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Reading The Decree Exegesis Election And Christology In Calvin And Barth David Gibson download

The document discusses David Gibson's examination of the relationship between Christology and election in the works of John Calvin and Karl Barth, highlighting their differing interpretations of scripture. It argues that these differences stem from their distinct hermeneutical approaches and conceptual frameworks. The foreword by Francis Watson emphasizes the importance of understanding these theological constructs in relation to biblical texts and the ongoing dialogue within the Christian tradition.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
18 views

Reading The Decree Exegesis Election And Christology In Calvin And Barth David Gibson download

The document discusses David Gibson's examination of the relationship between Christology and election in the works of John Calvin and Karl Barth, highlighting their differing interpretations of scripture. It argues that these differences stem from their distinct hermeneutical approaches and conceptual frameworks. The foreword by Francis Watson emphasizes the importance of understanding these theological constructs in relation to biblical texts and the ongoing dialogue within the Christian tradition.

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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For Angela, Archie and Ella
Sine quibus non
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foreword
Francis Watson

What is a ‘doctrine of election’, and why should such a thing be necessary?


Doctrines grow out of the language of scripture and tradition, and respond
to a felt need to articulate as clearly as possible what is entailed in a particu-
lar strand of that language. Yet the mere presence in scripture of statements
about election is not sufficient to give rise to a corresponding doctrine. While
doctrinal construction does seek in a certain sense to comprehend the scrip-
tural message in its entirety, it does so by proposing a framework within
which the biblical texts are to be read, not by converting scriptural utter-
ances into dogmatic propositions without remainder. In principle, then,
there might not have been a ‘doctrine of election’ evoked by and responsive
to biblical representations of divine choices of persons and communities.
A doctrine of election comes into being in response not only to particular
scriptural texts but also and above all to the scriptural witness as a whole.
The doctrine seeks to specify the basis for the contingent divine actions on
behalf of various persons and communities, of which scripture speaks.
Is divine action to be understood primarily as re-action to the prior actions
of human agents, for example, by rewarding the good and punishing the
guilty? Such a view might seem to be rather firmly rooted in scripture. If it
were to be accepted as adequate, no ‘doctrine of election’ would be needed –
for the point of this doctrine is precisely to reject a construal of divine action
as reaction and to insist that all our human acting and reacting is compre-
hended within a divine action that precedes and grounds it. Divine action is
divine action because it is occasioned solely by a divine decision unqualified
by anything outside God – a decision that is traced back even behind the
‘beginning’ of which Genesis speaks. Given that what begins in Genesis is an
unfolding narrative of divine interaction with the world and humanity, the
doctrine of election belongs within the doctrine of God insofar as God’s
own being is self-determined for engagement with the world. The doctrine
of election makes it impossible to suppose that we learn what is most fun-
damentally true about God only when God is abstracted from the world
and from relatedness to humanity.
Doctrines are, however, secondary constructs that originate from scripture
before they propose a way of reading scripture. In consequence, they can be
corrected in light of a new and different construal of the scriptural witness

ix
FOREWORD

to the matter in hand. Unlike scripture, doctrines are in principle provi-


sional; and their provisional status is especially clear where a doctrine is
held by one part of the Christian community but fails to generate a consen-
sus within the church as a whole. Such is the case with the doctrine of
election – an indication, perhaps, that there is more work to be done at this
point. That, at any rate, was the conclusion reached by Karl Barth in rela-
tion to the doctrine of election handed down within his own Reformed
tradition, classically expressed by John Calvin in dependence on Augustine.
Barth’s attempt to revise and correct Calvin marks the starting-point of
David Gibson’s outstanding monograph.
At the heart of this discussion stands a hermeneutical enigma. Calvin and
Barth both construct their accounts of the divine election with constant
recourse to the texts of scripture. Both are ‘biblical theologians’, not in the
sense that they ignore whatever lies outside the sphere of the Bible but in the
sense that the appropriate articulation of the scriptural witness is always at
the centre of their concerns, both in principle and in practice. And yet, read-
ing the same scriptural texts, they read them differently. Whatever the
continuities, the doctrine of election as constructed by Barth diverges radi-
cally from Calvin’s. The two theologians’ engagement with scripture is too
profound to be dismissed with the familiar reductionistic claim that they
have both projected their prior theological views onto the scriptural texts,
which are actually speaking of something else. A non-reductionistic account
of their difference is the task that David Gibson sets himself, retracing its
ramifications from fundamental conceptuality to the selection and exegesis of
the scriptural texts that bear the main weight of the theological argument.
This work was originally a Ph.D. thesis prepared under my supervision at
the University of Aberdeen. In its local context, it belongs among a number
of Ph.D. projects – together with Tom Holsinger-Friesen on Irenaeus,
Richard Cornell on Tertullian, and Jake Andrews on Augustine – which seek
to show how our understanding of the Christian theological tradition is
immeasurably enriched when its hermeneutical and exegetical dimensions
are systematically integrated into the discussion. David Gibson applies this
methodological insight to his comparison between Calvin and Barth, and
the result is illuminating. In the light of his work, it is hard to understand
how so many have contrived to write so much about these figures on the
assumption that their theologies are free-standing intellectual constructs –
rather than the products of an ongoing dialogue with scripture.

Francis Watson is Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at


the University of Durham, UK.

x
acknowledgements

This book is a lightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the


University of Aberdeen in 2007. For that first stage of its life I owe a special
debt of gratitude to my Doktorvater, Francis Watson. I will always be grate-
ful that he directed me to Barth, allowed me to include Calvin, and supervised
a thesis that developed along lines neither of us could foresee. Throughout,
he was exceedingly generous with his time, unfailingly wise in his probing
interaction, and gracious in his encouragement. My wrestling with Calvin
and Barth as they read the doctrine of election in Scripture has been deeply
enriching. I have come to understand what Barth means in saying: ‘of all
words that can be said or heard election is the best’; and to agree with
Calvin: ‘We shall never be clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our
salvation flows from the wellspring of God’s free mercy until we come to
know his eternal election.’ In profoundly different ways, both interpreters
reflect the apostolic conviction that divine election is only understood when
it issues in creaturely praise.
It is a great privilege to have been part of such a stimulating and learned
academic community here in Aberdeen. My Cromwell Tower office col-
leagues Rob Price and Richard Cornell each gave of their time and different
skills to help me when stuck. John Webster and Angus Paddison examined
the thesis, and I am indebted to them both for their searching questions and
their kind encouragement to consider publication. To be publishing on
Calvin in his quincentenary year is a special joy! Tom Kraft and Anna Tur-
ton at T&T Clark patiently responded to my many questions, always with
good cheer, and were excellent editors. Hans Madueme, Paul Helm, Carl
Trueman, and Edwin Tay read all or parts of the manuscript and saved me
from some errors. Chris Green and James Merrick provided invaluable
assistance with the indices and the proofs. The church family at High
Church, Hilton, is a blessing and it has been a great delight to move from
academia to pastoral ministry. Thomas Carlyle is reputed to have asked
‘Who, having been called to be a preacher, would stoop to be a king?’, and
I am learning why. We have the joy of working alongside Peter and Eleanor
Dickson at Hilton. Their friendship and model of ministry is an example of
godly, faithful and sacrificial leadership. As ever, my beloved parents inquired
and watched and listened and helped in ways that only parents can. Paul
and Ruth Reed, my parents-in-law, supported and encouraged us even
though doctoral studies meant a move far away from them. My brothers,

xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Jonathan and Alastair, between them were a superb theological help and a
source of sustaining humour. Numerous friendships enriched my life
throughout: my thanks to Chris Asprey, Jonathan and Zoë Norgate, Ben
and Elizabeth Reynolds, Mark and Monica McDowell, Abe Kuruvilla,
Daniel Strange, and Paul Levy. The late Morton Gauld and his inimitable
teaching of Latin will always be fondly remembered. His untimely death
midway through my studies robbed many of us of a friend and the academic
community in Aberdeen of one of its most gifted and entertaining teachers.
Ubinam parem inveniemus?
My postgraduate studies at King’s College London and Aberdeen were
funded in full by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which
also provided for a period of research at Princeton Theological Seminary
and Westminster Theological Seminary in the USA. As well as allowing me
to mine two excellent libraries for hard to obtain material, this trip led to
conversations with Bruce McCormack, George Hunsinger, and Richard
Gaffin which were extremely formative and opened up new avenues of
thought. My thanks also to Clifford Anderson, Jason and Shannon Santos,
Sandy and Linda Finlayson, and Carl and Catriona Trueman for their help
during that time.
My deepest thanks, however, are reserved for my wife, Angela. My closest
companion, my delight in ways that words cannot express, she has sup-
ported, encouraged and cheered me at every stage. This work is as much
hers as it is mine, for my life bears the impress of her selfless love and care.
She daily teaches me the gospel; the heart of her husband trusts in her. Our
son, Archie William, arrived to upset the thesis wonderfully and our daugh-
ter, Ella Ruth, came later to delay the book. To each of them this work is
most affectionately and gratefully dedicated.

xii
abbreviations

CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (ed. G. W. Bromiley and


T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–1975).
CNTC Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (ed. D. W. Torrance
and T. F. Torrance; 12 vols; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1959–1972).
CO Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt Omnia (ed. Wilhelm
Braum, Edward Cunitz and Edward Reuss; 59 vols. Corpus
Reformatorum: vols 29–87; Brunswick: C. A. Schwetchke and
Son, 1863–1900).
CTJ Calvin Theological Journal.
CTS Calvin’s Commentaries (45 vols; Edinburgh: Calvin
Translation Society, 1844–1856).
EQ Evangelical Quarterly.
IJST International Journal of Systematic Theology.
Inst. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed.
J. T. McNeill; trans. F. L. Battles; 2 vols; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1960).
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament.
JTS Journal of Theological Studies.
KD Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik (Munich: Chr. Kaiser,
1932; Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag Zürich, 1938–1967).
LQ Lutheran Quarterly.
LXX The Septuagint.
MT Masoretic Text.
OS John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini Opera Selecta (ed. Peter Barth,
Wilhelm Niesel and Doris Scheuner; 5 vols; Munich: Chr.
Kaiser Verlag, 1926–1952).
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology.
WTJ Westminster Theological Journal.

xiii
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1

calvin, barth and


christocentrism

Introduction
This book examines the relationship between Christology and election in
the Reformed theological tradition. The relationship is probed by exploring
its presence and function in the work of an early modern theologian (John
Calvin, 1509–64) and a late modern theologian (Karl Barth, 1886–1968).
It is an exercise in historical theology with a focus on theological issues as
they present themselves in the biblical interpretation of both figures. I argue
that the exegetical presentations of Christology and election in Calvin and
Barth expose a contrasting set of relationships between these doctrinal loci
in each theologian. I also argue that this differing relationship between Chris-
tology and election in both theologians can be seen to flow from, and to
inform, two contrasting approaches to the interpretation of Scripture.
This first chapter proceeds along the following lines. First, I sketch the
contours of the relationship between Christology and election in Calvin and
Barth. This leads to an argument for conceptual distinctions in their think-
ing which provide an analytical tool for grasping the differences between
them in this area. Second, an account is offered of why this difference should
be approached by examining their exegesis, and it is suggested that these
conceptual christological distinctions are reflected in similar distinctions in
their hermeneutical approaches to the biblical texts. The remainder of the
chapter engages with the complexities of comparing Calvin and Barth and
their work, and provides an outline of the rest of the book.

1. Christ and Election


In arguing for ‘the name of Jesus Christ as the basis of the doctrine of elec-
tion’, Karl Barth is clear that he does not intend to make an innovative move

1
READING THE DECREE

in the history of doctrine. The biblical texts themselves are wellsprings of


the tradition which has accorded Christology a crucial place in election
(Eph.1.4–5, 3.10; Rom. 8.29–30).1 G. C. Berkouwer adds 2 Tim. 1.9 to such
a list and suggests ‘The history of the doctrine of election may be interpreted
as an effort to understand the meaning of these words.’2
For Barth, the efforts of the continental Reformed tradition to under-
stand the witness of Scripture to divine election involved a struggle over
this question: should Christ be understood in relation to the decree of
election as its foundation, its origin; or merely as its executor? Barth’s
exposition of the doctrine of election unfolds against the historical
backdrop of a Reformed tradition he regards as having gone seriously
awry – despite its best efforts and against its best intentions, it effectively
reduced Christ to the role of election’s executor by emphasizing a secret
electio Patris. A hidden God we can never know stands as the author of
election behind a Christ appearing in time as ‘the organ which serves the
electing will of God’.3 The Reformed doctrine of election leaves us with a
decretum absolutum: ‘The christological reference was warmly and
impressively made, but it is left standing in the air.’4 Barth’s criticism
brings the function of Christology in election sharply into focus. For him
the classic Reformed doctrine of election has severed the link between
Christ and election, and so he seeks to recover it. Nevertheless the fact
remains that the Reformed tradition – as Barth admits – did contain from
its earliest days an understanding of election that was bound up with a
particular understanding of Christology.5 In the thought of John Calvin,
the pastor–theologian standing at the fountain-head of the Reformed tra-
dition, the relationship between Christology and election is particularly
clear.
Christus et decretum The centre of Calvin’s Christology is his applica-
tion of the term ‘Mediator’ to Jesus Christ. This is the titular description
with which he begins his Christology proper in Institutes II.xii, and the term
surfaces repeatedly in Calvin’s exegesis of the Gospels and other biblical
passages. By beginning his Christology with what Richard A. Muller calls
the ‘essentially Anselmic argument concerning the necessity of the mediator,
the God-man’, Calvin supersedes a traditional person–work paradigm and
substitutes ‘a doctrinal model in which the function of mediation becomes

1
CD II/2, p. 60; KD II/2, p. 64.
2
G. C. Berkouwer, Divine Election (trans. H. Bekker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960),
p. 135.
3
CD II/2, p. 65; KD II/2, p. 70.
4
Ibid., p. 65; pp. 69–70.
5
Berkouwer argues that if the Reformed tradition always held Scripture as the boundary
of reflection on election, then it also held Christology itself as an ‘accentuated boundary’
within that circumference (Divine Election, pp. 7–27).

