I have had my day railing against what is known as Federal (or Covenantal) theology. I still protest its existence, but as with any theological construct it’s possible to pick up its frail, broken pieces, and potentially make something constructive out of it. I am continuing my straight through drive of Barth’s magnum opus: Church Dogmatics. As I am finishing up CD II/1, I just came across a section where I can see where Barth, intentionally or not, is riffing on Federal theology. It’s rather elegant, given the fact that we can see his still forming doctrine of election potentially in the background of what he states. He writes:

Again, it is clear that even the judgments and punishments of God, the whole severity of His conduct towards Israel, do not contradict the truth that He actually wills to maintain and not destroy His creature. They are all temporary and as such symbolic judgments and punishments. They are not the outbreak of the genuine wrath and judgment of God. They are not the eternal death, the abandonment and precipitation into nothingness, which Israel and with Israel all humanity has deserved. They are all to be included in the sway of God’s patience. That which we all deserved has been suffered in our place and in Israel’s place by the only righteous One, who achieved a perfect penitence—although He had no need of it for Himself—by not refusing to take upon Himself the genuine wrath and judgment of God. Because He has done this in His function as the One who could take our place and suffer for us as our Head, all that which we with Israel have to suffer is shown to be included in the government of God’s patience, a reminder of our own incapacity to justify ourselves but also a reminder of the God who justifies us by Himself.[1]

Okay, not really Foedus or ‘Covenantal’ simpliciter, but we do get the ‘Head’[ship] language; which really could simply be more reminiscent of the two Adam’s motif we get from the Apostle Paul. Either way, a beautiful statement on the mirifica commutatio (‘wonderful exchange’) that has obtained in the Judge judged for us in Jesus Christ. Even the judgments and wrath of God we see in the Old Testament contra God’s covenant people, and the surrounding nations, even the judgments and wrath of the Lamb we see forthcoming in the book of Revelation, all ultimately point forward and backward to the ultimate judgment God took upon Himself for the many, so we might experience the Life of the One [in the Three] for all eternity.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 §30 The Doctrine of God: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 168.