Karl Barth’s Ontology of Divine Grace: God’s Decision is God’s Being

Karl Barth’s rigorous and singular focus on God’s reconciling and revealing activity in Jesus Christ yields a profoundly compelling ontological vision. In this study, Tyler J. Frick explores Barth’s understanding of God’s being and particularly Barth’s contention in Church Dogmatics II/1 that God is essentially gracious in God’s original and proper triune life. The author argues that Barth’s doctrine of election expounded in Church Dogmatics II/2 provides Barth with the sufficient conceptual framework to ensure that there is no bifurcation between what God does in the economy of grace and who and what God is as triune. This analysis demonstrates the Trinitarian consequences present in Barth’s later volumes, which arise from Barth’s insistence that the doctrine of election is the eternal decision in which God graciously elects Godself to become humanity’s God in the covenant-fulfilling existence of Jesus Christ.