FREEDOM AND THEOLOGY

Freedom and Theology

When one sees more deeply into Christ, is one looking into a mirror merely reflecting one's own deepest feelings? The answer must be that the Church has the mission of determining what is only the projection of subjective feelings and what is an authentic response to Christ as revealed. Yet it would be preposterous to imagine that all these profound changes occured simply by the acquiring of deeper insights into Christ. Human beings do not reach moral conclusions in a vacuum, apart from the whole web of language, custom and social structure surrounding them. A society composed entirely of free human beings was unknown in the Mediterranean world of the first centuries; a society where the state did not support religion was equally unknown. Only as social structures changed did moral mutation become possible, even if change in social structures, as it might reasonably be argued, was owed at least in part to the perception that structures fostering liberty were more congruent with deeper insights into Christ.