On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Because we are imperfect, we see the universe in ways appropriate to the limits of the human body. This is positional knowledge that God cannot have. Unlike God, we can choose to see ourselves and the world through others of our own kind. A familiar biblical verse makes Stein’s point about knowledge through the Leib of another: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). God has no Leib and is aware of the attendant limitations: “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (Genesis 6:3). Stein put it this way: “We have to admit that if God rejoiced over the repentance of a sinner, he would experience no pounding of the heart.” Our hearts do pound from excitement or exertion. Unlike God, we can be free, in the precise sense of turning the restraints of our universe into opportunities. God knows no adversity, and adversity has uses. Facing a law of necessity He does not face, we expand a law of freedom He does not know. And so: The limits of an object are its limits. The capabilities of God are His capabilities. The limits of a Leib are its capabilities. Jesus of Nazareth certainly had a Leib.

More philosolphy and theology of lieb and what it means for the concept of freedom.