The “No Choice” Option
that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Romans 8:21 NASB
Slavery to corruption – If we’re going to understand Paul’s view of freedom, we will first need to understand Paul’s view of slavery. He calls himself a slave, not a bondservant as some translations suggest. His experience with the Messiah is not optional, nor is it self-directed. His choice of the Greek words, both here and in his own introduction, imply compulsory service. He doesn’t have a choice. It’s either serve or die. Now Paul suggests that the same thing is true for the creation. But not with regard to the Master, or even to God Himself. Paul tells us that the creation is under compulsory obligation to corruption.
Paul couldn’t have chosen a more emotional word for slavery. douleía was an affront to all Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world. “Greeks have a strong sense of freedom. Personal dignity consists of freedom. There is thus a violent aversion to bondage. Service may be rendered to the state, but by free choice. Slavery is scorned and rejected. This explains the fierceness with which the Greeks fought for political independence.”[1] The word belongs in the political arena—until it acquires a religious connotation. “It acquires this as Near Eastern religions win new adherents and in so doing change the Greek view of God and our relationship to him.”[2] Of course, Paul’s Jewish view is one of those Near Eastern religions. Paul puts God into the equation. It doesn’t change the aversion. It just makes “conversion” even more revolting. Paula Fredriksen is right. To become a follower of the Messiah meant much more than changing religious rituals. It meant leaving everything behind—ethnicity, cultic protection, family—and personal dignity, from a Greek perspective.
With this scandalous language as the opening, why would Paul dare to say that the creation is enslaved? And even worse, enslaved to phthorá, “corruption”? What Paul says makes perfect sense to the Greco-Roman mind; it seems like nonsense to us. Why? Because we think of corruption as a moral property. But that’s not what the Greek mind thinks. phthorá is simply the decay and destruction of all individual things. The cosmos continues, but each part of it eventually wears out and returns to nothingness. Of course, phthorá has personal overtones: depravity, disfigurement, injury, damage. But these are merely symptoms of a larger truth. The whole survives; the pieces do not. Every educated Greek knew that decay was the reality of this world. Nothing lasts forever. Paul points out an obvious truth—the universe itself is locked into the pattern of a slave; compulsory destruction. There is no real freedom in Nature. Nature will continue but everything in it will end in death. The real message of the world is destruction, not immortality. It’s the Second Law all over again.
Then Paul makes an astounding claim. Death isn’t the end, not even for the cosmos. Slavery will end for us and for our world. When? When glory arrives. Paul knows his audience. He doesn’t have to prove that the world and everything in it is enslaved. They know that. What he has to do is use this platform to venture forth into the mysteries of God’s glory. That’s something they never associated with words like douleía and phthorá. Paul isn’t reviewing their moral condition. He’s providing a philosophical answer to a deep question: Why?
Topical Index: douleía, slavery, phthorá, corruption, Nature, glory, Romans 8:21
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 183). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Ibid.
