Re Imaging Election

In Re-Imaging Election Suzanne McDonald offers a fresh approach to the doctrine of election from a Reformed perspective, first by seeking greater acknowledgment that election is not only “in Christ” but also “by the Spirit,” and second by building on the scriptural and theological links between the doctrines of election and the image of God.

On the one hand, McDonald uses a pneumatological lens to analyze the doctrines of election found in John Owen (representing the historic Reformed tradition) and Karl Barth. As a result she claims that the earlier tradition maintains a better scriptural and Trinitarian balance between the work of the Son and the work of the Spirit in election, and also that pneumatological issues rather than christological ones raise the most acute questions for a Reformed approach to the doctrine.

On the other hand, McDonald draws attention to significant and converging insights concerning the scriptural contours of election and the image of God within contemporary biblical scholarship – insights that challenge aspects of Barth’s approach and that of historic Reformed orthodoxy alike.

This leads McDonald to develop a constructive proposal that posits representation (representing God to others and others to God) as a fruitful category for understanding the nature and purpose of election. In doing so, she seeks to restore the robust pneumatology characteristic of the earlier Reformed tradition without losing some of the central insights from Barth’s christological re-orientation of the doctrine.

While Re-Imaging Election is firmly rooted in the Reformed tradition, the re-expression of the doctrine presented here opens up new possibilities for dialogue across the theological spectrum and offers suggestive directions for reclaiming an often divisive doctrine in the life of the church.