manumission

In a circular letter to house churches across Galatia, Paul writes:

‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

'By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is lovely, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.’

Galatians 5.1, 22-23

For freedom Christ has set us free. Somewhere between 10% and a third of the population of the Roman empire were slaves. As such, they lacked legal personhood. They had no kinship, neither ancestors nor descendants. They were not permitted to marry — in each of the house churches Paul wrote to, there would have been only one man who was legally a husband and a father, only one woman who was legally a wife and a mother — though with their master’s permission slaves could enter into contubernium: a co-habitation with certain, limited, legal recognition. They could not enter into contracts, or own property — though their master could give them a peculium: land that, while remaining the legal property of the master, a slave could hold and manage for themselves. This mechanism allowed a slave to earn the money to buy his freedom — to be manumitted, their master letting go of their hand, becoming instead their patron. A slave who had been freed could translate their contubernium into a legal marriage; own property; and enter many, but not all, professions.

For freedom Christ has set us free. The image here is of manumission. An image that would have spoken deeply to the people — mostly slaves; a few masters who held legal power over them — to whom he wrote.

Paul goes on to say that the crop, or harvest, of the Spirit is affection, cheerfulness, wholeness or wellbeing, longsuffering (that is, being slow to anger) or patience, gentleness, goodness, assurance, inner strength, self control.

And then he says that there is no law — or, parcelling-out — against — or about, or according to — such things. Which might be translated, there is no peculium that allots this land as something the master retains legal rights over but which we might be permitted to benefit from so that we might buy our freedom.

That is to say, we can’t earn liberty by virtue: liberty is a gift.

But also to say that virtue is not something we do not, ultimately, possess ourselves: it is ours, fully, because we have been given our freedom. It might be the harvest of the Spirit, but we are not slaves, we are land — the human, or creature taken from the soil of the earth — we are Spirit-animated land, land from which the Spirit brings forth a fruitful life.