Judgment of God's Generative Non-willing: Karl Barth on Nothingness and the Cross

The constructive move of this paper, engaging especially Barth's Church Dogmatics III/3, is to interpret the cross as a judgment upon the potency of God’s original electing decision for covenant and creation as it also resulted in the emergence of that which was rejected by God, nothingness or evil. In this reading the judgment God pronounces through the cross is not primarily a “No” to humanity’s “no” to God, or put differently, not God’s rejection of the rejection of grace, but instead is a final “No” that counters the primordial “No” pronounced before creation as God rejected chaos.