s predestination then we can never speak about the elect as ever having been under divine wrath. Hoeksema’s unqualified supralapsarianism has its center in the proposition that what happens last in the order of history comes first in the order of the eternal decree.[1] This means that God chose the elect and the reprobate quite prior to his decree to create or ordain the fall. Each person’s eternal destination is determined apart from all the means that lead there onto. The means are swallowed up in and by the end.

This means that the reprobate cannot have any favor with God. But – and this is Van Til’s point – the elect can never be said to ever have been under God’s wrath. In other words, the person who becomes a Christian later in life can in no meaningful way be said to have transitioned from being under God’s wrath to being under his grace. On the terms of Hoeksema’s supralapsarianism, the elect person was always under God’s favor, even as an unbeliever.

This also means that when Adam fell there was no real transition from being in an estate of favor to an estate of wrath. What about the reprobate who were “in Adam” before the fall? Can we say, biblically, that the reprobate in Adam before the fall were under God’s wrath despite the fact that humanity was still innocent? Furthermore, when Christ came to die on the cross we cannot say that – relative to the elect – there was any real transition from an estate of wrath to an estate of grace. In fact, on Hoeksema’s presuppositions, there really was no need for Christ to come and atone for sins at all. Election is ultimate, and the elect were chosen quite irrespective of God’s decree to redeem in Christ. Christ and his work become somewhat of an unnecessary afterthought.

And so what Hoeksema ends up doing is making history somewhat of a farce. Historical dynamics are not real manifestations of moving from grace to wrath or wrath to grace. God does not have any real interaction with even his elect. His elect can never be under his wrath before their conversion, nor can they come under God’s Fatherly displeasure after their conversion. Likewise, the reprobate can never experience the true and genuine favor of God, nor ever hear a true and sincere call to repent and be saved. God does not really desire the repentance of the wicked.

So, how then are we to understand the relation between historical transitions and God’s eternal decree? Van Til proposes a Christian idea of “limiting concepts.” Limiting concepts, understood Christianly, has its basis in a Christian idea of mystery. In other words, there are things we simply do not know. In revelation, we are given knowledge of certain things, but not all things. God and his decree remain always incomprehensible to us. And where God’s revelation ends, there we must be content with mystery.

God does reveal to us that he elects some unto eternal life and some unto eternal reprobation. God does reveal to us that he really and genuinely interacts with history, and that there are real transitions of covenant status among men. Now, how exactly those two truths relate is a mystery. But each (God’s eternal decree and real transitions in history) are truths God gives to limit our thinking from going to one extreme or the other.

Unfortunately Hoeksema did not have his thinking limited by the truth of real transitions in history, and therefore fell into a form of rationalism by prejudicing God’s decree at the expense of history. Arminianism also falls into rationalism, by prejudicing history at the expense of God’s sovereign decree. Both have tried to pierce into mystery, and therefore they have surrendered one limiting concept for the sake of the other.

And this is why Bavinck is absolutely correct when he says that mystery is the lifeblood of all true theology. Forsake mystery – and its correlate, “limiting concepts” – and rationalism is the inevitable result.

[1] See Herman Hoeksema, The Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 6:148; cf. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 241.

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.

But I was recently surprised by Van Til while reading Common Grace and the Gospel.  There he writes:

As for “Old Princeton Theology” in the booklet on Common Grace, I have scarcely referred to it. Elsewhere I have expressed disagreement with its apologetics. In this I was following Kuyper. But never have I expressed a basic difference with its theology or its basic epistemology. (p. 177)

In context Van Til is defending himself against a number of charges leveled against him by William Masselink. Masselink asserts that Van Til disagrees with Old Princeton (among others such as Kuyper, Hepp, etc.) on the matter of epistemology. And here Van Til retorts that while he does disagree with Old Princeton on apologetics, he does not disagree “with its theology or its basic epistemology.”

This surprised me, in part, because I have always thought of Van Til’s criticism of Old Princeton as a criticism—first and foremost—of its epistemology. Of special interest here is what Van Til says about Warfield’s notion of “right reason” (for example in Defense of the Faith, 350). Is Van Til’s criticism against Warfield’s notion of how the unbeliever knows, or against his approach to the unbeliever apologetically? Or is it both?

I won’t try to answer that question here. But, it seems to me, it is awfully difficult to separate out Warfield’s idea of “right reason” (which seems to be an epistemological issue) from his apologetic method. Is Van Til being completely consistent with himself here?

