Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License

Christians must think about freedom. Not only does Scripture speak to them about their own spiritual freedom, but Christianity’s influence has been instrumental in the worldwide development of moral and political freedom. But just what is the relationship among these freedoms? In America, at least, that relationship may be the question of the moment. How should we guard our freedoms—and those of our neighbor—in an age when ideological forces push toward political and moral extremes? Brad Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and founder of the Davenant Institute, addresses these questions in Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License.

Littlejohn begins and ends Called to Freedom by emphasizing that freedom has become an existential problem: We’ve never had more freedom, but the demand for more still seems insatiable. In short, our experience of freedom is frustrating—if not entirely contradictory. Of course, the paradox of freedom and mastery is not a uniquely Christian problem at all. Nevertheless, Littlejohn suggests to us that Christianity offers particularly worthwhile insights into the problem. This is because the Christian faith offers freedom in the context of obligation: the obligation to obey the law, to participate in and support the community, and to love and serve our neighbor. He writes early in the book: “We will all serve somebody or something. It is only a question of whom and how. Some forms of service turn out to be liberating, while others . . . turn out to be enslaving and dehumanizing.” That insight is familiar to anyone familiar with classical and Christian sources, but in an age of perpetual revolutions and presumed liberations, it cannot be underscored enough.  

Spiritual, Moral, and Political Freedom

There are two parts to Littlejohn’s argument. The first part, in chapters 1 through 4, is essentially a theoretical and historical survey of influential ideas about freedom. The second, chapters 5 through 7, is an application of the Christian idea of freedom to contemporary cultural challenges. In the first part, Littlejohn focuses on what he calls “freedom in three dimensions.” The first dimension is Isaiah Berlin’s seminal distinction between negative (“freedom from”) and positive freedom (“freedom to”). Littlejohn emphasizes that freedom from is not enough to fulfill us, while asserting freedom to may likewise fail, because it can deny our finitude as limited creatures. The second dimension is the relationship of individual freedom to corporate freedom: communities expect liberty to order their common life, and individuals need community, but the liberty of each may come into conflict. Littlejohn’s third dimension is the distinction between inward and outward freedom: inward freedom to think and believe is potentially limitless, but the outward behavior it inspires certainly is not. These are sound dimensions around which to build a study of freedom, but Littlejohn does not always deploy them in his argument.

Having laid out these dimensions of freedom in chapter 1, Littlejohn then turns in chapter 2 to three fundamental types of freedom about which we must dispel confusion and seek a right understanding: spiritual, moral, and political. Spiritual freedom enables freedom from sin and its effects, effects that Littlejohn summarizes in his own alliterative trifecta: forgetfulness (being cut off from our past), futility (being cut off from our present), and fear (being cut off from our future). Littlejohn’s treatment of spiritual freedom is arguably the most theoretically ambitious aspect of his book—for example, in his attempt to connect spiritual freedom to contemporary psychological epidemics like addiction and depression. This is also his most narrowly sourced chapter. He relies too heavily on Martin Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian (1520), an early polemical essay reflecting neither Luther’s later thought nor most of the Christian tradition. Littlejohn wants the reader to consider moral obligations and political obligations standing entirely apart from spiritual freedom. Because, Luther argued, we are spiritually free (by which he meant liberated from works having salvific merit), we can do good works for their own sake. We are therefore free to do good works, obey political authorities (out of love of God and neighbor), or disobey political authorities (where they command contrary to Scripture)—but always with a clear conscience.

Even if we are willing to overlook the fact that Luther’s understanding of works and conscience excludes Roman Catholic and Orthodox theology—and we probably should not be—magisterial Protestant reformers agreed with Luther only on this one point: that good works could be neither salvific nor supererogatory. They went far beyond this early polemical treatment of good works, considering them evidence of sanctification or assurance, an antidote to antinomianism, or an important expression of conscience. Among Reformed Protestant thinkers, controversies about moral freedom arose in New England (the Antinomian Controversy), Scotland (the Marrow Controversy), and on both sides of the Atlantic (the immensely popular theology of Richard Baxter). Lutherans advanced the spiritual importance of good works in the Smalcald Articles. Anglican traditions—such as Methodism and the Oxford Movement—did the same.

Littlejohn’s treatment of political freedom in relation to spiritual freedom has a stronger foundation because he draws from Richard Hooker. His previous scholarship on Hooker is salutary, and Hooker is an excellent resource—especially because he refuted repeated claims of the Puritans that their conscience was perpetually violated by ecclesiastical or civil authorities. Hooker dispelled these claims by emphasizing a category of adiaphora or “things indifferent” that could not violate the conscience, and he emphasized that political authorities were God’s means to settle such questions. But Littlejohn wants to reduce too many political claims by Christians to confusion about “things indifferent.” He says nothing about, to take a few examples, the rich tradition of Christian dissent and disobedience reflecting not confusion about spiritual freedom but concerns about covenantal faithfulness (i.e., corporate freedom), the legal rights of the church (corporate freedom, again), or the legitimate political rights of citizens. Were government-imposed restrictions during the Covid pandemic simply a question of medical safety exercised under the same authority by which fire codes are established (as Littlejohn implies) and political adiaphora? And was every protest against such restrictions defended on grounds of spiritual freedom? Both assertions would be dubious.

