The Hope of the Believer . . .

SERVANTS OR SLAVES?  

When I was a graduate student at Harvard my major professor, Henry J. Cadbury, was a member of the committee that translated the Revised Standard Version, along with such stalwarts as Edgar J. Goodspeed. In one of Cadbury's classes the meaning of the Greek word doulos was discussed, and the professor noted that it was the common word for slave in New Testament times. One of the students, who was aware that the RSV committee had usually translated doulos as servant instead of slave, asked Cadbury why they did not translate the word according to its real meaning.

His answer startled me. "We did not have the courage," he said. He went on to say that the church was hardly prepared to accept the radical implication of the term slave, and so they followed other versions in using the more moderate term servant. Christians can accept the idea of being servants of Christ but not slaves of Christ.

And so the RSV, like most all translations, renders Ro. 1:1: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ" rather than "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ." Likewise in Jas. 1:1 it is "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" instead of slave. In 2 Tim. 2:24 it is "The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome" rather than the Lord's slave. In 2 Cor. 4:5 it is "your servants for Jesus sake" instead of "your slaves for Jesus sake," and in Rev. 19:5 it is "Praise our God, all you his servants" instead of slaves.

The word sundoulos, which means fellow slave, is treated the same way, as in Col. 1:7 where Epaphras is called "our beloved fellow servant" instead of a fellow slave. In Rev. 6:11 Christians are called "fellow servants" instead of fellow slaves.

On and on it goes, and the King James Version is worse than the RSV in avoiding the term slave. The KJV in fact translates doulos 127 times in the New Testament and never uses the word slave, which is really what it means. This led some naive social scientist, who relied only upon the KJV, to accuse the New Testament of ignoring the fact of slavery. Half of the world was in slavery and the New Testament does not even mention it, he charged. But that was because he was reading only of "servants" in the KJV. The New Testament actually refers to slavery in one way or another over 100 times.

To the credit of Cadbury and the RSV committee, they sometimes rendered doulos as slave, even as believers being slaves of Christ. This was when the context made it almost necessary, such as in 1 Cor. 7:22: "For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ." In Ro. 6:16-18 the RSV consistently renders doulos as slave: "Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." To use slave here, as the translator should, gives deeper meaning to the text

But the KJV uses servant in these texts, which robs the verses of some of their pungency. And this is generally the way doulos is treated by most all versions whenever it appears in the New Testament. We are thus led to conclude that we are to be mere servants in our commitment to Jesus Christ, not the more demanding role of slave, a term that was "scorned and rejected" by the Greeks of New Testament times, to quote Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

The Stoics, who were probably the most religious among the Greeks in their worship of Zeus, would never refer to themselves as slaves of God or Zeus, for it was too demeaning. It is remarkable that Christ and the early church reached into the most deplorable dimension of ancient culture, even into the slave galley itself, to borrow a term that would represent the believer's relationship to God and Christ. There was of course one crucial difference. The slave, sold on the auction block for a price, was involuntarily chattel property, while the Christian is a willing slave to Christ. Indeed, the Christian believes that it is only as a slave to Christ that he or she is really free.

The reason Prof. Cadbury gave for not always translating doulos according to its true meaning is a stunning indictment of how the church has allowed itself to be hoodwinked by its Western culture. The RSV committee did not have the courage to give the word its full impact because it was persuaded the church would not or could not see itself as slaves. Servants, perhaps, but not slaves.

To recover the pregnant meaning of this term could radically change the way we see ourselves as Christians. A slave had no will of his own, for his relation to his master was such that his mind always was "Not my will but thine be done." He lived for his master, not for himself. He never saw his work for the master as ever completed or that he deserved any kind of thanks or reward. Even when he did all that was commanded of him, he was still unprofitable. He was in fact his master's, and not his own, for he had been bought with a price.

Kittel's tells us that the essence of being a doulos is being completely dependent. The slave looks to his master for all of his needs. He need have no anxiety over any crisis, for the master will see to it. He has only one thing to do and that is to yield himself totally into the safekeeping of his master.

It is in this light that we can better understand such verses as, "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

You are not your own! That concept of voluntary enslavement draws the line between being a professed Christian and a real Christian. It means that we have a frame of reference far different from that of the world. When we are of the world we think in terms of self-interest; when we are of the we-are-not-our-own attitude we forget self and concern ourselves with the will of Christ. At heart we are to be martyrs for Christ, for our lives are not our own but his.

If indeed we think of ourselves as free men and women, we can heed the great truth of 1 Cor. 7:22: "He who is called while free is Christ's slave." — the Editor