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Hello in St Paul's letter to the Galatians he wrote, Christ has set us free.

Stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

This conception of redemption as freedom from bondage is crucial for Judeo-Christian thought.

In Christianity, the liberation is from original sin, a transformation from fallenness to salvation, not just for mankind but for individual human beings.

The content of that journey is moral, gaining redemption by becoming better.

So why is the idea of transformation so appealing to human beings. To what extent were Christian

views of redemption borrowed from Judaism? How did thinkers such as Marx and Freud interpret

the concept of redemption and can redemption retain its value in a world without God.

Does its continuing power signify a deep psychological need in mankind.

With me to discuss redemption is the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harris,

Janet Soskis, reader in philosophical theology at Cambridge

University and Stephen Mulhall, fellow and tutor in philosophy at Oxford University.

Richard Harris, can you explain exactly, as exactly as you can, what we mean by Christian redemption?

Well in the Hebrew scriptures there's a great sense of pain and anguish about human life

and a longing that God would intervene to put right everything that is

wrong where he would overcome evil and vindicate the good and Christians believed from the word go that this time had dawned that in

Jesus God was acting to vindicate the good to overcome evil and they believe that the

consummation of that process would be would be very soon when it would be

revealed and all would be radiant if you like to the glory and the beauty and the love of God

revealed in Jesus and everything that was evil and nasty would simply be overcome.

...