SIN NO MORE
BRAGUE, RÉMI
by Rémi Brague Christian area, which we would rather call Christendom, meaning mainly medieval Europe as it developed in the wake of the Emperor In 1877, the british historian Lord Acton...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...History is the very answer...
...17), etc...
...The common point is the fact that the scene is supposed to have taken place before the creation of the world, or at least of mankind, in the highest heavens...
...Lord Acton already could point this out...
...Interestingly, the Koran, which repeatedly praises God’s creative activity, does not mention the rest of the seventh day...
...For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants...
...Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice...
...They will even slightly overdo things, just to be on the safe side...
...But the answer is not given...
...The Sabbath is free time, time for leisure, for activity, i.e., for the activities that become a free man...
...Liberty is the very definition of the people of Israel as the people of the Exodus...
...We testify...
...Moreover, the New Testament insists that God does not stop “working” (John 5:17...
...They exist by what later thinkers will call “nature...
...We can spot something like that in ancient Israel, especially among the prophets...
...the disobedient group is utterly destroyed by some device: a strong wind, an earthquake, a flood, etc...
...I political fact...
...and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam” (Micah 6:1-4...
...As a consequence, it does not contain any law on sabbatical rest...
...Not only does Islam forbid apostasy, therefore, as an inexcusable offence...
...Juan, never losing their exquisite distinction and manners...
...In the city of rebellious slaves led by Spartacus, there were still slaves...
...Outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, it has been rare for thinkers to suppose that God endowed us with a nature of our own, that freedom is part of that nature, and that it is through the exercise of freedom, and the errors that inevitably stem from it, that we fulfill God’s plan...
...The ultimate aim of such a liberation is not leaving one master and falling prey to another...
...and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a Sin has been conceived by philosophers and reliwinepress therein: and he looked that it should bring gious people in various ways: as offending God, as forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes...
...This explains why no formal act of joining the community of believers, such as the Christian baptism, is required...
...The only legitimate rule is supposed to be God’s direct rule...
...God argues with His people on the basis of commonly received moral principles...
...The series is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation...
...On the other hand, people who retain the gnawing consciousness of being, at the end of the day, mere upstarts will normally react by behaving in a more gentlemanly way than “real” gentlemen...
...wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes...
...Robert D. Novak “Marvelously thought out and marvelously executed… leaves the reader panting with gratitude for his accomplishment, and smiling for his felicity...
...Impartial historians will observe how miserably the ideal and its realization often jarred with one another...
...This unpleasant remembrance is almost harped upon: “And remember that thou wast Israel’s Past liberation from egyPt is constantly a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:5...
...All are forever subject to His will...
...What the wheel of samsara and condemns us to reincarnaThe new Testament Israel, were familiar with conceptual thought...
...Thus Hosea, a prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century, declares: “Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land...
...Such a critical stance towards The way in which God behaves with His people shows that the Lord Himself respects the freedom of his creatures...
...They were meant to be the germinal cell of a general History of Liberty that he never wrote...
...We have to understand: Because you are now free people, you won’t have to do anymore what slaves do, i.e., you won’t kill, you won’t steal, etc...
...The same holds true of Greek philosophers, for whom freedom meant the condition of a selfgoverning city, and also that of their citizens who, unlike slaves, were ownR é M I b R a g u e e.g., the laws on slavery...
...There is a common ground of basic decency between God and man, a ground on which man can stand even without an explicit knowledge of the God of Israel...
...My second assumption is that the idea of liberty was not a sudden invention, springing into existence as part of the great intellectual revolution that we know as the Enlightenment...
...The ancient thinkers, who lived in societies of slaveholders, drew a line between what becomes a free man and what we are compelled to do in order to keep things going: tilling the soil, building houses, weaving garments, cooking meals, etc...
...Lord Acton’s insights remain extremely valuable, so valuable, as a matter of fact, that, even if I possessed the necessary competence, I could hardly wish to replace them with a deeper or more accurate account...
