Angelus News | June 30, 2023 | Vol. 8 No 13

LETTER AND SPIRIT
SCOTT HAHN
Scott Hahn is founder of the
St. Paul Center for Biblical
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.
Free reign
In July, freedom will be much celebrated and little understood.
July 4 is Independence Day, the anniversary
of the date in 1776 when 13 colonies declared themselves
free from British rule.
Many of our Founding Fathers were Christians, and they
were speaking to a populace that was Christian by heritage.
They drew from a common Christian vocabulary,
even if they sometimes chose to neutralize it by speaking
of “nature and nature’s God.”
Their words echoed biblical themes. They spoke often of
“freedom” from servitude — and they evoked the story of
the Exodus.
America’s social order has not always been welcoming
to Catholics or congenial to Catholic thought, but we too
can celebrate. We feel no less a thrill at words that echo
St. Paul: “because the creation itself will be set free from
its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the
children of God” (Romans 8:21).
Freedom is the stuff of our salvation, and liberty from
bondage can enable us to flourish in Christ. St. Paul urged
the early Christians to seize such chances: “Were you a
slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your
freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity” (1 Corinthians
7:21).
Still, it’s not simply from human overlords that Christ
would have us set free. And it’s not just better business
and lower taxes that we should be celebrating. “Where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians
3:17). We should not equate true freedom with free enterprise
and democratic process. For even the pagan Greeks
knew in their hearts that a slave could be more free than a
king.
We celebrate because we’re not just free from something.
We’re free for something. We’re free from the bondage to
sin. We’re free for a holy life with God in heaven — but
begun in holiness even on earth. What are we free for? We
are free to live the lives of the saints.
Liberty is a condition of possibility. God uses it as an
occasion of grace. It’s up to us to correspond to that grace.
“For freedom Christ has set us free,” said St. Paul. “Stand
fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery”
(Galatians 5:1, 13).
It’s a storyline that’s compatible with the American founding,
but not quite identical with it.
For we cannot doubt that the biblical language has been
“Spirit of ’76,” by Archibald Willard, 1836-1918, American.
| WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
abused; and freedom has been used as a pretext for license,
and even — in an instance of demonic irony — for slavery.
Today, we find people enslaved as they follow promises
of sexual freedom. Their masters promise them unbridled
access to the objects of their desires. “They promise them
freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for
whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter
2:19).
St. Peter said it well: “Live as free men, yet without using
your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of
God” (1 Peter 2:16).
Our liberation, like Israel’s, should be not so much a
declaration of independence from foreign bondage as a
declaration of dependence upon God.
36 • ANGELUS • June 30, 2023