2 of 2

Wary from his American sojourn, Solzhenitsyn returned home to a democratic Russia in 1994. According to a Christianity Today report, "His vision of Russia's future would seek to reverse the destructive force of 'freedom' understood within a nonreligious, relativist framework." It's a vision American evangelicals would do well to ponder, because Solzhenitsyn exposes how the culture dulls our theological senses.

Consider one commonly cited New Testament passage about freedom, Galatians 5:1: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Hearing that verse in America, where we waged war for independence from Britain and freedom for slaves, we naturally think about individual rights. Seen within the biblical context, however, freedom looks quite different. Freedom is not truly possible apart from Christ, and for those who are in Christ, it's not the goal. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:21 that the creation is in bondage to sin. Only God in Christ will set it free. He elaborates on freedom in Galatians 5:13. Christians must use their Calvary-bought freedom to serve one another in love. Likewise, the apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:16 that freedom is not license to sin but invitation to service.

When we understand freedom biblically, we more readily embrace God's resolve to work good even from bondage. God liberated Solzhenitsyn in the gulag. "It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good," Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago. "Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. … That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: "Bless you, prison!" I … have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: "Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!"

Collin Hansen is a CT editor at large and author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Previous Theology in the News columns are available on our site.

Charles Colson wrote about where we find ourselves three decades after Solzhenitsyn's famous speech at Harvard.

Christianity Today reported on Solzhenitsyn's return from exile in 1994.

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

August (Web-Only) 2008, Vol. 52