2
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

determinative and the person of Christ must be considered in and through


his office’.6 For Muller, the very structure of Calvin’s exposition at this point
in the Institutes reveals the causal ground of the plan of salvation. The result
is that ‘Christology and predestination are bound intimately together.’7
Calvin writes:

Now it was of the greatest importance for us that he who was to be


our Mediator be both true God and true man. If someone asks why
this was necessary, there has been no simple (to use the common
expression) or absolute necessity. Rather, it has stemmed from a heav-
enly decree (caelesti decreto), on which men’s salvation depended. Our
most merciful Father decreed what was best for us.8

This connection between Christ as Mediator and the ‘heavenly decree’ in


Calvin has been helpfully articulated in a number of treatments. Paul
Jacobs’ discussion remains the most powerful, influencing as it has the
later works of François Wendel, Richard Muller, and Stephen Edmondson.
Jacobs explains the connection between the eternal decree and its
temporal realization in a way which outlines the structure of Calvin’s
Institutes:

Predestination is a doctrine that has two sides: on the one hand,


God’s eternal will, and, on the other, the accomplished act of salva-
tion, i.e. salvation through Christ and his activity in sustaining the
Church. We can thus comprehend the Christ-centred aspect of the
doctrine of election as, first, trinitarian in that it refers to God’s eter-
nal counsel (as detailed in Book I of the Institutes); second, as
soteriological in that it concerns the salvation achieved by Christ
and its effect on us (detailed in Books II and III of the Institutes);
third, as ecclesiological i.e. God’s work in sustaining the Church
(as detailed in Book IV of the Institutes). The first aspect relates to
the second and third ones under the dualist principle of Calvinist
thinking.9

Almost simultaneously to Jacobs, Wilhem Niesel argued that for Calvin


‘Christ is not merely the ground of our recognition of the truth of our

6
R. A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed
Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008; first printed 1986),
pp. 27–28.
7
Ibid., p. 28.
8
Inst. II.xii.1, p. 464; OS 3, p. 437.
9
P. Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin (Neukirchen: Buchhand-
lung des Erziehungsvereins Neukirchen Kr. Moers, 1937), p. 73 (my translation).

3
READING THE DECREE

election; he is also its objective ground.’10 Wendel’s position advances to the


following conviction: ‘Christ took part in the decree of election in his capac-
ity as second Person of the Holy Trinity, and . . . he is also the artisan of this
election in his capacity as Mediator.’11 Precisely the same sentiment is
evident in Muller’s description: ‘The Son as God stands behind the decree
while the Son as Mediator is the executor of the decree.’12 And for Edmond-
son: ‘We understand Christ’s work as Mediator only when we grasp from
the outset that this work is conditioned by and revelatory of God’s mercy
for God’s chosen from eternity. Conversely, we must also say that we know
our election only in Christ, through his work as Mediator.’13
In this book I argue that Calvin’s exegesis yields a view of Christ’s role in
election which may be traced across a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum,
reaching back into eternity there is the pre-existent Son who is the author of
election, the active subject who participates in the decree of election. How-
ever, this Christ is also the object of the decree, the Elect One, both as the
pre-existent Mediator and as the Mediator in time. In his role as the pre-exist-
ent Mediator, Christ is the ‘Head’ of the elect, the locus in whom certain
humans are elect. In his role as Mediator in time, Christ continues to be the
executor of the decree, the one who by his life, death and resurrection brings
about the temporal salvation of those eternally decreed to be saved, and who
puts himself forward as the object of faith. Calvin’s Christ is clothed in a
range of metaphors which describe his relationship to the doctrine of election:
Christ is a book, in whom all the elect are written; Christ is a mirror, the place
we look to see our own election; a guardian, protecting the election given to
us by the Father; and a pledge, guaranteeing our election. The explanation of
Calvin’s Christology and doctrine of election along this eternal–temporal
spectrum corresponds to three contact points between Christology and pre-
destination in Calvin: ‘the definition of election as “in Christ”, the assertion
that predestination is known only in Christ, and the statement that Christ
himself is the “author of election” together with God the Father’.14 For Calvin,
election is by Christ, in Christ, and known in Christ.

10
W. Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (trans. H. Knight; London: Lutterworth, 1956),
p. 164. B. McCormack argues that Niesel’s 1938 work was actually the most influential
in spearheading a reappraisal of Calvin which argued for the christocentric nature of
his doctrine of election; cf. ‘Christ and the Decree: An Unsettled Question for the
Reformed Churches Today’, in L. Quigley (ed.), Reformed Theology in Contemporary
Perspective (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 2006), pp. 124–142.
11
F. Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought (trans.
P. Mairet; New York: Harper and Row, 1950), p. 274.
12
Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 37–38.
13
S. Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
p. 148.
14
Muller, Christ and the Decree, p. 35.

4
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

Christus decretum est If in Calvin’s doctrine Christ stands in a certain


relation to the decree, albeit a relation that cannot be described simplisti-
cally, in Barth’s doctrine Christ is the decree: ‘He is the decree of God (Gottes
Beschluß) behind and above which there can be no earlier or higher decree
and beside which there can be no other, since all others serve only the fulfil-
ment of this decree.’15 Even before arriving at his positive exposition of
Christ’s place in election, Barth outlines the false paths the doctrine takes if
it operates with a general doctrine of God and a general anthropology.
In their place he posits the central concept of Jesus Christ as both the elect-
ing God and the elected man. The concept of Christ as the electing God
involves, as he sees it, a radical concentration of the Reformed christological
motif in election by going significantly beyond the notion of Christ as the
first of the elect according to his human nature. It is also for Barth the
supreme factor in providing a foundation for an acceptable doctrine of
assurance. Christ as the elect man in Barth’s thought advances beyond the
Reformed position most strikingly in the weight Barth attaches to Christ
being elect to suffer, with the death and resurrection of this chosen One
being understood in universally actualistic and representative terms. Barth’s
understanding of election strongly maintains a ‘truly electing and free will of
God’. This is explained in the Reformed tradition by the decretum absolu-
tum, but for Barth ‘It must be shown, then, that it is Jesus Christ himself
who occupies this place.’16 His doctrine of election ‘is arguably the classic
instance in the Church Dogmatics of Barth working out his conviction that
the church’s talk of Jesus Christ is to furnish the ground and content of all
theological doctrine’.17

1.1. A Theological Distinction


It would be tempting to argue that, despite their differences, both Calvin
and Barth have a christocentric doctrine of election. However, some concep-
tual precision is required at this point. Bruce McCormack has suggested that
the label ‘christocentric’ as applied to Barth’s theology has ‘very little explan-
atory value unless one goes on to define concretely what “Christocentrism”
meant in his case’.18 Richard Muller has observed that exactly the same is

15
CD II/2, p. 94; KD II/2, p. 101.
16
Ibid., p. 75; p. 81.
17
J. Webster, Barth (London/New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 88.
18
B. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and
Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 453–454; cf. also J. K.
Riches, ‘What is a “Christocentric” Theology?’, in S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton (eds),
Christ, Faith and History: Cambridge Studies in Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972), pp. 223–238.

5
READING THE DECREE

true of Calvin’s theology.19 He argues persuasively that what has been


lacking in much of the extant discussion of christocentric theologies is ‘clear
definition, indeed, definition and distinction of the various meanings and
applications of “christocentrism” and associated terms as they have been
applied to various documents and movements in the history of Christian
thought.’20 It has been a burden of Muller’s recent work to point out that
modern historiography of the notion of christocentricity has been repeatedly
dogged by ‘the interpretive use of an exclusively twentieth-century notion of
christocentrism as a means for evaluating the theology of the past’.21 This
means that if ‘christocentrism’ as a descriptive term is to carry any value at
all then a set of distinctions within christocentrisms is required in order to
carefully distinguish various different approaches from each other. My study
follows distinctions suggested by Muller: soteriological christocentrism and
principial christocentrism. His explanation is as follows:

In examining the historical differences between [the models for theo-


logical systems that we see in Schleiermacher, Schweizer, Thomasius,
Ritschl and Barth] and the theological models of past eras, it is neces-
sary, therefore, to distinguish between the soteriological christocentrism
of traditional Christian theology, and what can be called the ‘princip-
ial’ christocentrism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
former christocentrism consistently places Christ at the historical and
at the soteriological center of the work of redemption. In the theology
of Calvin and of the Reformed orthodox, such soteriological christo-
centrism opposes all synergistic and, therefore, anthropocentric
approaches to salvation. The latter, a principial christocentrism, may
include the monergistic view of salvation, but it will also assume that
Christ is the principium cognoscendi theologiae or, in Kickel’s phrase
the Erkenntnissgrund of theology.22

Appearing as it does as part of an extensive (and convincing) critique of the


predestinarian ‘central dogma’ theory in Calvin and the Reformed orthodox,

19
R. A. Muller, ‘A Note on “Christocentrism” and the Imprudent Use of Such Termino-
logy’, WTJ 68.2 (2006), pp. 253–260.
20
Ibid., p. 254.
21
Ibid., p. 257; cf. Muller’s ‘Preface to the 2008 Printing’ of Christ and the Decree: ‘Rather
than attempting to match the christocentrism of the second-generation Reformers to
the christocentrism of the early orthodoxy, I would identify the issue of christocentrism
for what it is – an anachronistic overlay of neo-orthodox dogmatic categories – and set
it aside as useless for the discussion’ (p. x).
22
R. A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 97–98. The reference to W. Kickel is to his
Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodor Beza (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967);
cf. also ‘A Note on “Christocentrism”’ where the distinctions are further explicated, this
time with the addition of ‘prototypical’ or ‘teleological’ christocentrism (pp. 255–256).

6
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

Muller’s basic distinction between types of christocentrism is a useful


conceptual tool which requires both substantiation and careful qualifica-
tion.23 My aim in this essay is to provide the kind of substantiation
which will show that the term ‘christocentric’ to describe Calvin’s and
Barth’s theologies does not have to be repudiated so much as significantly
recalibrated. I argue that close examination of the exegesis of the doctrine
of election in Calvin and Barth provides at least one way in which the
soteriological–principial christocentric distinction may be further examined
and nuanced.
In doing so, it is important to make clear what I am not arguing. It is cer-
tainly not suggested here that Calvin’s theology has ‘soteriological
christocentrism’ as its ‘central dogma’, nor even as its key or overarching
motif, the neglect of which would mean misinterpreting his entire corpus.
Similarly, although I find Barth’s principial christocentrism by its very
nature to be significantly more pervasive, I would likewise resist simple
classifications of the whole of his project along these lines. Rather, my con-
tention is this: if we ask about the function of Christology in Calvin in
relation to the function of Christology in Barth, then the soteriological–
principial distinction emerges as a useful term of comparison should we
wish to afford each theologian some form of christocentricity in their theol-
ogy. The value of the terms lies in how they allow us to compare and
contrast Calvin’s and Barth’s theology, not in claiming that these terms are
the decisive factors in unlocking all the treasures of their theological
storehouses.
I will argue, therefore, that there is warrant for understanding both Calvin
and Barth as christocentric theologians but, much more significantly, this
must be supplemented by the application of the soteriological–principial
distinction respectively to each theologian’s conception of christocentrism.
The above outline has suggested that Calvin’s Christology is structured by
the exposition of Christ as Mediator, so that Christ’s person is considered
only in the context of his work of reconciliation. We will see in Chapter 4
that although Calvin is concerned to provide an orthodox discussion of
Christ’s two natures, his account of Christ’s person is clearly subsumed
within the driving force of his exposition of Christ’s saving work in

23
Muller’s use of E. TeSelle, Christ in Context: Divine Purpose and Human Possibility
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), is in danger of adopting TeSelle’s lack of attention to the
significant differences that separate Barth’s christocentrism from that of his liberal
Protestant forebears. Also, by seeking to rescue the theologies of the Reformed ortho-
dox from the ‘central dogma’ thesis but in turn imputing this to Barth (After Calvin,
p. 97), he runs the risk of collapsing his helpful ‘principial’ terminology into the mis-
leading conception of Barth’s theology as built on a principle from which a system can
be deduced. Cf. M. Cortez, ‘What Does It Mean to Call Karl Barth a “Christocentric”
Theologian?’, SJT 60.2 (2007), pp. 127–143.

7
READING THE DECREE

space-time history. It is in his doctrine of salvation that Calvin’s Christology


shines most brightly. Barth himself argued that in terms of understanding
the work of God in time (creation, reconciliation, redemption), then ‘In this
respect it is hard to put Jesus Christ higher or to give greater prominence to
his central and teleological office than did Calvin.’24
For Barth, however, this focus on the temporality of the divine work did
not contain sufficient reflection on its relationship to the ‘eternal presuppos-
ing’ of that work. The result was a consideration of the eternal and triune
God’s activity in election which was cut off from the ‘distinctness and form
of his temporal activity’ as revealed in Jesus Christ.25 Such language is the
election parsing of deep-seated christological convictions which interpene-
trate Barth’s corpus at every point. His own account of his development in
the years immediately prior to the writing of his monumental doctrine of
election offers explicit reflection on his deepening conviction that ‘Christian
doctrine . . . has to be exclusively and conclusively the doctrine of Jesus
Christ.’26 Barth said of this approach: ‘I should like to call it a Christological
concentration.’27 Similar comments appear in his treatment of Christology
in CD I/2:

A church dogmatics must, of course, be christologically determined as


a whole and in all its parts, as surely as the revealed Word of God,
attested by Holy Scripture and proclaimed by the church, is its one and
only criterion, and as surely as this revealed Word is identical with
Jesus Christ. If dogmatics cannot regard itself and cause itself to be
regarded as fundamentally Christology, it has assuredly succumbed to
some alien sway and is already on the verge of losing its character as
church dogmatics.28

24
CD II/2, p. 149; KD II/2, p. 161.
25
Ibid., p. 149; p. 162.
26
K. Barth, How I Changed My Mind (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1969), p. 43.
27
Ibid. Cf. H. Hartwell’s comment: ‘The Church Dogmatics is wholly Christological in
the sense that in it . . . every theological proposition has as its point of departure
Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, in the unity of his person and
work. This Christological concentration of the Church Dogmatics and indeed of
Barth’s theology as a whole, is “unparalleled in the history of Christian thought.”’
(The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction [London: Duckworth & Co. Ltd,
1964]), pp. 15–16.
28
CD I/2, p. 123; KD I/2, p. 135. ‘In his theology there is no Christology as such; on the
other hand it is all Christology . . . Barth’s theology as a whole and in every part is
determined by its relation to Jesus Christ, his being and action, so that one cannot
detach any aspect of it from its christological basis.’ J. Thompson, Christ in Perspective:
Christological Perspectives in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew
Press, 1978), p. 1.

