‘Election is the love of God enacted and inserted into history in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that in the strictest sense Jesus Christ is the election of God. ’1 In these words of Professor T. F. Torrance, as I hope to show in this essay, lies the heart of the New Testament conception of election. It is ‘in Christ’ that the primitive Church under-stands the meaning and purpose of Election rather than in the Old Testament ‘teaching’ regarding election; although, of course, she does look back to the Old Testament as ground for claiming the existence of an election as such. That is to say, the Church does not invent the idea of the Election, but rather takes up that idea and finds in her own existence and nature the meaning and purpose of election. It is the New Testament that illumines the shadowy Old Testament figure of Election with the light of the glory of Christ. Because of this, we must expect not only to see Election more clearly, as it were, in the New than in the Old Testament, but also we must expect to find in it new truth and new implications.

At precisely what point in the biblical witness did the act of election begin? Who are the elect or chosen in the sight of the biblical writers? Writers tend to vary among themselves as to the answer to these questions.

It seems worth considering whether in the Emmaus story we have the missing account of Jesus' special Appearance to Simon Peter, which Mark foreshadows before his Gospel breaks off and which Paul recalled in the earliest list of Resurrection Appearances of all (‘He was seen of Cephas’).

Among the many insights for which we should be indebted to Professor Rudolf Bultmann is the recognition that пίστις is for Paul at once active and passive. Simultaneously it is ‘faith’ and ‘obedience’. To be sure it receives the unmerited grace of God in a completely passive way, but at the same time it actively responds to that grace in obedience. By faith the believer accepted passively at God's hand a new freedom from sin heretofore unknown (Rom. 6.1–14), but in that very ‘act’ of receiving, he also by faith made himself obedient to God (Rom. 6–15–23). The one cannot be had without the other for they are absolutely inseparable.