Magisterial Orthodox Social Teaching
Part 2: An Orthodox Theological Anthropology of Ordered Freedom
Especially given our emphasis on “negative freedom” or the absence of legal or even moral restraints on our actions, the phrase “ordered freedom” may seem to be something of an oxymoron. The idea itself, however, is seminal to Western culture. Aristotle, for example, roots his understanding of happiness in the cultivation of virtue and specifically of the highest virtue, the contemplation of the truth. This is a theme that will be repeated throughout the Christian tradition—East and West—true freedom (even in the negative sense) requires the cultivation of a life of virtue.
Put another way, like the Church’s ascetical tradition the concept of “order freedom” or what Edmund Burke calls “ordered liberty” requires effort on our part. If it requires negative freedom (that is, freedom from coercion), the absence of constraint is not sufficient. Burke puts it this way:
…the only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
In what follows, we’ll look briefly at the Orthodox understanding of Burke’s ordered liberty.1
Called to a life of communion
The freedoms of the political and economic arenas are important and have their own roles to play in the pursuit of human flourishing and Christian holiness. St. Gregory of Nyssa put it this way, “this is truly perfection: never to stop growing toward what is better and never placing any limit on perfection” and this requires our ability to choose so we can change.2
However, our freedom is not meant to be exercised in a series of random opened-end choices among nearly limitless options. Much less is it the mere absence of constraints. While the myriad decisions we make daily are important, they are not ends in themselves. They are rather in the service of the purposeful and ordered change to which St. Gregory alludes.
This purposeful and ordered change is rooted in human nature. As we read in the opening lines of FLW (#1, emphasis added)
The Orthodox Church understands the human person as having been created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). To be made in God’s image is to be made for free and conscious communion and union with God in Jesus Christ, inasmuch as we are formed in, through, and for him (Colossians 1:16).
This life of communion is built on
…prayer and action…derived from loving and reverent gratitude for life and for all the gifts that God imparts to us through his Son and in his Spirit. Our service to God is fundamentally doxological in nature and essentially Eucharistic in character.
Quoting St. Basil the Great, the authors go on to explain that the doxological nature of human life means we only exercise our freedom in a full sense (to say nothing of becoming ourselves) when we “look up and see God, worshipping him and acknowledging him as [our] source and origin.”
And since God is a community of Three Divine Persons, a life of personal communion with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit includes as well communion with our neighbor and the creation. Human life, then, is necessarily Eucharistic in character and “it is only in and through our participation in the community of Christ’s body that any of us, as a unique object of divine love, can enter into full union with God.”
As a consequence of this, God calls Christians
not to accommodate ourselves to the practical exigencies of the world as we find it, but instead … to strive against evil, however invincible it may at times appear, and to work for the love and justice that God requires of his creatures, however impractical that may at times prove.
This is not a rejection of prudence or technical expertise. Nor is it meant as a rejection of the role of culture in human affairs in favor of some form of liturgical sectarianism. It is rather an affirmation that Christians must not lose sight of our primary obligation “to bless, elevate, and transfigure this world, so that its intrinsic goodness may be revealed even amidst its fallenness” (FLW #4). Or if you prefer, “to preach the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15).
Freedom, asceticism & martyrdom
Living as we do in a fallen world exercising our freedom in love “may on many occasions” take the form of a call “to pursue God’s goodness even to the point of self-sacrifice.” We cannot preclude martyrdom as not simply a possibility if we are to take seriously the Christian vocation to “struggle against everything distorted and malignant, both in ourselves and in the damaged structure and fabric of a suffering creation.”
Even when it does not end in literal martyrdom, the exercise of ordered liberty of the Gospel is “inevitably … an ascetical labor” since above all else, Christ calls us
to strive against the obstinate selfishness of our own sinful inclinations, and to undertake a constant effort to cultivate in ourselves the eye of charity, which alone is able to see the face of Christ in the face of our every brother and sisters (FLW #5).
With this in mind, let’s turn to our next theme: the relationship between Church and State.
For more on the theme of ordered liberty, see Samuel Gregg (2003), On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, Lexington Books.
See St Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection, in Fathers of the Church, vol 58, 122.