8
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

It is just such a presentation of the controlling priority of Christology which


contributes to Bruce McCormack’s definition of what it means to describe
Barth’s theology as christocentric. He writes:

‘Christocentrism’, in Barth’s case then, refers to the attempt (which


characterized his mature theology) to understand every doctrine from
a centre in God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; i.e. from a centre in
God’s act of veiling and unveiling in Christ . . . ‘Christocentrism’, for
him, was a methodological rule – not an a priori principle, but a rule
which is learned through encounter with the God who reveals himself
in Christ – in accordance with which one presupposes a particular
understanding of God’s Self-revelation in reflecting upon each and
every other doctrinal topic, and seeks to interpret those topics in the
light of what is already known of Jesus Christ.29

This explanation of McCormack’s may be aligned with Muller’s term


‘principial christocentrism’, so long as ‘principial’ is understood in methodo-
logical terms and not as a reference to an abstract ‘principle’.30 Barth himself
expresses the concept in methodological terms at the beginning of his expo-
sition of Jn 1.14 in CD I/2. In following the apostolic ‘The Word became
flesh’, and in therefore stating that ‘Jesus Christ is very God’, Christian proc-
lamation and Christian dogmatics discover their raison d’être: ‘If Christology
in particular insists upon this truth and its recognition, it thereby describes
as it were an inner circle surrounded by a host of other concentric circles in
each of which it is repeated, and in which its truth and recognition must be
maintained and expounded.’31 To be sure, Barth’s principial christocentrism
does also contain within it a soteriological christocentrism in the sense of a
profound orientation to ‘the monergistic view of salvation’.32 But the identi-
fication of Christ with God’s Self-revelation in Barth’s theology functions in
such a way as to cause Christology to operate within range of other doctrinal
loci in a way that is markedly different from the function of Christology in

29
McCormack, Critically Realistic, p. 454. For further discussion of McCormack’s defini-
tion, see Cortez, ‘What Does It Mean to Call Karl Barth a “Christocentric” Theologian?’
30
Cf. the discussion in H. Kirschstein, Der Souveräne Gott und die Heilige Schrift:
Einführung in die Biblische Hermeneutik Karl Barths (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 1998),
pp. 20–23. My argument is in agreement with P. Lange ‘that in Barth’s Dogmatics there
is no place for a conceptually formulated principle of theology’ (cited in Kirschstein,
p. 23, my translation). A conceptually formulated christological principle might entail
seeing other doctrinal loci as deducible from the principle; but ‘principial christocen-
trism’ as I am using the phrase means only that other doctrinal loci are interpreted in
light of the encounter with the God revealed in Jesus; cf. also the observations in
Thompson, Christ in Perspective, pp. 4–7.
31
CD I/2, p. 133 (emphasis added); KD I/2, p. 147.
32
Muller, After Calvin, p. 98.

9
READING THE DECREE

Calvin. This is in harmony with the suggestion that different conceptions of


the relationship between Christ and revelation lie at the heart of their respec-
tive principial and soteriological christocentrisms. Indeed, we will see that the
language of principial ‘christocentrism’ as applied to Barth’s doctrine of elec-
tion may be in danger of not penetrating deeply enough to the heart of his
radical conception of the nature of revelation, or even the triunity of the divine
being. Douglas Sharp has argued that in Barth,

The Christological determination of the doctrine of election is not an


influence brought to bear upon the idea of election. Rather it is a deter-
mination which has its origin in election and which takes a peculiarly
Christological form . . . it is election which precedes Christology, giv-
ing to Christology its characteristic form and content, determination
and qualification.33

If such a contention is sustainable might we be better to speak of a ‘princip-


ial electionism’ in Barth than a ‘principial christocentrism’? Sharp’s argument
resonates with a construal of Barth’s doctrine of election which has been
most powerfully presented by Bruce McCormack.34 I shall consider these
interpretations and their relevance for the argument about forms of christo-
centrism in Chapter 2.

2. Exegesis and Election


In arguing for these overarching christological distinctions in Calvin and
Barth, my study offers an in-depth examination of the exegesis of the doctrine

33
D. R. Sharp, The Hermeneutics of Election: The Significance of the Doctrine in Barth’s
Church Dogmatics (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990), p. 2. Cf. ‘Viewed
dogmatically, christology is the basis, context and hermeneutic for election. However,
this is possible in dogmatic construction only because actually, originally, and ontically,
the movement is from God’s being and primal act of decision (Subject) to the execution
and revelation of the decision in the reality of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully
human (object). Thus in reality, election is the constitutive basis, context and herme-
neutic for christology’ (ibid., pp. 56–57).
34
The most substantial expression of his argument appears in ‘Grace and Being: The Role
of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology’, in J. Webster (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 92–110. However, see also: ‘For Us and Our Salvation: Incarnation and
Atonement in the Reformed Tradition’ (Studies in Reformed Theology and History 1.2;
Princeton Theological Seminary, 1993); ‘Barths grundsätzlicher Chalkedonismus?’,
Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 18 (2002), pp. 138–173; ‘The Ontological
Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement’, in C. E. Hill and F. A. James III
(eds), The Glory of the Atonement (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004), pp. 346–366; ‘Christ
and the Decree: An Unsettled Question’; ‘Seek God Where He May be Found:
A Response to Edwin Chr. van Driel’, SJT 60.1 (2007), pp. 62–79.

10
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

of election in each theologian. This particular focus makes a contribution to


a systematically underplayed issue in historical and modern theology: the
role of text-reception in theological construction. In discussions of whether
or how Calvin and Barth are christocentric in their doctrines of election,
the role of text-reception is significantly lacking – attention is invariably
directed to the shape of the dogmatic enterprise, and less (if at all) to its
exegetical contours. But for both theologians this is disastrous. Their work
exhibits an inseparable relationship between exegesis and theological
reflection.
Despite a renaissance in Calvin scholarship which has highlighted the
necessity of approaching Calvin as a reader of biblical texts,35 the exegesis
of election in Calvin remains seriously underdescribed (though it is not
undercriticized). One result of this surprising paucity of material which
examines in depth the biblical contours of election and predestination in
Calvin is that many of the common criticisms of Calvin do not offer a com-
prehensive enough account to be convincing.
Consider the following examples. First, in an influential two-part article
which appeared in the first volume of Scottish Journal of Theology,
J. K. S. Reid surveys Calvin’s understanding of Christ and election and
argues that when we see what Calvin said on this topic ‘it is impossible to
suppress surprise and even alarm’.36 This is because, in Reid’s view, Calvin’s
Christ is merely the executor of the decree of election and he is not its
subject – he merely carries out the Father’s bidding and has no role in the
actual choosing itself. Remarkably, Reid’s work does not contain a single
reference to any of Calvin’s commentaries. Reid is indebted to Barth’s
expression of the theological problem in Calvin’s doctrine of election and
has perpetuated this via his own incomplete presentation of Calvin’s
position.37
Second, commenting on Calvin’s stated aim of deriving his doctrine of elec-
tion from Holy Scripture, Cornelis van der Kooi notes that Rom. 9.18, 22

35
Cf. D. K. McKim (ed.), Calvin and the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006). Although sadly lacking a bibliography, the chapters in this volume provide an
orientation to scholarship in this area; cf. also J. L. Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical
Interpreter’, in D. McKim (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 58–73.
36
J. K. S. Reid, ‘The Office of Christ in Predestination’, SJT 1.1 (1948), pp. 5–19; 1.2
(1948), pp. 166–183. A similar neglect of Calvin’s commentaries on this issue with dis-
torting results appears in F. S. Clarke, ‘Christocentric Developments in the Reformed
Doctrine of Predestination’, Churchman 98.3 (1984), pp. 229–245.
37
For further criticisms of Reid, cf. Berkouwer, Divine Election, pp. 141–145; C. Gunton,
‘Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election as Part of His Doctrine of God’, in Theology through
the Theologians: Selected Essays 1972–1995 (London/New York: T & T Clark, 1996),
pp. 88–104.

11
READING THE DECREE

and Prov. 16.4 are ‘key texts for the concept of double predestination’ in
Calvin. He proceeds to comment on Calvin’s use of them:

On the basis of contemporary insights from Biblical research we can


only observe that already, on exegetical grounds alone, there is no
longer any support for Calvin’s purely individualistic exegesis of these
texts and his undervaluing of the category of covenant. Calvin did not
see that in chapters 9–11 of Romans election is a category of sacred
history, and that the question of personal salvation is subordinate to
the question of how God will remain true to his promises and his
covenant.38

Van der Kooi may or may not be correct as regards the challenge to Calvin
from contemporary biblical research, but the substance of his assertion is
certainly misguided. The most serious shortcoming is the lack of any refer-
ence to Calvin’s Romans commentary. As we will see, Calvin’s exegesis of
Romans 9–11 cannot at all be described as ‘purely individualistic’, and the
category of covenant functions there as arguably his most important herme-
neutical concept.39 When Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is criticized on
the basis of what he should have said exegetically, and it turns out that this
is what Calvin actually did include in his exegesis, then it can only mean that
the understanding of what is being criticized is skewed. If, as I will argue,
Calvin understands Romans 9–11 to describe election as ‘a category of
sacred history’ and to deal with ‘the question of how God will remain true
to his promises and his covenant’, then our understanding of Calvin’s
theology is enhanced by wrestling with how he held covenantal convictions
about the election of Israel and the church alongside convictions about
personal salvation and double predestination.40 At best, van der Kooi’s com-
ments alert us to the issue of how Calvin’s commentary exegesis should be
read alongside his exegetical comments in the Institutes by asking whether
Calvin’s aim in using a text in both locations is always the same. At worst,

38
C. van der Kooi, As in a Mirror: John Calvin and Karl Barth on Knowing God (Leiden:
Brill, 2005), p. 164. This criticism of Calvin is a particular example of the general
criticism made by Barth of ‘the decisive exegetical error’ of the classical doctrine
of predestination; cf. CD II/2, p. 221; KD II/2, pp. 243–244. For a similar analysis,
cf. W. Kreck, Grundentscheidungen in Karl Barths Dogmatik: Zur Diskussion seines
Verständnisses von Offenbarung und Erwählung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1978), p. 245.
39
Calvin appeals to the covenant 39 times in his commentary on Romans 9–11; cf. P. A.
Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), p. 210.
40
As Lillback suggests, Calvin’s covenant-saturated interpretation of Romans 9–11
provides a serious challenge to the view, prevalent since Dorner, that covenant theology
was birthed by the critical reaction to Calvin’s rigid predestinarianism (ibid., p. 211).

12
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

they represent the redundancy of criticizing either Calvin’s theology or his


work as a biblical interpreter while ignoring the primary location of his exe-
getical work.41
Such factors mean, however, that my aim in treating Calvin’s exegesis is
less to contribute to the increasingly familiar terrain of Calvin as an exegete
(sources; relation to humanism; his exegetical method compared and con-
trasted with the medieval context), but rather to ask: What contribution
does Calvin’s exegesis make to his doctrine of election? How may one
describe the relationship of Calvin’s exegesis to his theology of election and
predestination? Even here my primary aim is not to map the progress of
Calvin’s commentary exegesis onto the developing form of his Institutes,
although, as I will outline below, there will necessarily be some engagement
with these concerns.42 Rather, this book aims to show that the repeated
themes of Calvin’s election exegesis across a range of biblical texts are
reflected in the treatment of election in the final edition of the Institutes
(1559). In this way, it aims to be a departure from those dogmatic studies of
Calvin’s theology which ‘have often cited his commentaries but have seldom
inquired into the impact of Calvin’s exegetical efforts on his formulation of
theological topics’.43
Barth’s practice as a biblical exegete has also enjoyed considerable atten-
tion in the secondary literature, but his doctrine of election has arguably
fared somewhat better in this respect than Calvin’s. As a reader of biblical
texts, Barth is well served in a number of studies which range from
general accounts treating the place of Scripture in his thinking;44 to biblical

41
This view of Calvin is widespread. T. Eskola argues that there is a close dependence
between exegesis and dogmatic questions on the issue of predestination and that one
of the most influential dogmatic positions has been that of Calvin; cf. Theodicy and
Predestination in Pauline Soteriology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998). Statements like
the following, however, are problematic: ‘It is probably justified to say that Calvin, with
his teaching of double predestination, drew the ultimate conclusions from the predesti-
narian statements of Augustine’ (p. 180). Such a construal ignores the instances where
Calvin explicitly departs from Augustine (for example, on reprobation as merely fore-
known). More importantly, it offers a misleading account of the way exegesis and
dogmatics are related in Calvin’s own position by underplaying Calvin’s stress on
deriving his doctrine from Scripture in a way which eschews determinism.
42
For an excellent example of this kind of project, see B. Pitkin, What Pure Eyes Could
See: Calvin’s Doctrine of Faith in Its Exegetical Context (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
43
R. A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Formation of a Theological
Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 6.
44
Cf. C. Baxter, ‘The Nature and Place of Scripture in the Church Dogmatics’, in
J. Thompson (ed.), Theology Beyond Christendom: Essays on the Centenary of the
Birth of Karl Barth (Allison Park: Pickwick Publications, 1986), pp. 33–62; idem,
‘Barth – A Truly Biblical Theologian?’, Tyndale Bulletin 38 (1987), pp. 3–27.

