My Most Recent Publication: Barth, Election, and Atonement

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An essay of my production is included in the summer issue of the Journal of Reformed Theology. The relevant issue is already available online for those of you with the proper permissions, and is soon to be released – or very recently released – in hard copy. Here is the article’s bibliographic information, followed by the abstract. The subtext of this essay is an attempt to bring both McCormack and Hunsinger's ways of reading Barth into fruitful conversation. You, gentle readers, will have to be the judges of whether or not I succeeded.
W. Travis McMaken, “Election and the Pattern of Exchange in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement” in Journal of Reformed Theology 3.2 (2009): 202-18.
ABSTRACT: Bruce McCormack has described Barth’s doctrine of the atonement as even more forensic than the traditional Protestant account due to the role played therein by his doctrine of election. The content of this election is fleshed out by the covenant of grace. This essay gives attention to the place of one aspect of that covenant of grace—the pattern of exchange—as it is found in Barth’s account of the atonement, arguing that a mutually constitutive relation of unity-in-distinction obtains between the pattern of exchange and election in Barth’s treatment of the atonement, with an asymmetrical priority given to election.

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