slavery & freedom, corruption & glory
Because the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of the corruption unto the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
[Romans 8.21; translation mine]
This is an interesting text on a wide variety of levels, not least of which is the central point, viz. that just as God’s people look forward to an eschatological hope, so does the creation itself.
In my reading today, though, the thing that intrigued me was the parallelism.
I think I’ve seen some translations render thn eleutherian ths doxhs as “the glorious freedom,” and while that is a grammatically possible (and very Hebraic) translation, it is an unfortunate weakening of doxa here. Paul is not talking simply about how wonderful freedom is, and our frequent usages of terms like “wonderful,” “marvelous,” and “glorious” as interchangeable superlatives is bound to get us off track.
In truth, the two phrases “from the slavery of the corruption” and “unto the freedom of the glory” are direct antithetic parallels, and just as “corrupt slavery” won’t work for the former, neither will “glorious freedom” work for the latter. The contrast is between “corruption” (elaborated in the preceding verses as “mortality” – death-subjection, and is posited in particular of the body in 8.11′s ta thnhta somata; thnhta is closely related to thanatos, the primary Greek word for death).
Given this, just as corruption here is synonymous with death-subjection, so glory is synonymous with resurrection (or “resurrectedness”). The genitive is not merely a superlative adjective; it is very much the defining noun for the freedom in question.
Over the course of Romans 5-8, we are given a two-stage resolution to the problem of death incurred by Adam and inflicted upon the race. Paul says that the fall constituted all men as sinners, subject to Sin (the capitalization here is intentional, because Paul’s description is not simply of particular wrongs committed, but Sin as a dominion or even as a lord).
The first stage has come. Already in the present, the believer is “not under Torah but under grace,” with the implication that “Sin shall have no dominion [lordship] over you” (Rom 6.14). (Nomos/Torah here is shorthand for the old creation; as Paul explains elsewhere – e.g. Gal 4 – Torah is among the constitutive elements of the first kosmos.) Already we walk in newness of life, because we have been joined to Christ not only in His death but also His resurrection (6.4).
And yet, thoughout, the second stage is interwoven as something “not yet,” as something promised. In the context of saying that sin shall have no dominion over us, he makes this rather paradoxical statement: “Therefore let not Sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you would obey their passions” (6.12).
While union with Christ means a transference of dominions brought about by salvation history (note 6.14 again), it nonetheless remains a fact that our bodies are death-subject, and their “native” passions belong to Sin.
However we interpret Romans 7, there is an analogy and indeed a strong thread that runs between the old creation from which we have been released, and our bodies, so that “body of death” (cf 7.24) can refer either to the corporate and total life of the believer under Torah, or to the present life of the new covenant believer as one yet living in a “mortal body.”
We should not think that Paul is being dualistic in the Greek sense of that term. It is not at all that he is anti-creational, or thinks that body is bad and spirit is good. If Paul were anti-creational, he would not say what he does in 8.21; nor would he place the tremendous accent upon bodily resurrection which he does.
Rather, Paul’s point is salvation-historical. It concerns what facets of redemption have and have not been brought into present reality. One aspect of us has been redeemed (“in Him we have redemption through His blood,” Eph 1.7), while another aspect has not (“we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” Rom 8.23). As the apostle says in 2 Cor 4, the (current) outer man is “perishing” (corrupting, dying), even while the inner man is being renewed.
Paul succinctly says here that those whom God foreknew are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son (8.29). This conformity has already occurred in principle and is occurring in practice even now, both as gift and mandate (cf 12.2: do not be conformed to this present kosmos, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, which must in turn be aligned with 1 Cor 2, where Paul says we have the mind of Christ).
But this “already” conformity excepts our bodies, whose conformity to Christ is by promise, and refers to the consummation: “who will transform our lowly body [and] conform it to the body of His glory, according to the working of His power even to subject all things to Himself” (Phi 3.21). Even as in His death and resurrection, Christ has effected the transference of lordship from Sin to Himself, that same power of subjecting all things to Himself will conform our bodies to His own, so that the mastery of His resurrection over us will be complete.
And not only over us. Coming back to Rom 8.21, that mastery will also be over “the creation itself.” No more will the creation be a decaying creation that we pollute and deface; when we are liberated from our death-bodies, the creation will be liberated too. One may say that the creation will be liberated from our death-bodies, since so often it is our sin which destroys it, but what we learn elsewhere is more total even than that. Even as glory for us is not simply having death removed from our present state, so glory for the creation will mean newness. The second stage of redemption will be complete, and it will be comprehensive.