What does Paul have to say about slavery?
By Will Johansen
By the early second century, Christianity had spread across the Mediterranean: to most of Asia Minor, to Upper Mesopotamia, northern Africa and to modern-day Greece and Italy. Around the same time, the Roman Empire was also at its largest, with an estimated population of 50 million. Moreover, it was estimated that between 10% and 20% of those 50 million people were enslaved. (1) That’s up to 10 million enslaved people living under Roman ordinance and through a wildfire of Christian influence that was spreading at an exponential rate! This might lead one to wonder: how could this be? Are these not contradictory statements of fact? Almost all civilized societies today would agree that slavery is wrong for many reasons, and the average Christian today would certainly condemn slavery as well, so what did Christians believe about slavery back then? How could both of these things have been simultaneously prevalent in antiquity? In this blog, I will discuss what the New Testament has to say about slavery, and how scripture has been used historically in the context of defending and opposing slavery.
So, the Bible does condemn slavery, right?
The short answer is no. A less short but equally as obtuse answer would be it’s complicated. To whatever extent a book can speak, the Bible “says” many things, and there are many teachings of Jesus that Christians have interpreted differently throughout time to fit their needs–modern Christians being no exception: the Beatitudes are a great example of this. To that point, there are a plethora of verses and stories in the Bible that people have historically used to condemn (and support) slavery. However, in all the Beatitudes, Ten Commandments, parables in the Synoptic Gospels, or any other part of the Bible, you will never find an outright condemnation of slavery.
Whether we like it or not, slavery was an accepted social institution in the Old Testament, with many regulatory laws for Hebrew slaves specified in books as early as Exodus. Likewise, slavery is mentioned numerous times in the New Testament as well, largely focusing on encouragement of fair treatment of slaves (but never does it instruct for the release of slaves… with one exception to be discussed later on).
Fair treatment of slaves you say? Well that sounds like a good start, right?
Yes, an opinionated blog would say that is good! Unfortunately, you are not about to continue reading an at-length spiel about why a small silver lining fails to reconcile the fact that enslaving people is wrong. Instead, I will articulate the views of scholars on both sides of this “fair treatment” coin, emphasizing examples found in Pauline writings.
Beginning with 1 Corinthians, this epistle is far from hoity-toity admiration or congratulation to the people of Corinth for maintaining steadfastness to Paul’s teachings–in truth it’s the exact opposite. The people of Corinth tended to be rather unruly, and their general disorder permeated their treatment of slaves as well. Take 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 for example, where Paul writes:
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (2)
Paul specifically states that a person’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit–a house of God exists in everyone, and as we cannot physically escape from our bodies, we in turn cannot escape from the Holy Spirit within us. Therefore, Paul claims that sexual immorality is a sin not against others, but against our own body and the price for which our body was bought–that price being Jesus’s death on the cross. All this is to say, by and large the people of Corinth did not heed this scripture very scrupulously, as they treated their bodies and the bodies of their slaves with pervasive immorality. And, of the many obstacles that slaves faced in participating in the Corinthian church, this is one that Jennifer A. Glancy puts specific emphasis on. In truth, slaves in Corinth had no control over their master’s decision to use them sexually. Moreover, enslaved girls, women, boys and young men were all potential sexual targets for masters.
In bad taste, one could argue that this apparent lack of partiality among the sexual targets of masters was indicative of fair treatment of their slaves, but ignoring everything else that is wrong with that take, it’s most important to remember that these actions were in contradiction to Paul’s likely intended teachings. That is to say, while the delineation in boundaries of appropriate sexual conduct should have been more self-evident to the Corinthians, Paul never specifies that a master having complete sexual reign over his or her slaves qualifies as sexual immorality. Vagueness and misinterpretations of scripture (or in their historical context, just letters) was as common in the early church as it is today. (3)
Luckily, the reverse side of this fair treatment coin is more clearly stipulated in other Pauline epistles, such as in Colossians 3:22-4:1, which reads:
“Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” (4)
What is particularly interesting here is the specific commands not only to slaves but also to masters, underlying a root commonality between the two roles. Slaves (or bondservants in this translation) are called not to rebel, but instead obey their earthly masters, and to do so for the Lord. Similarly, masters are called not to free their slaves in any capacity, but to treat them justly and fairly, as eventually they too will realize their own Master in heaven. In a better light this time around, it remains true that there is no partiality.
