Karl Barth is known in theological circles for his radical reshaping, through a Christological and paschal concentration, of the doctrine of election. There is no doubt that his massive development of this theme, in the thick volume known as Church Dogmatics II/2 (published right in the middle of the Second World War, in 1942), represents an extraordinary achievement in Protestant—and, more importantly, Christian—theology in the last century. But Barth did not begin to consider this theme in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and he also did not stop once he published the 1942 volume. Already in his commentary on Romans, his famous Römerbrief in its two editions (1919 and 1922), the apostle Paul’s text led him to wrestle with one of the key biblical texts dealing with election, namely Romans 9–11.

As it turns out, Barth wrote his most significant texts on election during the two World Wars. In order to understand his insights on this theme, it is important to begin with his theological exegesis, in his early years as a young, lively pastor in the small town of Safenwil (Canton Aargau, Switzerland), before moving on to his (no less lively) doctrinal and academic teaching a decade later in Göttingen, and two decades later in Basel