Again, I raise the question not to answer it here. It seems the answer would be complex enough to warrant a longer study. Or, at the very least, it seems to warrant further discussion.

Now it’s your turn. Thoughts?

It is sometimes contended that ministers need not be trained in systematic theology if only they know their Bibles. But “Bible-trained” instead of systematically trained preachers frequently preach error. … There are many “orthodox” preachers today whose study of Scripture has been so limited to what it says about soteriology that they could not protect the fold of God against heresies on the person of Christ. … If we carry this idea one step further, we note that a study of systematic theology will help men to preach theologically. It will help to make men proclaim the whole counsel of God. Many ministers never touch the greater part of the wealth of the revelation of God to man contained in Scripture. But systematics helps ministers to preach the whole counsel of God, and thus to make God central in their work. (pp. 22-23)

At first blush it may sound like that Van Til is prioritizing systematic theology over the Bible. There is nothing further from the truth. What Van Til is eschewing is the practice of myopic and atomistic handling of Scripture in the ministry. We might say that Van Til is saying that systematic theology properly done protects against reductionism. That is certainly what he has in view when he talks about orthodox preachers who limit their study of Scripture to soteriology.

Such a practice can be found even today in the Reformed church. Sometimes everything gets boiled down to soteriology, or one aspect of soteriology like justification. Sometimes it all gets boiled down to counseling, or evangelism, or law, or what have you. Every sermon seems to be harping on one subject. Texts are picked out which teach only that subject matter. Or, worse still, texts are made to address those subjects no matter what they are really saying.

Being trained as systematic theologians helps us to maintain balance in the ministry. With it we can be free to preach the whole counsel of God. We can maintain a balance between soteriology, the doctrine of God, the person and work of Christ, etc.

Anyone who is a frequenter to this website knows how much of a premium we place on Biblical Theology. But Vos himself was quite clear how BT and ST should relate, even as they should be distinguished. The Reformed minister would do well to heed the concerns of both Vos and Van Til. If we do we will be better equipped to serve the health and well-being of the church.

In closing, I leave the reader with this quote from Van Til later in the same volume:

It is not sufficient, then, to instruct the church in certain portions of Scripture, or to make them memorize a great deal of Scripture. In addition to this, they must possess a doctrine of Scripture as a whole. It is only if men see clearly that Scripture is what the orthodox doctrine says it in that they will, by the grace of God, be safeguarded against every wind of doctrine that so easily besets us.

Unfortunately many Fundamentalist ministers are, to a large extent, themselves to blame for this deflection of the membership of the churches into all manner of false doctrines. With all the good intentions that they have, they all too commonly teach Scripture in a piecemeal fashion. And, in particular, many of them occupy themselves to such an extent with the more obscure passages of Scripture that they cultivate in their hearers a wrong sense of proportion. It is not uncommon to find an ardent and well-meaning youth, of less than twenty, interested greatly in the details of the “signs of the times,” while he has no reasonable knowledge of the main doctrines of Scripture, to say nothing of the catechisms of the church, in which the system of doctrine of the Scripture is set forth. (p. 240)

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.

“Now Romanism does not go nearly so far as this. It does hold to the possibility of true propositional knowledge about God as an antecedent being. Even so, Romanism is so largely monistic in its philosophy of being that it cannot do justice to the Christian idea of revelation. Following Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas talks about being as such before making the distinction between the divine and created being. And this is fatal to Christian theology. It constitutes an attack on the basic distinction between God as self-contained and man as his creature. Being as such is a pure abstraction. Hegel was quite right in maintaining that it can be interchanged with non-being. To attempt to say one word about it is to attempt to make Reality as a whole, inclusive of God and man, the final subject of predication. It is, in effect, to deny that created reality is what it is, as exclusively revelational of what God is in himself to himself. It is, in effect, also to deny that all of man’s knowledge is true to the extent that it is a restatement by man of the revelation of God. Conversely, it is to maintain, in effect, that man is able to make true predication about reality without a priori self-consciously, revelational activity on the part of God. To talk about being as such is to talk about possibility as such. And to talk about possibility as such is to assume the idea of logic as such. And to assume the idea of logic such is to assume the idea of consciousness as such. And to assume the idea of consciousness as such is to deny the fundamental distinction between the self-contained consciousness of God and the dependent consciousness of man. In other words it is to assume that man can employ the laws of logic and by means of them legislate for reality” (An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 200, emphasis mine).

Believing in any “as-suchness” whatsoever renders the creature superior to the Creator. It makes that thing – as such – the final arbiter of reality, of even God himself. This is how we end up with so many bad theologies of God. We come to a question about God, and we try to answer that question in keeping with the rules of abstract concepts of being, act or becoming, justice, logic, goodness, etc.

