is the humiliation of God for us; his yes to Christ in the resurrection is the
exaltation of humanity for our sake. The humiliation of God overturns the
sin of pride; the exaltation of man overturns the sin of sloth.
Barth’s doctrine of election seems to imply universal salvation. In Christ,
God chooses not just who God shall be but who humanity shall be. It seems
to follow that all humanity is saved in Christ, who elected to give his life for
all. Barth does not draw this conclusion, which is up to the judgment of God,
and some critics have found Barth to be evasive on this point. For Barth, the
doctrine of election is good news because Jesus Christ is the chosen one,
in whom all humanity is saved. Likewise, in the Bible the election of Israel
as the chosen people is for the blessing of all nations. The structure of the
biblical concept is not that some are chosen instead of others, but that some
are chosen for the sake of others.
Barth’s actualism (his focus on revelation as an event or act of God) seems
to be an example of what he rightly rejected: a philosophical foundation that
determines what may be said in theology. Barth’s actualism does not look at
all necessary to those outside the tradition of German theology, which lives
in Kant’s shadow. For Kantian philosophy, and therefore for German Liberal
and Existentialist theology, the structure of the self determines the structure
of the known world. Barth’s actualism is a way of escaping this otherwise
inevitable turn to the self in German thought. For those not dwelling in the
shadow of German philosophy, actualism is not needed in order to escape
this turn to the self. Ŷ
Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology.
Miller and Grenz, Fortress Introduction to Contemporary Theologies.
Tillich, Dynamics of Faith.
Suggested Reading