An 11-Day Study On Challenges To Biblical Authorityಮಾದರಿ

DOES THE BIBLE ENDORSE SLAVERY?

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord” (Colossians 3:22).

Who doesn’t squirm a little bit reading those words today? After all, I thought the Bible taught kindness and love, but slavery?

Here are five things you need to know in order to set the record straight on the Bible and slavery.

First, Christianity did not invent slavery. Virtually every society has had slavery; this was a universal problem. It’s simply false to imagine that all the other nations were looking to Israel to morally justify slavery. We need to understand Christianity as entering into an existing situation—not creating it. If we do this, then we will see just how revolutionary and countercultural the message of the Bible really was during the time it was composed.

Second, the biblical discussion must appear within its cultural context. The ancient Near Eastern cultural context was very different from the modern postcolonial context. The two biggest causes of slavery in the ancient world were war and poverty, not skin color. Old Testament scholar Christopher J. H. Wright helpfully reminds that the slavery found in ancient Israel was: qualitatively vastly different from slavery in the large imperial civilizations—the contemporary ancient Near Eastern empires, and especially the latter empires of the Greeks and Romans. There the slave markets were glutted with captives of war and displaced peoples, and slaves were put to degrading and dehumanizing labor. And, of course, Israelite slavery was even more different from the ghastly commercialized and massive-scale slave trade that Arabs, Europeans, and Americans perpetrated upon Africa.

In drawing attention to this contrast, I am by no means trying to justify slavery, absolve any Christians for their participation in it, or mitigate the dehumanization that occurred in the African slave trade. The main point here is merely that slavery in ancient Israel and the laws pertaining to it recorded in the Old Testament need to be understood within an ancient Near Eastern context because they were very different. The fact that we see laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy regulating slavery at all is striking given the moral poverty of surrounding nations.

We need to remember that Israel was not God’s ideal society. Israel was already corrupt and broken like the rest of the peoples of the world when God began his redemptive work in and through them. The people of Israel were called to be progressively different than the surrounding nations. Israel was to begin shining light into a very dark world.

Third, Christianity tolerated slavery until it could be abolished. Since human beings are involved—and free moral agents embedded in cultures are involved—change takes time. The creational norm was that everyone bears the image of God (cf. Genesis 1:26–27). As we just discussed, the laws you find in the Old Testament actually were an improvement compared to the other ancient Near Eastern nations.

There are passages that embody the creational norm in the post-fall world.

For example, Job recognized that his bond-servants were created by God just like he was, and therefore he would have to answer to God if he mistreated them (Job 31:13–14). This passage points back to God’s original design of humankind in his image before sin’s corrupting effects set in. In the New Testament, we see passages like Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Moreover, we see Paul urging Philemon that his slave Onesimus must be treated as a brother (Philemon 1:16).

The immediate abolition of slavery would have created serious cultural problems. For lasting change to occur and be sustained, a moral tipping point had to be reached over time. One need look no further than how William Wilberforce, as a member of the British parliament, thoughtfully approached the abolition of the slave trade in England. He knew that slave owners would not give up their slaves without compensation, so he incrementally worked over time to address this and other societal conditions that would allow the abolition of slavery to be accomplished and sustainable.

Fourth, Jesus was not silent on slavery; he simply understood what the root issues were—and they all reside in the human heart. Jesus’ mission was to set spiritual captives free, and this freedom would come to have real-world effects. When Jesus began his public ministry, he stood in the synagogue to read the following passage: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18, quoting Isaiah 61:1–2).

Jesus came to set captives free, restore, heal, and transform—that is the good news of the kingdom of God. It has already begun, and we await its full and final consummation.

Fifth, the Christian worldview best accounts for human rights and dignity. “Human rights” are buzzwords today and rightly so. The Bible unequivocally teaches universal human dignity and equality because all are made in the image of God. Racism is completely at odds with this foundational truth. What is often forgotten is that atheism rose to prominence only after centuries of Judeo-Christian ethic and thought had shaped modern civilization. Atheism did not lay the groundwork for inherent human dignity and equality; it borrows that from a Judeo-Christian worldview. If you remove God from the equation, you also remove inherent human dignity and equality.