The Incarnation implies the actualist salvation of all of humanity; or at least so goes the logic of Karl Barth’s ‘Christological objectivism.’ I believe that this is indeed the logic of the Incarnation; viz. that all of humanity has been objectively (extra nos) justified (‘saved’) before God. This is the case precisely because humanity, at a primordial level, I would contend, is Christ’s vicarious humanity; His humanity is humanity. As such, what it means to be human before God, as all humans now are, is what it means for Christ, our high priest, to stand before God for us, as the imago Dei. Some believe that the logic I am forwarding, qua Barth, necessarily leads to a dogmatic Christian universalism, wherein all will finally be saved. I will respond to this latterly, but first let’s hear from Bruce McCormack as he describes Barth’s Christological objectivism vis-à-vis a soteriological frame:

I have already hinted at a major conclusion of my own research on Barth that will have bearing on what is said in the remainder of this section of the current chapter. A final significant development (one of may even speak of an ever-so slight “turn”) took place within the bounds of the Church Dogmatics that would force a recapitulation of all that went before and even a few retractions. The final modulation took place in the revision of election and its most significant result was what I would like to call Barth’s “Christological objectivism” — that is, the understanding that God’s work of reconciliation and redemption is fully accomplished and already effective “for” all human beings even before an awakening to faith makes it effective “in” any particular one of them. What is accomplished by God in Jesus Christ is the reality of reconciliation and redemption, not merely its possibility — a possibility to be made actual later by the work of the Spirit. No, the work of the Spirit in awakening an individual to faith and obedience does not make Christ’s work effective; it simply brings Christ’s work in its efficacy to conscious awareness so that the individual is redirected, reoriented to a future of which they had been unaware. Ex opere operato is a phrase well-suited to describe Barth’s mature understanding of Christ’s work.1

This sits well with what I have highlighted in my sidebar from TF Torrance; he writes:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.2

First, we have an explication of how Barth came to understand the objective nature of salvation in Jesus Christ, as described by Bruce McCormack. Second, we have an iteration of this type of Christological objectivism as that found its way into the inklings of Barth’s greatest English speaking student, TF Torrance. I wanted to share TFT’s rendition of this doctrine because I think it is important to see how such deep theology has real-life practical implications towards thinking and proclaiming the Gospel.

But certain theologians might spy a Christian universalism in all of this. Indeed, there is a biblical universalism at play here, but it isn’t of the sort of mercantile or causal type that causes these theologians to panic. That is to say: the only way something like Barth’s (and TFT’s following) Christological objectivism leads to a dogmatic Christian universalism is if the theologian applies something like an Aristotelian causal theory to the kerygmatic logic being deployed in the thinking of Barth/TFT. But if the theologian were to simply think from the logic determined by the sui generis Gospel itself, the theologian does not conclude at a dogmatic Christian universalism; such as the aforementioned theologians fear. That is how this works in the theologies of Barth and Torrance; they are not metaphysicians, they are Christian theologians. As such, they think from the theo-logic inherent to the Gospel. As Torrance might qualify: the Christian needs to operate from the kata physin (according to the nature of) of the Gospel itself. As if the Gospel creates and recreates reality, and out of this reality the theologian comes to have the fertile soil needed to think from the foundations which no one else has laid but God Himself. That is, the theologian needs to allow the pure Gospel, rather than some discursive notion of a pure nature to supply the categories by which the theologian thinks God, in a God-world relation.

So let it be written so let it be done.

1 Bruce Lindley McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 104-05. 

2 T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.