Paul and Slavery

Photo by Johannes Krupinski

The institution of slavery was part of the very fabric of ancient Greco-Roman society. Nearly one out of every 3 people in the first-century Roman world was a slave. Roman slaves were not isolated among a single people group; virtually all ethnic groups were represented among the slave class. Some people would even voluntarily become a slave in order to pay off debt or otherwise provide for themselves. 

Many slaves were eventually freed, purchasing their freedom by means of accumulated financial rewards paid to them by their owners. Significant numbers even became Roman citizens. Though many slaves were relegated to physically-demanding labor, others held highly-skilled positions, such as doctors, teachers, administrators, or other positions of authority working on behalf of their owners.

And yet even though slavery in the first-century Roman world was quite different in several important respects than, for example, the history of slavery in the antebellum South, it was still an unambiguously oppressive and dehumanizing institution.

So what should Christians do with biblical passages such as Ephesians 6:5, where the apostle Paul writes: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ” (NIV)?  

First, we should appreciate that the historical Paul fundamentally understood himself as emissary of Jesus Christ, who by virtue of his resurrection from the dead had been installed by God as Lord and Savior of the world. In Paul’s view, following his resurrection Jesus had ascended to heaven. But he would be returning to earth very soon to establish the Kingdom of God. Once Christ would return, then all things would be set right, once and for all.

In the interim, Paul’s mission was to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ’s universal reign to the nations beyond Israel. What God now required for Jews and non-Jews alike was their complete allegiance to Jesus, the true Caesar, before the final judgment of all mankind.

Accordingly, Paul’s objective was the formation of diverse and unified communities fully devoted to God and his Christ, living in anticipation of Christ’s return. While this devotion would entail righteous living befitting God’s people and thus the subversion of many norms of ancient Greco-Roman life, Paul was not occupied with righting systemic wrongs of the greater Roman world.

 It is in this light that he addresses both slaves and slave-owners in his letters (Ephesians 6:5–9; Colossians 3:22–4:1; 1 Timothy 6:1–2; Titus 2:9–10; see similarly 1 Peter 2:18). What we find if we continue reading Ephesians 6:6–9 is that without overturning the social location of either party, Paul at heart entreats slaves and their owners to demonstrate love and respect for each other as they would toward Christ.

Paul’s hope was almost certainly that if members of the Christ community fully committed to a righteous and loving lifestyle, slave owners would cease viewing their slaves as mere property. That is, they might remain slaves in terms of their larger social status, but they would otherwise be treated as a brother or sister by their Christ-following owners.

In another of Paul’s letters, a personal one to a man named Philemon, he indicates exactly this sort of change. Regarding Philemon’s slave Onesimus who had been away in service to Paul during his imprisonment, he writes:

“Perhaps the reason [Onesimus] was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord” (NIV).

In all, taking seriously Paul’s own context in Scripture means reading his admonition to slaves and slave-owners as both (1) ethically serious, revealing abiding truth relevant to persons in an inequitable power relationship with one another, and (2) historically-conditioned, and therefore not the last word to be said on the matter for Christians.

As ethically serious words that reveal abiding truth, we may understand that any use of self-serving power at the expense of others is wholly ruled out for God’s people. As historically-conditioned words, we may recognize that Paul was a first-century Mediterranean man and slavery was simply a fact of life for him until the Lord would return. Nevertheless, he clearly sought to mitigate the injustice of this institution in the present time (a time he characterizes as “evil” in Galatians 1:4) and suggested that it is ultimately contrary to God’s will (see especially 1 Corinthians 7:21–23; Galatians 3:28).

Unfortunately, Paul nowhere says, “Masters, free your slaves,” and it seems that he did not completely grasp the full implications of his own teaching in this respect. However, all major Christian groups in the modern world and a number of Christian voices throughout the centuries who have been shaped by what he did say have correctly concluded that the institution of slavery has no rightful place in society and that it is, moreover, Christian duty to stand unequivocally against it.