Karl Barth and Election

I wrote a research paper on Karl Barth's Doctrine of Election for Theology class this Fall. Barth's doctrine of election is significant because he understood election to be essential to who God is. Election is not about a predetermined number of individuals who will be saved, but rather it is about the God who has eternally elected to be God in Jesus and therefore God has eternally identified God's self with all of humanity in this election. Election is the free and gracious movement of God to make room within the Godhead for humanity. Here is a snippet of my paper for your reading pleasure:

For Barth, the existence of Jesus, God in flesh, demonstrates God’s eternal election of humanity.

In the person of His eternal Son he has united Himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and in Him and through Him with this people. He is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is not only the Father of the eternal Son, but as such He is the eternal Father of the temporal man.*

God wills to be God in relation to Jesus; therefore election is central to the doctrine of God because God has eternally willed to be God in Christ.* This predestination of God and of humanity fundamentally orients the ontological status of God and humanity. Election “determines the being of God and of humanity.”* This is because in election God has determined to be an electing God and God has determined humanity to be the elect.* This is known in Jesus: the electing God and the elected human.

Everything that is, is because of God’s election. Because God chose to be God in Jesus, God who was divine and human; God who was God and not God, God decided to bind God’s self to everything that was not God. Barth writes,

In the beginning, before time and space as we know them…God anticipated and determined within Himself that the goal and meaning of all His dealings with the as yet non-existent universe should be the fact that in His Son He would be gracious towards man, uniting Himself with him.*

This would ultimately result in the Son offering himself in sacrifice for humanity in order that God’s covenant with humanity would be a reality.

Jesus is the electing God and the elected human. Jesus is God’s electing movement towards humanity and humanity’s subsequent movement towards God.* “For it is God’s free grace that in Him He elects to be man and to have dealings with man and to join Himself to man.”* What Barth is doing is reorienting the doctrine of election so that it is not an afterthought. It is not an improvisation that occurred due to the fall of the created order. Rather, “God, as essentially the electing God, makes the universe in order that it may be the arena on which his gracious purposes may come to pass. It is therefore the presupposition of all God’s works.”* In Barth’s own words, he writes, “This decree is really the first of all things…It is the decision which is the basis of all that follows.”*



References

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1957).

Eberhard Jungel, God's Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001).

Colin E. Gunton, "Karl Barth's doctrine of election as part of his doctrine of God", Journal of Theological Studies 25.2 (1974): 381-392.