In his series of lectures, Adams explores the concept of the being of God from a contemporary, but historically informed, perspective. He focuses on the traditional concepts of divine nature which characterise God as ipsum esse subsistens (being itself) or ens realissimum (the most real being). His lectures were never published.
Robert Merrihew Adams was born on 8 September 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An analytic philosopher, he helped revive Yale’s philosophy department after its near collapse in the 1990s. Joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1968, he moved to UCLA in 1972, eventually becoming Professor of Philosophy. Appointed Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics at Yale in 1993, he retired in 2003 and relocated to the UK as Senior Research Fellow of Mansfield College. He later held posts as Distinguished Research Professor at UNC Chapel Hill and Rutgers University.
Fellow of the British Academy, he was also President of the Society of Christian Philosophers. He and his wife, Marilyn McCord Adams, are the only couple to have both been appointed Gifford Lecturer. Notable works include The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (1987), Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist (1994), Integrity and Conscience (1998), and Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (2002), and What Is, and What Is In Itself (2021).
