Election, Barth, and the French Connection, 2nd Edition

How Pierre Maury Gave a "Decisive Impetus" to Karl Barth's Doctrine of Election

Pierre Maury, Simon Hattrell

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781532667183, 9781532667190
• eBook ISBN: 9781532667206
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Karl Barth's famous account of the doctrine of election in his mammoth Dogmatics has been described as the heart of his theology--a great hymn to the grace of God in Christ. Discover the person who initially stimulated Barth's mammoth reworking of the "classical" view of the doctrine--pastor/theologian Pierre Maury (1890-1956). Their close friendship and especially a seminal paper Maury gave in 1936 entitled "Election and Faith" helped stimulate Barth's reflection. Discover some never-before-translated works of Maury as well as a revision of a previously published piece on predestination. In this revised and expanded second edition, seven theologians reflect on the significance of these works for us today from historical, textual, pastoral, and theological standpoints, and seek to draw conclusions for us in our contemporary setting.

14

The Human Election of God

Leo Stossich

In his autobiographical contribution to The Christian Century published in 1939, How I Changed My Mind, Karl Barth described the previous decade as one of a theological “deepening.” His study of Anselm of Canterbury had been pivotal in allowing him to fully abandon theological liberalism and shape a theology which consented to Credo and proceeded from faith to understanding—fides quaerens intellectum.383 This new trajectory shaped his general approach to the Church Dogmatics, the first two volumes appearing in 1932 and 1938.

A further key factor in this development was the Calvin Conference384 held in Geneva in June 1936, where Barth heard a lecture by Pierre Maury on the subject of election. In Karl Barth’s original foreword to Predestination and Other Papers385 he says,

Most of those present at the Calvinist Congress were neither prepared, nor apt to receive in their hearts, nor just simply to register with their brains, what Pierre Maury was saying to them then. There were but few who had any idea of the implications of his thesis in the course of the years that followed, when preoccupations of a political nature loomed so large that they scarcely left time or energy for theological reflection of this sort. But I remember one person who read the text of that address with the greatest attention—myself! . . . It was he who contributed decisively to giving my thoughts on this point their fundamental orientation. Before I read his study, I had met no one who had dealt with the question so freshly and boldly.386

The central theme of Maury’s paper, Election and Faith, was that the concrete reality of election and predestination which is made known in Jesus Christ cannot be separated from the doctrine of election. He boldly stated “outside of Christ, there is neither election, nor knowledge of election.”387 Maury placed Christ as the object of God’s predestinating activity making for “a truly Christological grounding of predestination.”388 McCormack maintains that while “this did not hand Barth’s later doctrine to him on a platter . . . complete in all of its details,”389 it did provide the stimulus for revision toward the fully developed doctrine of CD II/2. Barth said:

I had to learn that Christian doctrine, if it is to merit its name and if it is to build up the Christian church in the world as she must needs be built up, has to be exclusively and conclusively the doctrine of Jesus Christ—of Jesus Christ as the living Word of God spoken to us men.390

Christ became the point of departure for Barth’s theological reflection. He referred to this as his “Christological concentration.”391

Barth later acknowledges the significance of this conference to his own development in his Church Dogmatics.392 Likewise, Maury acknowledges the thinking of Barth in his own lectures. He indicates that, “We have . . . for many years discussed this doctrine together, and he has propounded it in masterly fashion, infusing it with new life, in his Church Dogmatics II/2.”393

The following statements by Maury and Barth provide three foci in looking at Barth’s thinking about election. Maury said: “The election of Jesus Christ is not only the means by which he has chosen us, it is also the way in which we choose him, and no longer ourselves.”394 He likewise said: “He chooses to love, in order to be loved himself in return, voluntarily and freely, by his creature.”395 Barth stated that “The purpose and meaning of the eternal divine election of grace consists in the fact that the one who is elected from all eternity can and does elect God in return.”396

These three foci are: the election of grace, the Holy Spirit, and human freedom.

The truth that humanity is elect in Christ cannot be dissolved and so a contradiction remains between objective and subjective reality.397 God bestows on humanity the gift of freedom in Jesus Christ through the Spirit, making himself available, so humanity might respond to him. Nonetheless, human freedom involves “a genuine decision and act in the right direction.”398

The Election of Grace

Barth’s mature development of the doctrine had shifted focus to pivot around the election of Jesus Christ as both the electing God and the elected man.399 The inclusion of the doctrine of election within the volume on the doctrine of God gave election precedence over subsequent doctrines. Maury said “it qualifies them all.”400 Greggs maintains, for Barth, “Election logically is the prior step that allows God’s self-revelation to take place, and it is God’s decision in election that leads to His self-revelation to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.”401 God could only be known in His self-disclosure—“Jesus Christ is the ground, the center and the focus of all human speech about ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 2: Jacques Maury’s Tribute to his Father
• Chapter 3: Gustave Monod’s Tribute to Pierre Maury on the Occasion of his Death in 1956
• Chapter 4: Jean Bosc’s Tribute to Pierre Maury on the Occasion of His Death in 1956
• Chapter 5: A Memoir of Pierre Maury 1890–1956
• Chapter 6: Karl Barth’s Original Foreword to Maury’s Predestination
• Chapter 7: Election et Foi (Election and Faith)
• Chapter 9: Predestination
• Chapter 10: Pierre Maury, Karl Barth, and the Evolution of Election
• Chapter 12: Serious Joy of the Ultimate Decision
• Chapter 13: Karl Barth’s Influence on Contemporary Christian Universalism
• Chapter 14: The Human Election of God