The Christian’s Freedom: Servant of All, Partisan of the Poor
Hana Johnson ’07

In his Colloquium lecture, “God’s Freedom from and for the World,” George Stroup analyzed Shirley Guthrie’s understanding of the doctrine God’s sovereignty. He also explained how Guthrie’s views provided the impetus for his involvement in social and political affairs, particularly his advocacy for a change in the PC(USA)’s ordination standards.

Stroup began with a paradox. He quoted Guthrie’s concern with the triviality of doctrinal and ethical debates held in churches while so many people in the world are starving to death. Then Stroup questioned how Guthrie could himself have been involved in those debates. For an answer, Stroup looked to Guthrie’s discussion of the sovereignty of God in Guthrie’s book Always Being Reformed. Guthrie argued that we need to reinterpret our old understanding of the sovereignty of God, in which God looks like a heavenly tyrant free from any suffering that humans undergo. In response to such absolute power, humans might simply submit to whatever happens as the will of God. Guthrie rejects this notion because it derives from our philosophical musings about how we think absolute power ought to appear rather than from what the Bible actually tells us about God’s absolute power. In particular, the notion neglects Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, particularly as to how God’s power was reflected in Jesus’ crucifixion. We cannot simply think of God’s sovereignty as freedom from the world.

Instead, Stroup explained, Guthrie argued that we should adopt a Trinitarian understanding of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in which God is primarily free for the world. In this understanding, God’s sovereignty is essentially freedom only to love all people always. Humanity is not coerced or dominated by God’s power, but is liberated and enabled by it so that we can participate in God’s loving and just will, which will indeed be done. Moreover, God’s sovereignty means freedom to suffer with us and for us.

Stroup pointed out a possible weakness in Guthrie’s reinterpretation: do we have to give up the idea of God’s freedom from the world in order to affirm God’s freedom for the world? Stroup responded that this would be a misreading of Guthrie. Instead, Stroup suggested that Guthrie would say that God is both free from the world and free for the world. Guthrie was influenced on this point by Karl Barth, who argued that God is first and foremost free within Godself, which is to say that only God is able to determine who God is. This means we should not identify God, God’s will, or God’s kingdom with any particular religious, political, or social institution, program, or ideology. We know this because Jesus was an advocate for a particular kind of people—the poor and marginalized—and not for a particular institution or program. Therefore, we should not make any particular social or political issue more important or more absolute than the Gospel. We need to recognize when we are turning our agendas into idols.

God’s freedom from and for the world are inseparable, Stroup concluded, adding that through God’s freedom we are graciously given our own Christian freedom, enabling us to be partisans for the least of these, our brothers and sisters. This partisanship is not the same as an unqualified allegiance to any social or political program. Rather it is a call to be servants of all and at the same time partisans of the poor and the marginalized. This is a Christian freedom that was lived out in the life and witness of Shirley Guthrie.