13
READING THE DECREE

interpretation in his earlier theology;45 in the development of his thought;46


through to accounts which focus specifically on aspects of his exegesis in the
Church Dogmatics.47 Alongside this, a number of studies (in varying degrees
of depth) have highlighted the role of exegesis in his doctrine of election.48
My study has benefited from such treatments of Barth’s election exegesis but
differs from them in important respects. Most of these differences will
emerge as the argument unfolds, but in relation to the most important stud-
ies some main divergences can be outlined as follows.
Mary Cunningham’s study aims to provide a sustained analysis of Barth’s
appeal to New Testament predestinarian texts in a way which uncovers the
‘internal logic’ of his approach to these texts.49 But Cunningham’s rendering
of the relationship between Eph. 1.4 and Jn 1.1-2 in Barth’s doctrine of elec-
tion does not provide a sufficient account of the internal logic of his
hermeneutic. Her construal of the relationship of these texts to each other
and to other biblical texts treated by Barth, as well as her arguments about
Barth’s attitude to ‘historical criticism’, are insufficiently nuanced. Paul
McGlasson helpfully discusses Barth’s ‘tendency toward Christocentric
exegesis’50 but again his focus is more narrow than the range of this study –
while his approach to Barth’s exegesis is applied to the election and rejection
of Judas, there is no significant discussion of the earlier exegetical material
in CD II/2. Douglas Sharp’s understanding of election as the basis of Chris-

45
See especially R. E. Burnett, Karl Barth’s Theological Exegesis: The Hermeneutical
Principles of the Römerbrief Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); cf. also
J. Webster, ‘Karl Barth’, in J. P. Greenman and T. Larsen (eds), Reading Romans through
the Centuries (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005), pp. 205–223; idem, ‘The Resurrec-
tion of the Dead’, in Barth’s Earlier Theology (London/New York: Continuum, 2005),
pp. 67–90; D. Wood, ‘“Ich sah mit Staunen”: Reflections on the Theological Substance
of Barth’s Early Hermeneutics’, SJT 58.2 (2005), pp. 184–198.
46
Kirschstein, Der Souveräne Gott und die Heilige Schrift; W. Lindemann, Karl Barth und
die kritische Schriftauslegung (Hamburg-Bergstedt: Herbert Reich-Evangelischer
Verlag, 1973); D. Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
47
B. Bourgine, L’herméneutique théologique de Karl Barth. Exégèse et dogmatique dans
le quatrième volume de la Kirchliche Dogmatik (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2003).
48
J. Colwell, ‘Perspectives on Judas: Barth’s Implicit Hermeneutic’, in A. N. S. Lane (ed.),
Interpreting the Bible: Historical & Theological Studies in Honour of David F. Wright
(Leicester: Apollos, 1997), pp. 163–180; M. K. Cunningham, What is Theological
Exegesis? Interpretation and Use of Scripture in Barth’s Doctrine of Election (Pennsyl-
vania: Trinity Press International, 1995); E. Buess, ‘Zur Präedestinationslehre Karl
Barths’, Theologische Studien 43 (1955), pp. 5–64; G. Gloege, ‘Zur Prädestinationsle-
hre Karl Barths’, Kerygma und Dogma 2 (July 1956), pp. 193–217; (October 1956),
pp. 233–255; Kreck, Grundentscheidungen in Karl Barths Dogmatik; P. McGlasson,
Jesus and Judas: Biblical Exegesis in Barth (AAR Academy Series 72; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1990); Sharp, The Hermeneutics of Election.
49
Cunningham, What is Theological Exegesis?, p. 14.
50
McGlasson, Jesus and Judas, p. 47.

14
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

tology in Barth needs to be tempered in two main ways. First, on Jesus’


pre-existence, Sharp mistakenly assumes that Barth’s position ‘calls for a
strict understanding of the eternal pre-existence of the human Jesus’.51
Second, I will argue that the christological shape of Barth’s election exegesis
of passages such as Romans 9–11 requires the language of election as
‘preceding’ Christology to be carefully nuanced. There is clearly a way in
which Christology influences election for Barth, and not merely vice versa.52

2.1. A Hermeneutical Distinction


To look at their exegesis as part of their doctrines of election is to respect the
best intentions of both Calvin and Barth, and thus actually to provide two
overlapping areas of examination: a doctrine; and the exegesis of the doctrine.
The twin issues of the doctrine of election and its exegetical construction pro-
vide two overlapping areas in which to probe christocentrism. That is to say,
examining election – a doctrinal locus formally separate from Christology –
creates the space to consider what influence Christology exerts on that
doctrine in the thinking of both theologians. And with the doctrine of election
taking two different christocentric forms, we may likewise ask: does the exe-
gesis of election also take these forms? I will argue that the soteriological–
principial christological distinction in election corresponds to an extensive–
intensive hermeneutical distinction in exegesis. Just as a theology may be
christocentric in either a soteriological or principial way, so I suggest that a
hermeneutic may be christocentric in either an extensive or intensive way.
To describe a hermeneutic as christologically extensive means that Chris-
tology clearly defines the hermeneutical approach, but the centre of
Christology points outwards to other doctrinal loci which have space and
scope to exist in themselves at a measure of distance from Christology and
from each other. Christology reaches out to and touches on other doctrines
which nevertheless can be given coherent description in themselves without
the language of christological description. Christology may influence and
shape these loci, but it does not dictate or control them. Conversely, to
describe a hermeneutic as christologically intensive means that the christo-
logical centre defines all else within its circumference. Within this circle,
Christology draws everything else to itself so that all other doctrinal loci
cannot be read in Scripture apart from explicit christological reference.
More than merely reaching out to and touching other doctrines, here Chris-
tology permeates all other doctrines so that the terms of their definition are
drawn from the domain of christological description. A christologically

51
Sharp, Hermeneutics of Election, p. 130 n. 25.
52
For other criticisms of Sharp, cf. S. McDonald, ‘Barth’s “Other” Doctrine of Election in
the Church Dogmatics’, IJST 9.2 (2007), pp. 134–147.

15
READING THE DECREE

intensive hermeneutic is well expressed in Webster’s words: Barth’s mature


doctrine of election has Jesus Christ as its ‘ground and content’.53
Although the extensive–intensive distinction may be a fine one, it ably
explains a main difference between Calvin’s and Barth’s hermeneutical chris-
tocentrism. Calvin’s hermeneutical approach to the biblical text is
christologically extensive: although he reads the whole of the Bible’s plot-line
in connection with Christology and finds the gospel which the text reveals to
be inseparably connected to Christology, he does not always read every
aspect of election through a christological lens. Underlying this approach is
Calvin’s doctrine of revelation. Calvin has a conception of revelation which
never exclusively identifies the Word of God with the person of Jesus, but
sees revelation more extensively as also a property of the biblical text. This is
different from Barth. His hermeneutics of election may be described as chris-
tologically intensive: he both finds the text to speak about Christ at those
moments where Calvin speaks more generally about God or the decree, and
finds the text to speak about election where Calvin would find the text to
speak only about Christology. Likewise, we will see that driving this herme-
neutical approach is a doctrine of revelation which more intensively identifies
revelation with Jesus the Word of God than does Calvin.
This examination of the exegesis of the doctrine of election in two theolo-
gians from different eras provides a fundamental challenge to dominant
paradigms in modern hermeneutics. The role that Christology plays in
Calvin’s and Barth’s different approaches to reading the biblical text is at
odds with those conceptions of hermeneutics which relegate doctrinal ques-
tions to the periphery. In such approaches, ‘Christian doctrine is rarely
regarded as adequate to the task of describing what takes place when the
church reads the Bible, and is normally believed to require either supple-
menting or (more frequently) grounding in general considerations of the
ways in which human beings interpret written materials.’54 As a deliberate
move, this book maps low-level descriptions of Calvin’s and Barth’s exegesis
of election with the result that the specifically theological nature of their
reading practices comes to the fore while the language of explicit herme-
neutical description recedes into the background. The exegesis of election in
Calvin and Barth exists within christological horizons which show how doc-
trine itself may be a hermeneutic. Their respective Christologies, emerging as
they do from exegesis, in turn shape and direct further exegesis. Their
projects are aptly described in Francis Watson’s words: ‘Christian doctrine

53
Webster, Barth, p. 88.
54
J. Webster, ‘Hermeneutics in Modern Theology: Some Doctrinal Reflections’, SJT 51
(1998), pp. 307–341 (p. 309). Contra such approaches, Webster suggests that ‘theologi-
cal hermeneutics will be confident and well-founded if it says much of the reality which
is the axiom of all Christian life and thought, the living, speaking presence of the living
Jesus Christ’ (p. 317).

16
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

initially offers an interpretation of scripture, but in a second moment consti-


tutes a hermeneutic which will affect subsequent interpretation.’55

3. On Comparing Calvin and Barth


Methodologically, a number of important factors deserve consideration.
It will be obvious by now that this work adopts a comparative approach to
Calvin and Barth. But the separation of each theologian by several centuries
which generate massively different contexts provides a number of challenges
to explicating their thought in comparative terms.
For some, the contextual complexities are such that the attempt itself is
misguided. Muller writes: ‘Projects that compare Calvin and Barth or Calvin
and Schleiermacher will not enlighten us particularly about Calvin – nor
probably about Barth or Schleiermacher, for that matter.’ His concern
is to tie comparative studies strictly to ‘actual partners in the ongoing
sixteenth-century theological conversation.’56 But it is not at all clear why
this is the only way to proceed. One suspects that Muller’s underlying aim
is to prevent any Barthian distortion of Calvin which might occur in the
process of comparison,57 but to bracket both theologians off from each other
completely in the interest of faithful interpretation is to exaggerate the need
for methodological care. That this is an example of overstatement is con-
firmed when we observe that Muller’s own conception of the christological
distinctions between Calvin and the Reformed orthodox on the one hand,
and Barth and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century theologies on the
other, is – if it retains any merit at all – irreducibly comparative.58
More temperate is Don Wood’s caution from the side of Barth studies:
when the comparative move is made too quickly ‘it can serve to flatten out
the theological contours of Barth’s work.’59 This much – for Calvin and
Barth – must surely be granted. At the same time, a comparative study does
not necessarily entail ignoring the fact that ‘much of what makes Barth’s
hermeneutics so interesting can best be brought to light by attending to
connections internal to his own work.’60 Indeed, this study advances the
claim that it is the connections internal to the literary output of Calvin and
Barth (internal connections between their respective exegesis, hermeneutics

55
F. B. Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspec-
tive (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), p. 222.
56
Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, p. 187.
57
Cf. ibid., p. 14.
58
Cf. esp. Muller, ‘A Note on “Christocentrism”’, pp. 257–258; cf. Edmondson’s brief
criticisms of Muller’s reticence to claim the relevance of Calvin for modern theological
discussion (Calvin’s Christology, p. x).
59
Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation, p. xiv.
60
Ibid.

17
READING THE DECREE

and doctrines of election) which contribute most interestingly to the nature


of the comparison and contrast between them. Examining their work in this
way does not require the transposition of ideas from one into the other, or
even the interpretation of one in the light of the other. It is precisely because
they are distinct that a comparison which appreciates this may be fruitful.
This point may be pressed further. One of the main reasons why compari-
sons between Calvin and Barth may prove interesting is because the
examination of connections and motifs internal to Barth’s own thought is
not, in the final analysis, truly penetrating apart from consideration of his
debt to the Reformed tradition, and notably to Calvin himself. For all his
independent and creative genius, Barth’s theology is profoundly catholic,
soaked in dialogue and debate with centuries of tradition and modulated
with a Reformed accent. Here the particularly Calvinian tone which regis-
ters so often is relevant to my project in at least three key ways.61
First, Barth’s work as a biblical interpreter is directly shaped by his encoun-
ter with Calvin as a biblical interpreter. John Webster argues that during
the Göttingen period Barth’s engagement with Calvin in particular gave him
‘a model of theological interpretation which enabled him to focus and
extend the exegetical instincts of the Römerbrief ’.62 In Barth’s lectures on
Calvin in 1922, Calvin as a model exegete emerges most clearly in Barth’s
treatment of Calvin’s Romans commentary.63 Here Barth finds the tradi-
tional Reformed conception of knowledge of God as essential to engagement
with the text of Scripture. Alongside this, Barth discovered a commitment
both to the ‘objective study’ of the Bible and the corresponding realization
that ‘A purely historical understanding of the mind of scripture would be
for Calvin no understanding at all. The mind of scripture cannot be merely
the object of exposition but has to be its subject as well.’64 We will see in
Chapter 4 that this description of the exegetical task has strong resonances
with Barth’s later conception of a theology of interpretation which would

61
I limit myself to three, but there are further grounds for exploring connections between
Calvin and Barth. T. H. L. Parker comments on the significance of Barth’s Second
World War context: ‘It is not irrelevant to Calvin-studies that the confessing church
turned so eagerly to Luther and Calvin, men who spoke the word needed for strength-
ening. One can no longer write about Calvin as if he had played no part in the “German
church struggle”’; cf. John Calvin: A Biography (Oxford: Lion, 2006), p. 7.
62
J. Webster, ‘“In the Shadow of Biblical Work”: Barth and Bonhoeffer on Reading the
Bible’, Toronto Journal of Theology 17 (2001), pp. 75–91 (p. 78). E. Busch records how
during this time Barth became so preoccupied with Calvin that he had to abandon a
planned series of lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews; cf. Karl Barth: His Life from
Letters and Autobiographical Texts (trans. J. Bowden; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994),
p. 138; cf. also p. 143.
63
K. Barth, The Theology of John Calvin (trans. G. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1995).
64
Ibid., p. 389.

18
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

prove so influential in his doctrine of election. Webster goes so far as to say


‘it is not too much to claim the “constitutive significance” of this section of
the Calvin lectures for his later development.’65 Calvin and Barth warrant
comparison precisely because Barth’s reading of Scripture is not separable
from his reading of Calvin.
Second, Barth’s work as a dogmatic theologian was, from the earliest days
of his academic career, both moulded by Calvin’s understanding of election
and worked out in disagreement with it. In the Göttingen Dogmatics, Barth
comments on his ‘one incisive deviation’ from the Reformed doctrine of
predestination:

And I for my part am fully aware that it is no secondary matter if


I deviate here but that it will have the most far-reaching consequences.
This is the rent in the cloak of my orthodoxy, for which undoubtedly
I would at least have been beaten with rods in old-time Geneva.66

If Barth felt like this about his doctrine of election as it stood in 1924–1925,
then the personal reflection on his mature exposition of election in CD II/2
(1942) is not surprising: ‘To think of the contents of this volume gives me
much pleasure, but even greater anxiety.’67 However much Barth may have
felt he was departing from the Reformed tradition in the Göttingen Dog-
matics, it was nothing compared to the colossal shift which appears in II/2
of the Church Dogmatics. His treatment of election in Göttingen contains
notable similarities to the Calvinian tradition of Pauline exegesis (Rom. 9
‘teaches eternal, unconditional twofold predestination’68), with the stated
deviation being the account of temporality. Here Barth rejects a concept of
election as a decree occurring in a pretemporal past to save a ‘fixed number’.
He prefers instead an actualistic understanding of election whereby God is
involved in a continual interaction with individuals in the present as part of
the divine decision of electing and rejecting.69 But by 1942 everything is
different. In CD II/2 Barth explicitly rejects not just his earlier moment-by-
moment actualism in offering a more complex account of eternity and time,
but also the classical landscape of eternal, individual, double predestination.
While wishing to stand in the Reformed tradition and adopt many of its
foundational premises, Barth now expounds his radical re-orientation of the

65
Webster, ‘Barth and Bonhoeffer on Reading the Bible’, p. 78.
66
K. Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion (ed. H. Reiffen;
trans. G. Bromiley; vol. 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 453 (hereafter GD).
67
CD II/2, p. x; KD II/2, p. vii.
68
GD, p. 453.
69
S. McDonald argues that this doctrine of election remains influential for Barth in the
volumes of Church Dogmatics prior to II/2; cf. ‘Barth’s “Other” Doctrine of Election’,
pp. 134–147.