Here is a quick example. God cannot possibly foreordain certain people unto eternal perdition. And certainly God cannot on the day of judgment sentence a whole mass of people unto eternal punishment. Why not?

Because, then God would not be good or just.

Did you see that? Did you see how what follows the “then God would” is a kind of third party, supposed neutral legislator that has its own independent existence apart from God. Goodness and justice – as understood by fallen rebellious man – become standards to which God Himself must be held accountable.

Contrary to this, for Van Til, we must begin with God as the “concrete absolute.” That is to say, only in God is goodness or justice concrete and not an abstraction. God IS good. God IS just. He defines what goodness and justice is, not us. And certainly not goodness or justice as such. There does not exist — at least outside of our own rebellious and fallen minds – any “as-suchness” whatsoever.

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.

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.

To that end, I have begun reading Van Til outside of his works that specifically target Barth.[1] This approach is purposeful. I believe that the best way to understand how and why Van Til criticizes Barth is to understand his thought as a whole. If one tries to abstract Van Til’s critique of Barth from his theology as a whole – and the apologetic/polemic approach that arises from it – then Van Til’s critique will never be properly understood.

So I have begun with two of the newly released annotated versions of Van Til’s works published by P&R Publishing, Common Grace and the Gospel (annotated by K. Scott Oliphint) and An Introduction to Systematic Theology (annotated by William Edgar). I have also made use of the digital version of Van Til’s works by Logos. If you do not have Logos, and you want to engage in serious study of both the Bible and theology, do yourself the favor and save your pennies for it. And, while you’re saving, save also for the digital Van Til set!

So, what I would like to do here is offer a series of posts containing some of the best quotes I come across in Van Til’s writings and offer some brief commentary. I hope you enjoy it, and benefit from Van Til’s faithfully and consistently Reformed insights.

The first quote comes from Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 13:

To use a phrase of Kierkegaard, we ask how the Moment is to have significance. Our claim as believers is that the Moment cannot intelligently be shown to have any significance except upon the presupposition of the biblical doctrine of the ontological trinity. In the ontological trinity there is complete harmony between an equally ultimate one and many. The persons of the trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another and of God’s nature. It is the absolute equality in point of ultimacy that requires all the emphasis we can give it. Involved in this absolute equality is complete interdependence; God is our concrete universal.[2]

One of the common misconceptions out there about Van Til’s apologetic approach is that his great insight was that everyone has presuppositions. That no one comes to the process of thinking about anything neutrally. And so the believer presupposes the existence of God, while the atheist does not. And God is the believer’s basis for ethics, logic, etc. The atheist, however, has no basis.

All that is true enough, as far as it goes. But the misconception is due to the fact that it does not go far enough. Van Til does not offer a generic deity as the Christian’s presupposition. It is not as if Van Til’s God can be swapped out for the God of Islam, Judaism, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Rather, Van Til presupposes the self-contained ontological Trinity as he reveals himself in the Bible. That is important because a generic deity cannot account for anything in the universe – unity or differentiation, universals or particulars, the subject-object relationship, etc. A generic deity yields only a meaningless and unintelligible creation. For Van Til only God as absolutely self-contained (i.e., a se) can render anything and everything intelligible.

I hope to be able to unpack that idea some more in future posts.

[1] The several works I have in mind here are The New Modernism, Barthianism and Christianity, Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?, The Confession of 1967, Karl Barth and Evangelicalism, and Barth’s Christology. Of course, he has critical statements about “the new modernism” all throughout his writings. But these are particularly focused on the thought of Karl Barth (and others).

[2] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, ed. K. Scott Oliphint, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2015).

Written at the entrance of the temple of Reformed theology are the words: “God does not exist because of man, but man because of God.”[1] This Reformed principle of a relentless commitment to the preeminence of God’s glory—what Geerhardus Vos called Scripture’s “deepest root idea”—found its most natural expression in covenant theology.[2] Cornelius Van Til went so far as to say, “Covenant theology is Reformed theology.”[3] For “only covenant theology gives all the glory to God, and without giving all the glory to God there is no true religion.”[4] This covenantal schema is embodied in what B. B. Warfield called “the ripest fruit of Reformed creed-making,” the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF).[5]

This should come as no surprise for the Westminster divines were wholly committed to the glory of God as the chief end of man and self-consciously began with Scripture as their principium cognoscendi—the two ingredients of covenant theology.[6] So, as Vos observed, “The Westminster Confession is the first Reformed confession in which the doctrine of the covenant is not merely brought in from the side, but placed in the foreground and has been able to permeate at almost every point.”[7] Likewise Warfield is well-known for writing, “The architectonic principle of the Westminster Confession is supplied by the schematization of the Federal theology, which had obtained by this time in Britain, as on the Continent, a dominant position as the most commodious mode of presenting the corpus of Reformed doctrine.”[8] The covenant, then, is not a disparate chapter in the confession, but the structural framework around which the entire confession is built, manifesting a commitment to the glory of God above all else.

