Unconditional freedom

[Megan R.]

Short takes by Søren Kierkegaard on freedom. For more download the free e-
book of his writings at
http://www.bruderhof.com/e-books/Provocations.htm

Unconditional freedom, freedom which equally well chooses the good or the
evil, is nothing but an abrogation of freedom and a despair of any
explanation of it. Freedom means to be capable. - SK

[Bruderhof]

Christianity teaches that you should choose the one thing needful, but in
such a way that there must be no question of any choice. That is, if you
fool around a long time, then you are not really choosing the one thing
needful. Consequently, the very fact that there is no choice expresses the
tremendous passion or intensity with which one chooses. Can there be a more
accurate expression for the fact that freedom of choice is only a formal
condition of freedom and that emphasizing freedom of choice as such means
the sure loss of freedom? The very truth of freedom of choice is that there
must be no choice, even though there is a choice.

[Bruderhof Communities]

The opposite of freedom is not necessity, but guilt.

[Jim]

Freedom really is freedom only when, in the same moment, the same second,
it rushes with infinite speed to bind itself. Freedom is the choice whose
truth is that there can be no question of any choice.

[Bruderhof]

Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy matter, but
wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.

[Greg G.]

Bruderhof wrote:

> Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy matter, but
> wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.
>

God’s education consists in leading one to being able to do freely what at
first one had to be compelled to do.

[Megan R.]

In staring fixedly at freedom of choice instead of choosing, we lose both
freedom and freedom of choice. The most tremendous thing given to a human
being is – choice, freedom. If you want to rescue and keep it, there is
only one way – in the very same second unconditionally in full attachment
give it back to God and yourself along with it. If the sight of what is
given to you tempts you, if you surrender to the temptation and look with
selfish craving at freedom of choice, then you lose your freedom. And your
punishment then is to go around in a kind of confusion and brag about
having freedom of choice.

[Greg G.]

Woe to you, this is the judgment upon you. You have freedom of choice, you
say, and yet you have not chosen God. Then you become ill; freedom of
choice becomes your fixed idea. Finally you become like the rich man
morbidly imagining that he has become impoverished and will die of want.
You sigh that you have lost the freedom of choice, and the mistake is
merely that you do not sorrow deeply enough so that you get it back again.

[Bruderhof]

What Augustine says about true freedom (distinguished from freedom of
choice) is very true and very much a part of experience. Namely, that a
person has the most lively sense of freedom when with completely decisive
determination he impresses upon his action the inner necessity which
excludes the thought of another possibility. Then freedom of choice or the
“agony” of choice comes to an end.

[Mary]

People want to eliminate injunctions and constraints in order to play the
game of being independent. In the old days people believed that it was the
conscience that gave freedom of conscience, that if one had conscience,
freedom was sure to come along. But to eliminate every constraint, to
loosen every bond, meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as
possible for everyone to have no conscience while imagining that he had
one. All this talk about eliminating constraint comes either from the
coddled or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now
exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.

[Bruderhof Communities]

Certainly, Mary was the chosen one, and so decidedly so that she was
chosen. But there is also another factor, freedom and the moment of choice,
where we see that such a one is the right one. Had the angel not found her
as he did find her, she would not have been the right one.

[Bruderhof Communities]

In all our own "freedom," we actually seek one thing: to be able to live
without responsibility.

[Megan R.]

A person is a slave of what he is unfreely dependent upon. But our freedom-
loving age thinks otherwise; it thinks that if one is not dependent, then
one is not a slave either. If there is no ruler, then there is no slave
either. One is scarcely aware that precisely here a bondage is being
created. This bondage is not that one person wants to subjugate many, but
that individuals, when they forget their relation to God, become mutually
afraid of one another.

[Jim]

We read that Christ after his resurrection came through closed doors, where
the disciples were assembled. This is sometimes mistakenly used as a
picture of how eagerly Christ seeks the soul, how he can even get through
the closed doors of hearts that are indifferent or hardened. But this is
untrue. Rather, he stands before the door and knocks.

[Bruderhof]

That which distinguishes the Christian way from the common way is the
voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be
satisfied with poverty – no, he chose poverty.

[Greg G.]

That God could create beings free over against himself is the cross that
philosophy could not bear but upon which it has remained hanging.

[Greasy]

Bruderhof wrote:

> Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy matter, but
> wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.
>

The whole question of God’s omnipotence and the relation of goodness to
evil may perhaps be resolved quite simply in this way. The highest that
conceivably can be done for a being is to make it free. But it requires
omnipotence for this. It may seem strange, since omnipotence would seem to
require dependence. But if one will think carefully about omnipotence, he
will perceive that the distinctive characteristic of omnipotence is the
ability to withdraw itself again. It is precisely for this cause that what
comes into existence by omnipotence can be independent.

[Werner]

Only omnipotence is able to withdraw (take itself back) in giving out, and
it is this relationship precisely which constitutes the independence of the
recipient. Hence God’s omnipotence is his goodness. For goodness means to
give out completely, but in such a way that withdrawing it makes the
recipient free. Omnipotence is not merely able to produce the most imposing
phenomenon, the totality of the visible universe, but also the most fragile
thing of all: a being that in the very face of omnipotence is independent.
It is but a worthless and worldly conception of the dynamic of power that
it is greater and greater in proportion as it can compel and make
dependent. No, the art of true power is precisely to make free.