...Positivel i h T . s r e t r a p t u o h i w , e n o i d o G t t , n r o e t Passage from Paul draws the whole picture of m h an K kin a d’s e ha xistence, s the fu nd t amen tal d n octri ne o y s f , , beginning of the Epistle to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself” (1:3-5...
...By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth 3 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 letters for the translators only...
...I will deal with the New Testament in a more summary way...
...The upshot was the choice of monarchy...
...First, because there are no concepts in the Bible...
...The New Testament sees sin first and foremost as a weakening of our own liberty...
...He creates things that are endowed with natures of their own...
...When Luke’s Gospel tells us about the Transfigura tion on M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 3 3 History as the Realm of liberty s I n n o M o R e tion, etc...
...This is what the vine is expected to do (God “looks that…”), because this is what a vine, when it is properly looked after, normally and spontaneously does...
...It involves falling away from a religion that was implanted in all of us by the Creator...
...The necessary outfit that enables a creature to reach its own good is what we call its nature...
...What we call the laws are the codification of liberty...
...And trespassing against a rule, as sullying the purity of now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, our soul, as increasing the burden that chains us to judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard...
...Now, the biblical narrative of creation makes possible a leisure that encompasses everybody, not only slave-owners...
...They don’t limit freedom by setting rules that we are not allowed to trespass...
...e call this character by a name that is lacking in th l o e . s s y b l va e i r e h d n , ls i h , s t n u o m he Way in WhiCh goD behaves with His is being ain jud ge l d. I a n th t is c p ase m , the p a art is W play w ed u b d y the fore in a scene that several prophets, among In short, we have entered the realm of law...
...From time to time, I will compare their content with what matches it in the Koran, which draws upon some biblical stories, and underline the peculiarities of the two sets of texts...
...But in the time that stretches before the creation of the world nothing whatsoever takes place, except God’s initiative...
...His books include The Law of God (University of Chicago) and The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (University of Chicago...
...The powers of nature are called to witness...
...It strikes its roots in a dee r e m t o i y t e b i l a h t i h T n t W io ill s. take e m fi y r st bea s rings t from r tw o s b n asic a assum p e p e ly r - Two assumptions soil, in the very conception of man and of God that underlies a religion, and even in the way each religion conceives of the interplay of God and man in history...
...The ultimate goal of salvation, mankind’s ultimate hope, is conceived as total freedom: “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21...
...How one should behave is already a matter of common knowledge, which can be brought back to the memory, but not taught...
...The Koran does not mention such scenes...
...migrations were seen as the work of God’s hand...
...God’s job, so to speak, consists in setting people free...
...History is the stage on which the drama of liberty is played...
...It is an appeal to everybody to behave as a priest, as Israel is “a nation of priests” (Exodus 19:6...
...it has a tendency to regard the adherents of other faiths as already apostates, guilty of the primary sin against God...
...God does not admit any bargain with Him...
...Western liberty is a far older tradition, the sources of which are to be looked for first and foremost in the medieval period...
...Exchange takes place only between beings that exist on the same level...
...To be sure, many contradictory discussions between the prophets and their people are reported, but none takes place between God and the prophets whom He sends...
...On the contrary, this was considered to be a common phenomenon...
...This has consequences for the behavior that is expected of the Israelite towards foreigners: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21...
...What is important is the kind of experience of God that is implied in such a narrative...
...and When ancient Israelite sages reflected on the beginning of all things, they put freedom at the center of the relationship between God and the world...
...We shall also need to understand the principles that governed their conduct, and the ideals to which they aspired...
...They are described according to the worldview that prevailed at that time: the earth is seen as a flat surface posited on pillars...
...The metaphysical idea of free will is hardly older than the Fathers of the Church, and owes its first clear statement to St...
...The originality of the New Testament outlook becomes still more spectacular when we compare this passage with a verse from the Koran: “And (remember) when thy Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their reins, their seed, and made them testify of themselves, (saying): Am I not your Lord...
...In fact, the “commandments” are something like the code of honor of free people, of gentlemen who are aware of “what is not done...
