Are You Free?
September 21, 2017 By Ray Mills
Are you hindering someone else's freedom? Are you even free yourself?
In his new book Freedom in Resistance and Creative Transformation, CTS Professor Michael Miller argues that despite the claimed importance of freedom in the Christian faith—not to mention a host of other secular settings—there continues to be interpersonal, socio-political, and religious power hierarchies that keep some people dominant and others dominated.
Miller suggests that these hierarchies have been influenced by Christian teachings that deny freedom to human beings. Those teachings classify humanity as fallen, our own worst enemies and obligated to accept bondage to God.
Miller presents a case against this understanding of the human situation, citing and critically reviewing the Old and New Testaments. As an alternative, he promotes freedom that is finite and relational as being most compatible with the character of human beings that are partially self-creating and self-determining.
In an editorial review of Freedom in Resistance and Creative Transformation, CTS Professor Emeriti Clark Williamson writes, "The promise of Christian faith is that 'for freedom Christ has set us free.' Yet in the witness and theology of the church this promise is frequently hampered and often undermined by claims about God and humanity that serve instead to reflect and reinforce hierarchies of oppression. Michael Miller argues instead for views of God's creativity and humanity's limited self-creativity that make good on the promise of genuine freedom."
Freedom in Resistance and Creative Transformation is now available in the CTS Bookstore.
Filed Under: Faculty