The Cost of Cheap Freedom and the Liberation of Discipleship

This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. Describing the freedom associated with market relations, as conceived by F. A. Hayek, as a negative and cheap form of freedom primarily exercised in a freedom from outside interference, I discuss the cost of fully embracing this kind of freedom to the common life of a society and its constituents, identifying its true price in pervasive fragmentation, animosity, and injustice. I will then contrast this view of freedom with the positive freedom of discipleship described as the new way of life (κοινωνíα) koinonia for God’s people in Acts 2. In conclusion, I argue that the liberation of discipleship can ultimately free us from the economic enslavement to which we have become so accustomed.