The counterfactual question of whether Christ would have come had there been no fall turns out not to be the most helpful way of investigating the matter. The real question is whether God’s means are consistent with God’s ends – whether the story of God’s purpose to be with us now and always is a more encompassing narrative than the smaller story of evil, sin, suffering and death, and whether there is utter consistency between the Jesus who is with us in the incarnation and the Jesus who is with us always. In this chapter I investigate Karl Barth’s proposal and, while appreciating its very significant contributions to my project, find it finally wanting on these grounds. Barth helpfully renarrates election as the election of Jesus Christ, but his account of salvation is inconsistent with his Christocentrism and his eschatology is thin.

This chapter articulates God’s purpose, which could be identified with the term ‘election’, but which here I break down into three themes – incarnation, creation and eschatology. If God’s character is not to change, God’s way of bringing about that purpose must be entirely consistent with the nature of that purpose. Thus the incarnation is both the means and the end of God’s purpose. God’s ultimate purpose is for us to be with God: God achieves that purpose by being with us. The incarnation is God being with us: the eschaton is us being with God. Creation is incarnational, because the purpose of creation is to be the theatre of God’s relationship with humankind, and because Jesus demonstrates what creation is and where it belongs in the story of God. The gospels portray the incarnate Jesus as the one through whom creation turns into heaven, and the flaws in existence are overwhelmed by the foretaste of essence.