Skip to main content

Freedom that thinks

A small snip from Ratz's Introduction to Christianity:
For Christianity, the explanation of reality as a whole is not an all embracing conciousness or one single materiality; on the contrary, at the summit stands a freedom that thinks and, by thinking, creates freedoms, thus making freedom the structural form of all being.
I think that's terrific but I also read the two pages that lead up to it. Perhaps it looks like so much air to you, dear reader. It evades the pits of material determinism (a form of being that can't know itself can't be free; freedom that is the product of accident also cannot be free) and ideal determinism (a form of being utterly determined by another cannot be free). It posits that reality is self aware and, being self aware, is capable not only of exersizing freedom, but of granting it to its creations such that they are "made in God's image." An important caveat is that freedom cannot here be understood to mean "anything at all," but rather fulfilling one's nature in a way that is unique but still subject to the laws of creation. Just curious - is anyone else enjoying these posts from Ratzinger's book? Am I wasting my time typing them up?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Hiatus will be blogged

This hiatus thing isn't going to plan. As I'm reading (books and blogs) I find things I think are interesting, or things I would like an opinion on, and bingo, my hiatus is in a shambles. So, *coughs*, until further notice, I'm blogging again. The main editorial difference that I can see coming from my few weeks away is that I do not expect to resume posting six out of seven days a week. There could be, at any time and without warning, a break of a week or two between posts. Really, I think that is the only way I can start to get some books behind me, and is also inevitable in the summer season when one wants to get out and enjoy it all. Here's a few things that got my attention this past week. Chris Taylor is blogging once again and has recruited an air force for the Red Ensign Brigade. Heh. Dennis Prager asks, Are you a liberal? Anglicans and Catholics are getting closer to reconciling -over the role of Mary in the Christian faith. Quote: A working group c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghost in the machine

In writing up this post I have to mention that I am very impressed with the quality of discussion that one finds on blogs. This truly is a remarkable medium. Thanks go to all three of the bloggers mentioned here for providing such good reading and thinking for the rest of us to try and learn from. I have not had a chance to read all of the entries linked to here, but I do intend to. ***** George Will compares two views of man in his latest column . One is novelist Ian McEwan, who places the following words into the mouth of the leading character in his latest novel, Saturday : Endless and beautiful forms of life, such as you see in a common hedgerow, including exulted beings like ourselves, arose from physical laws, from war or nature, famine and death. This is the grandeur. And a bracing kind of consolation in the brief privilege of consciousness. This character is a neurosurgeon. The quote reminds me that there may be some truth to the observation that those in the biological and...
Post a Comment
Read more