What Does the Bible Say About Slavery?

The Objection

At Full Strength

• The Bible never issues a flat command, “Do not own slaves.”
• It regulates slavery and tells slaves to obey their masters.
• Critics conclude that Scripture is complicit in a great evil.
• This is a serious moral objection that deserves an honest hearing.

Key idea: The hard truth: the Bible regulates slavery rather than abolishing it outright. That demands an honest reckoning.

Source: Stated, e.g., by critics such as Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great.

Context

Two Different Things Called “Slavery”

• Ancient Near Eastern slavery was widespread and economically central.
• It was usually not race-based, unlike the later transatlantic trade.
• Many entered it through debt, poverty, or war — and could be freed.
• Reading later chattel slavery back into the text distorts both.

Useful fact: Ancient servitude was often debt-based and temporary — not the race-based, lifelong chattel slavery of later centuries.

Source: Standard histories of ancient Near Eastern slavery.

Old Testament

Regulation and Real Limits

• Israelite servitude was often indentured, with release in the seventh year.
• Kidnapping a person to sell was a capital crime (Exodus 21:16).
• A slave whose master destroyed an eye or knocked out a tooth was to go free (Exodus 21:26–27).
• A runaway was not to be returned (Deuteronomy 23:15–16) — striking for its era.

Useful fact: Deuteronomy forbids returning a runaway slave — humane compared to surrounding cultures and to later slave codes.

Source: Exodus 21; Deuteronomy 23.

Old Testament

The Harder Texts

• Foreign slaves could be held longer and passed on as property (Leviticus 25:44–46).
• Beating a slave was penalized, yet a disturbing clause limits the penalty (Exodus 21:20–21).
• These passages are genuinely uncomfortable and shouldn't be smoothed over.
• Many read them as regulating a fallen institution, not endorsing an ideal.

Honest note: Some Old Testament slave laws are harsh by any standard. Pretending otherwise isn't honest apologetics.

Source: Leviticus 25; Exodus 21.

Responses

The “Accommodation” Reading

• A major view: the law met Israel where it was, restraining cruelty within a hard culture.
• Like divorce, it was “permitted” for hardness of heart, not held up as the ideal (Matthew 19:8).
• The trajectory bends toward restraint and dignity, not endorsement.
• Critics fairly reply that a perfect God could simply have forbidden it.

Key idea: On the accommodation view, the law limited an entrenched evil rather than blessing it — though a fair objection remains.

Source: William Webb, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals (2001).

New Testament

A New Logic

• Paul tells masters to treat slaves justly, “knowing that you also have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1; cf. Ephesians 6:9).
• “There is neither slave nor free... all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
• In Philemon, Paul urges that the slave Onesimus be received “as a brother.”
• The seeds of equality are planted, even without a political program.

Useful fact: Paul calls the slave Onesimus a “beloved brother” and reminds masters they too have a Master — planting equality's seed.

Source: Galatians 3:28; Philemon 16; Colossians 4:1; Ephesians 6:9.

Responses

Why No Immediate Abolition?

• Early Christians were a powerless minority, not lawmakers.
• An attempted slave revolt would have been crushed (cf. the fate of Spartacus).
• The strategy was to transform relationships from within.
• Critics fairly ask whether that was enough; defenders point to the long arc.

Source: Historical context of the early church under Rome.

The Long Arc

Scripture and Abolition

• The logic of “all one in Christ” later fueled abolition movements.
• Christians such as William Wilberforce and the Quakers led British abolition.
• Pro-slavery Christians also misused the Bible — an ugly fact to own.
• Scripture stood at the center of both sides of the historical fight.

Honest note: The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and to abolish it. The abolitionists argued they were reading it rightly.

Source: David Brion Davis, histories of abolition.

Honest Limits

Sitting With the Tension

• The absence of a clear, blanket ban troubles many sincere readers.
• “Accommodation” and “trajectory” answers help but don't fully remove the discomfort.
• Thoughtful Christians admit this is a place where faith holds tension.
• Honesty here is better than a tidy defense that ignores the texts.

Key idea: This is a question where honest Christians sit with tension rather than claim a neat, total answer.

Source: Reflected in much contemporary Christian ethics.

Conclusion

The Big Takeaway

• The Bible regulates and restrains slavery and sows the seeds of its undoing.
• It does not issue the blanket condemnation modern readers want.
• Its deepest logic — every person bears God's image — undercuts slavery entirely.
• An honest faith owns both the hard texts and the liberating trajectory.

In one line: Scripture restrains and ultimately undermines slavery through human dignity — while leaving some texts that stay hard.

Source: Webb; Davis; Genesis 1:27.