The background in the Old Testament

That being the case, it seemed a good idea to reflect upon what the language of the New Testament might tell us with regard to ‘ministry’, about the background of ‘servant’ terminology (for, of course in Latin, ‘service’ is the meaning of the set of terms from which the English word comes.)Footnote ⁴

Then, of course, as we are more aware these days, it is impossible to understand the NT language without inspecting its background in the OT. There are several terms, some of which seem primarily cultic; for example, the root תרׁש, which is used, along with other words from the same root, for Temple service;Footnote ⁵ but significantly it is used in parallel with דֶֽבֶע at Isaiah 56:6, speaking of ‘foreigners who attach themselves to the Lord to become his ministers and to love the name of the Lord and to be his slaves’. There is a conceptual link, therefore between the cultic ministry and being servants or slaves of God; in both cases there is emphasis on the inferiority of the ‘minister’. This is the case even at Psalm 103:21, where the term refers to what we call ‘angels’. Interestingly the same is true of Abishag, who is described at 1 Kings 1:4 as ‘[David's] attendant’;Footnote ⁶ the narrator is very careful not to allow any hint of impropriety by adding that ּהֽעָ ָדְי אֹ ֥ל; she seems to have been more of a hot-water bottle. The same root gives us the word רׂש, which is used three times in EstherFootnote ⁷ for the kind of courtier who gets invited to a royal banquet.

Cultic servants in the New Testament

In the NT there are three terms with a cultic whiff about them, namely λειτουργός, ὑπηρέτης, and διάκονος.

1. a) Leitourgos

It may be worth looking to see how they are used: λειτουργός is clearly a term for cultic service. The verb is so used at Hebrews 10:11 and, slightly differently, at Acts 13:2, here in relation to what ‘prophets and teachers’ get up to. At Hebrews 8:2 the author is developing his very original notion of Jesus as the ‘high priest’, who ‘took his seat at the right hand of the throne of majesty as the minister of the holy things and of the true tent’. And at Romans 15:16 Paul describes himself, in a welter of cultic metaphor (indicated here by italics) as the ‘minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, doing the sacred work of the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, consecrated by the Holy Spirit’, trying to capture the reality of what he is doing.

1. b) Hyperetes

Then there is ὑπηρέτης. This term, which can be translated as something like ‘minion’, ‘helper’, or ‘assistant’, has a clearly cultic sense at Luke 4:20, referring to an official in the synagogue who handed Jesus the Isaiah scroll, which gave him the text for his sermon in Nazareth. There is a different sense of the term at Luke 1:2, where it is apparently those who first proclaimed the gospel. At Mark 14:65 it is ‘servants’, apparently of the High Priest, who ‘received [Jesus] with slaps’.Footnote ⁸ It is used also in John's account of the Passion Narrative to refer to the ‘servants of the Judeans’ who arrested Jesus (18:12), the servants of the Pharisees and High Priests,Footnote ⁹ and in John 18:22 at the same event as in Mark, and, in the debate with Pilate, to the kind of ‘servants’ that Jesus might have had if he had been a ‘king’ of the kind that Pilate imagines (18:36). They are also the ones who shout ‘crucify, crucify’ along with the High Priests.Footnote ¹⁰ At Acts 13:5 John Mark is a ‘minion’ of Barnabas and Saul, though later on that would lead to a quarrel between the two.Footnote ¹¹ Acts 5:22, 26 presents them as servants of the Temple authorities; but at Acts 26:16, in the third account of Saul's Damascus Road encounter, he is told that he is to be a ὑπηρέτης and a ‘witness’ of Jesus.

1. c) Diakonos/diakonia

The use of διάκονος is interesting: Paul employs it at 1 Corinthians 3:5, where he is trying to sort out the tension between followers of Paul and those of Apollos, by identifying both these figures, so important in the Corinthian church, as ‘servants’, and then expanding in the following verses with metaphors from horticulture (planting, watering, growing, verses 6–8) and architecture (laying a foundation, building, verses 9–15). The alert reader will notice, of course, that in both metaphors Paul is clearly given the priority.

