1. The Orientation of the Doctrine (II.2, 3)

"Theology must begin with Jesus Christ, and not with general principles. . . . Theology must also end with Him." (II.2, 4)

"Jesus Christ is indeed God in His movement towards man, or, more exactly, in His movement towards the people represented in the one man Jesus of Nazareth, in His covenant with this people, in His being and activity amongst and towards this people. Jesus Christ is the decision of God in favour of this attitude or relation." (II.2, 7)

"The doctrine of the divine election of grace is the sum of the gospel. It is the content of the good news of Jesus Christ." (II.2, 10)

"Nothing can precede His grace, whether in eternity or time, whether from the beginning or in the process of development." (II.2, 11)

"The truth which must now occupy us, the truth of the doctrine of predestination, is first and last and in all circumstances the sum of the Gospel." (II.2, 12)

2. The Foundation of the Doctrine (II.2, 34)

"We must at this point recall the basic rule of all Church dogmatics: that no single item of Christian doctrine is legitimately grounded, or rightly developed or expounded, unless it can of itself be understood and explained as a part of the responsibility laid upon the hearing and teaching Church towards the self-revelation of God attested in Holy Scripture." (II.2, 35)

"It is the name of Jesus Christ which, according to the divine self-revelation, forms the focus at which the two decisive beams of the truth force upon us converge and unite: on the one hand, the electing God and on the other elected man. It is to this name, then, that all Christian teaching of this truth must look, from this name that it must derive, and to this name that it must strive. Like all Christian teaching, it must always testify to this name." (II.2, 59)

3. The Place of the Doctrine in Dogmatics (II.2, 76)

"We maintain of God that in Himself, in the primal and basic decision in which He wills to be and actually is God, in the mystery of what takes place from and to all eternity within Himself, within His triune being, God is none other than the One who in His Son or Word elects Himself, and in and with Himself elects His people. In so far as God not only is love, but loves, in the act of love which determines His whole being God elects. And in so far as this act of love is an election, it is at the same time and as such the act of His freedom. There can be no subsequent knowledge of God, whether from His revelation or from His work as disclosed in that revelation, which is not as such knowledge of this election. There can be no Christian truth which does not from the very first contain within itself as its basis the fact that from and to all eternity God is the electing God." (II.2, 76-77)

"Dogmatics has not more exalted or profound word-essentially, indeed, it has no other word-than this: that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Cor. 5:19)." (II.2, 88)

1. Jesus Christ, Electing and Elected (II.2, 94)

"Between God and man there stands the person of Jesus Christ, Himself God and Himself man, and so mediating between the two. In Him God reveals Himself to man. In Him man sees and knows God. In Him God stands before man and man stands before God, as is the eternal will of God, and the eternal ordination of man in accordance with this will. In Him God's plan for man is disclosed, God's judgment on man fulfilled, God's deliverance of man accomplished, God's gift to man present in fulness, God's claim and promise to man declared in Him God has joined Himself to man. And so man exists for His sake. It is by Him, Jesus Christ, and for Him and to Him, that the universe is created as a theatre for God's dealings with man and man's dealings with God. . . . He, Jesus Christ, is the free grace of God." (II.2, 94-95)

"In its simplest and most comprehensive form the dogma of predestination consists, then, in the assertion that the divine predestination is the election of Jesus Christ. But the concept of election has a double reference-to the elector and to the elected. And so, too, the name of Jesus Christ has within itself the double reference: the One called by this name is both very God and very man. Thus the simplest form of the dogma may be divided at once into the two assertions that Jesus Christ is the electing God, and that He is also elected man." (II.2, 103)

"All the dubious features of Calvin's doctrine result from the basic failing that in the last analysis he separates God and Jesus Christ, thinking that what was in the beginning with God must be sought elsewhere than in Jesus Christ." (II.2, 111)

"The election of Jesus Christ is the eternal choice and decision of God. And our first assertion tells us that Jesus Christ is the electing God. We must not ask concerning any other but Him. In no depth of the Godhead shall we encounter any other but Him. There is no such thing as Godhead in itself. Godhead is always the Godhead of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But the Father is the Father of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ. There is no such thing as a decretum absolutum. There is no such thing as a will of God apart from the will of Jesus Christ." (II.2, 115)

"It is by the work of the Word of God, by the Holy Spirit, that He is conceived and born without sin, that He is what He is, the Son of God; by grace alone. And as He became Christ, so we come Christians." (II.2, 118)

"To believe in Jesus means to have His resurrection and prayer both in the mind and in the heart. And this means to be elected." (II.2, 127)

2. The Eternal Will of God in the Election of Jesus Christ (II.2, 145)

"In the beginning with God was this One, Jesus Christ. And that is predestination. All that this concept contains and comprehends is to be found originally in Him and must be understood in relation to Him." (II.2, 145)

1. "Our thesis is that God's eternal will is the election of Jesus Christ." (II.2, 146)

2. "With the traditional teaching and testimony of Scripture, we think of predestination as eternal, preceding time and all the contents of time." (II.2, 155)

3. "The eternal will of God in the election of Jesus Christ is His will to give Himself for the sake of man as created by Him and fallen from Him." (II.2, 161)

"The exchange which took place on Golgotha, when God chose as His throne the malefactor's cross, when the Son of God bore what the son of man ought to have borne, took place once for all in fulfilment of God's eternal will, and it can never be reversed. There is no condemnation-literally none-for those that are in Christ Jesus." (II.2, 167)

4. "Because it is identical with the election of Jesus Christ, the eternal will of God is a divine activity in the form of the history, encounter and decision between God and man. In God's eternal predestination we have to do already with the living God." (II.2, 175)

"The purpose and meaning of the eternal divine election of grace consists in the fact that the one who is elected from all eternity can and does elect God in return." (II.2, 178)