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Church Dogmatics
Volume II, Part 2
By Karl Barth
806 Edinburgh, Scotland, T. and T. Clark, 1958. 55 shillings.

Barth's interpretation of the doctrine of election, which occupies the first half of his Church Dogmatics, II, 2, ¹ marks the high point in his program of bringing every Christian doctrine under the normative control of Christology. It also marks the point of his most radical departure from the theological tradition in which he stands. He discards the traditional term, "predestination," in favor of "election of grace" (Gnadenwahl; cf. Rom. 11: 5). His concern is to stress the two elements which are combined in this word: he seeks to show that election is from beginning to end a matter of grace, and that at every stage grace operates electively. By the same token he repudiates the notion of an "election of wrath" which counter-balances the election of grace, as was taught in the, classical doctrine of "double predestination," and also the notion of a grace which operates non-electively and ensures the ultimate salvation of all men, as was taught in the doctrine of apokatastasis ("universalism").

I

Barth places the doctrine of election in the doctrine of God. Election concerns God's attitude towards that which is external to himself an opus ad extra), but it is primarily a self-determination of his being. Barth insists on the coincidence of the being and the works of God ("God is in his works and ways"), and he regards election, so to speak, as the copula between them. It is not merely something that God chooses to' do, it is the way in which he chooses to be God.

Here Barth breaks with the theological tradition, both Catholic and Protestant. For Aquinas predestination forms a part of the doctrine of providence . ² Providence deals with God's disposal and direction of all created things to their appointed end, and predestination with the application of it to the special creature, man. It is, as such, an external operation on the part of God, not an internal determination of his being. The same is true of Calvin's doctrine, despite the formal fact that it is treated.

¹ The doctrine of election occupies pages 1-506 (Chapter VII of the whole work). remainder of the volume (which will not be discussed here) contains the introductory se of Barth's ethics, which he plans to develop at appropriate points in his dogmatics. introduces the subject here under the title of "The Command of God," because it concern the question what it means for man to be elected as a partner in God's covenant of grace.
² Summa Theological, I, QQ22f.

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in the course of the exposition of the third article of the Apostles' Creed; 3 for though the question is asked in a Christological-soteriological context, the answer is given in terms of providential disposal. It was not illogical, therefore that in the development of the Calvinistic tradition the doctrine of predestination came to be moved from the context where Calvin had placed it and brought into closer proximity to the doctrine of providence. In the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms it comes immediately after the doctrine of God and the Trinity. The consequence this arrangement is the dissociation of the doctrine from the Gospel, with which it is associated in the New Testament, and the introduction of a painful tension between the revealed (saving) will of God and his hidden (disposing) will, which can only be eased-not resolved-by the subordination of one to the other, or the suppression of one by the other.

The Westminster Confession, for example, concludes its forthright and uninhibited presentation of the doctrine of the "double decree" with a recommendation to concentrate on the revealed will of God and forget the other side of the picture-which seems rather like a recommendation to forget the whole thing. Barth, on the other hand, introduces the topic with the proposition, "The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man . . . ⁴ It is not concerned merely with the mechanics of God's healing with man; it is the fundamental act of God in which he inwardly determines his being and his will toward man; it is the opus internum ad extra, in which he determines to be God-for-man, that is, the God of race. And at the same time it is the act in which he determines that man all be man for God.

But this act of self-determination and man-determination on the part of God is also an act of election. In electing to be God for man and in electing man for himself, he has rejected the alternative of his being a God who is indifferent to man and of man's being a creature who possesses freedom of indifference toward God. This possibility God has cast behind him, so that it exists only as an "Impossible possibility," a possibility which has been eternally excluded from realization.

When election is understood in this way, it is clear that its scope is not limited to the work of salvation; all the works of God are works of election. Thus creation for Barth is a work of election, the same gracious election which is manifested in the saving work of God in Christ; for the first in the series of the works of the triune God, has for its

³ Institutes III, 21-24. The placing of the doctrine appears to have presented something of a problem Calvin, and in various of his writings he tried various solutions (Barth says four). But since in the final edition of the Institutes he came back to virtually the same position he had taken in the first, this may be held to represent his considered judgment on the question.
⁴ Op. cit., p. 3.

