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On Human Nature: Freedom, Equality, or Relatedness?

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In his book Foolishness to Greeks, Lesslie Newbigin argues that the central value of democracy is freedom, and that in America this takes on a particularly individualistic flare. Conversely, Newbigin asserts, the central value of socialism is equality though it’s hard to discern what this means in practice since there has been no example of a truly socialistic (or communistic) nation as these terms were conceived by Marx, Engels, and those who followed after them.

Contrasting these divergent worldviews with the teaching of the Bible, Newbigin suggests that there is a third way. “From its first page to its last, the Bible is informed by a vision of human nature for which neither freedom nor equality is fundamental; what is fundamental is relatedness…Human beings reach their true end in such relatedness, in bonds of mutual love and obedience that reflect the mutual relatedness in love that is the being of the Triune God himself. Neither freedom nor equality are words that can take us to the heart of the matter” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986, page 118-19).

Newbigin is not saying that freedom or equality are unimportant but rather that they are not at the core of human nature. Like the God in whose image we are made, relatedness, or interdependence, is central to why we exist, how we are designed to function, and how we obtain joy and bear fruit in life. Life is not about being my own man, or about being utterly equal with every other person (where equality is conceived as sameness), but about being one with Christ and those who are in Christ for the glory of Christ and the common good.

I don’t have the time to spell all of this out, but please reflect carefully on 1 Corinthians 12:27, for I think it strikes the most genius balance in the universe between the individual and the whole. Speaking of the church Paul writes, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

This sentence at once asserts that the fundamental nature of human beings, being made in the image of God, is what Newbigin calls “relatedness.” And yet it affirms that such relatedness does not dissolve the individual. The vision of God for his church, and indeed for humanity, is that we be profoundly interrelated with Christ and then, as a consequence, with one another. As this truth infiltrates our hearts, our thinking, feeling, and acting toward God and one another will conform to his will. And as we conform to his will, our joy will rise because we'll learn to live in a way that honors our fundamental nature and glorifies our Creator. 

So, may God grant us insight and the desire to do his will, and to live in such a way as to honor our fundamental nature.

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