| What is freedom?
An expression of freedom may reflect a poor range of choices. One person’s choice may represent a preference for which another has no desire. To be prevented from accepting another’s preference of choice may be no loss of freedom at all. What then constitutes freedom? Is expression of choice an indication of true freedom or do our choices merely reflect existing constraints—as a limited range of choices that may be poorly formed as options? Where is freedom defined beyond an arbitrary range of individual or even social preferences? Freedom appears to have no foundation but itself as freedom. Freedom by definition must not be constrained by anything if it is truly free. If freedom is given an arbitrary point of reference, it is presumed no longer to be free. Yet if freedom is endorsed only by freedom, it is grounded on nothing but itself. v From the beginning, humans were created for relationship—the image of humans walking with the lord in Eden. Because God is creator and humans are created, the first command—a prohibition concerning the desire to become like gods, knowing good and evil—is given in the context of relationship as a gift toward communion. In biblical testimony, human freedom exists within a vocative encounter or being addressed by another. As vocative, freedom in the context of communion is accountable to another before it is wilful or intentional toward its own assertions and preferences. Communion gives freedom that exceeds any capacity for self-assertion; it is first the freedom of response and accountability to another. This is a paradox within human freedom. Seeking the conditions for freedom wholly within self-assertion, ultimately invokes the spectre of nihilism—an abyss of nothingness—without any possible foundation for freedom. God alone is the foundation of human freedom. Freedom is a gift that forms the scope of existence instead of non-existence. The creator’s command precedes human freedom as the possibility of freedom by contrast to collapse into groundlessness. Paradoxically, freedom is given to curb freedom because true freedom exists within communion. As a gift given within a command that limits creaturely autonomy, freedom is inseparable from relational accountability. We assume this in any healthy relationship. We may be free to assert personal preferences, yet the gift of love expressed as communion with others is the defining criterion for true possibilities within Christian freedom (Rom. 14-15). Without this criterion, freedom is an empty ideal that will be informed by arbitrary preferences derived from incidental contexts. Humans are constituted for limits within their expressions of freedom. In reality, freedom is never without constraints and accountability in the context of relationships. Human freedom, according to biblical testimony, has always had its true reference in the vocative word of God that addresses human life. Becoming like gods in grasping for a complete knowledge of good and evil in order to define existence, is not feasible for human life that only finds genuine freedom in trusting the promises of God. Human freedom is not equal to the task of ordering life within a panoramic grasp of good and evil. God alone is equal to this. The word from the beginning is a gift that gives true freedom because it gives human freedom within the intimacy of trust. Without recognising the creator’s imperative word in the formation of choices extrinsic to our assumed choices, assertions of freedom can only recede into an abyss. Such “freedom” is based on nothing but itself in search of itself in freedom—a recipe for malaise. In reality, our freedom is expressed within contexts that are preceded and formed by the choices of others. Freedom is therefore exercised within specific contexts that limit our range of choices; it is not exercised in a vacuum within which all constraints are suspended, irrelevant or relationships are entirely absent. We live with real limits within livelihood and civic responsibilities. Our range of choices does not represent a presumed liberty so easily asserted. If expression of choice represents freedom, our limited range of choices can give a lie to this assumption. The choices arbitrarily offered by others and society curtail our liberty at some point. The scope of our choices may be seemingly detrimental as few. Such limits can be perceived as impediments or engaged creatively for their implicit possibilities. Within the reality of human compromise, both conditions with varying responses are present. Christian freedom exceeds the focus on choice as a prevailing criterion of contemporary freedom. New Testament testimony consistently presents freedom as defined before God not by our circumstances, however constrained these might seem. Freedom is a gift within which present constraints can be received as unique opportunities within and toward expressions of grace among others. Deference to God in grace is necessary for this to become a tangible reality. (I Cor. 7; Rom. 12) v As created, humans cannot view or know the full scope of their existence and therefore do not know whether assumed freedoms are truly free or whether assumed acts of freedom merely represent an arbitrary selection of preferences within a given context or society. To presume that unfettered freedom is possible is a self-deception; instead, it is bondage as a source of self-destruction in pursuits that are presumably free because desired, yet fettered because unrighteous (Rom. 6). As an assumed criterion of freedom, the capacity to choose is also the ability to rebel. Since a claim to absolute freedom will not admit any limit to preference, rebellion against any constraint is experienced as freedom. Yet this illusion of freedom, without traction in quest of unfettered freedom, dissolves into ennui. Assumed freedom becomes bondage because it acts against the only context in which genuine freedom is possible—accountability within relationships. Freedom is ultimately a gift in the context of communion between creator and creature. Response to God as creator occurs within a vocative encounter as trust and relational accountability as responsibility. These are only possible in grace and truth, which in Christian testimony, are given definitive expression in Jesus Christ to be received and expressed as gifts within life among others. Pursuit of pure autonomy that is not subject to constraints is empty as absurd because presumption of such freedom is ultimately founded on nothing. Human freedom has an arbitrary point of reference in God as creator, which is the source of possibilities beyond any conceived within human conjecture and assertion. An arbitrary source of human liberty before God seemingly contradicts freedom, yet this is no problem in biblical testimony. Freedom is a paradox, which we see in the Eden prohibition. Voluntary self-constraint for the sake of love, grace flourishing despite limits of context or impositions by others, and trust in grace and truth when these are stymied or rejected by others, are examples of true freedom (Rom. 12-15).
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sources: Edwards Freedom of the Will; Luther Romans. |
