Are we the 'slaves' of God – and what happens if we refuse his dominion?
If God is our Master, are we his servants... or slaves?
If God is our Master, are we his servants... or slaves?
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Father Coleridge tells us…
How Christ gently leads us to the truth that God alone can be our Master.
That divine service is absolute, exclusive, and the very law of our condition – and why this service can indeed be called “slavery,” in a qualified and positive sense.
Why to attempt divided service is to fall into slavery under the devil.
He shows us that obedience to God is not a contract, but the rightful claim of a Creator – and that we should be encouraged by the absolute nature of this relationship and put all our trust in him.
But in what sense might we be called the “slaves” of God? Our Lord said to the Apostles that they were his friends rather than servants, which would seem to exclude a fortiori any notion of slavery:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.
“Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.
“I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.”
Similarly, great Bishop Bernard Ullathorne wrote in 1866:
“We are not the slaves even of God, but, as St. Paul says, our service is a free and reasonable service.”
On the other hand, the word used by Our Lady to the Angel denotes not just “handmaid” or “female servant” but “female slave” of the Lord. It seems clear, especially in light of Coleridge’s texts, we are and are not the slaves of God, depending on what is meant by the word. In some sense, we are less and lower than slaves, in relation to God; in another sense, we are granted an exalted place as adopted sons in the Son.
This is because “slavery” is a complex concept. The word “slavery” provokes strong reactions, and Catholics have debated whether the practice of slavery is intrinsically immoral, or whether just and unjust forms of slavery can be distinguished.
recently published an 1861 discussion of this matter by the celebrated Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick, which may shed more light on the matter for readers.Single Service
The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)
Chapter VII
St. Matt. vi. 24; Story of the Gospels, § 33
Burns and Oates, London, 1878
Gentleness of the argument
There is a kind of beautiful gentleness and delicacy, if we may so speak, about the way in which our Lord introduces the first of the series of truths on which we are now to comment.
He does not simply say, Remember, after all, that you are not here to work or hoard for yourselves, but for your Master. That is a peremptory decision of all difficulty about the question as to which He is now speaking, the question as to storing up in this world or in the next.
But He says, Remember you cannot do what is impossible—you cannot serve two masters. A Master you have already, Whom you are bound to serve, and you cannot have another. It is not only that nothing that you can lay up here will escape decay or pillage, it is not only that the only treasures which abide are those which are stored in Heaven, it is not only that if you heap up riches here, here your heart will be, and that there is the very greatest danger that your love for earthly goods and gains will so distort your judgment and blind your conscience as to make you fall into sin for the purpose of acquiring more or retaining what you have.
That is not all. You are not free. You are not your own. You belong to God, and for Him alone you are bound to labour. And I tell you further that, some master or other you must serve, and you have only to make your choice between the service to which you are bound, and another service, which will be imposed upon you if you seek the good things of this world. Combine the two services you cannot. They cannot be combined, because they are hostile in character, and the feelings which they call forth in their servants are incompatible. You cannot love both at once, or cling to both at once; if you love the one, you must hate the other; if you cleave to the one, you must neglect and despise the other.
It is against your duty and allegiance and loyalty to endeavour to serve both; but if it were not so, you could not succeed if you tried.
Dominion of God
This truth of the sovereign dominion of God is the main burthen of many of our Lord’s parables, especially those which come latest in the course of His teaching, and it is constantly referred to by the Apostles. St. Paul uses it in the Epistle to the Romans to silence the difficulty about the reprobation of the Jews and the call of the Gentiles.
But we may here confine ourselves to its importance in the personal teaching of our Lord. It seems to be almost the one dominant idea which runs through His teaching of the Holy Week in the Temple and on the Mount of Olives. It introduces an altogether new motive into the consideration of the matter more immediately before us now. That motive is no longer our own interest or profit, the prudence as regards ourselves of treasuring in Heaven, and the like. It brings in the notion of obedience and duty, of a law upon us which we are bound to obey without question.
Our Lord was fond, as we shall find, of the thought of the command laid upon Him by His Father, and chose, as we may say, to die for our sins when and as He did, out of obedience. He impressed on the Apostles that they too were servants and labourers with a certain definite work to do. Thus the ‘servant’ or ‘slave of Jesus Christ’ is the title in which they seem to delight above all others, and they use it as a sort of official designation at the beginning of their Epistles.
On the same principle we are to account for the immense importance attached to obedience in the spiritual life, and to the rule of obedience as the foundation of all perfection and fruitfulness in religious orders in the Church, and indeed in her whole system. We find the Saints afraid to undertake anything without obedience, and, when a thing has been decided on, desiring that the merit of obedience should be added to it, by the positive command of a lawful Superior. The addition of the notion of the service of a master changes altogether the ground on which the question of solicitude about earthly things has hitherto been treated in this passage. For a new relation is introduced—the relation between a Superior who has the right to command and the servant whose business it is to obey.
But, as we see in the course of the next few verses, this relation is double—it binds the master to the servant as well as the servant to the master, and it is from this feature in the relationship that our Lord draws a whole chain of arguments for that abandonment of temporal cares to which He is here leading on His Apostles.
