Dr Paul Allen

Genesis 9:20-27 has been used in the last 200 years, as the passage that defends the American institution of slavery (that designation comes from Albert Barnes:  “This passage, by a singular perverseness of interpretation, and a singular perseverance in that perverseness, notwithstanding the plainest rules of exegesis, is often employed to justify the reduction of the African to slavery”.  So let’s look at that passage:    Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Curse...

So what about Philemon? Often he is trotted out at as the token New Testament slave owner. Godly—after all, the church met in his home—friends with Paul, and most certainly a slave owner. The argument, as some make it, is that because Paul does not command Philemon to release Onesimus, then slavery must be totes cool for Christians. Here is the truth: while the message of Philemon is more profound than simply “slavery is bad,” the book does present some uncomfortable truths for both sides of today’s social justice debate. The background: Philemon was a church leader in Colossae. He owned slaves, one of whom ran away, apparently after stealing something from Philemon. Somehow this slave, Onesimus, met Paul in Rome and was converted, and eventually became valuable to Paul as a ministry partner. Paul then found himself in a bind. Should he send Onesimus back to Philemon, and risk losing one of his ministry partners? Or should he keep him and risk offending Philemon, should he ever fin...

The OT condemns slavery, it might surprise you to know that the NT is even more clear. While the Torah showed how the forceful ownership of a human was not fitting for God’s nation, the NT shows that the same action is not fitting for God’s church. The Romans had a practice nearly as barbaric as American slavery, and it was referred to as “man-stealing.” In 1 Timothy 1:10, Paul tells Timothy that a person cannot simultaneously claim the name of Christ while participating in the involuntary ownership of human life. The context is important . Paul’s first letter to Timothy was written to instruct Timothy on leading the Ephesian church. The purpose of the book is found in 3:15:  "you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth.”  It is in this vein that chapter one, after an introduction, moves into describing the lives of people who by definition are no part of the church. Paul comments t...

Douglas Wilson's poem implied that the American institution of slavery was good and noble (“The Experiment” in Untune the Sky). In fact, the noun used in the poem to describe the supposed goal of the American South was “virtue.”  Another work by Wilson, coauthored by Steve Wilkins, Southern Slavery as it Was. While ostensibly opposed to the “racism” of the South, the book was nothing other than a thorough defence of antebellum Christians who were slave owners. As a product of a secular university (and certainly a secular culture), you could easily be floored to see a well-known Christian leader defending slavery. Since then, you can find other Christians who believe the same thing: that the Bible not only permitted the American slave trade, but that those slave owners in the South who claimed the name of Christ and yet profited from the buying and selling of human beings could do so with a clean conscience before God. Perhaps the pertinacity of this belief explains lingering ra...

Slavery in the Ancient World Slavery existed in most cultures in the ancient world and in all the cultures surrounding the land of Israel during biblical times. A slave could be owned by the state—such as the publicly owned slaves in Athens who served as a police force—or by individuals. The majority of slaves were prisoners of war who were sold into slavery. Slavery could take the form of debt slavery , in which people sold themselves or their children to clear their debts, punishment for crime, the birth of children to slaves, and the enslavement of victims of piracy or war. Slaves in state-owned mines worked under inhumane conditions and had a short life expectancy. Many household slaves, on the other hand, fared better. In addition to denoting a person’s legal status or identity, the term “slave” also denotes a power relationship between persons. Patterson defines slavery as “social death,” arguing that an enslaved person was “alienated from all ‘rights’ or claims of bi...

Lee Strobel,  The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus   (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 166–69: Jesus and Slavery There was one other issue I wanted to raise with Carson. I glanced at my watch. “Do you have a few more minutes?” I asked. When he indicated he did, I began to address one more controversial topic. To be God, Jesus must be ethically perfect. But some critics of Christianity have charged that he fell short because, they say, he tacitly approved of the morally abhorrent practice of slavery. As Morton Smith wrote, There were innumerable slaves of the emperor and of the Roman state; the Jerusalem Temple owned slaves; the High Priest owned slaves (one of them lost an ear in Jesus’ arrest); all of the rich and almost all of the middle class owned slaves. So far as we are told, Jesus never attacked this practice. . . . There seem to have been slave revolts in Palestine and Jordan in Jesus’ youth; a miracle-wor...