Freedom, Virtue, Redemption: What Are We Saved From?

"We have a sense that, actually, we do not have to be redeemed by Christianity but, rather, from Christianity," wrote Pope Benedict XVI in an outstanding essay first published in English last year with the title Salvation: More Than a Cliché? "There is an insistent feeling that, in truth, Christianity hinders our freedom and that the land of freedom can appear only when the Christian terms and conditions have been torn up." The question that the Pontiff Emeritus asks is this: if Christ came to save us, what has he saved us from? "Sin" is the obvious answer, but in pursuing this idea Benedict leads us to the point I just cited. Would it not have been better, he asks, to be redeemed from guilt? Does our salvation do no more than sentence us to atonement, dependence, and the constant struggle to measure up to an external standard of virtue? How can we say we're really free? Answering these could fill a library, of course, but they're not questions we should avoid.