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Freedom, Salvation And The Danger Of Coercion In Faith

Freedom, Salvation And The Danger Of Coercion In Faith

Last updated on: April 1, 2026 at 1:19 am by Henry Karlson

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Freedom, Salvation And The Danger Of Coercion In Faith 2026-04-01T01:19:52-05:00 Henry Karlson

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One of Christ’s temptations was to embrace the way of power, undermining the freedom of everyone else. Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Temptation of Christ by the Devil / Wikimedia Commons

God entices us to embrace what is good and true through the beauty of the truth. Such beauty should bring us back to God, because, when we see it, we should find ourselves attracted to the beauty of God’s divine glory. God wants our love. To have it, we must be free. Love is not love if it is forced. Those who would tell us that God acts out of divine power instead of love, denying our free will, do not properly understand what Christianity tells us of God’s ways. God does not force us to act against our will, which is why God will not compel us to act in a certain way by mean of divine power, as St. Hilary of Poitiers explained:

God has taught, rather than compelled, the knowledge of himself and acquires authority for his ordinances by awe at the operations of things heavenly, disdaining the acknowledgment of a coerced will.[1]

Christians should keep this in mind, and try to follow God’s example as they act in the world, seeking to make it better. They should do what they can to help people do what is right and just by revealing to them why it is better for them to do so, and in that way, voluntarily do what is good. Now, to be sure, when dealing with grave social injustices, that is, when injustices threaten society as a whole, that society might have to act, forcing those who do wrong, to stop and, if possible, to reverse course and pay back those they have harmed. But, in general, society should give as much freedom as possible, even as Christians, embracing the way of God and God’s love and freedom, should want people to have as much freedom as possible. Indeed, Christians should realize that our freedom is a gift from God, which is why they must affirm it, for in doing so, we respect God (and with it, the dignity of every person):

But to the Creator of our nature, it would have seemed unprofitable, even unjust, to deprive our nature, by a measure such of this, of the greatest goods. For since the human person has been created like God, and has been made blessed by the ability to determine his own acts (for being autonomous and independent is what is proper to the divine blessedness), for him to be led forcefully by constraint, would deprive him of his dignity. Surely if [God] led human nature– which, using its own power of self-determination, had voluntarily reached out for something it should have avoided – away from what pleaded it by using force and compulsion, this step would be a deprivation of [humanity’s] most outstanding good, a loss of the honor that made them like God.[2]

This is why the Council of Sardica (presided by Ossius of Cordova, who also presided at the Council of Nicea), as reported by St. Hilary of Poitiers, wrote to the emperor, Constantius II, telling him that he should govern the state in such a way as to maintain religious liberty:

Your unique and wonderful wisdom understands that the unwilling and reluctant should not, and ought not, to be driven or compelled to submit or yield under duress to those who are ceaseless in scattering the corrupt seeds of counterfeit doctrine. For that reason you govern the state by elaborate and wholesome plans, you keep watch and are on your guard to see that all whom you rule possess sweet liberty. In no other way could troubles be quieted, divisions mended, save by each one’s having full power to live unrestricted by the exigency of a state of bondage. [3]

Religious liberty is an important concept, one which Christians appreciated and promoted when their own liberty was in question. Sadly, it was also something which many Christians, especially those in positions of authority, lost sight of over time. Many Christians began to see it was their role to compel people to be like them, to believe like them, to act like them, and they tried to justify it by saying they were being charitable, saving people’s soul. Of course, they could do that; while they might be able to force how people act, they could not force them to change their private beliefs. While, again, externally, someone could say they agree to the Christian faith and convert, no one but God and those they tell would know their real beliefs. Christians should have always followed the way of those Christian apologists who promoted religious liberty, realizing that by doing do, they followed the way God acts with humanity. But, as we see, too many Christians forgot this as they fell for one of the great temptations, a temptation which Christ had in the desert, and one which he rejected, that is a temptation to embrace the way of power:

The most perilous temptation is not that of bread, but of power, of that coercion with which Judas wanted to define Christ after his own image. Coercion upon conscience and upon human freedom really is a diabolic matter: the devil entered into Judas, and he became a means to exercise coercion upon Christ. [4]

Christ could have used his power to force people to be saved, and in doing so, give in to that temptation; but in doing so, he would have affirmed what the devil wanted him to affirm, that is, it is better to enslave the world for its own good than to give it freedom. God made us free, and our salvation should reinforce that freedom. This is why God does not save us against our will. This is why Christ works in and with us for our salvation in a way which affirms our freedom instead of denies it:

God’s Son, in his omnipotence (equal to the Father through the same essence) could in fact have rescued the human race from the devil’s sway by nothing more than a command from his will. It was especially in conformity with his divine work, however, that the hostility of that enemy’s wickedness should be overcome by what he had conquered, and that the liberty of one nature should be restored through the same nature by which the captivity of all had been brought into effect. [5]

God works with and by way of religious liberty so as to make sure salvation is something which people want instead of something forced upon them. Now, does that mean, there will be some who are not saved? It is possible, but we can hope that, when everyone truly understands what is being offered, when they see the beauty of God’s glory, and when they feel the presence of God’s forgiving love coming towards then, they will embrace that glory, desire what is being offered, and accept it. This is why we can hope that everyone, even the toughest of sinners, might end up saved, while denying those theories of universalism which has God force salvation on all (which, after all, is what the church objects to when it rejects universalism, and not the notion that all might end up saved).

[1] St. Hilary of Poitiers, “Against Valens and Usracius” in Hilary of Poitiers: Conflicts of Conscience and Law In the Fourth-century Church. Trans. Lionel R. Wickham (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 67.

[2] St. Gregory of Nyssa, “A Discourse on the Dead” in On Death and Eternal Life. Trans. Brian E. Daley (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022), 23.

[3] St. Hilary of Poitiers, “Against Valens and Usracius,” 65 [Address of the Synod of Sardica to the Emperor Constantius].

[4] Sergius Bulgakov, Judas Iscariot – Apostle – Betrayer. Trans. Mike Whitton (No City Listed: Independently Published, 2023), 78.

[5] St Leo the Great, Sermons. Trans. Jane Patricia Freeland CSJB and Agnes Josephine Conway SSJ (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1996), 272 [Sermon 62].

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