Oct272015
Book excerpt

“For the philosophers of Antiquity, and for the whole Christian tradition, freedom is the ability that man has — an ability belonging jointly to his intellect and will — to perform virtuous actions, good actions, excellent actions, perfect actions, when he wants and as he wants. Man’s freedom is therefore his capacity to accomplish good acts easily, joyously, and lastingly. This freedom is defined by the attraction of the good.

“William of Ockham, in contrast, makes freedom a moment ‘prior’ to intellect and will. In Ockham’s writings, the word ‘freedom’ is almost synonymous with Will. Man is no longer attracted at all by the good. He finds himself in a state of total indifference with regard to good and evil. In order for him to be able to choose between good and evil, therefore, the intervention of an external element will be necessary, which Ockham identifies with the law. From then on, according to this concept, obedience to the law is what defines the good: ‘It is good because the law requires it of me’, instead of ‘The law requires it of me because it is good.’ This is a veritable ‘revolution,’ which will eventually lead to what would be called ‘legalism,’ whereby the law alone is the criterion of good. Today we can recognize the havoc caused by all sorts of legalism.

“With Ockham we are confronted with what can be called an ‘extrinsicist’ concept of action: not in himself or in the goodness of the object does man find sufficient reasons for choosing one act or another; he chooses under the influence of an element outside himself, hence, the name extrinsicism. Once again we perceive the radical change of concept in this way of thinking about the good and this way of tending toward it.

“If there is no longer an attraction that impels us toward the good, that means that man no longer has within himself what St. Thomas called the ‘natural inclinations’, which he made a key feature of his moral doctrine. Natural inclinations are ‘natural’ dispositions, which is to say that they are dependent on the spiritual nature of man, potentialities of the whole person that set him in motion toward his own activity. They are the basis of the natural law. By virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God, man is naturally oriented toward the truth, toward the good, toward God, toward the opposite sex, toward the preservation of life. Founded on these inclinations, freedom is qualified by the attraction that it spontaneously experiences to what is true and good, or at least what appears to it as such. Thus man is free, not despite his natural inclinations, but on the contrary because of them. Of course man can be mistaken, but even sin does not present an obstacle to these natural inclinations. If man chooses evil, it is not because he was attracted by evil, as we have already explained earlier, but rather because evil, in the particular situation in which he finds himself, appears to him as a good — a deceptive one, no doubt, but as a good.”

—from Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B.,  The Noonday Devil: Acedia, The Unnamed Evil of Our Times (Ignatius Press, 2015)

Related reading and listening

  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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
  • The rise of God as capricious and willful — Jean Bethke Elshtain on the effects of nominalism on the Western understanding of divine (and human) sovereignty
  • Conventional “charismatic” speech, in service of the Zeitgeist — Richard Stivers on how the rhetoric of democracy invites tyranny
  • “A roaming unrest of the spirit” — Theologian Reinhard Hütter argues that the contemporary plague of pornography is a symptom of a deep spiritual apathy. (28 minutes)
  • 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)
  • Fulfillment is ek-static — Pope Benedict XVI summarizes the understanding of Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) on the true nature of freedom
  • The fountainhead from which perversions gush — Josef Pieper on how refusing to acknowledge the spiritual core of our true nature leads to a “roaming restlessness of the spirit”
  • 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
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 129 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nicholas Carr, Robert Pogue Harrison, R. J. Snell, Norman Wirzba, Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski, and Peter Phillips
  • 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
  • Modernity’s fateful encounter with weird, wayward sisters — Richard Weaver describes the cultural consequences of a decisive metaphysical mistake
  • 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
Tags: