January 22, 2025

Inward and Outward Freedom

Are people living in the free societies of the Western world really as free as they suppose? Christians know that you can’t answer that question simply by pointing to the presence of political and legal safeguards against tyranny or petty intolerance. We understand that human beings are naturally enslaved to their sinful predilections, and no law or constitution can alter that basic fact. You’ll either serve God or some other master, whether it's Caesar or the corrupt desires of your own heart.

"Free" people, then, are never free in the highest, best sense. It hardly follows, however, that tangible, official encroachments on one’s individual liberties should be met with a shoulder shrug, on the blithe assumption that you were already unfree to begin with.

Brad Littlejohn, founder of the Davenant Institute, is probably more willing than most Christian conservatives to countenance robust government action aimed at securing the genuine freedom that comes from living as God wills us to live—even at the cost of eroding the political, economic, and religious freedoms most Americans celebrate. That willingness explains some of the unease present in David VanDrunen’s review of Littlejohn’s new book, Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License. VanDrunen, a professor at Westminster Seminary California, credits Littlejohn for his insights on a Christian ideal of freedom, even as he questions some of the book’s applications to the current scene.

"Littlejohn’s work has a great many strengths," writes VanDrunen. "One of its overarching themes might be framed as a choice: Would you rather be inwardly free from bondage to sin while remaining outwardly unfree, or enjoy maximal outward freedom while remaining inwardly enslaved? Consider the virtuous Christian locked in prison for his faith and the ‘free’ American addicted to alcohol, pornography, or shopping. Littlejohn deserves commendation for clearly explaining why the first scenario is preferable to the second.

"A related and equally helpful theme running through the book is that a society with many outward freedoms will function well only if its citizens are virtuous, or inwardly free. As Littlejohn puts it, ‘a free government … depends on a virtuous people.’ He notes that citizens capable of governing themselves won’t need draconian laws or ubiquitous policing (chapter 4), that people who are honest in business won’t require numerous economic regulations (chapter 6), and that a community marked by the virtue of tolerance can exist peacefully amid differences when granted religious liberty (chapter 7). Only morally mature people will use outward freedoms well. Outwardly free societies with morally immature people face many troubles. Littlejohn also deserves credit for highlighting these important truths.

"Because Littlejohn deals with so many issues that intersect with competing claims about liberty, most readers will probably find themselves arguing with him at one point or another. For my part, I wonder if, in his understandable zeal to expose dangerous false promises in what we typically call the ‘free market’ and ‘religious liberty,’ he has understated the genuine goodness of these freedoms and granted too much authority to civil leaders to constrain them for a nebulous ‘common good.’

"To be fair, Littlejohn seems to assume a readership prone to be naively enthusiastic about free markets and religious liberty, and he wishes to challenge them. Had he envisioned theocratic socialists as his primary audience, his emphases undoubtedly would have differed. Littlejohn also isn’t overly political, in the sense of prescribing specific public-policy positions, and when he does venture into this territory, he ordinarily identifies both strengths and weaknesses of various opinions. Moreover, he states that prudence often advises civil officials not to exercise all the power they have in principle."

Puritan Wars in Early New England

The title of Matthew Tuininga’s new book, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People, is based on a striking and disconcerting fact. Over the course of Puritan history, two Puritan spokesmen were recorded using this phrase—"war of the lord"—to describe undertakings that might seem antithetical to one another. The first sought a spiritual war on behalf of native residents who needed the gospel. The second cheered a literal war in which English settlers subjected those same natives to violent displacement.

Tuininga, a professor at Calvin Theological Seminary, argues against framing these calls to "war" as a glaring hypocrisy within the Puritan worldview. The more uncomfortable reality, he suggests, is that high-minded evangelistic campaigns and episodes of military aggression belonged to the same underlying mission.

Reviewing the book for CT is John G. Turner, a history professor at George Mason University and the author, among other works, of They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty.

Here’s how he concludes his review:

"The Wars of the Lord is an antidote to contemporary political debates about the American past, which are not so much about the facts of history as about the relative importance placed on them. When it comes to 17th-century New England, should one focus on English settlements and the development of their religious and political institutions? Or on the Native peoples and their resistance to English conquest? How much time should one spend on the ‘deplorable consequences’ for Natives versus the opportunities that drew waves of European immigrants to New England?

"Tuininga demonstrates that the best response to these and related questions is simply to write good history. In its message, moreover, The Wars of the Lord is an appropriate mixture of thanks and lament. Natives ‘lamented, and still lament,’ he concludes, ‘the injustices and tragedies that devastated their people and the way Christianity was used to justify it.’ Conversion did not erase the sting of conquest. At the same time, Native Christians remained ‘thankful for the gospel and the hope it provided.’

"There is no reason 21st-century American Christians should not partake of these mixed emotions when reflecting on their nation’s past. It is hardly surprising that English colonists, despite their professed allegiance to Jesus Christ, put their own interests above those of the peoples they displaced. After all, as the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, ‘The good news of the gospel is not the law that we ought to love one another.’ We, like our forebears, often fail to do so. ‘The good news of the gospel is that there is a resource of divine mercy which is able to overcome a contradiction within our souls, which we cannot ourselves overcome.’ Thanks be to God."

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

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Cover of the January / February 2025 Issue

This first issue of 2025 exemplifies how reading creates community, grows empathy, gives words to the unnamable, and reminds us that our identities and relationships proceed from the Word of God and the Word made flesh. In this issue, you’ll read about the importance of a book club from Russell Moore and a meditation on the bookends of a life by Jen Wilkin. Mark Meynell writes about the present-day impact of a C. S. Lewis sermon in Ukraine, and Emily Belz reports on how churches care for endangered languages in New York City. Poet Malcolm Guite regales us with literary depth. And we hope you’ll pick up a copy of one of our CT Book Award winners or finalists. Happy reading!

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Inward and Outward Freedom

Puritan Wars in Early New England

Would You Rather Be Free from Sin or from State Regulation?

Pilgrim Charity and Pilgrim Cruelty Aren’t Easily Separated