Servant of the Servants of God

Abstract

In words familiar to us all St. Paul observes that in Christ there is “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” This is usually, and I think correctly, not taken to mean that the Apostle's ideal is the abolition of human distinctions in a blank uniformity. His own love for the figure of the Body with its various members suggests rather the maintenance of differences, freed from the stigma of inferiority, in the harmony of corporate life. We were reminded last year of the importance of the Barbarian, that is the non-Greek element in the Christian tradition. My subject this address is one of the chief representatives of another element—the Roman. Neither in the passage just quoted nor in the similar one in Galatians does the Roman appear in St. Paul's listing of the differences capable of being united in Christ. But St. John tells us that the titulus upon the cross of Jesus was written in Latin as well as in Hebrew and Greek. Pious as well as scholarly comment has seen in his emphasis on this point a reference to the place of Roman along with Greek and Jew in the Christian body, and in so doing has probably sensed correctly the intent of the Evangelist. Certainly the Roman striving for liberty under law is of great concern for us today, when the alternative to law appears to be not anarchy but despotism.