Put differently, Barth anticipated much of the
postmodern critique of Enlightenment reason while vigorously opposing the
nihilist presumption that there is no ground of truth.
The American religious empiricist so understood could accept what these
postmodern philosophers and theologians have elucidated without dismissing them as
nihilists; but these postmodernists, in turn, also are close enough to the American religious empiricist to hear their critique of
postmodern anti-realism and subjectivism.16