Biblical Slavery: An Apologetic and Devotional Mandate

Introduction: Modern Arguments Against Christianity/Bible.

Argument from critics:

The Bible claims that God is the ultimate grounding of all morality (God is morally perfect).

God in the Bible allows for the ownership of one person by another as property (slavery).

A situation in which persons are allowed to own slaves is morally inferior to a situation in which this is not permitted.

The God-given social structure prescribed in the Bible is therefore morally imperfect.

Therefore the claims of the Bible with regard to a morally perfect God are self-defeating.

Thesis: When seen in social historical context and within the scope of the broader context and message of the Bible, slavery is seen as a consequence of universal sin from which God is working to free mankind, as a component of His universal project of atonement and the restoration of all things.

Biblical Slavery In Context

Adolf Leo Oppenheim, a noted Ancient Near Eastern Scholar, wrote: "Slavery was an integral part of the economic and social structure of every Mesopotamian civilization. It was a ubiquitous institution, appearing in various forms across all levels of society, from the palace and temples to private households."

Kenneth Richard Samples, Philosopher and Theologian with “Reasons to Believe” and Professor at Biola University: “Every society in the ancient world practiced slavery. The Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians—I can’t name one civilization that didn’t practice slavery. So it’s important to realize that slavery is a human problem rather than a Jewish or Christian problem.”

The first mention of a servant or slave is in the context of a description of Abraham’s vast wealth

Genesis 12:16b “...and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.”

Here human stock is listed in the context of livestock.

The origin of this practice is nowhere described in scripture.

It just appears in the narrative as a brute fact.

It’s important to establish that slavery existed on its own before any kind of revelatory law was given.

Abraham was born approx 2200 B.C. Slavery already existed.

The law was given approx 1300 B.C., 900 years later.

Two reasons to become a slave in the OT.

Debt slavery:

Leviticus 25:39–43 ““If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.”

Exodus 21:2 “When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.”

In this time, without “bankruptcy protection,” a man deep in debt can have his debts paid by another and work off that debt for up to six years.

It protected the creditor and debtor.

It was not permanent slavery, but a season of indentured servitude.

Six years, but in the end they were to be supplied with resources to re-establish a living.

Deuteronomy 15:12–15 ““If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.”

The debt slave who wished to remain in his master’s household after six years could voluntarily become a lifelong slave, called a bond-slave (Ex 21:3-6).

Prisoners of war.

Conquered people groups were subjected to forced labor as was common in the historical setting.

Female prisoners of war taken as wives were not to be treated as slaves (Deut 21:10-14).

Prisoners of war who had become slaves were not ever released from service, as were debt slaves, but they were still afforded protection from inhumane treatment (below).

Biblical Slavery and Human Worth

God did not create the institution of slavery. In the beginning, he created one race, two genders, with equal standing and worth as co-image bearers of God.

Genesis 1:26–28 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.””

The dominion of mankind is over nature, not one another.

The subjugation of mankind is to God, not to one another.

Obviously, we discussing slavery here, not gender roles, which are not the same thing.

When God dispersed mankind at the tower of Babel in Genesis 10-11, he did not call one nation to subjugate another as slaves.

Abraham’s slaves are included in the covenant blessing of Abraham.

God does not consider them less worthy of blessing and relationship.

Genesis 17:9–13 “And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.”

Slaves were to be given rest on the Sabbath along with their masters.

Exodus 20:10.

Deuteronomy 5:14 “but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.”

Slaves are explicitly valued in the law as people.

Exodus 21:20 ““When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged.”

Exodus 21:26–27 ““When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth.”

If abuse of a slave happened, there was justice for the slave. This did not exist in other contemporaneous legal systems, such as the Code of Hammurabi.

Female slaves, Concubines, were given specific legal protections in the OT law that did not exist in other cultures.

Exodus 21:7–11 ““When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.”

They could not be sent away without resources

They were to be considered family (wives, daughters).

If they aren’t provided for, they were set free.

Slaves who escaped their owners were not to be returned to them but were to be permitted to live free.

Deuteronomy 23:15–16 ““You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.”

Very different than surrounding civilizations’ legal codes.

Biblical Slavery and Ultimate Freedom

Spiritual vs Social Freedom:

The broad scope of scripture can be summarized by the ideas of “Creation, Fall, and Redemption.”

Slavery is not a part of the ideal creation.

It arose as a consequence of the sin of mankind, a perversion of the original intent of God.

From Genesis 3 onward, the Bible records the unfolding program of redeeming all of creation from the stain of sin.