Paul uses metaphor again at 2 Cor 3:6, to deal with the conflict between himself and the Corinthians immediately after describing that church as ‘a letter served up by us, written not in ink but in the spirit of the living God’ (3:3), when he says that ‘God has made us fit to be servants of the New Covenant’. Once again, the focus is on God, and those who are called ‘ministers’ are clearly to be regarded as inferior to God and to their divine task. At 11:15 Paul is still aware of the conflict and, after stating that ‘Satan is transformed into an angel of light’ (11:14), he speaks of ‘[Satan's] servants transformed into servants of righteousness – their end will be in accordance with their works’. So it is possible to be a servant of more than one power; and that may serve as a useful reminder that, in all of our scriptures, we are involved in a battle between the powers.

At Ephesians 6:21, Tychicus is commended for being ‘a beloved brother and a faithful servant in the Lord’, so it is clear that he knows his place. Ministry-language, let me repeat, is the opposite of clericalism, and refers to those to whom it is applied not as dominating bosses, but as servants at the disposition of God and of the Christian community. Compare the reference to Epaphras at Colossians 1:7 (‘our beloved fellow-slave, who is a faithful servant of Christ on your behalf’), or Tychicus at 4:7.

Diakonia in Mark

Perhaps closer to the understanding of Pope Francis is the use of the root diakoneo in Mark's Gospel. We start at Mark 1:13, where Jesus is ‘forty days in the desert, being tested by the Satan…and the angels/messengers served him’. Then at 1:31, the mother-in-law of Simon is described as serving, after the fever has been sent packing (in an age when there were no antibiotics, a fever could spell death. It comes again at 10:45, when the sons of Zebedee have made their bid for ecclesial power, and have to be reminded that ‘the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve’, followed by the challenging expansion ‘and to give his life as a ransom for many’. Finally it appears at 15:41, where, quite unexpectedly, the women appear after Jesus has died, in a context that suggests that they have always been there, ‘following and serving him’. The noun, diakonos, appears at 9:35 when the disciples have been arguing (after the second Passion Prediction) about who was ‘Mr Big’: ‘if anyone wants to be Number One they are to be last of all and diakonos of all’. Then it comes again at 10:43 where, after the third Passion Prediction, James and John, and the rest of the disciples who have got cross with them for stealing a march by asking Jesus for ecclesial promotion, all have to be told that ‘whoever wants to become Big among you shall be your diakonos. And whoever wants to be Number One among you shall be your slave’.

Ministry as slavery in the Old Testament

This last term, δοῦλος in Greek, leads neatly into our next section, where most interesting of all for our purposes is the pair of terms, one Hebrew, one Greek, that should for the most part be translated into English as ‘slave’, but are too often disembowelled and turned into ‘servant’.Footnote ¹² These terms are of course דֶֽבֶע and δοῦλος.

The word is common enough in the OT, applied as it is to MosesFootnote ¹³ and to Joshua,Footnote ¹⁴ to Samuel when Eli gives him a tutorial on how to pray;Footnote ¹⁵ the prophets who are to be avenged by Jehu are also so described.Footnote ¹⁶ The word also functions as a technical term for prophets,Footnote ¹⁷ and Abijah is so described at 1 Kings 14:18, as are ElijahFootnote ¹⁸ and Jonah ben Amittai.Footnote ¹⁹ In Second Isaiah the vindication of such ‘slaves’ is foreseenFootnote ²⁰ in God's good time, when Jerusalem is restored.

