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.
