A Proposed Guide

The May 1983, Reformed Journal featured an article entitled “Barth as Paradigm.” It was a review of a book judged to be extraordinarily significant especially to American evangelicals, Bernard Ramm’s After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology. The gist of the book (and its review) was a eulogy of especially Karl Barth’s view of the Bible. In Ramm’s opinion, “Of all the efforts of theologians to come to terms with the Enlightenment, Karl Barth’s theology has been the most thorough.” “In Ramm’s view, the big theological problem today is that of the Bible’s authority.” Rarnm criticized fundamentalists for their “appeal to a nonexistent biblical inerrancy” and Liberals for their surrender to modern science and giving up an authoritative Bible and he saw Karl Barth as, “more successfully than any other,” refusing to do either. “Ramm agrees with Barth in Barth’s refusal exhaustively to equate the Bible with the Word of God. The ultimate equation is between the Word of God and Jesus Christ.” Ramm’s thesis is “that Barth’s theology is the best paradigm (‘pattern, example, or model’– Webster) we have for theology in our times.”

A Stumbling Guide

Karl Barth first fascinated me almost a half century ago in college days. After 12 years of education in a very liberal California public school system I found his devastating criticism of the Liberalism of his own training and earlier preaching a helpful corrective. Unfortunately, what he proposed to put in its place did not escape from the very errors he was criticizing. Although he reacted against the errors of the old Liberalism he continued to share the same higher critical views of the Bible as the Liberalism which he attacked. Therefore his teachings, in spite of his talk of the Word of God and his use of old orthodox doctrinal terms, were not Bible teachings but philosophical reactions, in their own way often just as misleading as those he opposed.

An example may help to illuminate this point. Barth cited Calvin and the doctrine o f election, writing a commentary on the book of Romans. One who reads his treatment of election soon discovers, however, that in it each man is explained to be both an “elect” and a “reprobate,” a notion totally at odds with the teaching of Paul or Calvin.

Putting the matter a little differently, Barth maintained that the Bible conveys no “direct” revelation. It was not the Word of God, but it only “becomes” the Word of God “when it hits you.” In this he was really just as “subjectivistic,” controlled by his own experiences or opinions, as those whom he criticized.

The editor of Christianity Today some years ago made the observation that while one may have a lot of mistaken ideas, if he has a “high” view of the Bible as his authority, he has the necessary guide to have his errors corrected, but if one has no such “high” view of the Bible he has nothing to correct his mistakes.

A Theology “on Roller Skates”

Barth was not the guide to the church of our day. Kurt Marquart, in his fascinating account of the Missouri Lutheran Church struggles, Anatomy of an Explosion saw and stated the matter more clearly and accurately. “While Barthianism represented a distinct improvement over the old liberalism ( . . . a conscious attempt to get back to basic Christian concepts such as sin and grace, redemption, justification, etc.), the move from historic Lutheran orthodoxy to Barthianism meant an abandonment of biblical authority, hence a huge leap into liberalism.” “Barth’s system seemed more biblical than it was. The Swedish scholar Wingren observed drily: ‘Barth has the ability to a very large degree of being able to employ the language of scripture in a system that is totally foreign to the Bible.’” “Since for Barth . . . the actual biblical text was fully human and therefore full of errors, his ‘interpretation’ necessarily meant reading his own ideas into the text.”

With such an unbiblical view of biblical authority, Marquart observed that Barth’s position “was like being half-way down an inclined plane on roller skates. As subsequent events showed, one either had to crawl all the way back to a stable orthodoxy, or else slide all the way down into the liberal abyss, e.g., Bultmann, and the ‘death of God’ fad” (Anatomy of an Explosion, pp. 104, 105).

In the course of time it became apparent that Barth’s ostensible appeal to the Bible and his use of old doctrinal terms made his theology especially appealing (one is tempted to say “diabolically well tailored”) to the ecumenical movement of our day. It attracted unsuspecting orthodox because the terms sounded like a return to orthodoxy, and it attracted the Liberals who were quite willing to adjust themselves to different words as long as nobody bothered to define what they had to mean. Recently many are discovering how unsatisfactory such compromises are as they find the ecumenical World Council even financing anti-Christian guerrilla movements, and some are resigning from it in disgust.

Our Time of Opportunity

One of the most encouraging developments of our time is the increasing awareness of many evangelicals of the central role and function of the inerrant Scriptures in our Christian faith and life. The Lord and His apostles plainly taught us to regard the Bible and to use it in that way. Consider what a remarkably wide variety of evangelicals have found common cause in such a movement as the International Council ori Biblical Inerrancy. Corresponding with this increasing recognition of the foundation role of the inerrant Scriptures in the teaching of our Lord and His apostles, there has arisen also a remarkably increasing interest in the Biblical Reformed doctrines. That is obvious in the mounting response to and support of the Philadelphia Conferences on Reformed Theology over the last ten years. My wife and I recently visited the Reformed Theological Seminary at Jackson, Mississippi, to see something of its spectacular development in 17 years. Last week I had occasion to make contact with the Pennsylvania Ligonier Valley Study Center, to learn that Dr. R.C. Sproul whom we had hoped to reach, is encountering so much demand for his promotion of the Reformed faith that he has to be booked 18 months ahead. The June Acts and Facts of the Institute for Creation Research reported that Dr. Gary Parker, who recently wrote an article for us, had been speaking in an Alberta tour to audiences that ran as high as 2000 and 3000 people. Such reports among others appear to indicate a remarkable increase in interest in the Scriptures and their doctrines.

More Barthian Confusion or Biblical Light?

Surro’Unded by such developments, it is significant that our churches in general not only do not share them but are mostly totally unaware of them. That prompts one to ask why they are oblivious to what ought to be welcomed as encouragement and as offering new opportunities for those who share the Reformation heritage. The general course of our denomination as well as the activity of our recent synod reveal more and more clearly that a noisy, increasingly Liberal leadership, though giving lip service to the Bible’s authority, is determined to compromise or reject that authority whenever it contradicts either their private prejudices or those of our time. That is the issue that comes more and more plainly to expression in the debates about the drive to place women in church office. Despite the plain Pauline prohibitions, “Let your women keep silence in the churches . . . as also saith the law,” “If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that t he things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:33–38), and “I suffer not a woman to teach, not to usurp authority over the man” with an appeal to creation and the history of the fall (1 Tim. 2:11–3:7), we find our synods bombarded with th e bald lie that “there is no conclusive biblical basis for our current practice of excluding women from office.” As our churches continue to stumble and fumble with this, as with other current issues, they, by delays or indecisions, are like their mother churches in the Netherlands, as the book and review suggest already following the “paradigm” or “model” of Karl Barth. The ideas of Barth, far from guiding us out of our confusion and frustration, have brought us into them. Our churches’ recent history is showing the validity of the warning of God’s prophet, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). Whether one translates the last phrase so with the King James, or reads with the ASV, “surely there is no morning for them,” the warning is equally valid. One who will not be guided by God’s inspired Word has neither light nor future. Only the Bible-believing Christian and church can and will confess and experience the exciting fact, that, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105; cf. 2 Peter 1:19).