I"m sure you'll understand if I believe Jesus in Jn 8:34; i.e., man is a slave to sin. . .slaves to sin are not morally free.
I understand you’ve misconstrued what Jesus is recorded to have said.
John never used your unique phraseology of morally free.” Never mind that the phrase “morally free” is ambiguous as to meaning.
More importantly is you ignore the entire phrase of the verse. The Greek is those “who HABITUALLY/PRACTICES SIN are slaves to sin.”
Devoid of the facile exegesis of the text is any exploration as to what constitutes as “practice” and “habitually” sin as that renders one a “slave to sin.”
Regardless, Jesus’ carefully qualified comment doesn’t characterize those not “habitually/practices” sin as “slaves to sin.” It is sufficient that to “habitually/practices sin” renders one as a “slave to sin.”
Yet, John doesn’t attribute to Jesus as asserting the act of “habitually/practices sin” is coerced, forced, and not a product of free will, where free will is at least within the person’s power and ability to commit an action or refrain from it, without some external cause forcing, coercing, directly causing the action or refraining from the action.
Your reverse application of the word “slave” onto the preceding condition of “habitually/practices sin” to constitute as they MUST habitually/practice sin and have no freedom to choose to habitually sin/practice sin, is misplaced.
John is writing that Jesus said what is habitually done, practiced, makes them a slave. Jesus didn’t assert being a slave to sin makes one to habitually sin!!
By your apparent logic, a parall phrasing is everyone who habitually runs/practices in running is a slave to running such that being the slave makes them habitually run. But that isn’t what the phrase says but rather says if you habitually run, then you’re a slave to running, and not if you’re a slave to running, then you habitually run.
Next, you assume the Greek word for slave isn’t used metaphorically. Yet that assumption is equal to the opposing assumption the Greek word for slave is used metaphorically. All of this has ignores of course the entire sense in which free and not free meant in relation to the word “slave” then, while also ignoring whether the word “slave” was to chattel slavery or something else.
Chattel slaves lacked freedom in the sense paper commands, the law, treated them as property and they were required to obey their masters. Yet this paper designation doesn’t magically strip the human beings born with faculties to, guess what, freely make decisions. And one such freely exercised act in the ancient world was to violate the paper law, act contrary to their masters and runaway. Indeed, in Deuteronomy the slaves who freely didn’t obey their master and/or the law and freely ran away were not to be returned to their master. Instead, the runaway slave was free to live among the people and choose where to live.
“15 “You shall not hand over to his master a
slave who has [l]escaped from his master to you. 16 He
shall live with you in your midst, in the place that he chooses in one of your [
m]towns
where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.”
Well, if slaves can exercise that freedom contrary to their masters and law, then the word “slave” as some coercive force as you assume in this verse is a bankrupt interpretation and exegesis.
Simply, there’s no basis in the text, in the word placement, for your view this verse declares no free will. None.