While inculcating principles, which, if accepted and acted upon, would have destroyed the essence of despotism and slavery, transformed every despot, in fact, into a just and beneficent sovereign, every slave-owner into a kind master, like Philemon, and every slave into a freeman in all but the name—nay, into a “brother beloved”—the Apostles refrained from a crusade against despotism and slavery as political institutions. Both had so long and extensively prevailed, and the latter was so universally sanctioned, that they could not be extirpated by any summary process, nor denounced and resisted, except at the risk of transforming the religions revolutions into a political one.
The apostles seem to have been contented, therefore, to wait; and while plainly proposing principles which must, if acted upon, secure liberty and extinguish slavery, they left the seed to germinate in the soil. Such, at all events, appears to be the posture of the writers of the New Testament in reference to these evils; nor can we do them justice except by recollecting that Christianity was a system suddenly inserted into the framework of ancient society, and that it was impossible, without certain ruin to its main enterprise, directly to encounter some of the political and social enormities of the time.
To continue reading this Bible article, click here.
Author: Henry Rogers
Keywords: Philemon, Onesimus, Slavery, Bond servant, Bond slave, Slave, enslaved, indentured servant, endentured servant, indentured slave, debt slave, debt servant, endentured slave, forms of slavery, Master, Slave master, sold into slavery
Bible reference(s): 1 Corinthians 7:21, 1 Timothy 1:10, 1 Corinthians 12:13, 1 Corinthians 7:22, 1 Timothy 1:10, Colossians 4:1, Deuteronomy 12:12, Deuteronomy 21:14, Deuteronomy 24:7, Deuteronomy 5:14, Ephesians 6:9, Exodus 12:44, Exodus 20:10, Exodus 21:16, Galatians 3:28, Genesis 17:13, Leviticus 22:11, Luke 7:41, Matthew 18:28, Philemon 1:16, Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 7:18, Philemon 1
Source: “Christianity and Slavery,” The Testimony, Vol. 16, No. 181, January 1946, pp. 21-2.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.