Edgar J. Goodspeed has an especially interesting viewpoint on this matter, outlined in one of his brief communications aptly named “Paul and Slavery”. Much as the Corinthians misunderstood Paul directly, Goodspeed argues that some modern-day translations have caused readers to indirectly misunderstand Paul’s teachings about slavery, to the point where some people doubt whether Paul ever even mentioned slavery. –Spoiler alert, he did (21 times to be exact). Goodspeed, by virtue of Adolf Harnack, another Christian historian and theologian, emphasizes the validity of fair treatment existing for slaves in the first century. Slaves shared equal church rights as freemen, they were esteemed in personality to an equal degree, modesty of women was not to be outraged, and masters were strictly charged to treat their slaves humanely, remembering that they were all brothers and sisters in Christ. (5)
The outlier: Paul’s letter to Philemon.
Previously I had mentioned an exception to the rule that the Bible never specifically calls for the release of slaves. This is true. In Exodus there were regulations that Hebrew slaves were to serve for six years, but never any sort of “Emancipation Proclamation” in the Old or New Testament. However, Paul’s letter to Philemon is an interesting one-off in many ways, the primary being in the fact that it arguably does call for the freedom of one slave in particular: Onesimus.
Being the only undisputed epistle of Paul addressed to an individual, his letter to Philemon is a mere page in length, but this brevity has not detracted from its interest and cause of debate among scholars. –As a bit of background, Onesimus was a previous slave to Philemon, a wealthy Christian in Colossae who had previously been converted by Paul. Since then, Paul is now imprisoned in Rome, and Onesimus fled Philemon’s estate for a nondescript reason, and has somehow crossed paths with Paul in Rome, and Paul has converted him to being his spiritual son in Christ, just as Philemon had been years earlier. (6)
But, this background seems far too perplexing to be taken at face value, and it’s only fair to be left with questions. Why would Onesimus have run off in the first place? A definitive reason has never been proven, but if verse 18 is any indication, it may have been due to theft. In this case, Onesimus would have fled to protect himself from multiple offenses that he could have faced as a result of his actions. Primarily, under the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, theft of any significant value by a slave was a capital offense punishable by death; or, if the thief could not be found, all household slaves could be interrogated under torture for the offense in the thieves place. (7) Erring on the side that this claim has reasonable legitimacy (as Paul bothered to mention it), it makes sense that Onesimus would flee.
What still doesn’t make sense, however, is just how on Earth Onesimus found Paul. It surely could not have been a coincidence, right? Reading verses 17 to 20 in full give us some more insight to that:
“So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.” (8)
The most important stipulation here is that Paul makes an ultimatum to Philemon on the condition that he considers him his “partner”, and with that, Paul insinuates that Philemon might even be indebted to Paul, and he urges that Philemon says nothing of this. Truly a powerful move by Paul. So if Onesimus was trying to escape from Philemon for his wrongdoings, what would have led him to Philemon’s brother in Christ who is evidently even more powerful than himself? Counterintuitively, Paul’s inherent power itself is the answer. Recent studies of slavery law indicate that it was a recognized practice for law-breaking slaves to seek intervention and protection from one of their master’s trusted associates; this associate would then act as a mediator between the two parties. (9) Almost undoubtedly, that is what Paul is in this case.
But, the verses above do not answer the question of what Paul’s direct intentions are in writing this letter to Philemon, and this too does not have a definitive answer among scholars. One line of thinking is that Paul seeks for Philemon to release Onesimus from slavery and take him back in his home as a “beloved brother” both “in the flesh and in the Lord”. But, given the law that Romans were already to treat their slaves humanely as brothers of Christ, this request seems to accomplish nothing other than making the modern reader think that Paul was ahead of his time for opposing the practice of slavery.
