released 6/30/2023
“At its best, human freedom, political freedom, is an analogue of a much greater freedom, a spiritual freedom, to which all human beings are called in Christ: the freedom of the glory of the sons and daughters of God. It is for this freedom, as Paul says in the glorious chapter 8 of Romans, that all creation most deeply longs.” So concludes theologian John Betz in the third of three essays on the meaning of freedom. The three essays were originally published online at Church Life Journal, and are presented here as an “audio reprint” by generous permission of the author and publishers. This third essay is titled “Light from Neither the East nor the West.” [NOTE: The first two essays were also released as Friday Features. They are “We Hold These Freedoms: Modern, Postmodern, Christian” and “Freedom on Holiday: The Genealogy of a Cultural Revolution.”]
41 minutes
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In 2009, John Betz was interviewed for one of our special Conversations, speaking then about his book, After Enlightenment: The Post-secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) The eighteenth-century philosopher and translator, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788), was a critic and contemporary of Immanuel Kant and other prominent figures of the German Enlightenment. Hamann — even from the early stages of the Enlightenment — perceived and argued that the project of modernity would lead to its own destruction. Read more and listen here.
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