19
READING THE DECREE

doctrine to a christological centre which issues in a completely new under-


standing of both election and double predestination. Yet Barth never wished
to rid himself entirely of Calvin’s shadow. The publication of CD II/2 gave
Barth ‘much pleasure, but even greater anxiety’ for, as he comments in the
Preface:

I would have preferred to follow Calvin’s doctrine of predestination


much more closely instead of departing from it so radically . . . But
I could not and cannot do so. As I let the Bible itself speak to me on
these matters, as I meditated upon what I seemed to hear, I was driven
irresistibly to reconstruction.70

This study does not examine Barth’s relationship to Calvin.71 But the depth
of his indebtedness to Calvin in the reading of the Bible and the doctrine of
election makes comparison of their exegesis interesting and worthwhile, if
for no other reason than after benefiting from Calvin so extensively Barth’s
interpretation of Scripture on election was to come to differ so radically.
These two points, however, combine to suggest a third decisive reason for
why comparison of Calvin and Barth is valid. If Calvin influenced Barth
both as biblical interpreter and as theologian, then what truly forges a con-
nection between them is the fact that, in different centuries, their exegesis of
election is a reading of the same text: Holy Scripture. That is to say, their
differences in context are actually bridged by the biblical text so that one
can point to this in common between them above and beyond their contex-
tual particularities. Understood in this way, their different historical locations
do not render a comparison fruitless but rather add focus to the nature of
the comparison itself. Why is it that the one set of texts come to be read in
such strikingly different ways? This means that the kind of comparison
which Muller wishes to press (soteriological–principial) is further sharpened
by attending to the fact that this theological distinction contains within it a
hermeneutical distinction (extensive–intensive) which cannot be explained
solely in terms of divergence and separation between Calvin and Barth. Why
is Barth’s christocentrism best rendered as principial, and his hermeneutics
of election best rendered as christologically intensive, when his doctrine of

70
CD II/2, p. x; KD II/2, p. vii.
71
Cf. S. W. Chung, Admiration and Challenge: Karl Barth’s Theological Relationship
with John Calvin (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003). In comparing Calvin and Barth I have
found it necessary at certain points to diverge from Barth’s own reading of Calvin.
To follow his judgements in every case would not always place us on the right path.
However, this book reads Barth and reads Calvin; not Barth on Calvin, or Calvin
through Barth, despite partially following the outline of Barth’s topical arrangement.
The extent to which Barth’s reading of Calvin is warranted is not the focus of this work
as my concern is to present two different readings of Scripture on election in the
Reformed tradition. Of course, the issues are not always separated so easily.

20
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

election emerges as a reading of the same text which produced Calvin’s


infamous account of predestination?
Much more important at the comparative level is validating the particular
kind of comparison I am conducting. This book compares Calvin’s exegesis
of election in his commentaries (mostly on the Gospel of John and the
epistle to the Romans) with Barth’s exegesis in CD II/2. To add to the differ-
ences in context I now appear to be adding a not insignificant difference in
genre! There are, however, a number of important issues to consider.
To examine Calvin’s and Barth’s exegesis in their respective doctrines of
election one must do more than simply compare their commentaries, for
they did not write about election in relation to the biblical text in the same
way. A major contention of my study is the now commonplace assertion
that, in any given area of Calvin’s thought, his commentaries must be read in
conjunction with his Institutes so that these different texts combine to pro-
vide both dogmatic loci and interpretation of Scripture which Calvin intended
to be taken together as the (not exclusive) guide to his teaching. Muller com-
ments: ‘the exegetico-theological conclusions embodied in the commentaries
frequently lack either systematic elaboration or illustration on the basis of
other biblical texts, historical example, or dispute with variant theological
views – all of which occur at the relevant point in the Institutes.’72 In this
way, taking his commentaries and Institutes together, there is actually a very
basic level of similarity to Barth’s text in CD II/2. Although clearly driven by
doctrinal concerns, Barth’s small-print exegesis in this volume punctuates his
historical and dogmatic discussion and means that he combines into one text
what Calvin separates into two. If there is some form of analogous relation-
ship between their texts then, clearly, all manner of contextual differences
prevent this point being pressed too hard for any serious formal significance.
But the point of drawing a parallel is simply to suggest that the comparison
of different types of texts is not worthless when their overall content is held
in view. Some further explanation of my approach to the relationship between
exegesis and doctrine in both theologians is in order here.
Following the work of Muller,73 Elsie Anne McKee,74 and now also Stephen
Edmondson,75 it is accepted that there exists a ‘symbiotic’ or ‘stereoscopic’

72
Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, p. 108.
73
Ibid., especially pp. 101–158.
74
E. A. McKee, ‘Exegesis, Theology, and Development in Calvin’s Institutio: A Methodo-
logical Suggestion’, in McKee and B. G. Armstrong (eds), Probing the Reformation:
Historical Studies in Honor of Edward A. Dowey, Jr. (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 1989), pp. 154–174; idem, ‘Some Reflections on Relating Calvin’s Exegesis and
Theology’, in M. S. Burrows and P. Rorem (eds), Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical
Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 215–226.
75
Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology, especially pp. 40–48; idem, ‘The Biblical Historical
Structure of Calvin’s Institutes’, SJT 59.1 (2006), pp. 1–13.

21
READING THE DECREE

complementary relationship between Calvin’s commentaries and his Insti-


tutes. The developing form of the Institutes can be best understood by taking
seriously ‘Calvin’s advice to read this book as an introduction to the Bible
and a companion to his own commentaries’.76 This argument commonly
exists by extracting hermeneutical mileage from Iohannes Calvinus Lectori
which appeared as the preface to the 1539 Institutes and which, signifi-
cantly, remained in place through to the 1559 edition.77 There Calvin
introduces his work with these words:

It has been my purpose in this labour to prepare and instruct candi-


dates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word (ad divini
verbi lectionem), in order that they may be able both to have easy
access to it and to advance in it without stumbling (ut et facilem ad
eam aditum habere, et inofenso in ea gradu pergere queant). For
I believe I have so embraced the sum of religion in all its parts (religionis
summam omnibus partibus), and have arranged it in such an order,
that if anyone rightly grasps it, it will not be difficult for him to deter-
mine what he ought especially to seek in Scripture, and to what end
(scopum) he ought to relate its contents. If, after this road has, as it
were, been paved, I shall publish any interpretations (enarrationes) of
Scripture, I shall always condense them, because I shall have no need
to undertake long doctrinal discussions (dogmatibus longas disputa-
tions instituere), and to digress into commonplaces (in locos communes
evagari). In this way the godly reader will be spared great annoyance
and boredom, provided he approach Scripture armed (praemunitus)
with a knowledge of the present work, as a necessary tool (necessario
instrumento).78

This preface announces Calvin’s important distinction between the


function of his commentaries (condensed interpretation) and his Institutes
(doctrinal discussions and commonplaces), and it is often read in conjunc-
tion with the similar prefatory remarks at the start of his Epistle to the
Romans.79 Muller’s purpose in engaging with the 1539 preface is, rightly, to

76
McKee, ‘Exegesis, Theology, and Development’, p. 156.
77
The Battles edition notes some of the changes that were made to this preface as
a whole during the development of the Institutes (pp. 3–5). On the function of Calvin’s
prefaces, see S. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 1995), pp. 46–86; cf. her discussion of the development of the 1539 preface
(pp. 51–52).
78
Inst. ‘John Calvin to the Reader’, pp. 4–5; Institutio (1539); cf. OS 3, 6.
79
Cf. R. Gamble, ‘Brevitas et Facilitas: Toward an Understanding of John Calvin’s
Hermeneutic’, WTJ 47.1 (1985), pp. 1–17; idem, ‘Exposition and Method in Calvin’,
WTJ 49.1 (1987) pp. 153–165; idem, ‘Calvin as Theologian and Exegete: Is There
Anything New?’, CTJ 23 (1988), pp. 178–194; cf. also F. Büsser, ‘Bullinger as Calvin’s

22
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

challenge a trajectory of older Calvin scholarship which tended to view the


Institutes as the primary source for any understanding of Calvin’s theology.
Such a conception of Calvin’s project overlooked the implications of the
1539 preface appearing just as Calvin was preparing his first commentary
(Romans) for publication. It thereby ignored Calvin’s intention that the two
texts – and any following commentaries – should be read together.80
This argument for symbiotic complementarity is well made and sets in
place vital criteria for assessing the development of Calvin’s exegetical and
doctrinal work. It is the contention of this book, however, that the options
of viewing the Institutes either as having priority over the commentaries, or
as existing in a stereoscopic relationship to the commentaries, are not mutu-
ally exclusive. I suggest that, strictly speaking, it is the historical development
of the Institutes and commentaries that should be described as unfolding in
a complementary way but, in terms of the actual function of both sets of
texts, Calvin always intended his Institutes to have a relative hermeneutical
priority.
This much emerges from a close reading of the 1539 preface. Here Calvin
unambiguously frames the very purpose of the Institutes as being to guide
the reading of Scripture. Originally written as a catechetical text, note that
Calvin does not say that its purpose is to instruct candidates in theology, but
rather to instruct theological candidates ‘for the reading of the divine Word’.
The Institutes aims to facilitate easy access to Scripture, and unimpeded
progress in Scripture. Further, we note the logical ordering of Calvin’s aim:
if anyone rightly grasps his arrangement of Christian teaching in this text,
then he will know both what to look for in the biblical text and be able to
read the parts teleologically. Functionally, there is a clear sequential move
from dogmatic loci to biblical text. The godly reader is not to approach
Scripture without the weapon of the Institutes (praemunitus), or without it
as a tool (instrumento). Muller points out that after 1539 Calvin did not
‘change the wording of this description of his project in the subsequent
editions of the Institutes’,81 which means that in the final 1559 edition Calvin
had in place a body of loci communes which he still intended to serve as a
guide for the reader of Scripture.82 Itself the product of exegesis, the Insti-
tutes as a whole is designed to guide the reader as to what they should seek
in Scripture and to what end they should relate its parts.83 Calvin’s Institutes

Model in Biblical Exposition: An Examination of Calvin’s Preface to the Epistle to the


Romans’, in E. J. Furcha (ed.), In Honor of John Calvin, 1509–64 (Montreal: McGill
University, 1987), pp. 64–95.
80
Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, p. 106.
81
Ibid.
82
Cf. R. C. Zachman, ‘“Do You Understand What You are Reading?” Calvin’s Guidance
for the Reading of Scripture’, SJT 54 (2001), pp. 1–20.
83
Muller also argues that the Institutes were intended to pave the way not just for
a reading of Scripture but also for a reading of Calvin’s expositions of Scripture

23
READING THE DECREE

is itself a hermeneutic. This approach to the relationship between exegesis


and doctrine in Calvin shapes what follows in two main ways.
First, it ensures that when Chapter 4 of this book offers an account of the
hermeneutics of election in Calvin, what it records is simply the circular
relationship between Calvin’s biblical exegesis and his dogmatic presenta-
tion in the Institutes. The fundamental contention here is that the presentation
of Christology and its relationship to election and predestination in Book III
of the Institutes is a hermeneutically guiding presentation. Calvin intends
the placing, structure and content of the loci – and their relationship to
other closely connected loci – to teach how the doctrines should be read in
Scripture. Where the Institutes has been recognized as having a hermeneuti-
cal function, then one of the main results has been the extraction from the
Institutes of ‘tools’ or ‘principles’ which are held to be the tools which Calvin
uses (and so advocates) in interpretation. The exercise has much to com-
mend it.84 My study, however, aims to advance the underdeveloped contention
that the Institutes is itself a tool as much as it contains a set of tools. I sug-
gest that the search for general interpretative principles must not be carried
out at the expense of grasping how Calvin intends his own reading of the
Bible and his relation of its various loci to be in itself a hermeneutic. Calvin
teaches how to read the Bible not merely by offering a range of presupposi-
tions narrowly related to the art of exegesis, but by telling the Bible’s story,
unpacking its plot-line and narrative in a way which shows how he under-
stands it to hang together as a whole. In this way, Calvin teaches the
relationship of Christology to the history of Israel, its place in the historia
salutis, and therefore its crucial relationship to election and the attendant
issues of faith, works and repentance.
Second, by accepting that Calvin intended his Institutes to teach the reader
of the Bible the end to which they should relate its contents, this study pro-
vides a vantage point from which to answer the following question: should
the road of biblical hermeneutics which Calvin paves in his Institutes be
described as extensive or intensive at the level of christological influence?
In his important study, Wilhelm Niesel suggested that for Calvin the ‘aim of
all our attention to the Bible should be the recognition of Jesus Christ.’85

(The Unaccommodated Calvin, p. 140). This is further evidence of its hermeneutical


priority over the commentaries. Cf. Pitkin, What Pure Eyes Could See, p. 21.
84
R. W. Holder has recently provided an account of Calvin’s hermeneutical principles
which he argues need to be distinguished from Calvin’s exegetical practices: John Calvin
and the Grounding of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2006). He describes the former as:
hierarchical epistemology; Scripture’s authority; God’s accommodation; unity of the
testaments; mind of the author; hermeneutical circles; edification (pp. 29–86). He out-
lines the latter as: paraphrase; contextual interpretation; Scripture interpreting
Scripture; listening to tradition; humility; simplicity; fuller meaning (pp. 87–138).
85
Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, p. 27. Niesel’s assertion has significant substance. It is
drawn from Calvin’s preface to the editions of the Genevan translation of the Bible

