Karl Barth or Bruce McCormack?
Some have said Karl Barth’s theology of Election made it basically supralapsarianism. But if I understand Bruce McCormack’s work and exegesis on Barth, the term “supralapsarianism” for Barth, is a wrong way to categorize Barth because his ideas of election are out of his doctrine of God, i. e. what he is.
If I understand McCormack correctly, God is an eternal act of election within his life and consequently without. He chooses himself as the elect, as he is the elector (Barth’s Christology). Thus, when he chooses us individual humans, in our times and places, it is not dependent on whether we’re predestined or not because he’s predestined himself before-hand in order to do and be what we could not because he is a saving act. It just happens to be a matter of fact that we are not predestined in any classical sense of the word. And thank God for the that. But ultimately, it's because of who God is not what he decrees. I struggle to word it appropriately. (See quote below.)
I would only add if this is true it must be tamed by keeping in mind, as we understand God to be a saving act, and by saying so we are meaning that in an equally fundamental way God is love, always. Which I hope Bruce McCormack would agree with and Karl Barth. And since he is love he is eternally positioned to sustain himself and anything outside himself true to what he is. That is why as love he is in an equal sense an eternal act of election as described above.
"God’s essence is a description of God’s being in the eternal act of election, which is his triunity." -Bruce McCormack
