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Bible Dictionaries
Bondage
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or ‘Bondage’ in the English Version uniformly represents δουλεία, which can equally well be rendered ‘slavery.’ Note the Vulgate servitus and Wyclif’s corresponding term, ‘servage.’
1. So far as literal slavery is meant in the use of this and kindred expressions, see article Slavery.
2. ‘Bondage’ has an important figurative use in the Epistles in relation to spiritual experience. It denotes the state of sin. The place filled by slavery in the social structure of that age made such a figure natural and forceful. St. Paul conspicuously employs this description of the sinful state in his discussion of human sin in Romans 5-7. It is evident that he was far more deeply interested in man’s spiritual bondage and his deliverance than in slavery as an institution open to challenge in the cause of humanity. No slavery in his view was comparable with that of a man ‘sold under sin,’ whether lord or slave. This became a commonplace in the thought of the early Church. The writings of St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom notably furnish many instances of its vigorous enforcement. Similar sentiments, it should be added, were held by Plotinus (3rd cent.) and the Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria. (In the NT note the description of man as enslaved to sin, Romans 6:17; or to passions and pleasures. Titus 3:3; cf. Titus 2:3.)
The bondage of the will (‘the will, deprived of liberty, is led or dragged by necessity to evil’ [Calvin, Inst. iii. 2]), a theologoumenon figuring so largely in the Augustinian and the Reformed theology, strains Pauline teaching and finds little or no illustration in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
3. The righteous life, on the other hand, is also described as a bondage (Romans 6:18). This servitude, which is that of the δοῦλοι of God, or of Christ (1 Corinthians 7:22 f. etc.), is freedom in relation to that of sin (as per se, cf. ‘Whose service is perfect freedom,’ Book of Common Prayer), and vice versa. But St. Paul surely uses a gentle irony in representing sinners as ‘free’ from the bondage of righteousness (Romans 6:20).
4. The term is used of other forms of religious life in contrast to the liberty of the Christian life. Thus in the allegory, wrought out in Rabbinical fashion, in Galatians 4:21 ff., Judaism spells bondage; the gospel, freedom. In Galatians 4:3 and Galatians 4:8-10 slavery ὑπὸ τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου includes apparently reference both to Jewish legalism and to Gentile devotion to false gods. In this connexion must be noted Romans 8:15 (cf. Galatians 4:4-7) with its striking contrast between the servile temper of fear characterizing life under law, so vividly depicted in Romans 7, and the filial spirit of happy confidence pertaining to Christian experience. For another instance of the association of bondage with fear and the antithesis between the filial and the servile condition, see Hebrews 2:14 f.
5. In Romans 8:21 all creation is represented as being in bondage-‘servitude to decay’-but hoping for deliverance and for that freedom which characterizes ‘the glory of the children of God.’ With this contrast the reference in 2 Peter 2:19 to ‘the bondage of corruption’ as=moral degradation.
J. S. Clemens.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Bondage'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/b/bondage.html. 1906-1918.