24
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

His position argues for a christocentric hermeneutic in Calvin which is best


described as intensive. By considering Calvin’s election exegesis and then
examining the way this dovetails with his hermeneutically guiding presenta-
tion of election in the Institutes, I will argue that construals such as Niesel’s
are right to identify christocentricity in Calvin but also suffer from lack of
attention to distinctions within christocentrism which best explain Calvin’s
position.86
In Barth, there is a sense in which the relationship between exegesis and
doctrine is more straightforward to navigate. The Church Dogmatics
presents small-print exegesis and large-print historical–dogmatic reflection
side by side, so that Barth’s hermeneutical approach is often on display
either close at hand or by wider reading in the Dogmatics. Nevertheless, it
is important to observe that the presence of page after page of detailed
exegetical reflection has rarely served to make much impression on even
Barth’s most able interpreters at the level of its substantial formative effect
on his theological development.87
This is particularly true in the case of Barth’s doctrine of election. Bruce
McCormack’s genetico-historical treatment of Barth’s development undoubt-
edly deserves its high praise and its continuing impact on current Barth
studies.88 But in McCormack’s description of Barth’s move from his earlier
pneumatocentrism in anhypostatic–enhypostatic Christology to his defining
christocentric concentration in the Dogmatics, discussion of the nature of
Barth’s attention to the biblical materials – either freshly during this period
or as the continuation of a habitual engagement – is positively lacking.89
To be sure, the significance of Pierre Maury’s address ‘Election and Faith’
(June 1936), which Barth heard delivered at the Reformation celebrations in
Geneva, cannot be overestimated. Barth himself was to highlight its pro-
found effects.90 Maury’s impact was quickly registered in Barth’s lectures in
Debrechen, Hungary (September 1936), on the subject of ‘God’s Gracious

where the christological focus on the ultimate end of scriptural interpretation is clear
(ibid., pp. 26–27). Cf. also Holder, John Calvin, who presents similar but more quali-
fied arguments, and without Niesel’s Barthian presuppositions (pp. 139–180).
86
Muller argues that the characterizations of Calvin’s thought as christocentric have
tended to come from scholars intent on rescuing his thought from ‘a metaphysically
controlled predestinarianism’ (‘A Note on “Christocentrism”’, p. 259). Niesel’s work
falls into this category. The intention is laudable; the execution requires considerable
qualification.
87
Cf. the observations in this regard by F. B. Watson, ‘The Bible’, in Webster (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, pp. 57–71.
88
McCormack, Critically Realistic.
89
Ibid., pp. 453–463.
90
K. Barth, ‘Foreword’, in P. Maury, Predestination and Other Papers (trans. E. Hudson;
London: SCM, 1960), pp. 15–16.

25
READING THE DECREE

Election’,91 and McCormack is certainly right to say that ‘These lectures set
forth the basic viewpoints which would govern the massive treatment of the
theme of election in Church Dogmatics II/2.’92
It can be argued, however, that such an account with its compelling pres-
entation of how the actualism of Barth’s doctrine of revelation became
married in the closest possible way to a christological account of election,
tends to contain within it ‘the marginalization of the scriptural impulse in
Barth’.93 The result is that the development in Barth’s thinking is invariably
presented as the discovery of a christological method, over and above an
exegetical development and discovery of a confluence of Christology, revela-
tion and election which would bring significant changes to bear on the
presentation of the doctrine of election.
A similar approach is present in Matthias Gockel’s account of Barth’s
development.94 His study offers no discussion of the possible effects of
Barth’s biblical exegesis during this period. Gockel does argue that Barth’s
radical interpretation of Jn 1.1–2 in CD II/2 (1942) ‘is not simply the result
of the retrospective attempt to find exegetical backing for the christological
revision’, precisely because this view can be found in Barth as early as 1925.95
But the significance of this observation is underplayed. As we will see, in
1942 Barth would argue for an understanding of Jn 1.1–2 which would
draw the Jesus of history into the triune identity in a way which would
have significant effects on his revised doctrine of election. But might the fact
that in 1925 Barth was able to say that ‘the only possibility’ for the interpre-
tation of ou-toj in Jn 1.2 is that ‘he, Jesus . . . was in the beginning’ mean that
there are clear biblical precedents in his thought for the line of development
he would come to pursue after 1936?96 This is not to deny the radical new
insights Barth was to achieve. But it does indicate more than merely back-
ground significance to his constant engagement with the biblical materials.
This much resonates with Barth’s later explicit claim in the Preface to his
mature doctrine of election: ‘As I let the Bible itself speak to me on these
matters, as I meditated upon what I seemed to hear, I was driven irresistibly
to reconstruction.’97

91
K. Barth, Gottes Gnadenwahl (Theologische Existenz heute, 47; Zurich: EVZ, 1936).
92
McCormack, Critically Realistic, p. 458.
93
Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation, p. 2; cf. his discussion of McCormack’s
work, pp. 2–4.
94
M. Gockel, Barth & Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election: A Systematic-
Theological Comparison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 158–197.
Gockel’s account has contributed to McCormack’s recent modification of his develop-
mental paradigm; cf. ‘Seek God Where He May be Found’, p. 64.
95
Gockel, Barth & Schleiermacher, p. 170.
96
K. Barth, Witness to the Word: A Commentary on John 1 (trans. G. W. Bromiley; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 29.
97
CD II/2, p. x; KD II/2, p. vii.

26
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

My intention in this book is not to provide an evaluation of Barth’s exe-


gesis or his doctrine of election but rather to lay bare his approach as the
necessary foundation for such evaluations. Specifically, I aim to do this by
examining Barth’s exegesis in relation to his own theology of interpretation,
and so to consider how exegesis and hermeneutics inform each other in his
account.98

4. Mapping the Argument


I argue that Calvin’s exegesis of election reveals a doctrine of election which
may be described as christocentric (if by this we understand Christ to be cen-
tral to salvation-history and the effecting of redemption within the economy).
Allied to this, I suggest that Calvin’s exegesis of election is explained by a
hermeneutical approach to Scripture which is extensively christocentric – his
reading of the whole of the biblical narrative is shaped by his understanding
of how Christology functions within that narrative. Conversely, it is sug-
gested that Barth’s exegesis of election reveals a doctrine of election which,
when carefully nuanced, may be described as christocentric in a methodolog-
ically principial way. This exegesis is best understood in tandem with Barth’s
theology of interpretation which is intensively christological – his reading of
the Bible privileges the name of Jesus Christ in ways which go significantly
beyond Calvin’s understanding of how Christology functions in exegesis.
To show these points, the book unfolds in the following manner. Chapter 2
expands in much greater detail on the sketch provided in this chapter on the
relationship of Christ himself to election in Calvin’s and Barth’s exegesis.
While it is argued that Barth’s position is not as radical as some recent inter-
preters have claimed, his concept of the pre-existent Jesus as the subject of
election (not merely God the Son) is different enough from the correspond-
ing concept in Calvin to issue in two different understandings of election’s
trinitarian basis. In this chapter we see Calvin and Barth use different texts
to construct different conceptions of the relationship between Christology
and election, with the result that Calvin’s christocentrism emerges as distinc-
tively soteriological and Barth’s as radically principial.
In Chapter 3, ‘Community and Election’, the focus is on Calvin’s and
Barth’s use of the same text: Romans 9–11. I show that in their readings of
this material they have strikingly different understandings of the relationship

98
In this study, Barth’s theology of interpretation is restricted to its expression in the
Church Dogmatics, as this provides the material most closely to hand for examining
his exegesis of election. Undoubtedly there are precedents for this even as far back as
Barth’s ‘Die neue Welt’ lecture in 1917, but it is left to others to explore the connec-
tions. See especially Kirschstein, Der Souveräne Gott; Lindemann, Karl Barth und die
kritische Schriftauslegung; Wood, Barth’s Theology of Interpretation.

27
READING THE DECREE

between covenant and election. For Barth, because Jesus Christ himself is
the subject of election, then the heart of the covenant is that God wills
fellowship with himself for man and wills the place of sinful man for him-
self. It is this determination at the heart of the divine life which necessitates
a two-fold form to the community and which thus creates a principial chris-
tological framework for Barth’s interpretation of Romans 9–11. The election
of Israel occurs for the sake of the Son of God; this is an explicitly theologi-
cal basis to Barth’s strong exegetical typology. Calvin’s understanding of the
covenant history likewise reflects his understanding of Christology. For him,
Christ is the head of his people, but this union between Christ and the elect
does not mean that the flow of redemptive history is a mirror image of the
humiliated and exalted Christ. Rather, for Calvin, union with Christ is effec-
tive only for the salvifically elect, and this points to his distinction between
a general and a special election. Christology is notably absent from large
sections of Calvin’s treatment of Romans 9–11. Given that Calvin under-
stands the logic of Paul’s argument to be the exposition of the eternal decree,
Christology’s recession into the background strengthens my argument that
Calvin’s form of christocentrism is one which is focused above all on the
economy of salvation rather than the eternal grounds of that salvation.
Chapters 2 and 3 hint at the way in which exegesis and theology are
related for Calvin and Barth. Chapter 4 turns from the theological distinc-
tion to the hermeneutical distinction. Here I offer an account of both
theologians’ theology of interpretation as it sheds light on their exegesis of
election. I do this for Calvin by showing how the Institutes works as itself a
reading of Scripture which emphasizes Christology in the exposition of
salvation-history and so impacts directly on the way in which election should
be read in Scripture. Calvin’s hermeneutics here are christocentric in a way
which may be described as extensive – no aspect of redemptive history is left
outside Christology’s reach. For Barth, I examine in detail his own observa-
tions on his hermeneutical approach in CD II/2 and explore the significant
connections between this material and his earlier reflections on biblical
interpretation. Such a study reveals that Barth’s aim is to make the reading
of Scripture as intensively christological as possible.
In this way, Chapter 4 is an attempt to stand back and consider the rela-
tionship between Calvin’s and Barth’s contrasting exegetical constructions
and their wider theological projects. Construing the hermeneutics of elec-
tion in this way is a deliberate move. The argument is that Calvin and Barth
read election in Scripture in a way which is best understood within a matrix
of theological doctrines (revelation, Scripture, Christology), rather than
within a range of more typical hermeneutical descriptions that are often
closer to hand, but which can submerge their exegesis under a weight of
conceptual abstractions and remove it from the stated aims both theolo-
gians intended it to fulfil. The differing functions of Christology in their
election exegesis is reflected in the way that both Christology and election

28
CALVIN, BARTH AND CHRISTOCENTRISM

function in their respective systems of thought. Superficially, this is seen in


Calvin placing election within the economy of salvation, and Barth placing
it within his doctrine of God. More pointedly, we will also see here that dif-
fering doctrines of revelation and thus differing doctrines of Scripture inform
the way that election is read.99

99
Throughout, I have gratefully made use of and cited standard English translations of
Calvin and Barth. The translations quoted here, however, are my own responsibility
and are based on my own reading of the original texts. Accordingly, the translations
have been modified in some places without comment, while in other instances notable
problems in the standard translations have been recorded. Full citation details or stand-
ard abbreviations of every text in both translation and original are provided at each
point in the appropriate place.

29
2

christology and election

Introduction
The previous chapter sketched an outline of the different understandings of
the relationship between Christology and election in Calvin and Barth.
Calvin’s theology allows us to speak of Christ and the decree, but Barth’s
theology to say that Christ is the decree. This chapter focuses on the exact
nature of the contrast between these phrases, and explores how this contrast
is evidenced in Calvin’s and Barth’s biblical exegesis of election. Examining
the explicit connections between Christology and election in both interpret-
ers yields three main results.
First, the patient work of a thick description will reveal why both of their
respective doctrines of election may be described as christocentric. This
establishes a similarity between both theologians. But secondly, precisely in
this description of their christocentric doctrines of election, we will see a
conceptual distinction emerging. Calvin’s doctrine of election is best described
as christocentric in the soteriological sense: although in his theology election
is connected to Christology in the realm of the inscrutable divine decree, the
weight of his treatment falls on the nexus of ideas associated with the preach-
ing of the gospel, the Spirit’s call and the response of faith in the Mediator.
By having more to say about election’s connection to Christ in this temporal
realm of faith and obedience, Calvin’s doctrine of election is an example of
his soteriological christocentrism. By contrast, we will see that the opposite
is true of Barth. The connection of election to Christology is not primarily to
be found in something that God does (issue a decree) but rather, in the person
of Jesus Christ, election describes who God is (turned toward us in his self-
determination). Barth’s understanding of Christology and election locates his
christocentrism principially: it is the ‘ground and content’1 of the doctrine of
election, with this particular understanding itself having a determining influ-
ence on the divine being and intra-trinitarian life. Here Christology operates

1
Webster, Barth, p. 88.

30
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

as a methodological rule which is more pervasive and radical than in the


thinking of Calvin. Thirdly, the contrasts which emerge between a soteriolog-
ical–principial christocentrism help to show that the difference between
Calvin and Barth in the area of Christology and election is fundamentally
explained by their contrasting understandings of how election is related to
the doctrine of the Trinity.
The respective treatments of Christology and election in Calvin and Barth
permit examination of their exegesis under two main headings: Christ as the
subject of election; and Christ as the object of election. Calvin does not use
these words. For him the analogous terms are Christ as ‘author’ (author)
and ‘Mediator’ (mediator); and where Barth uses the terms they are clearly
interpretative of his main theological constructs: Jesus Christ is electing God
(erwählende Gott) and elected man (erwählte Mensch).2 But the use of these
terms to describe the thought of both theologians is significant. Contrary to
what Barth seems to suggest, the subject–object conceptuality applies as
much to Calvin in this area as it does to Barth himself. Rather than being an
imposition of Barthian categories onto the interpretation of Calvin, these
terms help to highlight some of the distinctives of Calvin’s approach over
against the Barthian critique precisely because their understanding of these
categories is so different.

