Barthian error: Trueblood & Baillie

Elton Trueblood[1] and John Baillie take issue with K. Barth:

The powerful influence of Karl Barth has made some believe that knowledge of God is limited to the Christian revelation as found in the Bible, but this is unbiblical. The Barthian error, of course, is not Barth's insistence on the centrality of Christ, but his virtual denial of the idea that in pre-Christian ages God "did not leave himself without witness" (Acts 14:17). Though the revelation in nature is manifestly incomplete, it is nevertheless real, and a man can have some knowledge even before he meets Jesus Christ. John Baillie took great pains to make this clear in the Gifford Lectures which he wrote but never delivered.

I had, of course, always believed that there is no ultimate salvation for mankind save in Jesus Christ, but when I began to read Dr. Barth's books, what struck me at once as unfamiliar was his insistence that mankind had no knowledge of God save in Jesus Christ. This is new teaching and it is precisely what I have never been able to accept.

John Baillie, The Sense of the Presence of God (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 255.

[1] A Place To Stand,  David Elton Trueblood Harper & Row 1969 page 54.