Apokatastasis: Four MeditationsI am going to do so again. Given how very radically the stan -
<lard late modern concept of freedom ( we can call it the "lib-
ertarian" model) differs from that of most of ancient and
mediaeval intellectual culture, I want to make sure that the
matter has been made perfectly clear. So here I want to gather
up the half-statements I have left littering the path behind me
to this point, and try to integrate them into a somewhat more
continuous pattern of claims. One need not, incidentally, pre-
sume any aspect of Christian doctrine in order to grasp the
logical issues involved; but, if one does happen to presuppose
certain things intrinsic to the Christian view of reality, one has
already tacitly conceded enough to make the case I want to
advance. Above all, a Christian is more or less obliged to be-
lieve that there is such a thing as an intrinsic nature in ratio-
nal spirits: We are created, that is to say, according to a divine
design, after the divine image, oriented toward a divine pur-
pose, and thus are fulfilled in ourselves only insofar as we can
achieve the perfection of our natures in union with God. There
alone our true happiness lies. This inevitably places Christian
thought in the classical moral and metaphysical tradition that
assumes that true freedom consists in the realization of a com -
plex nature in its own proper good ( the "intellectualist" model
of freedom, as I have called it above). Freedom is a being's
power to flourish as what it naturally is, to become ever more
fully what it is. The freedom of an oak seed is its uninterrupted
growth into an oak tree. The freedom of a rational spirit is its
consummation in union with God. Freedom is never then the
mere "negative liberty" of indeterminate openness to every-
thing; if rational liberty consisted in simple indeterminacy of
the will, then no fruitful distinction could be made between
personal agency and pure impersonal impulse or pure chance.
And this classical and Christian understanding of freedom re-