1. Jesus Christ as the Subject of Election


1.1. Christ as Author
In three separate passages in John’s Gospel, Calvin discusses Christ’s choos-
ing of the twelve disciples. At the heart of Calvin’s treatment of these passages
is his contention that although the same word for choosing is used in all
three passages (evkle,gomai) it is not used in exactly the same way. The dif-
ference in contexts prevents both a contradiction between the passages and
makes clear that there is more than one way in which Calvin’s Christ plays
a part in choosing.
The first passage is Jn 6.70–71. Here Calvin explains that Christ is prepar-
ing his disciples against future discouragement. Reduced already to a small
number, their faith might be utterly shaken with the defection of Judas on
the horizon. To counter this, Jesus admonishes his disciples in v. 70: ‘Did
I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil. He was speaking of
Judas son of Simon Iscariot for he, though one of the twelve, was going to
betray him’. Calvin comments:

When Christ says that he has chosen twelve, he is not referring to the
eternal counsel of God. For it is impossible that any of those who have

2
Cf. CD II/2, p. 145; KD II/2, p. 157.

31
READING THE DECREE

been predestined (praeordinati) to life will fall away. But they, who had
been chosen (delecti) to the apostolic office, ought to have surpassed
all others in godliness and holiness. Therefore, he used the word cho-
sen (electos) for those who were selected and separated from the
common rank.3

This choosing is a choosing purely to the office of apostle. Calvin’s reason


for this is interesting – he says that this text must be limited to this temporal
form of choosing because ‘it is impossible that any of those who have been
predestined to life will fall away.’ So although Calvin is saying this text is not
about eternal election, it appears that Calvin still uses what he perceives the
features of eternal election to be to interpret the text. Here Calvin is wrestling
seriously with the reality of Judas. If Judas is described as a devil, and in
Calvin’s eyes predestined to destruction, then he has to make sense of how
Judas can nevertheless be chosen by Jesus to be part of the twelve. Judas
does eventually fall away, and so this choosing in 6.70–71 cannot be a
salvific choosing.
The issue of Judas in relation to Jesus’ choosing becomes even clearer in
the next passage, Jn 13.18: ‘I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom
I have chosen. But it is to fulfil the scripture, “The one eating my bread has
lifted his heel against me.”’ What emerges here for Calvin is the fact that
Jesus again speaks of choosing the disciples but now excludes Judas from
this choosing. In 6.70 Judas is one of the chosen; in 13.18 he is not. For
Calvin this sense in which Judas is both chosen and not chosen means that
two very different kinds of choosing are in view. He explains:

When elsewhere [Christ] includes Judas in the number of the elect


(inter electos numerat), the expression is different, not contradictory.
For there a temporal election is meant (notatur temporalis electio), by
which God appoints us to any particular work – just like Saul who
was elected king, but yet was reprobate. But here Christ is speaking of
the eternal election (de aeterna electione) by which we are made God’s
children, and by which God predestined us to life (pradestinavit ad
vitam) before the creation of the world.4

Calvin goes on to explain how the eternally reprobate can actually be


adorned with God’s gifts which enable them to carry out their office (like
Saul or Judas) but this is entirely different from the sanctification of the
Spirit, something which God only grants to the eternally elect. After making
this distinction, however, between a temporal and an eternal election, Calvin
explores what he thinks the further implications of this verse are. He argues

3
Comm. John (CNTC, vol. 4, p. 179); CO 47, p. 163.
4
Comm. John (CNTC, vol. 5, p. 62); CO 47, p. 311.

32
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

that in two different ways in v. 18 Jesus gives a clear witness to his divinity.
First, this judgement by Jesus that he knows those whom he has chosen, and
that he is not speaking of all his disciples, is a clear example that Jesus does
not judge in a human way. For Calvin, when Christ says ‘I know’ in 13.18,
this kind of knowledge is peculiar to God.5
But, Calvin argues, there is a second proof of Christ’s divinity in v. 18
which is more powerful than the first: here Christ makes ‘himself the author
of election’ (se electionis facit autorem).6 When Jesus says ‘I know whom
I have chosen’ this is Christ testifying ‘that those who were chosen before
the creation of the world were chosen by himself (quum a se testator fuisse
electos, qui ante mundi creationem electi sunt). Such a remarkable demon-
stration of his divine power should affect us more deeply than if Scripture
had called him God a hundred times.’7 So Calvin is explicit that Christ plays
an active role not just in the temporal choosing of the twelve to the apostolic
office, but also according to his divine nature in the eternal choosing of indi-
viduals in a salvific sense.8 In Institutes III.xxii.7 Calvin comments on this
verse that ‘although Christ interposes himself as Mediator, he claims for
himself, in common with the Father, the right to choose’ (sibi tamen ius ele-
gendi communiter vendicat cum Patre).9 And also, referring to this election
as a heavenly decree (caelesti decreto), ‘we may infer that none excel by their
own effort or diligence, seeing that Christ makes himself the Author of elec-
tion’ (se Christus electionis facit authorem).10 In the context where Calvin
most clearly asserts Christ playing an active role in election in an eternal
sense, and even where Calvin draws inferences from this about the deity of
Christ, his emphasis is soteriological. The Christ who chooses eternally is
the Christ whose choosing brings some into the family of God and leaves
others (like Judas) outside.
In the final passage where the choosing language surfaces again, Jn 15.16,
19, Calvin equivocates between assigning a temporal or an eternal referent
to it. He uses the kai. e;qhka u`ma/j of v. 16 to interpret the immediately pre-

5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
This exegesis of Jn 13.18 is overlooked entirely by Berkouwer in his discussion of
Christ as the subject of election in Calvin (Divine Election, pp. 157–159).
9
Inst. III.xxii.7, p. 940; OS 4, p. 387.
10
Ibid., p. 941; ibid. In Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, when addressing
the issue of how those who are eternally elect are nevertheless strangers to God until
they become sons through faith, Calvin comments on Jn 10.16: ‘Meantime, though
they did not know it, the shepherd knew them, according to that eternal predestination
by which he chose his own before the foundation of the world (qua suos elegit ante
consitutionem mundi), as Augustine rightly declares’ (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co,
1961), p. 150; De Aeterna Dei Praedestinatione (ed. W. H. Neuser; Genève: Librairie
Droz, 1998), p. 200; cf. also Inst. IV.i.10, p. 1024; OS 5, p. 15.

33
READING THE DECREE

ceding clause ouvc u`mei/j me evxele,xasqe( avllV evgw. evxelexa,mhn u`ma/j, but is
reluctant to drive too sharp a wedge between them. He first admits that this
passage does not ‘treat of the common election of believers (de communi
piorum electione), by which they are adopted to be God’s children, but of
that special election (de particulari) by which he appointed his disciples to
the office of preaching the gospel’.11 Nevertheless, he also wants to suggest
that there is a very clear parallel between this temporal election and eternal
election; what unites them is that both are entirely free, taking no account
whatsoever of human merit. Calvin takes this to be Jesus’ main point in Jn
15.16 – the disciples have done nothing to gain the honour being bestowed
on them. Yet he adds: ‘But all the same, if they were elected to the apostolic
office freely and by no merit of their own, much more is it certain that the
election is free by which, from being the children of wrath and accursed
seed, we are made his eternal heirs.’12 The election to office sheds light on the
election to salvation, and both are of a kind because both stem from Christ’s
grace. Calvin argues here that Christ is aiming to stir up the disciples to do
their duty actively and that nothing is more effective in doing this than the
believer acknowledging that they owe everything to God and possess noth-
ing of their own. For Calvin, both the beginning of salvation (eternal election)
and all the parts which flow from it (in this case appointment to the office
of preaching), flow from Christ’s free mercy. Having forged a relationship
between the ouvc u`mei/j me evxele,xasqe( avllV evgw. evxelexa,mhn u`ma/j and the
kai. e;qhka u`ma/j of v. 16, Calvin then comments specifically on the latter by
using the apostle Paul and the prophet Jeremiah as examples of how the
salvific election may be hidden until election to office becomes visible in
time. His final comment mirrors what he has earlier said on Jn 13.18: ‘That
Christ says he is the author of both [forms of election] (Christus se utriusque
facit autorem) is not surprising, since it is only by him that God acts and he
acts with the Father. So then, election and ordination belong equally to
both.’13
It is clear, then, that for Calvin Christ stands in such a relation to election
that it may truly be said to be a se – and this carries both temporal and
eternal reference, with a bearing on soteriology. This exegetical understand-
ing of Christ’s authorial role reveals a trinitarian conception of election that
reflects at least two wider theological constructs.

1.2. The Trinitarian Basis of Election in Calvin


First, on the basis of Christ’s divinity attested in Jn 13.18, and the election in
15.16 which belongs to both Christ and the Father, Calvin clearly expresses

11
Comm. John (CNTC, vol. 5, p. 102); CO 47, p. 346.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid., p. 103; p. 347.

34
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

some of the concepts of what would come to be known as the opus Dei
essentiale ad intra – the eternal decree or plan of God as willed by the entire
Godhead.14 Although for Calvin, as we will see, the weight of scriptural
testimony falls on emphasizing the electio Patris, such that the corresponding
weight in his exegesis of election will reflect this conception of the order and
distinction of the persons, he is nevertheless clear that the Father does not
choose alone: ‘although Christ interposes himself as Mediator, he claims for
himself, in common with the Father, the right to choose’ (quanvis se medium
Christus inserat, sibi tamen ius eligendi communiter vendicat cum Patre).15
This commonality between the works of the persons, specifically here the
Father and the Son, extends to the enactment of the divine decree. It is some-
times described by Calvin in terms of a unity of substance, and sometimes as
a unity of concord. Commenting on Jn 6.11, Calvin first of all calls Christ a
‘channel’ (canalis) that conveys to us the blessing of the Father, then corrects
himself: ‘he is rather the living fountain flowing from the eternal Father.’ For
this reason blessings come from the Father and the Son in common (commu-
niter), and ‘not only is this an office proper to [Christ’s] eternal divinity, but
even in the flesh the Father has appointed him the steward, to feed us by his
hand.’16 However, when Calvin comes to discuss ‘I and the Father are one’ in
Jn 10.30 he comments: ‘Christ is not discussing the unity of substance but
the concord (consensus) he has with the Father; so that whatever Christ does
will be confirmed by his Father’s power.’17 The point here is that in Calvin’s
description the works of the Father and Son express a mutuality, either on
the basis of shared essence or on the basis of shared purpose, so that the
actions of one are seen in the actions of the other.18 This overall theological
position means that election – decreed ad intra and executed ad extra – is for
Calvin always the work of the triune God.19
Following Paul Jacobs,20 Richard Muller has argued cogently that a
‘trinitarian ground of doctrine’ unites predestination and Christology in
Calvin such that their systematic inter-relationship occurs on two levels: ‘the
level of the eternal intra-trinitarian relationships of Father, Son and Spirit,
and the level of the temporal effecting of God’s will’.21 The two poles are

14
R. A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant
Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), pp. 211–212.
15
Inst. III.xxii.7, p. 940; OS 4, p. 387.
16
Comm. John (CNTC, vol. 4, p. 147); CO 47, p. 133.
17
Ibid., p. 273; p. 250. Cf. also Jn 10.38 ‘This saying does not refer to the unity of
essence, but to the manifestation of divine power in the person of Christ, which showed
that he was sent from God’ (ibid., p. 277; p. 254).
18
Cf. Inst. I.xiii, pp. 120–159; OS 3, pp. 108–151.
19
Cf. F. H. Klooster, Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination (Calvin Theological Seminary
Monograph Series III; Grand Rapids: Calvin Theological Seminary, 1961), pp. 19–20.
20
Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin, pp. 74–78.
21
Muller, Christ and the Decree, p. 10, p. 18.

35
READING THE DECREE

related in this way: ‘As mediator Christ is subordinate to the decree while as
Son of God he is one with the Father and in no way subordinate. The Son as
God stands behind the decree while the Son as mediator is the executor of
the decree.’22 Commenting on Calvin’s use of Jn 13.18, Muller also observes
that ‘The certainty of Christ’s mediation and the certainty of his promise are
grounded in his divinity, since the promise he conveys in his incarnation sub
forma servi is the same promise which he decreed in his eternal divinity.’23
This focus on the relationship between Christ’s incarnation and his eternal
divinity in connection with election highlights the other theological construct
at work in the trinitarian super-structure of Calvin’s doctrine; namely, the
so-called extra Calvinisticum.
I refer to this doctrine as the ‘so-called’ extra Calvinisticum because, as
E. David Willis has shown, ‘A distinction must be made between “extra
Calvinisticum” as a term and the so-called extra Calvinisticum as a doc-
trine.’24 The latter did not originate with Calvin and indeed, according to
Willis, might properly be called the extra Patristicum or extra Catholicum.
This existing catholic doctrine came to play a critical role in Eucharistic
debates between the Lutheran and Reformed churches in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, so that the ‘Calvinistic extra’ became a Lutheran term
of derision. The extra taught the Son’s existence ‘beyond’ (extra) the flesh of
Jesus Christ. Whereas in Lutheran Christology Christ’s flesh receives
ubiquity by virtue of the hypostatic union, the Reformed argued that this
conception threatened the integrity of the human nature. It was better, they
held, to regard the human nature as limited spatially and the divine nature
as retaining its essential properties, such as omnipresence, impassibility and
immensity. Calvin expressed it in this way:

For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the
nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was con-
fined therein. Here is something marvellous: the Son of God descended
from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to
be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon
the cross; yet he continually filled the world even as he had done from
the beginning.25

22
Ibid., pp. 37–38.
23
Ibid., p. 25.
24
E. D. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-called Extra
Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 8. Willis provides a compre-
hensive overview of the patristic and medieval sources of Calvin’s doctrine, pp. 26–60.
25
Inst. II.xiii.4, p. 481; OS 3, p. 458. Calvin refers to the extra again in his discussion of
the Supper (Inst. IV.xvii.30, pp. 1401–3; OS 4, pp. 387–389), and it is actually this
Eucharistic reference to the extra, in shortened form, that is original to the 1536
Inst. Willis also outlines Calvin’s use of the extra as it appears outside of the Institutes
(pp. 31–34).

