The Being of God as Gift and Grace: On Freedom and Necessity, Aseity and the Divine “Attributes”

In his seventh and final lecture, Professor McCormack concludes with a treatment of God’s being and attributes. Of particular interest is his notion of Freedom. Freedom, he suggests, is not freedom in the face of options. Rather, God’s freedom is the freedom to follow through with the course of action that God has elected from all eternity to do and to be. It is a freedom with which God elects to be our God, elects us to be His people, and it is a freedom with which God does not elect to be himself in any other way.

For a summary of the lecture series, visit
McCormack’s Kantzer Lectures page.

Biography

Bruce Lindley McCormack (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Seminary. A Presbyterian, McCormack is interested in the history of modern theology, from Schleiermacher and Hegel through Karl Barth. His courses cover Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre and the doctrine of atonement in Christian tradition. He is a member of the General Assembly committee commissioned to write a new catechism for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and has been a member of the panel on doctrine for the Church of Scotland. A member of the Karl Barth-Stiftung in Basel, Switerzland, he is North American editor of the Zeitschrift fuer Dialektische Theologie, published in Holland.