released 7/8/2022

“Just as created being cannot be understood apart from divine being, human freedom cannot be understood apart from that good and holy freedom that is divine, to which human freedom is ordered as to its own perfection.” So observes theologian John Betz in his essay, “We Hold These Freedoms: Modern, Postmodern, Christian.” Originally published in Church Life Journal, Betz’s essay on the theological grounding of real freedom is presented as an audio reprint in today’s Feature. Thanks to Church Life Journal for granting permission to share this essay with our listeners. [This was the first of three essays by Betz on freedom, all three of which were read as Friday Features. The second installment in the series was “Freedom on Holiday: The Genealogy of a Cultural Revolution.” The third was “Light from Neither the East nor the West.”]

(36 minutes)

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More to hear . . .

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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