We can serve no one else
The first conclusion, which follows from our relation to God as our Master, is that we can serve no one else. That is, we can serve no one else who stands to God in any position but that of a subordinate who represents Him to us, and whose power depends on and is derived from Him.
We can serve God and the Church, God and our parents, God and the State, when there is no usurpation on the part of the State of power which does not belong to it—because in all these cases we serve God in the Church, in our parents, in the State. It would be enough to rest the incompatibility of a double service upon the simple idea of what service in the abstract requires.
But there is something more in our Lord’s mind. He has before Him, not an abstract case of any two possible masters, but the reality of the rival claims on the heart of man of God and our great enemy the devil. This is the true alternative in the question before us now, and so our Lord characterizes the issues of the two alternatives in words which are precisely adapted to the contrast which lies before us.
The true Master is God; the usurper, who endeavours to put himself in the place of God, is the devil. When he tempted our Lord in the desert, he arrogantly and falsely claimed for himself the kingdom of the world and all its wealth and power, whereas in truth he is only permitted to use these things as the means of temptation to us. On this account our Lord here speaks of him, or alludes to him, as the master whom all the servants of earthly interests and riches must in truth serve. We have here, then, more than one head of consideration on which we may ground our meditations on the truths before us.
Nature of the service of God
The first and most direct reason for the statement which our Lord makes as to the impossibility of serving two masters lies, as has been said, in the nature of the service, as it is drawn out for us in the Sacred Scriptures. The service of which the Scriptures are full is that entire devotion of a person to his Lord, which goes far beyond the modern ideas of the relation between servants and masters.
The word commonly used by our Lord and the Apostles is the word which is more properly rendered ‘slave.’ Nothing short of this can in truth satisfy the entire sovereignty of God over His rational creatures, and, indeed, no earthly ownership can come up to the fulness of the rights of a Creator over the work of His hands. The service of a slave to his master is one of right, not of compact, and if the slave labours all his days for the master to whom he belongs, he does not do more than his duty. We have already quoted the words of our Lord, in which He seems to remind us of this truth.
The master, in the second place, is not limited in his rights to a particular kind of service, or to a particular time. He is bound by the common laws of right and wrong, but there are no specified limits within those laws which fetter the arbitrariness of his commands. He may set one servant to one service and another to another service, and change them about as he chooses. Again, a master may use the services of his slave without paying him wages, the relation between them is not one of contract. Again, the slave has no right, after a certain time of service, to his liberty, which he can only acquire by the free consent of his master.
In all these respects, the blessed service of God corresponds to what we call slavery.
Over and over again does the thought rise to the minds of the children of Adam that they have made no contract with God, and that therefore they are not obliged to serve Him. They complain in their hearts that they have not been asked whether they would come or not into the world in which their probation is cast, whether they would agree to run the risk of incurring the eternity of Hell as the price of their having the chance of gaining Heaven. No, they have not been asked, because they are not their own. They belong entirely to Him Who has made them. It is for Him to fix the conditions of their probation and the risks of its issues, and the only law which He can observe is the law of His own ineffable holiness, justice, and goodness.
But it is obvious that this kind of absolute property and dominion cannot be shared, nor can it exist except in the hands of One, that is, of God. It is the essential right of a Creator.
Complete and engrossing
Moreover, the service which God requires of us is so complete and engrossing, that we come to the same conclusion on this ground also. Looking through the parables and sayings of our Lord which bear on this point, we find that the servants of whom He speaks are expected to be active and industrious in His service; they have money and goods committed to them which they are not only to preserve unhurt against the time when they are to be demanded of them, but which they are expected to multiply; and if they do not do this, they are to be severely punished. Such is the lesson of the parable of the Talents.
Again, the servants of God are to be employed by Him in the work of His kingdom, as when they are sent out, in the parable of the Marriage Supper, to compel people to come in. Again, they are sent on dangerous embassies, such as may cost them their life, as in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. Again, they are the executioners of the justice of their Master, as in the same parable, where the servants of the King are sent to chastise the rebellious tenants.
If they are to be so highly rewarded for their faithfulness, goodness, watchfulness, and other like qualities, they are also chastised for simple uselessness, without any other crime, and chastised also according to a strict rule, those who knew their Master’s will and do not hold themselves ready, with many stripes, and those who did not know their master’s will with few stripes. This is the teaching of our Lord in St. Luke.1
When they have done all that is commanded them, they are to expect nothing as of right, but to say that they are unprofitable servants.2 And, on the other hand, great fidelity and loyalty are expected of them. Our Lord cannot forget, nor wish us to forget, that at the same time that we are the servants of God we are also His children. Thus the servants of the householder, in the parable of the Cockle, are represented as having a keen interest in the fruitfulness of the harvest field, and in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, they are set before us as resenting the hard treatment of one of themselves by his brother—servant.
They are to imitate their Master in His mercifulness, and it is to be their highest honour to be as their Master, as our Lord tells the Apostles in His great charge to them before He sends them forth to preach, thus opening out the whole doctrine of the Cross which they are to undergo for His sake, especially as His followers in the work of the salvation of souls.
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St. Luke xii.
St. Luke xvii, 10.