Freedom, Progressive Values, and Religion
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The progressive view of freedom links freedom, opportunity, and prosperity together in an underlying conception of human nature and human fulfillment. George Lakoff writes, "There is no fulfillment without freedom, no freedom without opportunity, and no opportunity without prosperity" (Don't Think of an Elephant!, p. 90). Freedom, on this view, is not simply or even primarily "freedom from" restraint or restriction. According to Lakoff, it is also "freedom to"—freedom to prosper, freedom to flourish (Whose Freedom?, p. 178). Indeed, "freedom doesn’t exist…in the absence of opportunity?" (Whose Freedom?, p. 76).
While today this idea of freedom is commonly referred to as the "progressive" view, Lakoff notes that it is in fact the traditional American view, the conception of freedom that animated America from its inception (Whose Freedom?, p. 3). Interestingly, this American conception of freedom is also deeply rooted in the biblical traditions of Judaism and Christianity.
In the Hebraic heritage, freedom is never simply the absence of restraints; it is also opportunity. This understanding of freedom—which links freedom from and freedom to—emerges out of, and is required by, a biblical understanding of human nature.
Perhaps the best mythic expression of this understanding is found in a surprising story in Genesis 2. God creates a variety of living things, in this part of the creation account, and then gives to Adam a special task. God brings the animals before Adam and tells Adam to "name" them. Two things are important here. First, in Genesis 2 the word "Adam" means "humanity." The job of naming is given to humanity. The other important point is that to name something in the Hebraic tradition is much more than giving it a label; to name something is to decide its proper place in the nature of things. To name something is to determine where it fits best in the scheme of the creation. Humanity, in this story, is given the task of deciding the way life should be ordered.
We can focus on the potentially authoritarian expression of "deciding where things fit," but, alternatively, we can think of the sensitive artist who, given certain resources, fits them together so that the value of each is highlighted in relation to the others. Either construal of humanity’s role—as imposer or as creator—is possible, but the point is that to be human in this biblical view is to be an agent, an agent, moreover, in a field of rich opportunity. To be human is not only to have the abstract capacity or "freedom" to do something; it is also, necessarily, to have the resources in relation to which we may exercise this capacity or freedom. Or more precisely stated, according to this biblical tradition, without such resources, without opportunity, what we call freedom is a mere abstraction. Indeed, it is not freedom at all. Freedom is both agency and opportunity.
This way of thinking about human freedom, as agency within an environment of bountiful opportunity—what Lakoff refers to as "prosperity"—persists in the biblical as well as the later Western religious traditions. In the Hebrew Bible the importance of opportunity appears in concept of the promised land, a place of plenty within which humans are able to exercise their agency fully. In Rabbinic Judaism it is expressed in the concept of the "days of the Messiah" or the messianic age. The New Testament idea of the "kingdom of God" has the same connotation of plenty, a comprehensive plenitude available to all.
Later, dominant forms of Christianity individualized the "kingdom of God," making it a state of inner peace, or they projected it onto some trans-historical future. Both modifications sacrifice the fullness of the concept as it appears in the New Testament as well as in the subordinate Christian communities that persisted throughout Western history. Both the Jewish and the Christian insistence on bountiful opportunity are tied to a conception of being human. Theirs is a view that makes freedom central to being human—freedom as creative agency, which in turn presupposes a rich environment of opportunities in which to exercise that agency.
In the traditions of Judaism and Christianity the emphasis on agency was sometimes expressed in the notion that humans are co-creators with God. This idea is already implicit, as we have seen, in Genesis 2. God creates the raw materials, so to speak, but humanity is responsible for the ongoing process of discovering the potential of these materials and deciding how they are to be arranged. In the Hebrew Bible reference is often made to "serving the Lord." This simply means, to quote an old rabbinic saying, being "a partner with God in the work of creation." Christian thinkers like Basil the Great and Origen insisted that creation and redemption are one, and that humans are active agents in that process. Simply put, this means that redemption is a process, a process of embodied creative involvement in the world. It is neither a private, internal state of being nor a transcendent or future kingdom.
As Christianity became allied with the Roman Empire, the effort was made to reduce human agency to a decision about whether to obey the dictates of the divinely appointed authorities. But this reduction was never fully successful. In much of Christian history, and even more consistently in Judaism, there persisted the very ancient biblical idea that freedom is central to human fulfillment, and that freedom is never simply the absence of restraint. It is agency within an environment of rich resources. The environment of plenty is never an end in itself; rather, it is essential in order that freedom might be realized. And human freedom is central to being human, to becoming what humans are created to be.
Today, the progressive idea that human fulfillment requires freedom and that freedom requires rich opportunity is one of the conceptions of freedom that competes for allegiance in the human community. It is no longer solely a biblical idea or even a religious idea. But neither is it simply a modern idea. It has a long history, stretching back to, among other places, the religious foundations of Western culture. "There is no fulfillment without freedom, no freedom without opportunity, and no opportunity without prosperity." If employed in our thinking about social policy, this understanding of freedom—ancient as well as modern—would offer us a new future.
Delwin Brown is a Guest Fellow of the Rockridge Institute and Dean Emeritus of the Pacific School of Religion.
