I have noticed a growing theme among Christians who identify as complementarian (those who believe men and women are equal in human worth, but men are granted a higher level of human authority by God); some of them seem to believe that slavery in New Testament times was “less harsh” than the slavery of Africans in American (and European) history.
The conversation normally goes like this. The complementarian will say, “The Bible is clear that women are not to teach or have authority over men.” To which I reply, “Slave owners in America also said that the Bible was clear that slavery is permissible.” Then, some complementarians will actually attempt to justify “biblical slavery” by stating, “Slavery in the New Testament was less harsh than the slavery we have seen in American history.”
I have been tremendously disturbed by Christians that would seek to justify any type of slavery. As one who studied church history on a graduate level, I don’t agree that Romans and Greeks were “less harsh” with their slaves. Romans had no trouble throwing people to lions and would pack out large arenas to watch. With such barbaric practices, we are naive to believe that ancient slavery in the Roman empire was “not as bad” as the slavery we saw in American history.
Slavery in the ancient world was different from slavery in American history, in that it did not center on systematic oppression of one ethnic group by another. Instead, slavery in the ancient world was one of conqueror to conquered and there was nothing that resembled the transatlantic slave trade. What is worse about American slavery is the fact that from 1440 to 1870, around 11 million Africans were captured by Europeans and transported to the Americas.
Therefore, it is the “scale” of the slave trade in the Americas that is worse than the slavery we see in the ancient world, but individual slaves were treated just as cruelly and unfairly in the ancient world.
In other words, the only thing that makes American slavery “more harsh” than New Testament slavery was its organized effort to systematically oppress people due to their skin color. The truth is that any form of slavery is evil, and as Christians, we should openly condemn any and all types of slavery and never seek to justify it.
It should be noted that slavery within ancient Rome and Greece (New Testament slavery) should be defined as one human owning another human. This was culturally acceptable and added to the elitism of the rich and powerful.
Slaves in the Roman Empire did all sorts of jobs to make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful. Slaves served their owners as administrators, financial agents, secretaries, house servants, cooks, farmers, etc. Owning slaves increased a person’s social status and displayed their wealth. Elite wealth and status were built on the backs of slave labor, and allowed the rich to live lives of leisure (Source, P. 8-9).
It’s important to understand that slaves in the Roman empire had no control over their own lives. Ancient Greeks and Romans sought to own other humans for the same reason that modern slavery exists today: power and wealth. Slavery is about dominance, and it is always the most vulnerable in society that are victimized – the poor, minorities, women, etc.
Although biblical slavery was not as organized in its systemic oppression of another race, millions of individual slaves were treated just as unfairly and harshly. In New Testament times, if slaves disobeyed their masters or performed tasks wrongly, it was not uncommon for them to get flogged (whipped). Surely, some slave owners were kinder than others, but they still were practicing evil, because they took ownership of another human’s life (Source).
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul is both tolerant and intolerant of slavery. To truly understand the Apostle Paul, we must examine both his tolerance of cultural evils and his hope to abolish such evils with time and with the message of the Gospel. Put it this way, some of us are trying to abolish the unjust notion that husbands have authority over their wives, but we are also tolerant of this practice as long as the husband is treating his wife kindly.
In society, we are often tolerant of unjust establishments, because the only way to change them is to be tolerant. Why? Because if we are intolerant of our complementarian and patriarchal friends, they will not have ears to hear our message of equality. Yet, we still must speak the truth, as the Apostle Paul did, in hopes of pushing Christians towards redemption in Jesus Christ.
And so we see the Apostle Paul encouraging slaves to obey their masters out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 6:5), but we also see the Apostle Paul write, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28).” Therefore, Paul’s ultimate mission is to see women, slaves, and all races treated equally; but in order to accomplish this, some measure of submission to culture was necessary.
For example, if a slave simply stated, “I am out of here. Jesus set me free and I don’t have to be your slave anymore,” the slave owner would not be turned on to Christianity, and he may even beat or kill his slave. But if the slave stayed and loved his owner and showed him Christ, the owner may see a change in the slave and want what the slave has.
Paul’s ideal would be that the slave introduces the slave owner to Christ and, in turn, the slave owner’s heart is changed and he willingly sets his slave free.
In the same way, we see the Apostle Paul encouraging wives to submit to their husbands so that their husbands may come to know Christ, and, in time, understand their calling to mutually submit to their wives and to empower women. In the ancient world, a man setting his slave free and submitting to a woman would have been an outrageous and humiliating thought.
As Christians in the modern world, we must join the Apostle Paul’s efforts and passion to see all slaves set free and all men and women treated as equals in both human worth and human authority. God’s story is one of redemption; we should partner with God in correcting all that is unjust and unrighteous in this world. After all, Jesus taught us to do unto others as we would like others to do unto us (Luke 6:31).
If every man and woman were honest, not one of us would want to be enslaved in any form of slavery, and not one of us would want to have less human authority due to our gender, race, or social status.
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