Freedom for the Yet-to-Be: Theological Horizons of Future Generations Commissioners

The dominant legal and political frameworks for intergenerational justice, including Edith Brown Weiss’s influential principles, often focus on procedural safeguards that risk reinforcing present-day biases. This paper critiques such proceduralism through the lens of theological traditions that understand freedom not merely as autonomy but as a relational, covenantal responsibility to those who come after us. Drawing on Latour, Whiteside, Morton, and Rose, as well as biblical insights into covenant and eschatology, this paper argues for an expansion of intergenerational equity beyond anthropocentric and procedural constraints. Proposed Future Generations Commissioners are not merely a legal innovation but a recognition of freedom’s long arc – one that extends beyond the living to those yet to be born and the creation they will inherit. Case studies in governance models will illustrate how this broadened theological vision can reshape legal and political structures to embody a more radical, future-oriented freedom.