“Freedom has all the power and all the danger of a radically under-determined notion. Left to function at the level of habitual associations and unexamined assumptions, it becomes a serious obstacle to understanding, manipulable by all kinds of political and commercial interests, sheltering desires that would seem much less admirable without its cover, enticing rather than convincing us, offering in cut-price versions what can be truly had only at considerable cost. Moreover, the meaning of freedom is unstable, because it necessarily varies with the context of world-interpreting or life-directing meaning to which, in any instance, it belongs. Its meaning relates to that of other big and malleable terms, such as goodness, justice, equality, rights, truth, progress, authority, and God. Contemporary rhetoric of freedom requires some demythologizing or deconstruction if we are to get beyond rhetoric to the issues that are really at stake at the present juncture of political, social, cultural, and religious history in the West. . . .
“Freedom seems to lead inevitably to the atomization of society. And while freedom is one of the most popular of all concepts, authority has become one of the most unpopular, virtually defined as the enemy of freedom, synonymous with authoritarianism and coercion. If this is problematic, the problem lies in the kind of freedom, the particular understanding of freedom that has become culturally dominant: freedom conceived exclusively as the emancipation of the individual from all constraints and as unlimited freedom of choice. This is also a freedom constructed as the only absolute in a radically relativistic culture. In our increasingly postmodern culture, all other values become matters of individual preference. It is dubious how freedom can survive at all in such splendid isolation.
“An argument of this book is that we need to recover a richer understanding of freedom that is possible only by restoring it to a context of other values and beliefs. Such a freedom is not threatened but formed and nurtured by dependence, belonging, relationship, community, and — importantly and most controversially — authority. Of course, these other factors must themselves be understood as hospitable to freedom and productive of freedom if they are to function in positive synergy with an appropriate form of freedom. . . .
“But because this understanding of freedom is drawn from the resources of the Bible and the Christian tradition, it also requires reference to God. . . . [O]nly in a context of values and practices of life in which human life is related to God can such freedom be adequately sustained. Outside such a context, reduced to the absolute right of the individual to self-determination, freedom degenerates into the banal pursuit of self-gratification or the cynical pursuit of power.
“God is undoubtedly implicated in the contemporary crisis of freedom. In the present cultural climate, belief in God — or, at least, in a God to any extent resembling the Christian God — seems to many incompatible with human autonomy. The modern process of emancipation of life from traditional authorities has also been a process of liberation from God. Can we think and speak about the authority of God in such a way as to affirm human freedom, as given and nurtured by God? Are there Christian understandings of both freedom and authority that avoid the dilemmas of contemporary culture and point to a positive interaction of the two? Can we find God to be the ground of true human freedom and the one who liberates from compulsions that go deeper than the restraints contemporary people are concerned to throw off? This book offers reasons for answering these questions in the affirmative.
“‘The bigger the words, the more easily alien elements are able to hide in them. This is particularly the case with freedom,’ observed Ernst Bloch. Because freedom is such a ‘big’ word, appealing to such fundamental human aspirations and therefore so politically potent, it is easily abused. The defense or promotion of one form of freedom is frequently used as a political excuse for suppressing other forms of freedom. As often as the word seems to open unlimited horizons of human self-fulfillment for those who aspire to freedom, so often its real meaning is reduced to a minimum by those who use it to acquire or maintain political power. Because all too often the selective use of the Bible has been used to justify the restriction of freedom — in the claim that the Bible endorses only this kind of freedom and not that — we must try to be open to the actual dimensions of freedom in Scripture. And because the ambiguity of the notion of freedom makes it all too easy to cloak our own concept in biblical rhetoric, we need to work hard at discerning the central thrust of the Bible’s understanding of freedom. . . .