The Covenant, Van Til’s Representational Principle and God’s Eternal Decree

The above context is vital for understanding the way in which the confession relates God’s absolute sovereignty to human freedom without falling into the rationalism of either fatalism or deism in chapter 3 (“Of God’s Eternal Decree”). The first paragraph of this chapter reads,

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.[9]

The primary question of concern is this: How does the covenantal structure of the WCF inform its theological formulation of God’s sovereignty and human freedom? While this question could be considered from numerous vantage points, Cornelius Van Til provides an answer by way of his representational principle in continuity with the theology of the WCF. His representational principle pushes us beyond a superficial and impersonal understanding of the covenant idea, for it pushes us to its most basic foundation: the self-sufficient triune God of Scripture. Van Til writes,

The covenant idea is nothing but the expression of the representational principle consistently applied to all reality. The foundation of the representational principle among men is the fact that the Trinity exists in the form of a mutually exhaustive representation of the three Persons that constitute it.[10]

Notice, the covenant, according to Van Til, has an exhaustive impact on “all reality,” charging the whole of it with personality. Man does not operate or make choices in a vacuum or in an atmosphere of chance—such would render his will inoperative and his choices meaningless—but in an exhaustively personalistic environment, that is, within the comprehensive plan of God. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). At all times and in all places man is coram Deo semper. The Trinity, in whom there is no residue of impersonality since the persons are mutually exhaustive of each other, provides the necessary ontological foundation for this personalistic environment, which is expressed in the covenant idea.

Critiquing Contemporary Non-Covenantal Formulations

We should note the relevancy of this exploration in the WCF and Van Til’s theology. There has been a welcomed resurgence to Reformed theology in recent years, which is a good sign of the church returning to Scripture and realizing its “root idea” of the glory of God. Unfortunately, Reformed theology is often reduced to the five points of Calvinism as found in the Canons of Dort[11] and so abstracted from its larger Reformed system, which is structurally covenantal. As Van Til said, “Covenant theology is Reformed theology.”[12] Richard Muller exposes this problem well,

Calvinism or, better, Reformed teaching, as defined by the great Reformed confessions does include the so-called five points. Just as it is improper, however, to identify Calvin as the sole progenitor of Reformed theology, so also is it incorrect to identify the five points or the document from which they have been drawn, the Canons of Dort, as a full confession of the Reformed faith, whole and entire unto itself. In other words, it would be a major error—both historically and doctrinally—if the five points of Calvinism were understood either as the sole or even as the absolutely primary basis for identifying someone as holding the Calvinistic or Reformed faith. In fact, the Canons of Dort contain five points only because the Arminian articles, the Remonstrance of 1610, to which they responded, had five points. The number five, far from being sacrosanct, is the result of a particular historical circumstance and was determined negatively by the number of articles in the Arminian objection to confessional Calvinism.[13]

At least two problems arise from this. First, many have embraced the five points abstracted from their covenantal context. This has led to a misunderstanding of Reformed theology by its opponents and a distortion of the five points by its proponents. The former waging accusations of fatalism or philosophical determinism, and the latter purporting some species of fatalism or philosophical determinism, despite explicit objections to such conclusions. Van Til and the WCF avoid these issues by means of situating the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom within its personalistic covenantal context.

Second, many have embraced the five points purely in reaction to Arminianism, but have not escaped the fundamental rationalism of Arminianism. So while they object to Arminian conclusions they continue to operate with the same methodology and merely end up on the opposite end of the same rationalistic spectrum. Fatalism is as much rationalistic as libertarianism. It is as much a problem to rationalize away God’s sovereignty as it is to rationalize away human freedom. In contrast, Van Til and the WCF operate on a different spectrum entirely and are able to maintain the tension between the two equally valid biblical truths of divine sovereignty and human freedom.

