The relationship of the Christian understanding of freedom to that which has provided the central thrust of the Enlightenment must necessarily be a critical one. Seen from a biblical perspective, a human being is not and can never be autonomous. Consequently, liberation in the Bible is always seen as a change of regime, or jurisdiction, from the false dominion to the true, from serving Pharaoh to serving Yahweh (Exod. 3: 13; 6: 6), from serving sin and death to serving God (Rom. 6: 20– 23). From the point of view of the Enlightenment, the biblical idea of freedom is paradoxical— a freedom of the one who serves the true master. From the point of view of the Bible, the freedom celebrated in the Enlightenment is the freedom offered by the serpent in Eden, the freedom to make one’s own decision about what is good. By accepting that offer, we put ourselves under the domination of powers that lead to destruction. We become, as Paul says, the slaves of sin. True freedom is a gift of grace given by the one who is in fact Lord; that gift, freely given, can only be received in freedom. It follows that the church cannot bear witness to that gift unless there is freedom to refuse it. Yet the church must still bear witness that this is the only true freedom: to belong wholly to the one by whom the space of freedom is created, and whose service is perfect freedom.

Newbigin, Lesslie (1988-06-01). Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (p. 141). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.