Ministry as slavery in the New Testament

This is the kind of background that we should take with us when we read the word δοῦλος in the NT. We start with Paul, who is the first of our NT writers, and who flaunts the ‘slave’ word as a kind of badge; he describes himself proudly as ‘slave of Jesus Christ’ in the first lines of Romans, perhaps his most influential letter, and Philippians, certainly his most joyful.Footnote ²¹ Likewise, in the irritable opening of Galatians, which can be understood as offering freedom over against slavery,Footnote ²² he insists that ‘if I were trying to please human beings, then I should not be Christ's slave’,Footnote ²³ which is all that he wants to be. And of course, Philippians 2:7 makes no sense if Jesus, here presented as a model for the quarrelling members of the community is just a ‘servant’ rather than a ‘slave’; and the rhetorical effect of Philemon 16 depends on the word meaning ‘slave’. Paul makes a similar point at 2 Corinthians 4:5 when, defending his ministry to his opponents in Corinth, he describesFootnote ²⁴ his work as a diakonia, and goes on to insist that he and his fellow-apostles are ‘your slaves, on Jesus’ account’. This is exactly what Pope Francis is saying to us; but it is quite the opposite of what Paul's opponents in Corinth were teaching.

The point of all this slavery talk is that ‘ministry’, if properly understood, means that it can never be an excuse for domination; tempting though it may be for ministers to regard their education as allowing them licence to control what goes on, that is not what Paul and other NT writers have in mind. Any gifts that Paul's Christians have are to be seen as Spirit-given, for the building of unity. See the important treatment of ‘difference’ and ‘unity’ in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, and 27–28, for example, and the very similar passage at Ephesians 4:11-12 that should be linked with Ephesians 2:20-22. In both cases the key is that ministry is meant to serve the cause of unity.

Another context where it is important to understand both the Hebrew and the Greek term as ‘slave’ rather than ‘servant’ is that of the four Songs of the Suffering Slave from Second Isaiah,Footnote ²⁵ the last of which sees the Slave as bringing redemption through suffering. This idea was clearly important in the New Testament, helping Christians to understand what had happened at the crucifixion, possibly as early as Jesus himself, and is picked up, for example, at Mark 1:11, Matthew 12:18-21, and Acts 8:32-35.

Slavery in the Synoptic Gospels

The contrast between a ‘slave’ and a ‘Kyrios’Footnote ²⁶ is very frequent in the New Testament, and once you admit that at the back of most uses of the latter term there is the idea of God, and perhaps also the Emperor, then clearly Christian teaching is thoroughly subversive of an important element in Roman-Greek society,Footnote ²⁷ especially the remarkable teaching where (in response to yet another bêtise by his leading disciples) Jesus patiently teaches them, as we have seen, that ‘whoever wants to be Number 1 among you will be the slave of all’.Footnote ²⁸

Luke's Gospel seems to emerge from the society of the bigger Greek metropoleis, where slaves and free regularly rubbed shoulders, and you find the same emphasis there: indeed at 7:2, he insists that the person cured by Jesus was a ‘slave’, whereas in the parallel passage in MatthewFootnote ²⁹ it could be a son. We also draw in a sharp breath at the very severe teaching we find at Luke 17:7-10: ‘Which of you who owns a slave who does the ploughing or shepherding, when they come in from the farm, will say to them “quick - come and lie down to eat!”. Won't they tell him, “Make me something for supper, and put on your livery and serve me, while I eat and drink – and then you are to eat and drink after that”. Is he to thank the slave because he has done what he was told? So with you - when you do everything you have been told, you are to say, “We are unprofitable slaves – we have done what we ought to have done”.’ This is chilling teaching; and it is at its sharpest for those who think that position in the Christian community might give them status.

Slavery as a metaphor for service in the Fourth Gospel

John's Gospel is likewise well aware of the contrast between ‘slave’ and ‘free’. This is evident in the discourse to ‘the Judeans who believed in him’, who insist that ‘we are children of Abraham and were never enslaved to anybody’, we hear Jesus insisting on the slavery of sin: ‘Amen amen I'm telling you, everyone who does sin is a slave of sin. But the slave does not stay in the household for ever; whereas the son remains in the household. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free in reality’.Footnote ³⁰

The idea of slavery and discipleship recurs in that great Johannine creation that is the Last Supper Discourse, as the darkness presses in from the outside on the tiny group huddled together, with the sad question hanging over them of how they are to survive Jesus’ absence. The most radical innovation of this discourse (and here I make the assumption that the evangelist expects his hearers to know the Synoptics, or at least Mark) is John's placing at the start of it, not the institution narrative, but the prophetic gesture of the washing of the feet. So at 13:16, Jesus interprets what he has done to them: although he is correctly styled ‘Teacher and Lord’, he has performed a slave's task for them, and they are to do the same: ‘Amen, amen I'm telling you: a slave is not more important than his Lord, nor the apostle [‘one who is sent’] more important than the One who sent him’. So the slavery that is ministry is for John a matter of fitting into the profound structure that goes Father-Son-Spirit-disciples.