Conclusion

Van Til, in congruity with the WCF, avoids the rationalism of both Arminianism (and Lutheranism as he demonstrates in his Survey of Christian Epistemology) by way of his representational principle, which maintains a robust covenant theology that provides an exhaustively personalistic atmosphere in which the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human freedom can be properly understood. The self-sufficient triune God of Scripture, in whom unity and diversity are eternally harmonized and equally ultimate, is the foundation of the representational principle, which is expressed by the covenant idea that reaches all reality, charging man’s entire atmosphere with personality as he is always operating within the plan of God. The fact that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass is the only environment in which the will of man can operate and his choices can be meaningful. And so God’s sovereignty does not destroy or limit man’s freedom, but rather establishes it.

[1] Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 242.

[2] Vos considers three implications of this Reformed principle that substantiate this claim: “When this principle is applied to man and his relationship to God, it immediately divines into three parts: 1. All of man’s works has to rest on an antecedent work of God; 2. In all of his works man has to show forth God’s image and be a means for the revelation of God’s virtues; 3. The latter should not occur unconsciously or passively, but the revelation of God’s virtues must proceed by way of understanding and will and by way of the conscious life, and actively come to external expression” (“The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” 242).

[3] Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 271.

[4] Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 98.

[5] Warfield, The Westminster Assembly and Its Work, 58.

[6] Westminster Confession of Faith 1.

[7] Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” 239.

[8] B. B. Warfield, The Westminster Assembly and Its Work, 56.

[9] Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1.

[10] Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 96.

[11] These five points are often summarized by the acronym TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the saints. We should also note that the Canons of Dort were never understood to encapsulate the entirety of Reformed theology. Instead, they were received by the Reformed continental tradition along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession.

[12] Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 271.

[13] Richard Muller, “How Many Points,” 426.

— Cornelius Van Til

Cornelius Van Til cut through the densest theological controversies like a hot knife through butter. What some readers dismiss as daft conclusions or graceless criticism, others learn to appreciate as incisive critical synthesis. You might say, some wince at Van Til’s work while others whistle at it. I put myself in the latter group. After years of reading his work, I’m still struck by his theological acumen.

Van Til’s discussion of Trinitarian heresies is a case in point. Throughout his chapter on the Trinity in An Introduction to Systematic Theology, he keeps coming back to the same point: at base all Trinitarian heresies are the result of mixing the eternal and the temporal. This is tied to his emphasis on the Creator-creature distinction. He reminds us that

all non-Christian thought would have us think of God as one aspect of the universe as a whole. In one way or another, all heresies bring in space-time existence as the other aspect of the universe as a whole. … Here, in fact, lies the bond of connection between ancient and modern heresies. For this reason, the church has emphasized the fact that the ontological Trinity, that is, the Trinity as it exists in itself, apart from its relation to the created universe, is self-complete, involving as it does the equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. But it was a long and arduous road by which the church reached its high doctrine of the Trinity.[i]

Indeed, the church is still walking that road, ever vigilant of its feet, for a precipice lies on each side of the doctrine. Every century the church has stamped the dust of dogma and left footprints for the faithful to follow. It was in looking at such footprints, I believe, that Van Til drew out his incisive critique of Trinitarian heresies.

Gnosticism

He first takes aim at the Gnostic notion of the Logos (not to be confused with the biblical understanding of the Logos in John’s Gospel). The Gnostics could not see how the eternal God could be self-contained and yet still engage with creation. To solve this problem, they understood the Logos to be “the self-expression for God in the universe.”[ii] In other words, the Logos for them was a middleman between eternity and time, the divine and the human. But their conclusion merely muddied the water by making God dependent on creation. The Gnostics had mixed time and eternity by making the latter inextricable from the former. It was Irenaeus who would step onto the road of orthodoxy to claim that “God did not in any wise need the universe as a medium of self-expression; he was self-expressed in the Trinity.”[iii]

Sabellianism and Arianism 

Van Til next set his sights on Sabellianism and Arianism, showing that they were two sides of the same coin. The Arians refused to let go of the Son as a creature. Put differently, they refused to let the self-contained eternal Trinity engage with the dependent temporal world on God’s own terms. God was, in some sense, made correlative to the world. We might even say that Arianism attempted to force time into eternity by demanding that the Son be understood as a creature.

