Freedom of achievement: my own expression for freedom as the ability to achieve your goal. If you have the parts to a radio, then getting assembly instructions will give you to make that which you desire to make. This notion of freedom shows up in Augustine and Aquinas, but gets replaced in the popular mind later on with...
freedom of indifference: not being predetermined to act or to act this way rather than another: this freedom is a negative freedom, at least as described. It may also be incoherent. The point in the ramblings below is that I replace freedom of indifference with something that at a superficial level LOOKS like it, but is fundamentally positive.
We see this positivity if we consider the two following freedoms that can be attributed to God:
1. God's freedom in being able to love and enjoy God's own Being.
2. God's freedom in creating rather than not creating and in creating this world rather than another.
Craftsman's analogous freedom
Way back when I was teaching a brilliant seminarian at St. Mary's (named Ross, I think), I was cornered in a discussion about how human freedom is involved in sin.... I wish I could remember how the discussion went, but I ended up making two or three points that satisfied him.
The first was (if I'm not glossing over the past with my present speculations a bit too much) the distinction between God's eminent freedom in being completely happy, and God's freedom as the Creator (both in originally making the world begin to be and in continually sustaining it in existence. Obviously the two are related to each other and eminent freedom is in a sense prior to creative freedom. Furthermore, creative freedom refers back to the other. God creates ultimately to enjoy what has been created, and that enjoyment can't really be teased apart from the God's eminent freedom.
Again, I regret that I forget exactly how the argument went, but the second point was, roughly speaking, that human freedom has the same two-fold distinction.
The third point was, then, that human sin can best be understood as a faulty exercise of our creative freedom: is making a mess of things in the way a craftsman might do with the materials that have been given. Now I can see how dangerous it is to instrumentalize human behavior, as if our mission were to produce some stuff. But I don't think my original point made that mistake.
In any case, I recall that I in some way made (or thought to myself) the final point that when we sin there is a disorder in the way we relate TWO created things to each other, as if they were like two points that determine a line, but in the case of sin, it points in the wrong direction. When our actions are God-like, then the way in which we relate creatures to each other is likewise analogous to putting a line through two points, but in this case the direction is correct.
This is all fuzzy in my head: I remember thinking it was worth remembering... I only wish I was blogging a lot back then.
freedom of indifference: not being predetermined to act or to act this way rather than another: this freedom is a negative freedom, at least as described. It may also be incoherent. The point in the ramblings below is that I replace freedom of indifference with something that at a superficial level LOOKS like it, but is fundamentally positive.
We see this positivity if we consider the two following freedoms that can be attributed to God:
1. God's freedom in being able to love and enjoy God's own Being.
2. God's freedom in creating rather than not creating and in creating this world rather than another.
Craftsman's analogous freedom
Way back when I was teaching a brilliant seminarian at St. Mary's (named Ross, I think), I was cornered in a discussion about how human freedom is involved in sin.... I wish I could remember how the discussion went, but I ended up making two or three points that satisfied him.
The first was (if I'm not glossing over the past with my present speculations a bit too much) the distinction between God's eminent freedom in being completely happy, and God's freedom as the Creator (both in originally making the world begin to be and in continually sustaining it in existence. Obviously the two are related to each other and eminent freedom is in a sense prior to creative freedom. Furthermore, creative freedom refers back to the other. God creates ultimately to enjoy what has been created, and that enjoyment can't really be teased apart from the God's eminent freedom.
Again, I regret that I forget exactly how the argument went, but the second point was, roughly speaking, that human freedom has the same two-fold distinction.
The third point was, then, that human sin can best be understood as a faulty exercise of our creative freedom: is making a mess of things in the way a craftsman might do with the materials that have been given. Now I can see how dangerous it is to instrumentalize human behavior, as if our mission were to produce some stuff. But I don't think my original point made that mistake.
In any case, I recall that I in some way made (or thought to myself) the final point that when we sin there is a disorder in the way we relate TWO created things to each other, as if they were like two points that determine a line, but in the case of sin, it points in the wrong direction. When our actions are God-like, then the way in which we relate creatures to each other is likewise analogous to putting a line through two points, but in this case the direction is correct.
This is all fuzzy in my head: I remember thinking it was worth remembering... I only wish I was blogging a lot back then.
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