“THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE.” JOHN 8:32
Some time ago, Jason Micheli interviewed David Bentley Hart on Micheli’s podcast Crackers and Grape Juice. (The interview can be found on YouTube under the title “All Creation Afire as a Burning Bush.”) During the interview, Hart spoke eloquently about freedom as understood in the Greek Classical tradition and within the Early Church Fathers/Mothers. (The larger context of the interview was about Hart’s universalism in which he rejects any notion of an eternal and punitive hell. Defenders of such a hell maintain that we are free to reject God’s love forever and because God’s love is not coercive, God will not and cannot force us to love Her. Hart, along with many other theologians and philosophers, argues that without a full knowledge of the nature and consequences of our choices, we are not free to choose. See part three of this series.) The following are Hart’s observations (in places, paraphrased) regarding authentic freedom. I suggest his insights are suggestive and corrective for our narcissistic, greedy, and shallow society):
The Classical idea of freedom was not simply an empty power to choose. What makes us free? The truth—truth defined as the fulfillment of our nature without external or internal constraints. (Examples of internal constraints are ignorance and perverse longings which enslave us.)
In Christian freedom, we’re free because we have achieved a union with God so that what we will is what we fundamentally are—which is to be loved by God and to love God in God’s self and to love those whom God created. If true freedom consists in achieving the good and if it’s the case that to know the good properly (spiritually and intellectually aware of what the good is) is to have it as the natural and immediate object of one’s will, you cannot know the good for what it is and not desire it. Therefore, the defense of an everlasting hell by an argument based on humans’ ability to choose is ludicrous.
The freedom of capitalism is not the freedom of authentic Christian freedom. Advertising is the art of inspiring what the New Testament calls “lust of the eyes”—a desire for that which you don’t need and which can’t fulfill your true nature. There’s simply not an infinite capacity for rejection of the good in the way that there is an infinite capacity for the good to reach us. (See my blog article entitled A Privation of Good regarding the insight that evil has no grounding in ultimate reality and is doomed for extinction.)
Hart assumes the theology of the Early Church Fathers in his concept of freedom. According to the Jewish-Christian faith, we are created in the image of God. In other words, what it means to be human is defined by the nature and character of God. We can never be truly human apart from our Creator/Source. According to the New Testament, the eternal essence of God is love—unconditional, indiscriminate, self-giving, nonviolent, and everlasting love. God, as love, loves us into our healing and our humanity. The greater our distance from that fundamental orientation of our being, the less truly “human” and, therefore, free we are. That’s why Augustine said we are restless until we find our rest (our peace, belonging, destiny, and freedom) in God.
We are made in such a way that we must give our allegiance, devotion, and orientation to something. Without a center, we fracture, and life becomes pointless. What we choose will determine the content, direction, and essence of our lives. Anything or anyone we may choose other than God (whose essence is love as defined above) will ultimately and tragically disappoint or abandon us. No person, object, or idol has the internal capacity to meet the needs and address the nature of our full humanity with all its transcendent potential, hopes, and desires. They can take us only so far in our eternal pilgrimage as beings created in the image of an infinite Creator whose likeness we bear. That’s why the Hebrew prophets condemned idolatry. Idols made by humans are, of necessity, inferior to those very humans created in God’s image. Isaiah 46 contrasts idols which become burdens (and, thus, must be carried) with the Creator God who carries Her people. Jesus contrasted money/wealth (which he views as the chief and most destructive idol humans are tempted to embrace) with the God whose compassion and generosity are beyond calculation. He said, “Life (as intended by God for humankind) does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Authentic life is lived in the presence of and out of the source of Divine Love. Idols, incapable of seeking and granting our ultimate good, eventually enslave us with their addictive lures.
If only truth shall set us free and if the ultimate source of all truth is God defined by love, we shall never be free apart from participation in and devotion to that Love. The stupidity, selfish individualism, and shallow culture we have created is as enslaving as any other culture in history. We think we are free because we can choose whatever we want. What we do not realize is that what we have chosen has enslaved our minds, hearts, and souls in ways every bit as tragic and self-destructive as other forms of slavery. We are becoming a rootless and soulless society hellbent on moving toward an abyss which will destroy us and much of God’s precious creation. If you think I am exaggerating, all you need to do is listen to the ethicists, scientists, philosophers, mystics, Indigenous Elders, and youth of our culture. Insanity, corruption, violence, and scapegoating are becoming the norm, and too many of us do not have the decency or intelligence to notice or care about our demise. So, yes, we are free– free to self-destruct! But I cannot believe that is the kind of freedom God ever intended for humankind. No loving parent would wish that kind of freedom on Her precious children made in Her image.