Sabellianism, too, tried to force Trinitarian doctrine to fit the confines of temporality. In attempting to harmonize God’s threeness with his oneness, Sabellius and his cohort opted to make the three persons temporal manifestations of an eternal unity. For Van Til, this meant that they wanted to have “the temporal world furnish the plurality as a supplement to the eternal world, which furnished the unity of reality as a whole.”[iv] The plurality of persons in the Godhead was thus made correlative to the plurality we find in creation. This is drastically different, mind you, from the eternal unity and plurality of the Trinity being the basis for the temporal unity and plurality of creation.[v]

In both Arianism and Sabellianism, adherents were guilty of “uniting the temporal in a correlative union with the eternal.”[vi] To say that the Son is a creature is to say that God must follow the norms of creaturely reason (Arianism); to say that the divine persons are merely modes of the one God is to say the same thing, really. In both cases, God is denied as the self-contained three-in-one; he cannot house in himself unity and plurality in perfect harmony, apart from creation. But, as Van Til affirmed frequently, he does. That is what the true church came to confess.

Nestorianism and Eutychianism 

Van Til then turns to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, which seem strange victims for a critique of Trinitarian heresy. Yet, Van Til saw these blunders as “no more than modified forms of opposition to the church’s doctrine of the Trinity.”[vii] Nestorius conceived of two persons in Christ (which is linked in a sense to equating time and eternity), while Eutyches argued that Christ only had one, divine nature (not a divine and a human nature), thus segregating eternity (Christ’s divine nature) from time (Christ’s human nature). In both cases, the deity of Christ was not properly related to his humanity and there is a false conception of the relationship between the eternal and the temporal, which in Christ are neither confused nor divided. Mixing up the relationship of the temporal and eternity in Christ is, in essence, an offshoot of mixing up the temporal and eternal in the Trinity.

Deism and Pantheism

But Van Til does not stop here. He moves on to link Nestorianism and Eutychianism to deism and pantheism. “Any doctrine that denies God’s providence (as deism does) or his providence and creation (as Greek thought did) must in the end become a confusion of the eternal and the temporal. Deism and pantheism are no more than two forms of the one basic error of confusion of the eternal and the temporal.”[viii] Van Til’s critique here is a classic example of how what was often obvious to him was not so self-evident to the rest of us. What does he mean here?

Deism supposes that God is outside of and distant from created reality, which runs like a clock thanks to the laws of nature that God himself has instilled within it. God exists, for deists, but only as a hazy figure just within earshot of creation’s ticking clockwork. This belief system allowed deists to clutch a form of theism (which was not by any means Christian) without having to accept the rationally suspect claims of Scripture: that God became incarnate in the person of Christ and continues to work in his people through the power of the Spirit. These claims of the Bible assaulted the rules of human reason, so deists left them behind and supported a clear distinction between the clockmaker God and his gear-grinding world. Deists, in other words, enforced an extreme form of separation between the divine and the human, the eternal and the temporal. Thus, the “confusion of the eternal and the temporal” here is simply the practical removal of the former from the latter. God is stripped of his Trinitarian economy because that economy does not seem to cohere with the standards of temporal (human) reason. For Van Til, this is linked to Nestorianism. Just as the temporal is not divorced from the eternal in God’s economy, neither is the eternal divorced from the temporal in the person of Christ. This may be why Van Til suggested that Nestorianism was “the deistic form of opposition to the true doctrine.”[ix]

The distant heretical step-sister of deism is pantheism. Deism segregates the eternal from the temporal; pantheism blends them together so that we cannot distinguish them anymore. For pantheists, God is in everything. The divine is mixed into the fabric of creation. This mixture thus frustrates all efforts to distinguish between God and the world. In the end, pantheists simply resolve the issue by concluding that creation is divine. This parallels the attempt of Eutyches to show that Christ only had one, divine nature. The human is dissolved into the divine. With Nestorius, the human and divine were set apart; with Eutyches the human is collapsed into the divine. In both cases there is confusion of the relationship between the eternal and the temporal.

Solution: God Exists as Triune

What is the solution to this confusion? It is our recognition of the biblical truth that “God exists as triune. He is therefore self-complete. Yet he created the world. This world has meaning not in spite of, but because of, the self-completeness of the ontological Trinity. This God is the foundation of the created universe and therefore is far above it.”[x] The Trinity is properly understood and worshiped only with a biblical understanding of God’s transcendence and immanence. The ontological Trinity is independent of creation, and yet all of creation has meaning because of God’s independence and sovereignty over it, even as he is present with us in it. The triune God created the world and stands above it, and yet all of reality has meaning because he is involved with it. The Trinity might be likened to a gloveless gardener. He is responsible for planting the rose bushes and the rhododendron, but he is not thereby dependent on them. Yet he also chooses to fill his fingernails with the dirt that hugs the roots of what he has made.