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purpose the preparation and inauguration of the covenant-relation between God and man which culminates in the work of reconciliation. It is not, therefore, a neutral act, a mere positing of the creature; it is an affirmation, election and acceptance of the creature, and a rejection of the alternative. 5 "As Creator, God did not say No to what he created, nor did he say Yes and No; he said Yes. There is indeed also a divine No-the necessary rejection of everything that God according to his nature cannot be, and, in consequence, the necessary rejection of everything that God according to his nature could not will and could not create, every…thing that he could not tolerate as reality distinct from himself." ⁶

Barth detects this election motif at various points in the first creation narrative (or "saga," as he prefers to call it) of Genesis. He interprets the tohu wabohu of Gen. 1: 2, not as an intermediate stage in the process of creation, but as a backward glance at the formless and impossible world of chaos which God rejected, when he created this world to be the basis of the covenant. He sees a shadow of the same impossible possibility in the waters which are restrained by the creation of the firmament; the waters which are above the firmament, Barth admits, were, no doubt, real waters to the narrator, but they were of interest to him chiefly, he believes, as symbols of "the metaphysical danger" in which the history of mankind; takes place and from which it is mercifully protected by the grace of God; and the waters under the firmament which are separated to their own place so that the dry land may appear, he sees likewise as a symbol of the same threatening chaos which stands at the margin of the inhabited world. "Because God's covenant of grace is the meaning of this world because God's free mercy, his superior help, his salvation and his deliverance are his purpose with his creation, the created world must have this margin. Only from the existence of this margin can we see how gravely creation is imperiled, how much it needs mercy, help, salvation, and deliverance." ⁷

II

The interpretation of election as the fundamental act of self-determination on the part of God is grounded in the authenticity and exclusiveness of the revelation of God in Christ. It means, therefore, that the God who elects is the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ and who is eternallyl the Father of Jesus Christ in the unity of the Holy Spirit. In his Trinitarian doctrine Barth repeatedly stresses the point that the eternal Son, who is consubstantial with the Father, is not to be thought of as the discarnate Logos, but identical with the Son who is destined to become

⁵ Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, 1, p. 416.
⁶ Op. cit., p. 378.
⁷ Op. Cit., p. 159.

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man and to die for our sins, in which role fie stands eternally before the eyes of God. ⁸ He interprets the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, accordingly, as an eternal predisposition toward man, which is given effect in the historical mission of the Son. ⁹ The word which God "has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb. 1: 2) is the same word that "was in the beginning and was with God and was God" (Jn. 1:1). Thus Barth can say that "Jesus Christ is the electing God."

His complaint against the traditional doctrine is that it posits as the subject of election another than the God who is revealed in Christ. This God in general, who is unrevealed and whose will is inscrutable, is an unknown quantity, whose freedom is a freedom of indifference toward man. Election then becomes an arbitrary and partial suppression or suspension of this fundamental indifference of God toward man; and the more the absolute and arbitrary character of the freedom of God is stressed, the more his basic attitude toward man assumes the character of aversion (Calvin estimated that about twenty per cent of men were elect). Against this Barth insists that election is not an arbitrary act which reflects God's absolute freedom from man, but a determinate act which expresses that freedom for man which belongs to his innermost being. By the same token he finds the essence of the divinity of God to consist, not in his separation or isolation from man, but in the grace in which he condescends and relates himself to man. ¹⁰

In an interesting autobiographical essay, published recently, Barth says that the most decisive turn in his own thought is the replacement of an emphasis on God as the "wholly other," which was prominent in his early writings and which was justified at that time, by an emphasis on what he now calls "the humanity of God," and he ascribes this change to an increasing awareness of the centrality of Christ in theology.11 "The election of grace is the eternal beginning of all the ways and works of God in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God in his free grace determines himself for sinful man . . . "¹²

III

It was noted above that when Barth speaks of Jesus Christ as the electing God, he does not mean the eternal Son as distinct from the incarnate Christ (a distinction which, he maintains, is foreign to the New Testament), but the eternal Son in his "determination towards the elected man Jesus."¹³ In him God not only determines himself for sinful man, he

⁸ Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, 1, p. 58; cf. Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, pp. 52ff.
⁹ Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, pp. 157ff.
¹⁰ Op. cit., p. 117.
¹¹ Die Menschlichkeit Gottes, 1956.
¹² Church Dogmatics, II, 2, p. 94.
¹³ OP. cit., p. 110.

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also determines sinful man for himself. Jesus Christ is the subject of election (the electing God) because he is also its object (the elected man); and he is both subject and object because he is also the predicate-he is the election of God in action. In him the self-determination of God for man and God's determination of man for himself coincide.

Barth's chief criticism of the traditional doctrine is that it failed to take account of the mediatorial role of Christ in election. It neglected the fact that we are elected "in him," according to the statement in Eph. 1: 4 (a passage on which Barth lays tremendous stress), and it attempted to relate the divine election immediately to the individual. The consequence was' that the identity of the elected man became a painful problem, like that of the electing God. But there is no problem here. The elect of God is primarily the man Jesus, and he is elected in view of his mission to be, by vicarious suffering, "the man for other men" and to embrace other men in his election. Election is thus particular and selective in the highest degree.

