‘In de gemeente is Barth de duivel’. De periode 1940-1951 als de bakermat van het kritische Barth-beeld in hervormd-gereformeerde en christelijk-gereformeerde kring

Samenvatting

This article explores the reception of Karl Barth’s theology within both the Reformed
League in the former Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Christian Reformed
Church (CRC) from 1940 up to 1951, when a new church order in the DRC (heavily
influenced by Barth’s theology) ushered in a new era. The champions of the pre-War
critical approach in the Reformed League and the CRC, J. Severijn and J.J. van der
Schuit, readily accepted C. van Til’s attack on Barth’s dialectical theology as ‘new
modernism’. Representatives of a younger generation took the same critical stance.
Some of them, however, preferred the more nuanced criticism of G.C. Berkouwer. A
critical issue in the attacks on Barth was his doctrine of election, a theme which affected
the growing tensions in their own ranks about the predominance of either covenant or
election. Even more than the late thirties, the period 1940-1951 can be qualified as the
cradle of the critical attitude to Barth’s theology in the above mentioned circles.