Calvin and Arminius

Modern Trinitarian heresies followed in the same path as the ancient ones. They once again fumbled with a “false conception of the Trinity, the self-contained God of Scripture.”[xi] The issues may have changed over time, but the problem was perennial. In Calvin’s day, the biblical doctrine of the Trinity was distorted by Arminius, who—again, following principles of strict rationalism—tried to resurrect the specter of subordinationism. Like Origen, Arminius wanted to push the taxonomy of the Trinity too far, ultimately reducing the divine to a unity rather than a Trinity. Calvin, in contrast, “was strongly interested in asserting the consubstantiality of the three persons of the Godhead.”[xii] While this was in some senses novel in Calvin’s day, it was really nothing more than a re-articulation of the ancient catholic doctrine that God is both one and three.

Idealism and Unitarianism

Continuing his critique, Van Til chastises Arminius for opening the door to “more radical departures” from the biblical doctrine, which came in with the idealists. “The idealist philosophers have identified the Trinity with the principle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in reality as a whole.”[xiii] This Hegelian principle, once more, leads to an ultimate unity, not an ultimate Trinity. It leads to Unitarian faith rather than Trinitarian. What’s worse, it binds God to his creation so as to render him dependent. So, Van Til restates his synthetic summary of Trinitarian heresy.

Unitarianism is nothing but a new form of the old error of mixing the eternal and the temporal. Modernism is the happy heir of all heresies, and basic to all its heresies is the denial of the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father; or rather, its error is even deeper than that, since the Father himself is for modernism no more than an aspect of reality. If ever there was need for reaffirming and teaching the true doctrine of the Trinity, it is now.[xiv]

Indeed, the same is true for us today, especially in light of the longstanding liberal push to forsake the immanent Trinity for the economic—to seek God for us rather than God in himself. Such a push could easily be translated into Van Til’s vernacular: we should seek the God in time rather than the God of eternity. But it is exactly at this point that orthodox Christianity must check its feet and follow the straight and narrow. It is only because God is in himself that he is for us. God is for us in time by a loving and gracious decision, and such a decision emerged from the eternal Trinity who is love.

Conclusion

T. S. Eliot once wrote, “Only through time time is conquered.”[xv] I always interpreted this to mean that the God above time entered time in order to redeem time. But time did not always need to be conquered. Indeed, time did not always exist. Seconds were spoken into motion by the voice of the Trinity. Before there was time, before there was such a thing as history, there was simply the Trinity. I end with Fred Sanders’s words.

God’s way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all eternity, perfectly complete in a triune fellowship of love. If we don’t take this as our starting point, everything we say about the practical relevance of the Trinity could lead us to one colossal misunderstanding: thinking of God the Trinity as a means to some other end, as if God were the Trinity in order to make himself useful. But God the Trinity is the end, the goal, the telos, the omega. In himself and without any reference to a created world of the plan of salvation, God is that being who exists as the triune love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit. The boundless life that God lives in himself, at home, within the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds, is perfect. It is complete, inexhaustibly full, and infinitely blessed.[xvi]

In remembering these words, let us continue in the footsteps of orthodoxy, never mixing the eternal and the temporal, the God who is love in himself with the God who is love for us. As Van Til wrote, it has been “a long and arduous road by which the church reached its high doctrine of the Trinity.” Let us continue to walk it, in praise of the self-contained tri-personal God.

[i] Cornelius Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, ed. William Edgar, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 353.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid., 354.

[iv] Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 356.

[v] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, ed. K. Scott Oliphint, 4th ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 47–51.

[vi] Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 356.

[vii] Ibid., 358.

[viii] Ibid., 359–60.

[ix] Ibid., 360.

[x] Ibid., 359.

[xi] Ibid., 360.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid., 361. This is a reference specifically to Hegel’s dialectic, the notion that history is in the process of moving towards an ultimate unity as a result of the continuous cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

[xiv] Ibid., 362.

[xv] T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1943), 16.

[xvi] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 62.

It is not sufficient … to instruct the church in certain positions of Scripture or to make them memorize a great deal of Scripture. In addition to this, they must possess a doctrine of Scripture as a whole. It is only if men see clearly that Scripture is what the orthodox doctrine says it is that they will, by the grace of God, be safeguarded against every wind of doctrine that so easily besets us (240).

This remains apt counsel in our day in which there is a high demand for immediate results and payoffs, but little desire to put in the time and sweat to first lay a strong foundation. While I’m no cultural expert, one reason for this may be the intuitive nature of technology. When Apple releases their latest version of the iPhone with new features and capabilities, rarely does a person need to spend time reading on how to use them. Instead, they are simply intuited and you learn by using them.

