Free to Make Mistakes

Spirituality Column #140
July 14, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Free to Make Mistakes
By Bob Walters

Occasionally we don’t field a fact cleanly.

I recently noted in print that the word "freedom" is not in the Declaration of Independence, and that the word "liberty" is not in the Bible.

Right on the first point; wrong on the second.

An alert reader pointed out that every day the top of the front page of the Indianapolis Star – the banner – has the verse from II Cor 3:17, “… where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

That’s the King James Version (KJV); I did my look-up in the New International Version (NIV). Whoops. “Liberty,” which appears a couple dozen times in the KJV, is translated as “freedom” in the NIV.

On further review, the word “liberty” does appear in the NIV, but only once and it’s buried in the Old Testament, Leviticus 25:10, in a verse regarding the 50-year jubilee of debt forgiveness and property return.

As penance for the mistake, I went to ScriptureText.com and looked up the Greek words for “liberty” and “freedom.” It turns out they are mostly interchangeable – though subtly distinct – variations of “eleutheria.”

With 13 variations of “eleutheria” sprinkled in 39 New Testament verses, it’s easy to drop in “liberty” for “freedom,” and vice versa.

And if you ever wondered why Greek Bible scholars are a breed apart, they have to know exact grammatical construction to even come close to bringing Ancient Greek into modern English. For example, the grammatical tense of “eleutherothentes” (“being made free” in Romans 6:18, 22) is Aorist Passive Participle Nominative Plural Masculine.

“Aorist,” if you’re curious, refers to an action that happened but doesn’t have an end, like gaining one’s freedom. The rest of it – Passive Participle, etc. – is taught in eighth grade English on a day most students probably take a nap.

Grammatically perfect Classical Greek notwithstanding, my overall point is that liberty, as we understand personal liberty and “rights,” is a humanist concept, not a Biblical concept. And freedom’s author is not the Declaration of Independence … or the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, for that matter.

Jesus Christ is the author of our freedom. We are free in Christ, and we are free of our sin, because Christ died to give us freedom.

He died so that we would know the Father, and so that our faith would overcome any mistakes we might make along the way.

Mea culpa.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests going outside ourselves to find right and wrong. God gives us the freedom to search; we pray for the wisdom to find.