36
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

Misunderstandings of Calvin’s position are not uncommon. Bruce


McCormack says of the Calvinistic extra that: ‘the second person of the
Trinity was, at one and the same time, completely within the flesh of Jesus
(spatially circumscribed) and completely without the flesh of Jesus (not
limited by space).’26 But this is not Calvin’s view. With Paul Helm, it is better
to understand the extra as expressing the truth that in the one person of
Jesus Christ the divine nature of the eternal Word is wholly united to the
human nature without being entirely united to it.27 Even where the concept
is clearly articulated, however, the significance of Calvin’s exegesis of
election for the actual function of the extra in Calvin’s theology has not been
widely perceived.
Richard Muller points us in the right direction. He argues that Calvin’s
interpretation of Jn 13.18 reflects the structure of the extra Calvinisticum.28
Calvin can understand this act of election to be one which took place
before the world began because of the way in which he conceives of the
Son’s existence beyond the flesh, and here the person of Jesus witnesses to
his eternal divinity in this reference to election. This means that for Muller
there is in Calvin a parallel distinction between the decree and its execution
in time, and between the eternal Word of God and the Word incarnate in
Jesus Christ: ‘In the execution of the decree or work of salvation, the Son
of God is wholly given, in subordination to the eternal plan, as mediator.
But the Son of God a se ipso cannot be wholly contained in the flesh or in
any way subsumed under the execution of the decree.’29 If it is correct to
see Calvin’s comments on Jn 13.18 as reflecting the influence of the extra
in his thought then I suggest that this adds a significant dimension to its
actual function in Calvin’s doctrine of election that is overlooked in Willis’
study.
When discussing Calvin’s understanding of Deus manifestatus in carne,
Willis argues that Calvin operates with a double sense to the designation of
Christ as ‘Mediator’. Christ is both head of the angels and expiator of sin:
‘Christ as Eternal Son mediated the divine ordering of the universe from
its beginning; Christ as Eternal Son manifested in the flesh performed the
reconciling work without the cessation or diminution of his mediation of
the divine ordering of the universe.’30 On this basis, Willis provides a colour-
ful description of the incarnation as operating primarily in political terms in
Calvin – it is ‘a reassertion of Christ’s empire over that part of creation that
had rebelled’, and ‘the Son of God left heaven only in such a way that he

26
McCormack, ‘Grace and Being’, p. 95.
27
P. Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 60.
28
Muller, Christ and the Decree, p. 190 n. 65. He suggests that the same is true of
Calvin’s use of Jn 17.6–8 (p. 196 n. 158).
29
Ibid., p. 38.
30
Willis, Catholic Christology, p. 71.

37
READING THE DECREE

continued to exercise his dominion over it; the Incarnation was the exten-
sion of his empire, not the momentary abdication of it.’31 In this way, creation
and redemption are inseparably connected in the work of Christ: ‘Redemp-
tion is the restoration and reformation of man and the world into a proper
order.’32 The significance of this connection, and the impact of the extra
Calvinisticum at this point in Calvin’s thought, is expressed by Willis like
this: ‘The continuity of gracious order over creaturely attempts at disconti-
nuity depends on the identity of the Redeeming Mediator in the flesh with
the Mediator who is the Eternal Son of God by whom, and with whose
Spirit, all things were created according to the Father’s will.’33 Thus far the
significance of the extra for Calvin.
When Willis touches on Calvin’s doctrine of election, however, he over-
looks Calvin’s comments on Jn 13.18, and so misses a significant application
of his insights about the extra to Calvin’s doctrine of election. For Willis,
Calvin is in danger of jeopardizing the revelation of God in Christ by priori-
tizing in election ‘a will of God to which Christ’s revelation is subject, and a
will which is discoverable by us outside the Deus manifestatus in carne’.34 In
this scheme, the revelation of Christ is subject to a two-fold eternal decision
of either salvation or damnation and Willis highlights that the incarnate
Christ does not make known why this decision is two-fold. Calvin would
doubtless have agreed that Christ does not reveal the reason for the double
decree, but given his exegesis of Jn 13.18 and 15.16 it is hard to see how he
would concur with a conception of God’s electing will to which Christ’s rev-
elation is merely subject. On the contrary, by omitting the fact that for
Calvin election is by Christ and in common with the Father ante mundi cre-
ationem, Willis does not see how election displays continuity between the
Son’s eternal, universal headship and his extension of that headship into
space-time history.
Consider Willis’ argument. The extra in Calvin provides continuity
between the two aspects of the eternal Son’s ordering of the universe: beyond
the flesh, as from the beginning; in time, manifested in the flesh to redeem.
The redemption Christ brings is the extension of his empire over the rebel-
lious creature. Thus the extra reveals continuity between the two spheres of
Christ’s headship – just as he always was and remained head of the angels
even in his incarnation, so now in his incarnation that headship is extended
to creatures who had spurned it. However, if in the incarnation the eternal
Son continued to exercise his dominion over creation by the work of redemp-
tion, then the striking feature of Calvin’s exegesis here is that it attributes to
Christ, according to his divine nature, an active role in the eternal basis of

31
Ibid., p. 76.
32
Ibid., p. 78.
33
Ibid., pp. 99–100.
34
Ibid., p. 117.

38
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

the temporal redemption. Or, approached from a different angle, we may


ask: what is the causal ground of the extension of Christ’s headship to rebel-
lious creatures in redemption? The answer is the free and gracious decree of
election, and Jn 13.18 for Calvin shows Christ himself active in that decree.
So at the point where Willis suggests Christ’s revelation is subordinate to the
will of God, Calvin shows the revelation of the eternal Son manifest in the
flesh to be a revelation of the electing will of the eternal Son. The Son is
wholly given as he redeems his people in the execution of the decree, even as
the Son is not wholly subsumed under the decree because it is an extension
of his own divine headship. Christ as the author of election shows that the
extension of his headship in time is continuous with the divine will – his
own divine will – which orders the universe in creation and redemption.
Perhaps we may say that it is in the revelation of election (via the extra con-
ceptuality) that Calvin shows Christ exercising a dominion par excellence
that he had never ceased to exercise.35 At the same time, we note again that
in Jn 13.18 the function of the extra conceptuality in Calvin’s hands sup-
ports his soteriological focus. In his eternal mediation Christ chooses some
to be saved. It is one thing to recognize that with the extra Calvin extends
Christ’s electing headship into precincts beyond his flesh; but another thing
to recognize that for Calvin his intention in doing so is to describe Christ’s
role in redemption. We may say that the concept of Christ as the author of
election is present in Calvin, and it is significantly present by virtue of its
connection to Calvin’s understanding of Christ’s divine nature; but it is
framed by Calvin’s soteriological concerns.
On the basis of this argument about Christ’s authorial role in election, it is
important to ask why it is that Barth is so critical of Calvin for not assigning
a role to Christ as the active subject in election.

[Calvin’s] reference to Christ as the one who executed the beneplaci-


tum is only an answer to the beneplacitum if the beneplacitum as such
is understood to be Christ’s, if Christ is already thought of not merely
as the executive instrument (das ausführende Organ) of the divine
dealings with man ordained in the election but as the Subject of the
election itself (das Subjekt der Erwählung selbst). But Calvin was not
prepared to think of him in this way.36

As Barth sees it, Calvin’s Christ has merely an instrumental connection to


election. This particular criticism appears as part of Barth’s argument against

35
Edmondson locates his discussion of election in Calvin under the rubric of Christ’s
royal office, and specifically under ‘The eternity of Christ’s kingdom’ (Calvin’s Christol-
ogy, pp. 143–151). In this way it could be argued that it is actually election itself, and
not just the incarnation, that deserves to be understood in political terms.
36
CD II/2, pp. 66–67; KD II/2, p. 71.

39
READING THE DECREE

a doctrine of election which consists of ‘a general view of man and general


concept of God’.37 Against the former (which might discuss election in
relation to ‘the being and destiny of individual man as such’) and against
the latter (which might discuss election in relation to ‘the concept of God
as omnipotent Will’), Barth insists that in both anthropology and theology
‘the Bible directs us to the name of Jesus Christ’.38 The criticism of the
Reformed tradition is intensely christological. Barth will later say that
Calvin’s failure to perceive that we can have no assurance of our own elec-
tion if Jesus Christ is merely an elected means whereby the electing God
chooses is ‘the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole
doctrine of predestination’.39 But given what we have seen in Calvin’s com-
ments on Jn 13.18, what are we to make of Barth’s analysis of his Reformed
forebear at this point?
The first thing to say is that a serious question mark ought to be placed
against Barth’s claim that the Reformed tradition has ignored his insight.
There are strong grounds for thinking that Barth has missed in Calvin’s John
commentary a significant piece of evidence that Calvin did indeed hold a
position like the one Barth is expounding as so essential to the doctrine of
election. Barth asserts that, although falling short, Calvin did come ‘apprecia-
bly near’ to an understanding of Christ as the subject of election, and he
refers to Calvin’s exposition of John 13 and 15. However, the words Barth
says we read in that exposition come from the Institutes, not the commen-
tary: sibi ius elegendi communiter vindicat cum Patre . . . Se Christus
electionis facit autorem.40 In Inst. III.xxii.7, straight after Barth’s Latin quo-
tation, the references to Jn 13.18 and 15.19 are given and these are the two
references Barth himself cites in parentheses. So it seems likely that at this
point Barth’s references to John simply follow the citations given in the
Institutes and therefore that Barth was basing his view of Christ as subject
in Calvin on this section of the Institutes, not the commentary. Although
Inst. III.xxii.7 does provide warrant for a view of Christ as the subject of
eternal election, this pretemporal sense could also be missed; as I will argue
in Chapter 4, it is certainly not the main point of Calvin’s argument in this
section. But the concept of Christ choosing a se in the clear sense of ante
mundi creationem is crystal clear in Calvin’s commentary and might be
deemed sufficient to cast Calvin’s position in a different light than that sug-
gested by Barth. Further uncertainty over Barth’s argument arises here from
a mistake in Barth’s citation of Jn 13.8 instead of 13.18 – this citation is
present in both the original German and the English translation41 – so that

37
Ibid., p. 52; pp. 55–56.
38
Ibid., p. 53; p. 56.
39
Ibid., p. 111; p. 119.
40
OS 4, p. 387.
41
KD II/2, p. 71; CD II/2, p. 67.

40
CHRISTOLOGY AND ELECTION

again it seems Barth is copying these biblical references from Calvin with a
slip of the pen, rather than studying them in Calvin.42
The second thing to say, however, is that regardless of the weaknesses in
Barth’s historical material at this point, a case can be made that his concep-
tion of Christ as the subject of election is different enough from Calvin’s
authorial Christ that even had he been aware of Calvin’s comments on
Jn 13.18 or 15.16 they would not have caused him to think much differently
about the problems in Calvin’s account. To consider this possibility I now
turn to examine Barth’s exegesis of Jesus Christ as the electing God. This
will allow us both to assess his position more fully in relation to Calvin and
also to see his different conception of the trinitarian basis of election.

1.3. Christ as Electing God


Barth’s exegetical treatment of the election of Jesus Christ appears nearly
one hundred pages into CD II/2. In this way his exegesis rests on quite con-
siderable conceptual foundations and it is easy to go astray in examining his
exegesis by not grasping exactly what he intends the exegesis to prove. This
is not to make a prior judgement about the merits or otherwise of Barth’s
actual exegesis. Rather it is a simple function of the structural features of
this section of the Church Dogmatics – small-print exegetical excurses fill in
the scriptural details of the unfolding thesis which has been explained both
dogmatically and historically.
The direction of Barth’s election Christology is apparent right from the
very beginning. His argument is an arrangement of connected extrapola-
tions which flow from the one central reality that ‘Jesus Christ is indeed God
in his movement towards man’. This, Barth argues, is because:

In a Christian doctrine of God, if God is to be exhaustively described


and represented as the Subject who governs and determines everything
else, there must be an advance beyond the immediate logical sense of
the concept to the actual relationship in which God has placed him-
self; a relationship outside of which God no longer wills to be and no
longer is God, and within which alone he can be truly honoured and
worshipped as God.43

42
Cf. Muller who suggests that ‘Barth has not fully discerned the relation of Christ to the
decrees in Calvin’s theology’ (Christ and the Decree, p. 190 n. 62). Also, on the
Reformed tradition more widely: ‘the concept of “Jesus Christ electing and elected”
which overcomes the threat of a “predestinarian metaphysic” and of a Deus nudus
absconditus appears not as a theme barely hinted at but as a fundamental interest,
indeed, as a norm for early orthodoxy’ (ibid., p. 173).
43
CD II/2, p. 7; KD II/2, p. 5.

41
READING THE DECREE

Jesus Christ is precisely this tatsächliche Beziehung. By being in himself


the relationship of God to humanity, Jesus Christ is the decision of God
(die Entscheidung Gottes) and God’s relation to humanity in Jesus ‘is a rela-
tion in which God is self-determined (in welchem er sich selber bestimmt
hat), so that the determination belongs no less to him than all that he is in
and for himself’.44 And it is this, even at this very early stage in Barth’s argu-
ment, which provides the framework within which he will use the word
‘election’ in counter-intuitive ways: election will describe who God is, not
merely what God does. As his argument unfolds, this connection between
God-towards-us in Christ and election becomes explicit:

As we have to do with Jesus Christ, we have to do with the electing


God. For election is obviously the first and basic and decisive thing
which we have always to say concerning this revelation, this activity,
this presence of God in the world, and therefore concerning the eternal
decree and the eternal self-determination of God which bursts through
and is manifested at this point. Already this self-determination, as a
confirmation of the free love of God, is itself the election or choice
of God (Schon diese Selbstbestimmung als solche, als Bestätigung der
freien Liebe, die Gott selber ist, ist Gottes Wahl). It is God’s choice that
he wills to be God in this determination and not otherwise.45

The significance of this conceptual move cannot be underestimated for how


Barth will constructively describe Christ’s role in election. There are at least
two key points to note.
First, by describing this self-determination of God as itself the election of
God, Barth has automatically broadened the semantic range of the word to
include the category of revelation. This much is clear from the above quota-
tion, and Barth says as much himself: ‘Election is that which takes place at
the very centre (gerade im Zentrum) of the divine self-revelation.’46
Significantly, this means that when Barth comes to elucidate his understand-
ing of Christ’s role in election by examining Jn 1.1–2, this treatment is as
much an articulation of his doctrine of revelation as it is of his doctrine of
election. As Douglas Sharp argues, ‘In Barth’s construction, election is iden-
tical with the revelation of God in its concrete form, and revelation is
identical with election in its concrete content.’47
Second, the outlines of Barth’s radically redefined concept of double pre-
destination are taking shape here. Webster describes Barth’s conception in
this way: ‘In Barth’s hands, the term comes to refer, not to a decision of God

44
Ibid., p. 7; p. 6.
45
Ibid., p. 54; p. 57.
46
Ibid., p. 59; p. 63.
47
Cf. Sharp, Hermeneutics of Election, pp. 1–2.

42
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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:


Duguay Tronin=> Duguay Trouin {pg iii}
to Magdebourg to a hold a review=> to Magdebourg to hold a review
{pg 146}
but to out the whole door=> but to cut the whole door {pg 152}
dressed, everything is well=> dressed, everthing is well {pg 256}
wai-patiently=> wait patiently {pg 261}
This man had suceeded=> This man had succeeded {pg 269}
fastened by a handkerhief=> fastened by a handkerchief {pg 273}
been making repretentations=> been making representations {pg 290}
selling them that=> telling them that {pg 293}
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