Dependent freedom

In God and the Crisis of Freedom , Richard Bauckham offers this superb example of freedom and self-creation: “If I make myself, for example, into a brilliant musician, then certainly I am exercising a real freedom to make all the choices, some no doubt very hard, that lead to this. But this freedom is entirely dependent, not only immediately and obviously, on being born with musical talent and having the opportunities to develop it (which have to be available even if one has to struggle to avail oneself of them). It is also dependent on a whole range of other facts about my circumstances that one would normally take for granted (but precisely for granted, that is, given!). For example, that there is music and that my culture has a musical tradition in which I can learn to love and to play music. Becoming a brilliant musician is therefore much more fundamentally gift than achievement. The same would be true of becoming a good parent, or a good friend, or just a good person. This is not to denigrate the achievement. But it is to recognize the priority of grace (to use the theological word for gift) to all human achievement. Pride and joy in the achievement are not in the least diminished by recognizing, with thankfulness and joy, that grace that made it possible.”

Prevenient grace is no theological anomaly, but the natural order of the world.