When Littlejohn turns to the challenges of moral freedom, he draws from the Western tradition more broadly and convincingly. He begins with the obvious case of Plato’s Republic and its argument that extreme freedom (the tyrannical soul) ends in slavery, while right order enables freedom through self-mastery. He also briefly surveys Aristotle, Cicero, the Stoics, and Immanuel Kant. Littlejohn agrees with them, but also recalls the warning of Boethius, Augustine, Luther, and St. Paul: the pursuit of moral excellence, without the Holy Spirit and Christian virtue, tempts vanity. Regardless of this disagreement, however, Littlejohn casts the whole of the Western tradition as an antidote to the new revisionist moral freedoms of authenticity, self-indulgence, and sexual liberation—especially insofar as these seek to “liberate” us from nature. Littlejohn sounds very much like Carl Trueman on this last point.

When Littlejohn turns to political freedom, he contrasts a politics of rights, which largely eschews moral freedom and focuses on autonomy, with a politics of right that seeks positive liberty and a common good. In Littlejohn’s casting of the two sides, it was Thomas Jefferson (“he neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg”) and John Stuart Mill who advanced a politics of rights against the older tradition of right. However, he also argues that the politics of right was too ambitious, necessitated the existence of out-groups (e.g., women, slaves, and barbarians), and was tempted by political totalitarianism. His solution is to pursue the moral objectives of a politics of right enabled not by the state but by literacy, conscience, and social norms. That pursuit, which Littlejohn associates with John Locke, is now necessary to counter the economic individualism of the Right and the sexual libertinism of the Left. America’s two main parties are, he argues, “locked in a joint conspiracy to expand ‘freedom’ and multiply ‘rights’ with scarcely a thought given to security of the moral, cultural, and political conditions within which these terms can have any meaning or durability.”

Understanding Freedom in Our Time

Beginning in chapter 5, Littlejohn moves to contemporary application— one in which we use our freedom to “take dominion over creation as image bearers of the great King” and avoid the perils of modern freedoms. Each chapter provides a helpful outline of the problems presented by these freedoms, though not without some rhetorical excesses. The first modern freedom addressed is technology, which Littlejohn characterizes as wanting to transcend our limits as creatures and therefore increasing the curse of the Fall rather than reversing it. Littlejohn flirts with distinguishing between technē and technology—but he neglects to elaborate on the distinction in a manner that would be helpful to his argument. His main concern is how our deployment of technology has evolved—from our original uses of it to helpfully manipulate the Earth’s resources and preserve life, to its current uses to undermine the created natural order and “the slavery of simply being human.” Littlejohn offers some solutions, including curbing the use of technology for children and resisting the distractions that make religious devotion almost impossible.

Littlejohn’s second modern freedom is economic freedom. Littlejohn rightly cautions against seeing a particular economic doctrine as necessarily Christian, and he revisits the challenge of reconciling positive and negative liberty in our economic policy. However, his main concern is the apparent contradictions in which the misuse of freedom can become slavery: consumer “freedoms,” for example, are often algorithmic nudges and the manipulation of psychological (rather than biological) needs. Littlejohn—with Thomas Aquinas—laments our inclination to greed and prodigality, while offering a solution in gratitude, joy, and detachment from our possessions. Unfortunately, some of the more provocative claims in this chapter go undeveloped. What, for example, is the real significance of land ownership if it is truly a zero-sum game? Are money and capital necessarily a kind of psychological trap in their false promises of infinite wealth?

Littlejohn’s final application will probably surprise most contemporary readers because of the way in which he considers the subject of religious liberty. Religious liberty cannot, Littlejohn argues, be rooted in religious indifferentism or bear the fruit of moral anarchy. Again, he gestures toward Luther, though this time to emphasize that what Luther insisted on at the Diet of Worms (“Here I stand . . .”) was not a negative liberty but a positive liberty. Littlejohn also emphasizes the traditional Protestant distinction between the inward and outward: no law can govern the inward by right or by power. But he also cites Heinrich Bullinger who, contrary to Luther, defended the religious life of the nation in covenantal or corporate (rather than individual) terms. Complicating the matter more, Littlejohn notes that many outward actions discouraged under religious establishments (e.g., idolatry and blasphemy) were long understood not merely as expressions or speech but—as in the case of People v. Ruggles—a public offense and undermining of the moral and political order. Littlejohn does not elaborate on this at length, but such concerns reflect a traditional and reasonable political concern.

The reader will have to judge whether or not Littlejohn addresses these traditional concerns satisfactorily—and how much they ultimately matter at all. He resolves the matter largely by deferring to political prudence and by raising concerns about our new political faiths. To this first point, what are the civil implications of unmoderated proselytizing for any faith? Can recalcitrant dissenters be effectively coerced by law versus persuasion? Probably not, so he recommends a culture of toleration in which we take matters of faith seriously, acknowledge disagreement, and avoid inappropriate steps to bring others into alignment with ourselves—all while realizing that not all faith traditions will assume that approach. But to this second point, perhaps religious pluralism is now passé insofar as the old faiths now contend together against a new faith—one that trafficks in identity affirmation and disembodied identity—that is absolutely intolerant of dissent.  

Called to Liberty is part of a series of intentionally short books, and short books have their place. As a short book with worthy insights, it could be helpful for lay Christians navigating theoretical and cultural concerns of the moment. It may prove useful for those outside the Church who seek a broad introduction to the paradoxes of freedom. Still, more is needed to recover freedom from its current drubbing by both radicals on the Left and reactionaries on the Right—a drubbing that increasingly rejects measure, moderation, and maturity. 

Image by Giorgio G and licensed via Adobe Stock.