A review of Os Guinness: Last Call for Liberty – Part 6
The previous blog post in this series discussed various religious and philosophical systems and the extent to which they can provide a basis for American freedom.
In Last Call for Liberty, Os Guinness makes the argument that it is the Abrahamic religions—specifically the understanding of the nature of God and humankind as taught in the Hebrew scriptures—that form the most viable foundation for liberty.
The picture of God we see in the Hebrew scriptures is a sovereign, personal Creator. Human beings were fashioned “in his image,” distinct in essence but deriving many of our attributes from him.
As we have seen in previous articles, meaningful choice is fundamental to freedom. Because the God of Abraham is sovereign being, he has meaningful choice. He speaks a word and brings creation into being. Humankind, likewise, has been given the opportunity to create and act on the existing creation through acts of the will.
The Hebrew God also has the ability to limit his own freedom. By creating separate creatures with their own capacity for free will, God chooses to limit his sovereignty in order to allow humans meaningful choice.
In the same way, people have the ability to limit their freedom in order to respect the choices of their fellow human beings. These two capacities, unlike the assumptions of Eastern and secular belief systems, provide a basis for both positive and negative freedom.
The Exodus narrative provides a especially powerful model for liberty, and was very influential on the early American settlers. In the escape from Egypt we see both negative and positive freedom—not just liberation from slavery, but also the the vision and calling to build a community of the faithful in the Promised Land.
The book of Exodus also records the first example of a covenant: a freely chosen agreement among a group of people that binds them together and shapes their community. The concept of covenant has been foundational to American government, from the Mayflower Compact to the U.S. Constitution itself.
Another essential element of the Hebrew worldview is its realistic assessment of the human capacity for corruption. Evil shows up early in the book of Genesis and is never eradicated in the Hebrew scriptures (only in the final pages of the New Testament do we see it fully vanquished).
The Framers of our Constitution were steeped in the Hebrew awareness of evil, and this is manifested in the care with which they pitted power against power and constructed checks and balances within our governmental structures. Madison's Federalist 51 contains one of the most famous articulations of the human tendency to abuse power:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
As we know from the Hebrew scriptures, the descendants of the children of the Exodus did not maintain their liberty for more than a few hundred years, but traded it for political security and status. Corruption, division, and eventual bondage ensued.
Only time will tell whether the children of the American Revolution can do better. But without a philosophical understanding of human nature that can serve as the basis for freedom, it is virtually impossible.
