Bound to Be Free?

Abstract The theme of covenant leads us to think simultaneously about both God’s freedom and God’s binding to creation. It may thus help us gain a deeper understanding both of the freedom God enjoys and the kind of necessity that ensues from God’s decision to be “God with,” rather than merely God a se , in se , and pro se . In the Scriptures, we see different “models” of covenant – some reciprocal and mutually conditioned, others unilateral and eternal. Rather than systematize these various models by unifying and homogenizing them, discerning their distinctive features may be a better avenue for a covenant theology today. In the New Testament too, we find different ways of presenting the newness of Jesus Christ in relation to the covenant(s) as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The final section of the paper seeks to show how, in the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel, God’s committed freedom, God’s free commitment, is exercised through this newness, not as replacing or as abrogating ancient traditions, but as fulfilling them: the point is to render witness to the renewing of the one covenant, not to present a “new” covenant in the sense of a “second” covenant.