INTRODUCTION: ON THE CHRISTOCENTRICITY OF BARTH’S DOCTRINE OF ELECTION

When the history of theology in the twentieth century is written from the vantage point of, let us say, one hundred years from now, I am confident that the greatest contribution of Karl Barth to the development of church doctrine will be located in his doctrine of election. It was here that he provided his most valuable corrective to classical teaching; here too his dogmatics found both its ontic ground and its capstone. Nothing in that claim will seem surprising to those who are acquainted with Barth's teaching on this theme. But a more penetrating analysis will also, I think, yield the observation that it was in Barth's doctrine of election that the historicizing tendencies of well over a century of theology prior to him found, at one and the same time, both their relative justification and their proper limit. What Barth accomplished with his doctrine of election was to establish a hermeneutical rule which would allow the church to speak authoritatively about what God was doing - and, indeed, who and what God was/is - 'before the foundation of the world', without engaging in speculation.