“If the law and the prophets (cf. Jer. 34) based their attitude to slavery on the salvation-historical ground of the exodus liberation, it is typical of the Wisdom literature that it reaches the same conclusion on creation-theological grounds: that the same God created both master and slave (Job 31:13-15). In the end, both kinds of argument require the abolition of slavery, and it is perfectly proper that we should follow the direction of these Old Testament principles as far as they point, even beyond Old Testament practice and, for that matter, even beyond New Testament practice. Indeed, they carry us further than the abolition of slavery defined in a narrow sense. All relationships of subjection that permit the exploitation of one human being by another are contrary to the fundamental will of God as the Old Testament reveals it. They have no basis in the created status of human beings, who are all equally subject to God, and the historical purpose of God is for the abolition of all such relationships. God’s liberation of Israel from slavery cannot, in the end, be an exclusive privilege for Israel alone, but is prototypical of God’s will that all humanity should similarly come under God’s liberating lordship. . . .
“[T]he New Testament gives a quite new emphasis to freedom as voluntary service. Although the New Testament continues to use the somewhat paradoxical language that equates subjection to God’s lordship with freedom (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:16), the heart of its understanding of freedom is that, through Jesus the Son of God, Christians are free sons and daughters of God their Father (John 8:32; Gal. 4:7; Rom. 3:14–17). The point is that, while a child fulfills himself or herself in dedicated obedience to his or her parent’s will, as Jesus did, this is not the involuntary subjection of a slave, but the glad and willing service of a child. Voluntary service to God means also, again on the model of Jesus, voluntary service of others. Instead of replacing a model of society in which there are masters and slaves with a model in which everyone is his or her own master, Jesus and the early church replaced it with a model in which everyone is the slave of others — with, of course, the understanding that this ‘slavery’ is entirely willing (Luke 22:26–27; John 13:14; Gal. 5:13). In other words, freedom is the freedom to love: ‘you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another’ (Gal. 5:13). If the Old Testament emphasis is on God’s people as freed slaves, the New Testament emphasis in on God’s people as free slaves.”
— from Richard Bauckham, God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002)
Related reading and listening
Why liberalism tends toward absolutism — In this lecture, Michael Hanby examines what causes liberalism to become dictatorial in thought and practice. (49 minutes)
When is a market “free”? — William T. Cavanaugh argues for a richer conception of freedom than the reductionist one promoted by economist Milton Friedman. (44 minutes)
The gift of objective reality — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. (40 minutes)
Freedom as conformity to reality — W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan
The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
David Bentley Hart on how “two-tier Thomism” deviates from historic Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Creation. (42 minutes)
Community, the giver of freedom — Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon on why suspicion about big government shouldn’t take the form of autonomous individualism
Light from Neither the East nor the West — Ken Myers reads an essay by theologian John Betz titled “Light from Neither the East nor the West.” It is the third of three essays by Betz in which he distinguishes a Christian understanding of freedom from the conventional modern definitions. (41 minutes)
Freedom on Holiday: The Genealogy of a Cultural Revolution — In this second of three essays, John Betz argues that freedom for the sake of conforming to the Good has been replaced by freedom as the space to choose whatever we want. (52 minutes)
Is irrational freedom truly freedom? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that freedom must be understood in the context of interplay of reason and the will
Freedom, real and counterfeit — D. C. Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how true freedom is a condition of harmony with reality. (59 minutes)
We Hold These Freedoms: Modern, Postmodern, Christian — An essay by John Betz explores the theological grounding of real freedom. He argues that human freedom cannot be understood apart from divine freedom. (36 minutes)
God is not Zeus; you are not Prometheus — Ron Highfield addresses those who doubt Christianity’s goodness, especially as regards modern assumptions about identity, freedom, and dignity. (24 minutes)
Power to the people — Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity
Why churches should be more attentive to space — Eric O. Jacobsen discusses New Urbanism with a Christian perspective, imagining how we might organize places in which life may be lived at a human scale and in which real community is nourished. (26 minutes)
Diagnosing our political conflicts — Michael Hanby explains why the modern pursuit of freedom — obeying its founding logic — has taken such a destructive turn. (36 minutes)
The social context of freedom — Brad Littlejohn talks about the necessity of a more expansive understanding of freedom, one which recognizes that we are really only free within the social experience of shared meaning and mutual recognition. (17 minutes)
The paradoxes of therapeutic culture — Stephen Gardner and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn discuss Philip Reiff’s diagnosis of how psychology replaced the social roles of religion, morality, and custom, redefining the meaning of what is public.(39 minutes)
The Sixth Commandment and the obligation to protect public health — Ethicist Gilbert Meilaender explains why our experience with COVID-19 has made it difficult for many — citizens and officials — to honor a proper obligation to protect public health. (17 minutes)
Freedom, ancient and modern — In a brief excerpt from David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions, and a longer excerpt from an Areopagus Lecture by D. C. Schindler, the modern view of freedom is contrasted with the understanding of freedom present in ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought. (27 minutes)
Perceiving the common good during a pandemic — D. C. Schindler reflects on the shape of our way of life in wake of a killer virus, seeing signs both encouraging and sinister. (35 minutes)
Loving your neighbor during a pandemic — Brad Littlejohn reflects on how best to ask and answer some of the questions raised by our current disease-ravaged circumstances, particularly questions related to Christian freedom and love of neighbor. (29 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 146 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Mark Mitchell, Hans Boersma, Henry T. Edmondson, III, Brian Clayton, Douglas Kries, Conor Sweeney, and Carole Vanderhoof
Freedom and equality according to Flannery O’Connor — Three guests discuss Flannery O’Connor’s ideas: Henry T. Edmondson, III, on O’Connor’s understanding of political life; Ralph C. Wood, on O’Connor as a “hillbilly Thomist”; and Susan Srigley, on O’Connor’s sacramental and incarnational fiction. (18 minutes)
D. C. Schindler: “For Freedom Set Free” — D. C. Schindler argues that the Christian notion of religious liberty is a synthesis of the Jewish, Roman, and Greek traditions. (61 minutes)
Is the First Amendment religiously neutral? — David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. discuss how the First Amendment is not as sympathetic to religious freedom as is commonly believed, as it is based on contestable assumptions about the nature of “religion,” “freedom,” and “human nature.” (33 minutes)
Fischer, Hart, and Highfield on freedom — Three past guests on the Journal explore the meaning of freedom and some common modern misunderstandings of the concept — errors with real consequences. (22 minutes)
The nature of freedom reconsidered — In anticipation of this Fall’s Areopagus Lecture entitled “‘For Freedom Set Free’: Retrieving Genuine Religious Liberty,” we present selections from interviews with three MARS HILL AUDIO guests who have raised questions about the modern understanding of freedom. (27 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
Unbearable Lightness: R. J. Snell on Acedia and Metaphysical Boredom — Philosopher R. J. Snell argues that the metaphysical boredom of modernity is sustained by our deeply-held convictions about freedom and contingency, which view the former as necessary and the latter as offensive. (48 minutes)
How the Church promotes the cause of freedom — Oliver O’Donovan: “We discover we are free when we are commanded by that authority which commands us according to the law of our being, disclosing the secrets of the heart.”
Stanley Hauerwas on the modern idea of freedom — Stanley Hauerwas: “Protestant churches in America lost the ability to maintain the disciplines necessary to sustain a people capable of being an alternative to the world.”
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 118 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, Ron Highfield, Mark Mitchell, Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Helen Rhee, and Peter Brown
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 107 — FEATURED GUESTS: Victor Lee Austin, Ellen T. Charry, Anthony Esolen, Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Allen Verhey, and Calvin Stapert
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 98 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Clarke Forsythe, Gilbert Meilaender, Jeanne Murray Walker, Roger Lundin, and David Bentley Hart
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 96 — FEATURED GUESTS: David A. Smith, Kiku Adatto, Elvin T. Lim, David Naugle, Richard Stivers, and John Betz