...More was done after him by students of the medieval legal tradition and of the conflict between the papacy and the empire, in which both sides, interestingly, chose as their catchword libertas, i.e., “freedom...
...He does not command the vine to produce good grapes...
...In the Epistle to the Ephesians, a question is implicitly asked: Will mankind accept God’s benediction, and the whole plan of salvation that it 3 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 “A masterful account...
...Second, because, wherever liberty is mentioned, it means a social status, viz...
...the status of people who are not slaves...
...By this token, something like freedom already exists at an elementary level, even before it becomes conscious of itself in man...
...it is itself the highest political end,” he is echoing voices that can be heard in all the sacred books of our tradition, from the Torah to the Epistles of St...
...The Greek in which it was written knows the word for “freedom” (eleutheria...
...When the Bible describes God as withdrawing God does not interfere any more with what He has created...
...A verse even discreetly criticizes the idea that God could get out of nothing, in every instant...
...By Christianity, he meant the Constantine’s conversion...
...On the negative side, disobedience cannot be excused...
...Yet there is more to it...
...What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor...
...His providence gives them whatever is required for them to be able to “shift for themselves” in the pursuit of what is good for them...
...XXIX, 40...
...We find reflections on the respective value of the various political regimes, e.g...
...God does not interfere any more with what He has created...
...Jesus’s death, which took place on Easter eve, and his resurrection are thought of on the model of the former Easter, Israel’s liberation from Egyptian bondage, hence as a new exodus...
...Nevertheless, freedom is there not only where the word is present, but also where it is not...
...it was part and parcel of the economic system and few people ever thought of criticizing it, let alone abolishing it...
...Rémi brague is a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne and at the University of Munich...
...Isaiah 5:1-4...
...Little wonder that Abraham’s famous haggling with God about the fate of Sodom (Genesis 18:22-33) should be quickly alluded to, but not told (XI, 74...
...The conquest of the Promised Land is the last episode in a process that leads the people to an independent life...
...To be sure, God keeps whatever exists in being, for without His continuous will to maintain them, they would disappear...
...More over, I will focus on the common ground of Christianity and Judaism: on the books known to the Jews as the Tanakh (an acronym for “Torah, Prophets and Writings”) and to the Christians as the Old Testament...
...We have only to make it explicit, in order to perceive its closeness to our thinking today...
...God’s vineyard is the country of Israel, the vine is the people, the fruit stands for the latter’s deeds, good or bad...
...He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made...
...At the same time, an important idea of freedom is implicit in many Old Testament passages...
...in Herodotus, who reports in his Histories (III, 80-82) the discussion that allegedly took place between the supporters of those regimes, after a revolution did away with an impostor...
...Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with His people, and he will plead with Israel...
...The Bible is the only ancient text that contains a critique of monarchy as such, not of this or that concrete king, not as pitted against another political system (I Samuel 8:10-18...
...My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very free from a captivity that affects man more deeply fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the than the one the people experienced in Egypt, the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, captivity of sin...
...Whether this matches a historical fact is scarcely relevant...
...Mainstream Islamic apologetics (Kalâm) belong together because they express the nature of a thing, but merely because God is accustomed to combining them...
...Human freedom expresses in a human key a property that belongs to each creature: the property of existing and acting according to a nature of its own...
...monarchy was a new phenomenon...
...Jesus’s passion is conceived of as setting man t s known song: “Now will I sing to my well- used is the Greek exodos, in a clear allusion to the fir r o w e h T ” . e r u t r a e d “ s i h t u o b a s i l E d a e s o M he fifth ChaPter of isaiah oPens With a wellthe M s ou n nt (9:3 a 1), it explains tha p t Jesus spoke with d vineyard...
...The Sabbath has another, deeper dimension, that we could call a metaphysical one...
...Hence biblical liberty is not peacefully enjoyed by a privileged caste...
...Although the call for liberty is regularly conceived as some kind of break with Christian ideas and ideals that allegedly held sway over the Middle Ages, this conception is far from the truth...
