Lord of His ‘Loving and Living’: Reading Karl Barth's Notion of the Divine Self-Determination

Abstract

This article explores three strategies currently employed in interpreting Karl Barth's notable idea of the divine self-determination, or God's ‘being-in-act’. They are the ‘repetition’ reading (where the ‘act’ or ‘decision’ merely repeats who the divine being is already), the ‘constitutive’ reading (where the divine being is constituted in the very ‘act’ or ‘decision’ itself), and the ‘specification’ reading (where the divine existence is specified in accordance to the divine essence). The third reading is commended on the basis that it not only considers seriously the implication that divine self-determination carries for the ontology of the divine being, but is also well attested by the text of CD II/1/KD II/1. The ‘specification’ reading, when compared with the ‘constitutive’ reading, is also better able to account for two aspects of Barth's theology – first, that God is not causa sui and second, that God is the absolute person who is the true ‘self-moved’ being, in turn allowing a space for Barth's counterfactual claims to remain.