Christianity and Barthianism

Christianity and Barthianism emerged from Cornelius Van Til's decades-long engagement with Karl Barth's theological revolution. Writing from his position at Westminster Theological Seminary, Van Til produced this systematic critique as Barth's influence reached its zenith in mid-twentieth-century Protestant theology. The work represents Van Til's most sustained analysis of what he saw as the fundamental philosophical and theological errors underlying Barth's entire project.

Van Til argues that Barth's theology, despite its claims to biblical orthodoxy, rests on an irreconcilable philosophical foundation that undermines genuine Christian faith. He contends that Barth's dialectical method, borrowed from existentialist philosophy, makes genuine knowledge of God impossible by reducing divine revelation to subjective encounter rather than objective truth. Van Til demonstrates how Barth's rejection of natural theology and his understanding of Scripture as becoming rather than being the Word of God effectively eliminates the possibility of rational apologetics and reduces Christianity to irrationalism. The critique extends to Barth's doctrines of election, reconciliation, and universal salvation, which Van Til argues flow inevitably from Barth's faulty starting point and represent a fundamental departure from Reformed orthodoxy.

The work became a defining text in Reformed apologetics and established Van Til as Barth's most persistent Reformed critic. It provided ammunition for conservative evangelicals suspicious of Barth's influence while demonstrating how presuppositional analysis could expose the philosophical foundations of theological systems. Christianity and Barthianism remains essential reading for students of twentieth-century theology seeking to understand the sharp divide between evangelical and neo-orthodox approaches to revelation and knowledge. Those sympathetic to Barth's theological program or unfamiliar with Reformed scholastic categories may find Van Til's critique overly systematic and philosophically dense.