Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Freiheit und Sünde; Konkupiszenz; das emotivistische (autonome) Selbst; Augustin: F. von etwas erst Anfang d. F.

Kurzinhalt: Sin is simply another word for that naming of good and evil for ourselves which God's command in Genesis forbids. It is another word for "going with the flow" of our own desires instead of obeying God's commands.

Textausschnitt: Freedom and Sin

116b Choice is a real element in our freedom. The command God gave Adam and Eve is itself a revelation of their freedom of choice. If they had had no such freedom, a command would have been an exercise in futility. And if God had intended to override their freedom of choice, he would simply have forced them into obedience. But freedom of choice is, as Genesis also clearly reveals, for the sake of the choice itself and not simply for the sake of having choices to make. Otherwise, there would have been no command. God would simply have told them to do whatever they wanted to do. (Fs)

117a Freedom of choice, therefore, can be wrongly used, as it was at the beginning, with damaging consequences not only for Adam and Eve but for everyone else as well. One such consequence is what the Church calls concupiscence, a strong tendency to sin or to go against the truth of our being. Since our freedom is dependent upon our knowing and living the truth, our freedom is diminished, not enhanced, by sin. As John Paul II has stated: "within his errors and negative decisions, man glimpses the source of a deep rebellion, which leads him to reject the Truth and the Good in order to set himself up as an absolute principle unto himself: 'You shall be like God' (Gen 3:5). Consequently, freedom itself needs to be set free. It is Christ who sets it free: he 'has set us free for freedom' (cf. Gal 5:1)" (VS 86). (Fs)

117b What does it mean to say that Christ has "set us free for freedom"? Christ "sets us free" by setting "our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence" (VS 103). Sin is simply another word for that naming of good and evil for ourselves which God's command in Genesis forbids. It is another word for "going with the flow" of our own desires instead of obeying God's commands. But this going with the flow, as the language itself suggests, means that we are controlled by the flow, not vice versa. But, as the Pope points out, man can only achieve the dignity appropriate to him "when he frees himself from all subservience to his feelings, and in a free choice of the good, pursues his own end by effectively and assiduously marshalling the appropriate means" (RH 42). (Fs)

117c The emotivist self who rejects all absolute truth in favor of a freedom understood exclusively in terms of choice is that same imperial, egalitarian self who rejects hierarchy in the name of liberation and equality. And, as well we might expect, the results are the same. Just as rejecting the order or hierarchy of creation produces not equality but anarchy, so also rejecting the existence of an objective moral order produces not more freedom of choice but simply more of that disorder which began back in the third chapter of Genesis. The Pope accurately concludes, "The worst situations of all are the ones in which all distinction between good and evil is thrown to the winds; chaos then reigns."1

118a Our freedom needs to be set free from the "mystery of lawlessness [anarchy]" (2 Th 2:7). This freedom from sin is a part of what is meant by that freedom with which God gifts us in creation and which Christ restores to us in redemption. But this freedom "from sin" is for the sake of that freedom "of the gift" of which the Pope speaks and, therefore, is only the first step toward true freedom. As St Augustine said and as the Pope reaffirms in Veritatis Splendor,

"The beginning of freedom," Saint Augustine writes, "is to be free from crimes ... such as murder, adultery, fornication, theft, fraud, sacrilege and so forth. Once one is without these crimes (and every Christian should be without them), one begins to lift up one's head toward freedom. But this is only the beginning of freedom, not perfect freedom ..." (13). (Fs)

118b In Gaudium et Spes Vatican II stated, "It is only in freedom that man can turn to what is good" (GS 11). The Pope cites this text and then asks the crucial question regarding it, "But what sort of freedom?" (VS 34) What sort of freedom allows man to turn to the good? Clearly freedom of choice is implied here, since "turning to the good" certainly requires a choice by which the bad is rejected. But what sort of freedom is capable not only of recognizing and desiring but also of actually choosing the good?