...r u t a r c s i f m o e e f e t p h eop r le s d hows o th H at t he e Lord Him h se s lf c respec t ts Old Testament: “nature...
...The interesting point, however, is the attitude of God...
...The the most ancient, repeatedly put on stage: the God of Israel is supposed to have with His unfaithful people a lover’s tiff, and even to bring a lawsuit (Hebrew r îv) against them...
...Instead I should like to supplement Acton’s insights by studying religion rather than culture, i.e., Christianity rather than Christendom...
...The code of free People with the particle that invokes or negates a future Ttive particle (“do this,” “don’t do that”), bu - a e p m i e h h t i w d s r p x t r , e a eg n hose t i C v om a m e an n D o m e ents e , s b e e they t positive r or t tense (“thou shalt do this” or “not do that...
...It is the full expression of what we naturally are...
...More than one Roman emperor was portrayed by Tacitus as a bloodthirsty tyrant and lampooned by Suetonius because of his deviant sexual practices...
...Such properties don’t that stick together because God creates them afresh, even time, consist of indivisible units or properties later built a whole world–view in which things, and tired (L, 38...
...blood” (Hosea 4:1-2...
...God expects moral behavior to spring forth from human nature, and to spring forth freely...
...With some irony, we could interpret many features of the Ten Commandments in the light of aristocratic ethics: A gentleman does not bow down to a graven image nor serve it (Exodus 20:5...
...M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 3 5...
...Available wherever books are sold...
...But the word means more exactly ten utterances, for the very first one, which I have just quoted, is not a commandment but a self-description...
...And wherein have I wearied thee...
...Slavery was in the ancient world a common practice...
...13-15...
...In the ancient world, we find from time to time critiques leveled at this or that concrete ruler...
...He sets His creatures on a free footing...
...The reasons for God’s wrath and desire to litigate with His people have nothing to do with God’s own “interests” (supposing this could make any sense), but very much to do with the good of those who most urgently need protection, i.e., the poor...
...That was) lest ye should say at the Day of Resurrection: Lo...
...Yet it provides us with the key to a proper understanding of the socalled “commandments...
...Now, this introduction explains the meaning of what follows, i.e., the famous “Decalogue,” which we commonly translate as “ten commandments...
...from His work in order to enjoy rest, God is described as free...
...This essay is the fourth in a ten-part series being published in successive issues of The American Spectator under the general title “The Future of Indi vidual Liberty: Elevating the Human Condition and Overcoming the Challenges to Free Societies...
...www.simonsays.com conclusion Wof the ideal of liberty that I have bee d n i g i e n i h C n h s i w e t h h at J C e ultur a es d that r i W st e a re r in l flu o en s C e m D a b n y e finding in both Testaments is a task for historians...
...O my people, what have I done unto thee...
...There is a particularly revealing passage in Micah, another prophet from the eighth-century King dom of Judah: “Hear ye now what the Lord saith...
...Of course, God expects that man will react positively and accept the offer...
...We can only hope that “all manner of things will be well...
...Those principles are not simply what God happens to will...
...He is not obeyed...
...Paul...
...And when Lord Acton tells us that “liberty is not a means to a higher political end...
...Likewise Isaiah, a prophet of the Southern Kingdom of Judah in the same period, announces that “the Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people...
...Abiding by the law is nothing more than remaining faithful to the logic of liberation, taking one’s freedom seriously and drawing whatever consequences it might have...
...This is not a claim in favor of theocracy, if we mean thereby the rule of priests over lay people...
...In the same way, God does not, properly speaking, command righteous moral behavior...
...of this we were unaware, or lest you should say: It was our fathers who associated partners with Allah” (VII, 172...
...he does not even stoop to look at other people’s property (v...
...Liberty comes to the fore right at the beginning of Israel’s history, such as the Israelites understood it...
...Islam is the religion into which each child is born...
...The whole passage belongs to the literary genre of the lawsuit between God and His people: the Israelites are summoned to judge between God and the vine, viz...
...But He respects the nature of the things He has created...
