Postcards from Karl #5

Often we focus on what our salvation means for us. But what does it mean for God?

What is quite certain is that for God it means severe self-commitment. God does not merely give Himself up to the risk and menace, but He exposes Himself to the actual onslaught and grasp of evil. For if God Himself became man, this man, what else can this mean but:

That He declared Himself guilty of the contradiction against Himself in which man was involved;

That He submitted Himself to the law of creation by which such a contradiction could be accompanied only by loss and destruction;

That He made Himself the object of the wrath and judgment to which man had brought himself;

That He took upon himself the rejection which man had deserved;

That He tasted Himself the damnation, death and hell which ought to have been the portion of fallen man?

...

If we would know what it was that God elected for Himself when He elected fellowship with man, then we can answer only that He elected our rejection.

He made it His own.

He bore it and suffered it with all its most bitter consequences.

For the sake of this choice and for the sake of man He hazarded Himself wholly and utterly.

He elected our suffering (what we as sinners must suffer towards Him and before Him and from Him).

He elected it as His own suffering.

This is the extent to which His election is

an election of grace,

an election of love,

an election to give Himself,

an election to empty and abase Himself for the sake of the elect.

Church Dogmatics II/2, 164

That's a lot of love, and it's a lot of suffering by God on our behalf. Note also Barth's unflinching acceptance of penal substitutionary atonement and his wonderfully poetic way of describing its beauty. I read recently some opinions that PSA is perhaps the dumbest theological invention of the Christian Church.

Not so from Barth's point of view.

10 points for the location and official name of the above monument (hint: it's not in Athens). Another 10 points for its nickname.