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| Freedom to commit: capacity to say yes, yes to Christ; and capacity to say no, no to the devil. |
Joseph Ratzinger does not attempt to develop a system of thought, because he holds that there is no way to come up with a world formula, because the world includes the mystery of freedom. He gives an explanation of this in the context of answering Karl Rahner's attempt at a world synthesis by the following spiritual formulation: "He who...accepts his existence...says...Yes to Christ." (PCT,* 167)
The problem here is "mere facticity". (Ibid.) Christianity is not mere facticity but conversion. (PCT, 171) Man's greatness is outside of man and outside of this world; and, miraculously, in man, in the Person of Christ.
"'[T]he real problem with Rahner's synthesis'...is the fact that 'he has attempted too much. He has, so to speak, sought for a philosophical and theological world formula on the basis of which the whole of reality can be deduced cohesively from necessary causes.' Such a concept is evidently contrary to the mystery of freedom." Twomey Pope Benedict XVI: The Concience of our Age: A Theological Portrait, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007, 42
"Science recognizes today that there can be no world formula, since even in the realm of nature, as Jacques Monod has pointed out, there is more than mere necessity. 'A fortiori, there can be no spiritual world formula--that was also Hegel's basic error.' (PCT, 169). At the root of this problem is Rahner's understanding of freedom, which, according to Ratzinger, 'is proper to idealistic philosphy, a concept that, in reality, is appropriate to the absolute Spirit--to God--but not to man.'" (PCT, 169-70). Ibid., 42 n7.
*PCT: Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987.
Cf. "By...freedom...Christ has set us free." In other words. the freedom of Christ is the source of our freedom. ...fratres non sumus ancillae filii sed liberae qua libertate nos Christus liberavit. Galatas 4:31
This passage of scripture is typically translated "for freedom" rather than "from freedom." Probably to avoid the ambiguity of meaning away from freedom. No, rather, the context is that of child-bearing. Your mother is a free woman, not a slave. Therefore you are born from freedom. Your source is freedom. Since freedom is your mother, your source, you were made out of freedom, then your nature is freedom. It is a reference to the birth in Christ Jesus, by His blood, in baptism.