Barth rejects the notion of an election of mankind in general, which some Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century opposed to Calvin's absolute decree"; he insists that God's election involves both a Yes and, a No (and in this sense it is truly "double predestination"); for men their fall into sin have brought upon themselves the rejection which God in his election of grace has put behind him. But in Jesus Christ God takes upon himself the rejection of man with all its consequences, and elects man to participation in his own glory." ¹⁴ And thus the unique election of the man Jesus is at the same time most catholic and universal; it is, so to speak, a geometrical point which expands to a circle wide enough to embrace all mankind.

There is still, however, another mediate and mediating election which has to be taken into account before we come to the election of the individual. This is the election of the community-Barth employs this term so as to cover both Israel and the Church, and he defines it as "the human fellowship which in a particular way provisionally forms the natural and historical environment of the man Jesus Christ." 15 Here we observe the divine election in operation at the historical level. The presence of Christ incarnate among men is the divine election in action, and id primary effect is to constitute a community, which lie calls to participate in his election for the purpose of bearing witness to him before the world. This community, as it appears in history, exhibits an inner dichotomy which reflects the two sides of election, the positive and the negative, grace and wrath, mercy and judgment. The negative side is represented in Israel and the positive in the Church, but not in stable equilibrium; as

¹⁴ Op. cit., p. 94.
¹⁵ Op. cit., p. 196.

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Israel and the Church have their point of unity and of separation in Christ, who is at once Israel's crucified Messiah and the Church's risen Lord, they represent together the triumph of grace over wrath.

Finally, election comes to the individual through the Church's testimony; for the preaching of Christ is the actuality of election. Barth eliminates the gap which appeared in the classical doctrine between election and vocation, together with the awkward notion of an ineffectual vocation. In its preaching of Christ the Church proclaims to the individual, "In him you are elected." It is not the calling of the individual that is not to be taken seriously, but the unbelief with which he pay receive it; for the Church consists of men who know that the gracious election of God in Christ has triumphed over the rejection they have merited, and they cannot, therefore, see in the ungodliness and unbelief others a final and insurmountable obstacle to it.

The preponderance of election over reprobation, as Barth stresses it, would seem to point to the doctrine of apokatastasis (universal salvation). But he rejects this inference, for the same reason as he rejects the numerus clausus (the idea that the number of the elect has been predetermined from all eternity) of the classical doctrine; both conflict with the actuality of election in Christ and with the freedom of man in the decision of faith. Barth's conclusion is to point to the practical task of the Church, which neither to eliminate the alternative of reprobation, nor to absolutize it, but, believing in the preponderance of election over reprobation, to in the Gospel to the unbeliever. The Church cannot take the unbelief of the unbeliever seriously and consign him to final reprobation; it must take seriously the electing will of God, that the reprobate man should believe the promise of his election, which is given to him in the Gospel, and so become an "elect reprobate."

IV

Barth's theology has been characterized by the Dutch theologian, Berkouwer, as a theology of "the triumph of grace." The brief summary Barth's doctrine of election given above illustrates the aptness of this title. Barth has made a profoundly impressive attempt to present the work of grace as a real triumph, by conserving the element of election in operation, while at the same time avoiding the "dread decree" (decretum horribile) of reprobation which was demanded by the logic of Calvin. There can also be no doubt that Barth has caught the authentic note of the New Testament, which treats this subject in tones of triumph rather than of doom. To give only one illustration, the classical doctrine of double predestination has leaned heavily on the three chapters in Romans where Paul treats of the destiny of Israel in God's purpose of election (Rom. 9-1 1), and it found a basis for the decree of reprobation

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in the passage where the Apostle speaks of "vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction" (Rom. 9:22), but it ignored the fact that the argument which Paul develops in these chapters mounts up to the triumphant conclusion will that God's purpose of salvation, according to the election of grace, will finally be realized both with all Israel and with the fullness of the Gentiles (Rom. 11: 25f.). In Barth's extended exposition of chapters, which he includes in this volume, the thrust of the argument toward its conclusion is felt from the beginning.

Barth's interpretation of election as a triumph of grace represents a remarkably consistent development of the course on which he embarked in his Epistle to the Romans forty years ago. His thinking has undergone some changes in these four decades, as he himself acknowledges, Barth has never hesitated to correct himself. But he claims that despite change is of form and accent his thought has moved in fundamentally the same direction from the outset. Readers who compare this volume with the ninth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans can note both things. The doctrine here elaborated Christologically is there presented dialectically, but it is unmistakably the same doctrine in germ. Double predestination, Barth wrote in the Romans, means, "All are confronted by the eternal two-sided possibility, which moves and rests in God alone … the secret of eternal, two-fold predestination concerns not this or that man, but all men. By it men are not divided, but united. . . . When the Reformers applied the doctrine of election and rejection (predestination) the psychological unity of this or that individual, and when they referred quantitatively to the 'elect' and the 'damned,' they were, as we can now see, speaking mythologically. . . . The individual is not more than the stage upon which election and rejection take place…. We know already what this duality in God means. We know that it involves no equilibrium, but that it is the eternal victory of election over rejection, of love over hate, of life over death. But this victory is hidden from us in every moment of time. We cannot escape the duality. . . . Thus it is that the Church, as we observe it, is confronted only by the possibility of rejection which is in God eternally overcome." ¹⁶

