„Divine Spirit and Human Freedom“, in: Michael Welker (Hg.), Quests for Freedom: Biblical – Historical – Contemporary, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2015, 391-403.
The plasticity of the human brain and the versatility of the human mind are extremely impressive. The capacity of the human spirit to host huge realms of memory and imagination, to keep memories and imaginations latent or to activate them, to share and to communicate them, can evoke strong impressions of individual freedom. The ability to communicate emotional, rational, cognitive and voluntative powers, to connect and to intensify them, and to shape natural and social environments generates feelings of shared and communal freedom. But the many experiences of limits to transforming imaginations and thoughts into action, the many experiences of disagreements and conflicts in social life, experiences of self-jeopardy and self-endangerment require the complicated discernment between illusions of freedom and reliable experiences of freedom.