Rather, Paul may be leveraging Philemon’s indebtedness that was stipulated in verse 20, and instead of requesting Onesimus’s complete manumit, he is instead advocating for the slave to be transferred to Paul himself. This would make sense for multiple reasons. One, Paul is old of age at the time of writing, so a slave would be useful. Second, Paul has already converted Onesimus to Christianity, and there is arguably a similar relationship between the two that Paul originally nurtured with Philemon during his trip to Colossae. Third, Onesimus could act as a physical repayment to Paul for all of Philemon’s debts, and given that Paul is optimistic that he will not be imprisoned forever, it would make sense that he would someday want to settle his balance with Philemon.
Not only fair treatment, but Paul was also a slave.
By now, I’ve written considerably about how the Pauline epistles discuss slavery in both positive and negative ways, but in reading Goodspeed’s article “Paul and Slavery” he mentions a very interesting point that is worth contemplating as a point of closure. In the original Greek translation of Pauline literature, specifically Romans, the very first line is “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus”; that he himself, Timothy and Epaphras are all slaves of Christ, and even that Christ himself took the form of a slave. (10) In modern translations, “slave” here is sometimes translated as servant, but needless to say, this does not hold the same authenticity as the original writings.
It’s worth considering that Paul describes himself as a slave to Christ, then, and what this means in the greater picture of what he has to say about slavery as a whole. While this blog is in no way a completely exhaustive analysis of his works, we can look to other scholarly works to further our understanding of this question. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Will Deming debates the existence of a “diatribe pattern” in Paul’s directions to slaves. He examines two schools of thought through the syntactical analysis of phrases, specifically in 1 Corinthians 7:21. P.J. Gräbe also analyzes Paul’s assertion of obedience as a slave to Christ in his teachings in Galatians. One set of scholars understand Paul as encouraging slaves to work toward their manumission, and if it is possible for them to achieve this, they should pursue it. Alternatively, other scholars believe Paul was speaking more in line with Apostolic theology, in that he favored the status quo: even if slaves had the option to become free, they should remain where they are. (11) (12) This line of thinking certainly corresponds to much of Paul’s other teachings regarding his fierce apocalyptic belief, such as his views on whether to marry or remain single.
All in all, Paul has much to say about slavery, and his letters give us the most insight out of any part of the New Testament on what the true environment of the slaves in the Christian church may have looked like in the height of the Roman Empire.
Thanks for reading.
Bibliography:
(1) Slavery in ancient Rome. The British Museum. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/nero-man-behind-myth/slavery-ancient-rome.
(2) Bible gateway passage: 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 – English Standard Version. Bible Gateway. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+6%3A18-20&version=ESV.
(3) Glancy JA. Obstacles to Slave’s Participation in the Corinthian Church. Journal of Biblical Literature. 1998;117:481-501.
(4) Bible gateway passage: 1 Corinthians 3:22-4:1 – English Standard Version. Bible Gateway. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%203%3A22-4%3A1&version=ESV
(5) Goodspeed EJ. Paul and Slavery. Journal of Biblical Literature. 1943;11:169-170.
(6) Taylor J, Bernard N. Howard, Ivan Mesa, Leithart P, et al. Uncovering treasures in paul’s shortest letter. The Gospel Coalition. November 9, 2017. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/relational-warnings-wisdom-tucked-away-pauls-shortest-letter.
(7) Ancient roman statutes : Translation, with introduction, commentary, glossary, and index. Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/twelve_tables.asp.
(8) Bible gateway passage: Philemon 17-20 – English Standard Version. Bible Gateway. Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philemon%2017-20&version=ESV
(9) Ehrman BD. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press; 2020.
(10) Goodspeed EJ. Paul and Slavery. Journal of Biblical Literature. 1943;11:169-170.
(11) Deming W. A Diatribe Pattern in 1 Cor. 7:21-22: A new Perspective on Paul’s Directions to Slaves. Novum Testamentum. 1995;37:130-137.
(12) Gräbe P.J.. Paul’s Assertion of Obedience as a Function of Persuasion. Neotestamentica. 1992;26:351-358.