ZDTh Paseo ma mua mney SUPPLEMENT SERIES 4 published by the Committee for the Advancement of the Study of Dialectical Theology responsible editors of this edition Gerrit Neven (Kampen) & Bruce L. McCormack (Princeton) ISSN 0169-7536 © 2010 Protestantse Theologische Universiteit in Kampen. The contents of this journal may not be distributed or reproduced in any form without prior written approval of the editor.Election and the lived life. Considerations on Gollwitzer's reading of Karl Barth in CD II/2 as a contribution to actual discussions on trinity and election + Zeitschrift fiir Dialektische Theologie + Supplement Series 4 + Akke van der Kooi INTRODUCTION This contribution focuses on the practical consequences of the doctrine of election in its origin in the Gospel. My guide is a chapter from a book by the German theologian Helmut Gollwitzer (1908-1993), a pupil, friend and interpreter of Barth and almost his successor in Basle. Goll- witzer can be characterized as the thinker who tried to connect Barth's Christian Humanism with a Marxist critique of society and ideology. I read the chapter “Gute Botschaft fiir Judas Ischarioth” from Gollwitzer’s book Krummes Holz — aufrechter Gang. Zur Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens (1970) (regrettably untranslated in English) as Gollwitzer’s own (critical) interpretation of Barth's doctrine of election. I am doing this against the background of actual discussions on the relation election — trinity in the work of Paul Molnar, Bruce McCormack and Eberhard Jiingel. In my route I will pay especially attention to the criticism which Eberhard Jiingel in his Gottes Sein ist im Werden (1965), starting from a paraphrase of Barth’s doctrine of election, urges against an earlier book by Gollwitzer: Die Existenz Gottes im Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1963; Eng. transl: The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith, 1965). Jiingel is one of68 the theologians who, following in the footsteps of Barth, derive the doc- trine of election from the doctrine of the trinity, using various arguments in which the relation Deus Absconditus — Deus Revelatus and the Logos doctrine play an important part. Despite his close proximity to Barth's work, Gollwitzer steps out of line here. When Gollwitzer talks about election, he does not bring up the doctrine of the trinity. He maintains the distinction Deus Absconditus — Deus Revelatus, but does not anchor it in a solid view of the trinity. Gollwitzer deliberately takes a different path and it seems that on this path he shows a surplus which we do not adequately find in Barth himself and in the discussions of his followers: Molnar, McCormack and Jiingel. My aim in this contribution is to show something of this surplus. I suspect that in the chapter on Judas (1970) Gollwitzer indirectly answers the questions which Jiingel had posed to him in his Gottes Sein ist im Werden from 1965. TRINITY AND ELECTION: MOLNAR’S CRITIQUE OF MCCORMACK In his book Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity Paul Molnar! examines Bruce McCormack’s article on “Grace and Being”. This article discusses what election involves in Barth and what its role is in Barth's theological ontology. The thrust of McCormack’s explanation of Barth is that election from eternity (there was never a time in which election did not exist) with its focus on the covenant between God and man renders superfluous a pregiven ontological trinity. ‘The latter can only be articulated in the realization of election: McCormack talks about an actualist ontology in Barth (instead of a — Calvinian — essentialist on- tology). He quotes: at the beginning of God’s ways with the world stood not a logos asarkos but the God-man Jesus Christ (this is — states McCor- mack — “barthian historicizing”). According to Barth, it is impossible to think God’s essence apart from God’s presence in the incarnation. Know- ledge of God comes from the incarnation. And ontically speaking there is no reason in the incarnation to decide on a breach in God between 1 Paul D. Molnar, Divine Freedom and The Doctrine of The Immanent Trinity. In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology, London/New York: T & T Clark, 2002, chapter 3, 61-82. 2 Bruce McCormack, “Grace and Being: The Role of God's Gracious Election in Karl Barths Theological Ontology’, in: The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 92-110.