...Yet the history of Israel is the story of a liberation...
...They describe the logical consequences of the liberation wrought by God...
...To be sure, the biblical worldview agrees in putting God above any fatigue (see Isaiah 40:28...
...It exists in a dynamic dimension: it must be shared with other people and expanded to the whole of mankind...
...This is the social dimension of the Sabbath, which became the thin wedge whereby ancient societies were opened to the pursuit of liberty...
...I will take them in chronological order...
...This is what Hosea calls “knowledge of God” in the passage quoted above: the “god” there has capital free discussion with god T o es m o i T es...
...On the other hand, the liberty that the people of Israel enjoy is not that of the aristocratic libertine...
...Their guilt is, as always, moral in nature: They have denied justice, taken bribes, and so on...
...Israel is not the only people that a divine being is supposed to have led from a former abode or state of nomadic wandering to its present place of permanent residence...
...And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (Genesis 2:2-3...
...In examining the Judeo-Christian inheritance, therefore, it will not be enough to describe the concrete activities of Jews and Christians in giving institutional expression to the idea of liberty...
...the spoil of the poor is in your houses...
...could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it...
...Islam (submission) is therefore the original and “natural” religion of mankind, whereas, according to a frequently quoted utterance of Muhammad (hadith), the other religions are foisted upon children by their parents...
...On the other hand, they will have to acknowledge that free institutions hardly ever developed in places that were not influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas...
...It involves falling away from a religion that was implanted in us by the Creator...
...The Bible stresses the fact that the servants, too, are to be granted a day of rest: “The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 9 s I n n o M o R e nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates” (Exodus 20:8-11...
...As a consequence, they won’t be particular about morality...
...Tcultural surroundings that, unlike ancie i r s a t i . d l e h f o t n e w he h o n le e c W o n t t estam t ent O tak B es u t for w gr w ant t e t D e n th n in e t expecting Tbeloved a song of my beloved touching his exodus...
...The mainstream tradition of Islam has certainly regarded freedom, both personal and political, as valuable—but valuable largely as a means to submission...
...he honors his lineage (v...
...Liberty is the goal of the liberation wrought by Christ...
...The first nar- Wthey put freedom at the center of the rel g t l a o g n n i e e o bs e n o hen t h an C a ient lu i t sr b ae g lite n i sages f re l fl h eC in te a s, D - rative of the creation tells us that “on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made...
...The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of His people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard...
...When God introduces Himself to His people, He does what we do when we first tell our name, then the trade that we R é M I b R a g u e ply: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2...
...The biblical God does not create bundles of independent properties that He arbitrarily puts together or asunder...
...The allegory is quickly explained...
...They connect the gift of freedom with the responsibilities that naturally flow from it...
...Also “thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9...
...M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 3 1 s I n n o M o R e The Bible generalizes aristocratic ethics to a people in its entirety...
...vividly portraying the R é M I b R a g u e New from the Publisher of The American Spectator implies...
...We shoulD not exPeCt to finD in the ers of themselves...
...But the world that God works to maintain is composed of things that are endowed with a stable nature and which spontaneously act in accordance with it...
...They said: Yea, verily...
...a gentleman does not tell fibs (v...
...he does not toil all the time but grants himself and his manservants a day of rest (v...
...Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1...
...No created thing, not even a human being, has a nature of its own, from which it can, as it were, enter into free relations with its maker...
...saith the Lord God of hosts” (Isaiah 3:13-15...
...This way of explaining the legitimacy of the weekly day of rest is grounded on the story according to which God, too, rested after His work: “It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17...
...nobody knows whether the answer of mankind will be, in the long run, positive or negative...
...People who considered themselves Jews or Christians may not have been faithful to the claims and obli gations of their religion...
...Little wonder that the Bible does not say anything totally revolutionary about it, but contents itself with advocating a more humane treatment of slaves...
...But the world is, so to speak, free from God’s action, too, and is allowed to rest...
...This may have something to do with a fact that had momentous consequences in Western political theory: The legitimacy of monarchic rule was always implicitly qualified, and often explicitly attacked...
