SJT 62(1): 1–25 (2009) Printed in the United Kingdom C  2008 Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd doi:10.1017/S0036930608004602 God’s self-specification: his being is his electing Aaron T. Smith Marquette University, PO Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201 aaron.t.smith@marquette.edu Abstract The article considers the relationship between divine will and being as revealed in election, particularly according to Karl Barth’s unique formulation of the doctrine. It comes at the salient features of this relationship by way of a public disagreement between Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar. In agreement with McCormack, the author contends, on the basis of Barth’s provocative claim that Jesus Christ is not just object but subject of election, that we cannot speak of God’s being apart from his will for humanity, and this from all eternity, or in God’s most intimate primordiality. Yet echoing Molnar, this observation does not entail the logical priority of grace to being. The author argues that a thoroughgoing commitment to conceiving of the being of God in the act of electing means affirming the eternal simultaneity and indeed reciprocity of will and being, as Jesus Christ is the full and total revelation of both. One cannot serve as ground for the other. As such, a preferable way of construing election is as the decisive statement of Godself – the primordial, eternal iteration of God for humanity – or the specification of divine being. The significance of Karl Barth’s formulation of election is appreciated in part by the depths to which it penetrates vis-` a-vis reflection upon God’s being, and by the intensity of disagreement it engenders relative to discourse about grace and being; in other words, by the extent of its ontological and theological provocation. The claims and debate it has provoked to date are substantive, and encapsulated in a collection of publications by Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar. 1 Affirming the ongoing import of this discussion, I reconsider 1 See Bruce McCormack, ‘Grace and Being: The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology’, in John Webster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 92–110; Paul Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2002), pp. 61–81. For further elucidation of McCormack’s position, see also Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 371–4, 455– 62. For further background on Molnar’s position on the place of the doctrine of the immanent Trinity for preserving divine freedom, see also ‘The Function of the 1