Nevertheless, Barth's doctrine raises a number of questions which may be briefly referred to in conclusion. First, his view of election as a fundamental act of self-determination on the part of God, with the corresponding identification of Jesus Christ as the electing God, raises problems in trinitarian theology. It involves a conception of the unity God which includes, not only complexity (in the sense for which Hodgson has contended), but a certain polarity, if not a: complexio oppositorum. God is one, not in the sense that he is for himself alone, but in the sense

¹⁶ Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, (E. T.), Oxford, 1933, pp. 343-348.

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that he is open and free for what is other than himself, because the otherness of everything that is other than God is the image of an otherness at God has originally in himself. But if the relation between God and the world is an analogue of the Trinity, is this not to strain the concept of substantiality to the breaking-point? Moreover, if the election of us Christ is a free act of self-determination on the part of God, does is not resolve the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son into something resembling an "elective affinity"? Is God free also to determine himself in an alternative way? Is he free to deal with us apart from Christ, as Brunner suggests he does? Barth is concerned to avoid the Scotistic notion of an arbitrary and inscrutable divine freedom which lay behind the decretum absolutum of the classical doctrine, by replacing it with what he calls the decretum concretum, the concrete self-determination of God in Jesus Christ, but he does not seem to be able to eliminate a certain area of absolute freedom which lies behind even this. It is perhaps not without significance that Barth at times uses language which has a faintly Arian flavor-as, for example, when he writes (following an exposition of Jn. 1: 1), "This choice was in the beginning. As the subject and object of this choice, Jesus Christ was at the beginning. He was not the beginning of God, for God has indeed no beginning. But he was at the beginning of all things, at the beginning of God's dealings with the reality which is distinct from himself." ¹⁷

There seems to be, in the second place, a certain looseness, or even equivocation, in Barth's use of the term "rejection" (or "reprobation").Sometimes it is used of God's rejection of man, sometimes of man's rejection of God. Now, if reprobation is a possibility which God in his election of grace has eternally cast behind him and excluded from realization, a question, which might be puzzling to some, how man can give reality to this possibility at the level of existence. But leaving that aside, assuming that man in his creaturely freedom, or the misuse of it, has power to conjure up on the stage the spectre which God has forever laid, this ought to be called sin or guilt; to speak of it as "merited reprobation" is surely equivocal. If there is any sense in which men may be said to merit reprobation, the fact remains that, since reprobation is an "impossible possibility," they cannot win it.

This ambiguity points to a third difficulty in Barth's interpretation of the work of Christ. His resolution of double predestination into a dialectic of particularity and universality hinges on a substitutionary, theory of the work of Christ, according to which he assumes our reprobation in exchange for his election; "in the election of Jesus Christ, which the eternal will of God, God has ascribed to man … election, salvation,

¹⁷ Op. Cit., p. 102.

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and life; and to himself he has ascribed … reprobation, perdition, and death." ¹⁸ But in what sense can Christ be thought to have assumed our reprobation? It is noteworthy that when Calvin faced this ultimate implication of the substitutionary theory, even he felt unable to take it literally, and he might have agreed with Tillich who calls it "a highly symbolic kind of speaking."19

Much criticism has centered on Barth's attitude to the doctrine of, apokatastasis. It seems to be the logical conclusion to which his argument points, and his disavowal of it has been a source of some puzzlement and has even been considered disingenuous. The misunderstanding between Barth and his critics on this matter may be due in part to the neglect of a simple distinction. The doctrine of apokatastasis affirms (or has been generally understood to affirm) that God will, even must, save all men. But to reject it does not mean to deny that God can and may save all men-and this was all that Origen contended, if the text of De Principiis can be relied on. Barth, however, differs from Origen, who deduced the possibility and probability of universal redemption from an abstract concept of divine omnipotence; his position is that the grace of God, which is manifested in election, cannot be treated as a law or principle, from which deductions can be drawn. If, despite this, Barth's doctrine has a marked bias toward apokatastasis, this is probably due to the ontological elements in his thought; for if God in his election of grace has cast reprobation behind him and excluded it from the realm of possibility, it is hard to see how it can become a live option for man, however much he merits it. Barth, so to speak, refuses to allow a divorce between election and reprobation, but he leaves a strong impression that the marriage will be annulled.

George S. Hendry
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey

¹⁸ Op. cit., p. 163.
¹⁹ Calvin, Institutes, II, 16, II Tillich, Systematic Theology, II, p. 175.