An Anthropology of Freedom
Personal, Religious, and Economic
In what follows, I want to focus on three iterations of the anthology of human freedom in OST. First, we will look at freedom as the defining quality of the person. We’ll then look at two spiritual arenas for the exercise of freedom: the Church and the Market.
An Anthropology of Ordered Freedom. To be created in the imago dei and called by grace to grow in our likeness to the Most Holy Trinty through the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church, is fundamentally a work of freedom.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthains 3:18, NKJV).
St Gregory of Nyssa says about our mutability,
I do not think it is a fearful thing (I mean that our nature is changeable). The Logos shows that it would be a disadvantage for us not to be able to make a change for the better, as a kind of wing of flight to greater things. Therefore, let no one be grieved if he sees in his nature a penchant for change. Changing in everything for the better, let him exchange “glory for glory,” becoming greater through daily increase, ever perfecting himself and never arriving too quickly at the limit of perfection. For this is truly perfection: never to stop growing toward what is better and never placing any limit on perfection.1
So yes we change. But, ideally at least, this happens in an ordered fashion.
Anthropologically, our freedom is not an opened-end choice among options that are equally good morally and practical. Much less is it the mere absence of constraints. As we will see options as well liberty in the political and economic arenas have their role to play in the pursuit of human flourishing and Christian holiness. But they are not ends in themselves but in the service of the purposeful and ordered change to which Gregory alludes.
Freedom of the Church and Religious Liberty. As we will see, the contemporary idea of religious freedom as a political ideal is for OST derived from the ontological freedom of the human person and so the Church. Or maybe, to be more precise, it is within the life of the Church that the person is able to realize his or her freedom.
For example, on Pentecost the Church draws a parallel between the Tower of Babel where humanity is divided, and the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire which undoes Babel by reuniting humanity in the Church:
Once tongues were confused through the presumption of building the tower; but now tongues have been made wise through the glory of the knowledge of God. There God condemned the impious for their offence; here Christ has enlightened the fishermen with the Spirit. Then discord was wrought for punishment; now concord is renewed for the salvation of our souls.2
These tongues of fire come to rest on each disciple (see, Acts 2:3) giving to each of them personally the “eloquence to their lips with tongues of fire” so that “through which we, every race of humankind” might receive
…the knowledge of God in our own language by the hearing of the ear, have been enlightened by the light of the Spirit, delivered from the darkness of error and, by the distribution and supernatural force of the perceptible tongues of fire, have been taught faith in you and have been illumined to speak of you as God with the Father and the holy Spirit in one Godhead, power and authority (Prayer at Kneeling Vespers).3
Life in the Church is never at the expense of personal uniqueness but is rather the condition for discovering and incarnating our uniqueness. Or, as St Augustine has it, in the Church “a diversity of tongues, but the diversity of tongues does not imply schisms” but rather “that those who are sanctified by the Spirit” are “without guile” and whose “simplicity” is not cold but the fruit of those who have “gathered together” into the Church.4
Economic Freedom. One area where I think magisterial OST is open to criticism is a certain aversion to risk and concomitant impatience with the amount of effort required for morally good outcomes in the Public Square. We’ll see in both the progressive voice of FLW and the more conservative voice of Basis not only a sometimes uncritical call for cooperation between Church and State but also advocacy for the State to curtail human freedom in economic matters to secure a specific good result. One need not agree with the economic choices by individuals being made to see that persuasion by the Church is preferable to the Church trying to secure a particular outcome through government intervention by law or regulation.
“On Perfection,” in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC.: Catholic University of American, 1947, vol 58, p.122.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141213062028/http://www.anastasis.org.uk/PentAll.htm
ibid.
Tractates on the Gospel of John, 6:3 Volume VII. Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies. P. Schaff et al., eds. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2 series (14 vols. each). Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature, 1887-1894; Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952-1956; Reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994.