The Changed Meaning of Liberty

Historically, liberty meant a religious privilege or immunity freedom from state control because God alone is Lord. Churches, families, and professions possessed protected spheres of life grounded in Christian faith, where the state had no jurisdiction. This understanding survived into early American constitutional thought as “privileges and immunities.” With the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, liberty was redefined. It no longer meant immunity under God’s law, but autonomous self-expression: the right to do whatever one pleases so long as others are not “hurt.” Once God was removed as the definer of man and morality, man and ultimately the state became the new authority deciding what liberty means, who counts as a person, and whose freedoms matter. This new, humanistic liberty led not to freedom but to tyranny. When liberty is detached from God’s law, it becomes license, violence, and finally state control. True liberty, Scripture teaches, comes only from Christ and is grounded in God’s sovereignty, law, and order not in autonomous human will.