This chapter has ten subdivisions.
Roots.
Two paragraphs in this section, beginning with a few comments about Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard of “leap of faith” fame.
Karl Barth.
Three paragraphs in this subsection. Karl Barth was a Swiss theologian. He wrote a commentary on Romans, a book titled The Word of God and the Word of Man, The Humanity of God, and several summaries of his theology: Credo, Dogmatics in Outline, The Kingdom of God and the Service of God, and Evangelical Theology. His so-called masterpiece was the Church Dogmatics in fourteen large volumes. It is the largest systematic theology ever written in any language from any perspective.
Barth on
Scripture.
Mention is made of dialectical theology and crisis theology. Barth claimed to have high regard for the Bible but said that Scripture points to, contains, or becomes the Word of God rather than is the Word, by its very nature. Barth believed in the old liberal view of Scripture rather than the historical Reformed orthodox view.
Barth on
God.
His theology proper and Christology improve old liberalism but is still not fully orthodox Calvinism.
Barth on Salvation.
Barth said that the doctrine of election is the sum of the gospel, but he had a radically different theory than Calvin and historic Calvinism. He denied absolute foreordination and the twofold will of God. He put forth a purified supralapsarianism or super–supralapsarianism, centered on Christ, who is the only person who is elected. The work of Christ on the cross was not limited to the elect, nor is it penal substitutionary satisfaction like Calvin or even Arminius proposed. This strongly implies that Barth believed in ultimate universal salvation. But he neither asserted nor denied it as such. Some think he caught that there is a Hell (but nobody is in it) or that preaching on Hell is only a useful ruse to move people to a crisis of faith. Christ will be Judge to restore order in the universe, but not necessarily to consign lost sinners to Hell. In sum, he taught a radically different soteriology than historic Calvinism.
Emil Bruner.
Bruner was also German-Swiss who taught at Zürich and then in Tokyo. He was more liberal than Barth in several ways, such as in rejecting the virgin birth. Bruner denied and scorned the idea of biblical inerrancy. He denied the Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles. He believed Scripture has myths and contradictions. He believed Adam and Eve were non-historical myths. He thought Moses did not write the Pentateuch, which was compiled by scribes centuries after the prophets wrote their books. He believed two later editors wrote Isaiah. He felt the Gospels contain myths, such as Luke’s record of a Roman census and Matthew’s star of the wise men. Even the gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances are contradictory.
Scottish Neo-Orthodoxy.
Five paragraphs. A form of Neo-Orthodoxy began to appear in the Church of Scotland after World War II. They disliked the Westminster Confession of Faith.
American Neo-Orthodoxy.
Reinhold[1] and Richard Niebuhr came out of what was left of the old German Reformed Church in America and develop what some consider an American form of Neo-Orthodoxy. They interacted very little with previous Calvinists and were as far from the Reformed mainstream as their European counterparts. Evangelicals resisted Neo-Orthodoxy for decades, but some eventually capitulated and claimed to be both evangelical and semi-Barthian.
Appraisal.
Neo-Orthodoxy may be considered one of Calvinism’s two errant and illegitimate children. The other is Arminianism. Both arose as reactions to and rejection of true Calvinism and resembled each other more than either wishes to acknowledge (e. g. their mutual rejection of the TULIP[2] doctrines and insistence on God’s universal dealing with man. But at least Arminius and Wesley were evangelical, which Neo-Orthodoxy is not. Nor is Neo-Orthodoxy another form of Amyraldism,[3] which may not have been in the mainstream, but at least was in the true Reformed family.
The Neo-Orthodox are usually united in their opposition to Reformed scholasticism, the Puritans, Covenant Theology, both Dort and Westminster, and Princeton Theology. They ignore or oppose the truest representatives of Reformed theology, such as John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Spurgeon as well as more contemporary Calvinists such as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, James I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, and John MacArthur. Cornelius Van Til wrote over 1000 pages of close analysis of this theology.
Here is a summary:
Nothing could be more untrue to history than to say that the theology of Barth and Bruner is basically similar to that of Luther and Calvin. Dialecticism is a basic reconstruction of the whole of the Reformation Theology along critical lines. A Calvinist should not object to Lutheranism in Barth; there is no Lutheranism there. A Lutheran should not object to the Calvinism of Barth’s doctrine of election; there is no Calvinism in it. A Calvinist should not object to the Arminianism in Barth's universalism; there is no Arminianism in it.[…] There is no more Christianity and no more theism in Bruner than there is in Barth.[…] If evangelical Christianity in general ought to recognize in the Theology of Crisis, a mortal enemy, this is doubly true with respect to those who hold to the Reformed faith.[…] The Theology of Crisis is a friend of Modernism, and a foe of historic Christianity.
Conclusion.
“Van Til
was right. Neo-orthodoxy is neither another form of Calvinism nor of true
Christianity, but is the new Modernism and pseudo-Christianity. It is not even
as evangelical as the Arminianism of John Wesley, for at least Wesley believed
in the fundamentals of the gospel. In sum, Neo-Orthodoxy is a bastardized
theology that wrongly claims to be Reformed. It is well to be warned.”
[1]
This is the favorite theologian of former FBI Director James Comey.
[2]
TULIP is an acronym that developed after the death of Calvin and in response to
the five points of Arminianism, referring to Total Depravity, Unconditional
Election, Limited Atonement (Particular Atonement), Irresistible
Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.
[3]
Amyraldism. This word is derived from the Latin form of the name of Moise
Amyraut (1596–1664), perhaps the most eminent and influential professor of the
French Protestant Academy of Saumur.