...conservative movement’s thinkers and activists...
...Hence I will not discuss the passages from both Testaments that deal with social phenomena in which liberty and the lack thereof were involved, The old Testament writings of the Old Testament anything resembling a philosophical concept of freedom...
...it is kind of a treason...
...see Deuteronomy 10:19...
...The big difference lies in man’s answer...
...The recurrent pattern is: God sends a prophet to a human group and commands that something should be done or avoided...
...The word “commandment” has a ring of submission...
...But it is an open one...
...Israel’s past liberation from Egypt is constantly brought to memory as a gift, so that liberty cannot be separated from the consciousness of former bondage...
...Knowing God” or “fearing God” means hardly more than abiding by R é M I b R a g u e the rules of common decency (see Genesis 20:11...
...But discarding this as obsolete would let an important element go: God and the people are not facing one another...
...Augustine...
...I would like to go further back, to the very foundations of the medieval worldview, i.e., to the sacred books of the Bible...
...Ta historical life, He sets them free by stepp e e r t e r e s o t f I . r u r o d he m g o to D H of i s t c he e b at ible e s d oe s h not o c nly a le u ave s f l r i ee n ad g - 3 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 god’s activity as liberation into history...
...The opinions expressed in this series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation...
...Testify against me...
...it is kind of a treason...
...8-10...
...To use a non-biblical word, it is the nature of the vine to produce grapes...
...They named the latter servile, i.e., slavish activities, whereas the former, which alone were worthy of free people, deserved the name of “liberal studies” or “liberal arts...
...But the Decalogue is not about submission at all...
...creating free beings tionship between God and the world...
...There is a third character in the drama, before which their dispute dimension of the juridical begins where two litigants contend in the presence of a third, neutral person...
...What actually happens, including any possible answer of man, does so in history...
...On the contrary, He somehow sets His creatures on a free footing...
...for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviti cus 19:34...
...he does not mingle in dirty business like killing, betraying his wife, or pilfering (v...
...These books remain the core of what we call, rather clumsily and for want of any better term, the 2 8 2 8 T H T H ee aa MM ee R I R I c a n c a n ss PP e c e c TT aa TT oo RR M a M a y 2 0 0 8 y 2 0 0 8 “Judeo-Christian” heritage...
...Freedom introduces a dynamic of liberation...
...The lack of submission to God’s will is not tough luck, or an error, nor a simple moral failure...
...The trouble with born gentlemen is that even if they indulge in the most shameful vices, they will do so with perfect grace and propriety, like Mozart’s Don liberty for the slaves brought to memory as a gift, so that liberty cannot be separated from the consciousness of a former bondage...
...Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Lack of submission to God’s will is not tough luck, or an error, nor a simple moral failure...
...themselves...
...by Rémi Brague Christian area, which we would rather call Christendom, meaning mainly medieval Europe as it developed in the wake of the Emperor In 1877, the british historian Lord Acton wrote two essays on the history of liberty in ancient times and in Christianity...
...The Revised Standard Version has, more literally: “For freedom Christ has set us free...
...7, 16...
...The whole of mankind has pledged allegiance to its Creator, and accepted, even before has submitted to God from the outset...
...The people are said to have been freed from a state of captivity they suffered in Egypt...
...Because liberty is nothing natural, but something that was vouchsafed by God, being born a free man loses its relevance, and the difference between true-blue Israelites and the others is played down: “But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself...
...In the Koran, it is given immediately afterward by Adam’s posterity, miraculously put in its entirety in front of God...
...A ng i e b n a m u h y r e ev d n a h c a e . . i , m a d A f o n o s y r ev s i d n a r g e h t s i t I . n a m h t i w s ng i l a d s i H the w e ay in which God respects freedom o in e ha e s positive and neg e a , tive consequences...
...Even if they “play the game,” they won’t take such things too seriously when none of their peers are watching...
...Ideas appear there under the guise of narratives...
Vol. 41 • May 2008 • No. 4
