Karl Barth wrote "God gives to created being what can only be given to it and what can be given only by Him. And does really give it: take what is mine - this final, supreme, insurpassable gift; take it, it is meant for you."
Few realizations have prompted so deep a realization of my own helplessness. We cannot somehow ascend to the grace and love given us by God. In fact if we take seriously what is in the world around us right now, we will see the true depths of brokenness. There is a world around us that is profoundly broken and in desperate need of redemption. This redemption only comes from the one true God.
And so God gives. He gives out of us own unbridled love and generosity. Even His own Son in the Incarnation, the central event of creation. God willed from and to all eternity to be Emmanuel, a willing event that centers around the Incarnation. God gives Himself "for us men and for our Salvation," declares the Creed. It is only from the One God that the gift of God may come, and only in Christ Jesus is this idea and act borne.
This gift is not something intended to elude us. Salvation is not a foreign hope, limited cruelly to the elect people of God, as if some are not elect, rather, as the Scriptures declare "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." This is the proclamation of Paul to the Ephesians. That we find our election in the ultimate Election of Christ; the subject and object of election. Not that we as truly depraved humans are able to pretend to election apart from His Election. Or that election is in and of itself salvation. Justification is found in the meeting of our election in Christ with human decision, for which grace to decide is given by God.
So as we arduously wait for the return of Emmanuel, we know that we rest in Him. This one truth is the hope of all creation.
While Karl Barth has received more than widespread revocation from Calvinist theologians the world over, it is my humble opinion that his writings on the subject of election, as I have read them from his work Church Dogmatics, have great influence over the entire subject.
It is my understanding that the debate was begun by John Calvin, a mid to late 16th century theologian, and arguably one of the most important to date. Calvin believed that God chose some humans for salvation through Christ. This statement by all means would then logically imply that God also chose some to not receive salvation through Christ, or more directly, to chose some for eternal damnation. This has become known as “double predestination (see Westminster Confession of Faith).” I don’t want to get into the idea and theology of absolute decree, but it is my opinion that Calvin’s absolute decree takes away the fundamental Christian concept of human independence, the idea that God gave us the ability to chose, independent of external, divine, force.
Barth believed that the idea of absolute decree, as explained by Calvin, undermined God’s sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Pointing instead to His decree being the willful sacrifice of His son on the cross, an act that beckons human response. Barth maintains the doctrine of double predestination that is core to the Reformed teachings, but moves the center of absolute decree to be over the person of Jesus Christ, and salvation through Him. Thus, Jesus is the vessel for both dietous election, and divine reprobation.
As I have explored the heart of this debate, I have begun to realize something about theology as whole. It is not so much that there is two sides to every debate. That there is a line in the sand that one must stand on one or the other side, poised for attack of the other. It is much more that there are forces, pulling in dissimilar directions that keep the debate in tension. I like this analogy more because it doesn’t cause static. It keeps a great almost anxious heart to explore either direction. More deeply spurring the Christian mind to investigate these concepts. I am so deeply thankful for Barth dusting off this tired old theology, and giving it some new depth. While I do not claim to be so wise as to be able to make a decision on this, I believe that Barth’s understanding more closely matches the heart of God. That by giving people more choice, it more clearly shows His greatness.