Slavery is part of this stain.

However, it is not the project of God to rebuild societal structures for their own sake.

He is undertaking to erase the effects and presence of sin and create for Himself a people redeemed.

The abolition of slavery is a side consequence of that project, not its chief aim.

Progressive treatment of slavery in the Bible.

Slavery is stated as a fact of ancient near eastern society without moral commentary (Gen 12).

Laws mitigating and regulating it as part of the Sinai covenant (Exodus 20; 21; Lev 25).

Overt statements of the equality of all people in the new covenant.

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.”

Philemon 15–16 “For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”

Eventually, the erasure of all sources of pain and suffering in the new creation.

Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.””

All moral imperfections will be excluded from the new heavens and new earth (Rev 21:8).

While slavery is not mentioned explicitly here, the pattern is clear. All that is sad, sinful, or broken has been made untrue.

While the abolition of slavery is not an explicit goal of scripture, the view of human worth as created in the image of God has been seen by many in the church as reason to take up this project.

John Chrysostom spoke against the mistreatment of slaves and emphasized the equality of all people before God. Although he did not call for the outright abolition of slavery, his teachings encouraged Christian masters to treat their slaves with kindness and justice.

"We are not making laws, but God has made them and given us the same nature and the same honorable birth, and we are just as much our brothers' keepers as we are their owners." (*Homilies on Ephesians*, Homily 22)

Augustine acknowledged the existence of slavery but saw it as a consequence of sin and the fallen state of humanity. He promoted the idea of spiritual equality and the transformative power of Christian love and charity.

"The first cause of slavery is sin, with the result that man is subjected to man in the bond of this condition of slavery."(*City of God*, Book XIX, Chapter 15)

John Newton, former slave trader turned abolitionist Anglican Priest, frequently argued for the freedom of all mankind from scripture.

"I hope it will always be a subject of humiliation to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders. The Scriptures teach us that in whatever situation we are placed, we should consider ourselves as in the presence of God, and that we should aim to promote the welfare of our fellow creatures. 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' (Matthew 22:39) I would desire that it might not only be said to our consciences, but likewise to our hearts, 'Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.' (Hebrews 13:3)"

Biblical Slavery and God’s Goodness:

The Bible claims that God is the ultimate grounding of all morality (God is morally perfect).

Agreed.

Deuteronomy 32:4 ““The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.”

God in the Bible allows for the ownership of one person by another as property (slavery).

Clarification: The Bible records a brute fact of history, not an affirmation of the state of being.

Scripture regulates and mitigates slavery to improve the situation while not supporting the practice.

Similar to Jesus’ reasoning on the divorce laws.

Matthew 19:8 “He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

A situation in which persons are allowed to own slaves is morally inferior to a situation in which this is not permitted.

Nuance: Indentured servitude is likely morally favorable to debtor’s prison or other societal solutions to financial insolvency.

The God-given social structure prescribed in the Bible is therefore morally imperfect.

Biblical models of slavery and servitude improve the alternative legal structures of the age.

The overall trajectory of the Bible is toward liberty and freedom for captives and the enslaved.

Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Isaiah 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;”

Therefore the claims of the Bible with regard to a morally perfect God are NOT self-defeating.

A Devotional Mandate of Servitude

Comment from Tim Mundinger about seeing himself as a servant.

The scriptures refer to New Testament Believers with many metaphorical terms. We had the “We Are” series last year.

Temple of the Lord

Bride of Christ

Body of Christ

New Creation

A less comfortable comparison for us is “slave.”

NT Greek word δοῦλος doulos, slave or servant, 126x.

No linguistic distinction between “servant,” “bond-servant” or “slave.”

Are you a slave of Christ?

Has He conquered your former kingdom?

Colossians 1:13 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,”

Colossians 2:15 “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Has he paid a debt you couldn’t possibly pay?

Colossians 2:14 “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

Matthew 6:12 “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

1 Corinthians 6:20 “for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Once you lived under the grace of our Master Jesus, did you love Him and not wish to depart?

If then we qualify in every sense as a “slave of God,” let us settle into some realities of that metaphorical role as well.

Our lives are not our own to direct.

Jeremiah 10:23 “I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.”

1 Corinthians 6:19 “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,”

Our Master gets the increase for our labors, not we ourselves.

Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”

1 Corinthians 10:31 “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Luke 17:10 “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ ””

We trust the provision of our Master to meet our needs and sustain our efforts. That isn’t our concern.

Matthew 6:31–33 “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”