‘The Son in His relation to his Father is the eternal archetype and prototype of God’s glory in His outward manifestation, in God’s co-existence with another, with man, in the Godman, Jesus Christ and through Him with all men … Moreover, he claims that Jesus Christ-and that includes His humanity – and in Jesus Christ man himself was with God from eternity, namely in God’s thought and will’. – Herbert Hartwell, The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 1964), 100.

‘In Jesus Christ, above all in His divine-human nature, the meaning of God’s election is revealed. For that which has taken place at the very centre of the divine self-revelation, that is, in Jesus Christ, in His person and work, is, seen in the light of His resurrection, God’s election. As the eternal Son of God who became man in the man Jesus of Nazareth, suffered and died on the Cross that sinful man may forever have fellowship with God, Jesus Christ is Himself the eternal decree or rather the realization of that resolve of God within Himself in His eternity before the creation of the world which is termed the eternal decree of God. It is only in Jesus Christ and through Him that God could carry out and has carried out His eternal plan with man, His eternal election of Himself to fellowship with man and of man to fellowship with Himself, and it is for this reason that Jesus Christ is the original and primary object of God’s election, God’s first and eternal thought and will in His election’. – Herbert Hartwell, The Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 1964), 107-8.