This theme receives a further twist later in the discourse, when, in the context of the ‘True Vine’, a graphic account of precisely that structure, whereby Jesus is the Vine, his Father the Vine-dresser, and the disciples who ‘remain’ in him are the branches, slaves are invited to go deeper and become ‘friends’. So at 15:15 we hear, ‘I am no longer calling you “slaves”, because the slave does not know what his Lord is doing; I have called you “friends”, because everything I have heard from my Father I made known to you’. But they still have to wash each other's feet, of course. A few verses laterFootnote ³¹ the same idea recurs: ‘A slave is not more important than his Lord’, here as a way of predicting that they will have to suffer the same hostility that Jesus has experienced at the hands of the ‘world’. That is what ministry does.

Slavery as an expression of ministry in Acts

Acts is quite clear about this, so when in the Pentecost discourse Peter quotes JoelFootnote ³² to explain what is going on: ‘I am pouring out some of my Spirit…on my men-slaves and my women-slaves’, and adds the phrase that is not in the scriptural text ‘and they will prophesy’. That is what God's slaves do. The same idea recurs as the small group of Christians pray, a couple of chapters later, ‘Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your slaves all confidence to speak your word’.Footnote ³³ Once again, you see, God's ministers are slaves. When the infant Church reaches Ephesus, a ‘little slave-girl’, who clearly knows exactly what is going on, describes Paul and his companions as ‘slaves of God Most High, who are proclaiming the way of salvation to you people’.Footnote ³⁴ So we see that, yet again, the job of ministers is aptly described as ‘slavery’.

Slavery in the Catholic Epistles

There is not much to go on in the Catholic epistles, though we notice that at James 1:1 the author describes himself, after the manner of St Paul, as ‘slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ’, which sets the scene for the very striking letter that is to follow. The same idea, offering the same context, appears at 1 Peter 2:15-16: ‘it is the will of God that we should do good and muzzle the ignorance of foolish mortals, as people who are free, and not those who regard freedom as an excuse for evil, but as slaves of God’. This is, you will observe, in the context of exhorting his hearers to obey the will of the imperial authorities, so it is delicately subversive.Footnote ³⁵

Slavery in the Book of Revelation

The last book of the Bible is nothing if not subversive, and is well aware that the Roman Empire required the institution of slavery for its political and economic survival. Like the rest of the NT, the elder John turns this upside down, so that his audience are addressed as ‘God's slaves’,Footnote ³⁶ which is a very different sort of thing; and that portion of them that inhabit Thyatira are warned against the wiles of ‘the woman Jezebel’ (we have no idea who she might be, but John is not terribly impressed by her) who ‘teaches and leads astray my slaves to commit fornication and to eat food-offered-to-idols’.Footnote ³⁷ At 7:3 his hearers are invited to watch as ‘the slaves of our God’ are sealed on their foreheads to protect them from destruction; and in good biblical fashion, the prophets are described as ‘God's slaves’,Footnote ³⁸ as also is Moses.Footnote ³⁹ In the liturgical hymn-singing that follows the victory over evil,Footnote ⁴⁰ the judgement over the ‘Great Whore’ is celebrated as precisely a vindication of ‘the blood of God's slaves from the hand [of the Whore]’. There is, therefore, discomfort in this ministry, but, looking ahead, the victory is assured; and it is worth noticing that that the slaves are described as ‘those who fear God, the little and the great’. So the range is wide (and note a similar expression at 19:18). Our last view of the ‘slaves’ comes in the final chapter, when they are described as worshipping the ‘throne of God and of the Lamb’Footnote ⁴¹. And there you have it.