But can such an intuitive process be applied to theology with similarly successful results? Can we correctly arrive at certain positions of Scripture without first taking the time to lay some foundation? Van Til implies in the above quote that sound and stable theology is founded upon our doctrine of Scripture. That is, along with asking the question, “What does Scripture teach?” we need to also ask the more fundamental question, “What is Scripture?” (see The Importance of Posture in Studying God’s Word).

There’s a reason this question gets answered under the branch of theology called prolegomena (from the Greek prolegein meaning, “say beforehand“). Here the more foundational material is presented from which all other doctrines will be elucidated. This includes the definition of theology, the origin and nature of revelation, the character of special revelation, etc. So while you might find volume 2 of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics on the doctrine of God (his names, attributes, triunity, decrees, etc.) more captivating and immediately applicable, if you bypass his first volume on prolegomena, you are going to end up constructing theological walls that are unstable since they are without a foundation. The walls may be beautiful and magnificent, but they can easily be torn down by winds of false doctrine.

We must, therefore, be self-conscious of our doctrine of Scripture when formulating our theology, whether that be exegetical, biblical or systematic. And for those who preach and teach in the church, our doctrine of Scripture needs to be evidenced in it all, so that our hearers may be rooted in the firm bedrock of Scripture and not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. A couple of places to find faithful articulations of the doctrine of Scripture would be chapter one of the Westminster Confession of Faith and articles 2-7 of the Belgic Confession.

Now while many specific problems at the foundational level could be addressed, Van Til, with his scope particularly aimed at fundamentalism, highlights two: (1) reading the Bible in a piecemeal fashion and (2) making obscure passages central. He writes,

Unfortunately many fundamentalist ministers are, to a large extent, themselves to blame for this deflection of the membership of the churches into all manner of false doctrines. With all the good intentions that they have, they all too commonly teach Scripture in a piecemeal fashion. And, in particular, many of them occupy themselves to such an extent with the more obscure passages of Scripture that they cultivate in their hearers a wrong sense of proportion. It is not uncommon to find an ardent and well-meaning youth, of less than twenty, interested greatly in the details of the “signs of the times,” while he has no reasonable knowledge of the main doctrines of Scripture, to say nothing of the catechisms of the church, in which the system of doctrine of the Scripture is set forth (240).

We can restate Van Til’s critique in terms of three positive exhortations, which we would do well to heed in order to bolster our theological foundation, whether we’re pastors, teachers or laypeople.

1. Recognize the organic unity of Scripture and have it bear on your interpretation. This means recognizing that underlying the diversity of Scripture is a fundamental unity that results from God himself being its primary author (2 Tim. 3:16). For this reason, Van Til can say, “All interpretations must be subordinated to Scripture as a whole.” That is, interpretation of any verse is always a canonical pursuit. Furthermore, because God’s revelation is the interpretation of his work of redemption, which took place in history, there is a corresponding historical progression to Scripture. It was not given in one lump-sum, but progressively over time. This progression moves in an organic fashion, like the seed of a flower moving toward full blossom. For more on this see the opening chapter of Vos’ Biblical Theology and listen to the corresponding discussions by Drs. Tipton and Bucey in Vos Group: part 1, part 2.

2. Maintain a healthy proportion between the clearer and more obscure passages. We confess that “all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all…” (WCF 1.7). This doesn’t mean we never leave John 3:16 and ignore the difficult passages deeply tucked away in Ezekiel, but it does mean we prioritize the clearer to make sense of the more obscure. For example, if there are interpretive options presented for a difficult passage, we are going to use the clearer passages, first, to cross-off options that are contradictory and, second, to provide us with an exegetical direction to go in. Van Til puts it simply, “[T]he darker places must be interpreted in the light of the more easily understood.”

3. Know your catechism well. Our catechisms (Westminster, Heidelberg, etc.) provide us with reliable summaries of the system of doctrine set forth in Scripture. They have been publicly accessible for hundreds of years to be tested as to their faithfulness and accuracy to God’s word. As a result, they provide us with bounds outside of which our interpretation of Scripture should not go (though they are not infallible). However, there is also a danger here in allowing them to flatten out our interpretation of Scripture so that all we’re doing is trying to plug a verse into a certain question and answer and, therefore, missing the unique contribution of a passage. For more on the role of confessional statements in the church see our interview with Carl Trueman on his excellent book The Creedal Imperative.