“St Maximus demonstrates that man does not find his unity, the integration of himself or his totality within himself but by surpassing himself, by coming out of himself. Thus, also in Christ, by coming out of himself, man finds himself in God, in the Son of God. It is . . . in God alone that we find ourselves, our totality and our completeness. Hence, we see that the person who withdraws into himself is not a complete person but the person who is open, who comes out of himself, becomes complete and finds himself, finds his true humanity, precisely in the Son of God. For St Maximus, this vision did not remain a philosophical speculation; he saw it realized in Jesus’ actual life, especially in the drama of Gethsemane. In this drama of Jesus’ agony, of the anguish of death, of the opposition between the human will not to die and the divine will which offers itself to death, in this drama of Gethsemane the whole human drama is played out, the drama of our redemption. St Maximus tells us that, and we know that this is true, Adam (and we ourselves are Adam) thought that the ‘no’ was the peak of freedom. He thought that only a person who can say ‘no’ is truly free; that if he is truly to achieve his freedom, man must say ‘no’ to God; only in this way he believed he could at last be himself, that he had reached the heights of freedom. This tendency also carried within it the human nature of Christ, but went beyond it, for Jesus saw that it was not the ‘no’ that was the height of freedom. The height of freedom is the ‘yes’, in conformity with God’s will. It is only in the ‘yes’ that man truly becomes himself; only in the great openness of the ‘yes’, in the unification of his will with the divine, that man becomes immensely open, becomes ‘divine’. What Adam wanted was to be like God, that is, to be completely free. But the person who withdraws into himself is not divine, is not completely free; he is freed by emerging from himself, it is in the ‘yes’ that he becomes free; and this is the drama of Gethsemane: not my will but yours. It is by transferring the human will to the divine will that the real person is born, it is in this way that we are redeemed.”
— from Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience homily, June 22, 2008
Related reading and listening
- 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)
- The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
- 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)
- Learning to see the world aright — Norman Wirzba on cultivating a Christocentric vision of Creation
- Culture in trinitarian perspective — An article by theologian Tracey Rowland titled “Joseph Ratzinger’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture” summarizes the ramifications of Ratzinger’s confidence that a recognition of the Trinity is the foundation of any reliable and faithful account of the relationship between faith and culture. (65 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)
- Rejecting “two-tiered” Thomism — FROM VOL. 155 David Bentley Hart on how “two-tier Thomism” deviates from historic Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Creation. (42 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
- Unreason destroys freedom — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the relationship between freedom and truth
- Conventional “charismatic” speech, in service of the Zeitgeist — Richard Stivers on how the rhetoric of democracy invites tyranny
- Man and woman as created realities — Pope Benedixt XVI on “gender” and the devaluation of the family
- 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 “hill-billy 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)
- Gisela Kreglinger: Victorian Wisdom for Contemporary Plights — Gisela Kreglinger considers how George MacDonald’s perspective on gender roles might guide us through some of the questions, problems, and concerns we face today. (68 minutes)
- When reason is detached from truth — Benedict XVI on what threatens true academic freedom
- Creating oneself? Or destroying oneself? — Pope Benedict XVI (and Rabbi Gilles Bernheim) on the anthropological revolution that destroys the family
- Free for obedience — Glenn W. Olsen on Augustine’s understanding of freedom
- God is more than a choice — Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr. (and Michael Sandel) on why religious freedom is poorly understood (and vulnerable)
- What is beyond our choosing? — D. C. Schindler on our nihilistic quest for freedom
- Love and truth precede justice — James Matthew Wilson on the relationship between truth and love in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate
- What Ockham severed — Jean-Charles Nault on the advent of sheer freedom
- Progress in the void — R. J. Snell on modernity’s preference for freedom over the good
- Command and liberation — Oliver O’Donovan on the freedom of living under authority
- Principles have to be discovered, not chosen — Alasdair MacIntyre on the problem of natural law and contemporary culture
- “Freedom” as tyranny — Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon on democracy, desire, and freedom
- Radical faith in the nothing — David Bentley Hart on the nihilism of worshiping mere choice
- 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
