Does the Bible Endorse Slavery? [a longer post]

Does the Bible Endorse Slavery?
 
1 Peter 2:18–20 (NKJV)
18 Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.
19 For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.
20 For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
 
The word “servants” is also translated as “slaves” or as “bondservants”. Multiple places in the Bible will reference this topic. Note the following:
 
Ephesians 6:5–8 (NKJV)
5 Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ;
6 not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,
7 with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men,
8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.
 
1 Timothy 6:1–2 (NKJV)
1 Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed.
2 And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things.
 
Colossians 3:22–23 (NKJV)
22 Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.
23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,
 
In these verses, some will use the word “slave”. James refers to himself as a “bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). The word "slave" in James (and in many instances of the New Testament) is "doulos" in the Greek, and it does mean servant or bondservant. It means someone who has placed their will under the will of another. When James is using the word, he is referring to the fact that he lives to fulfill God’s will, not his own.
 
You may have difficulty with the Bible’s use of the word “slave” because of how the evil industry of slavery was practiced and experienced in America’s history (and in other nations as well). You may read these verses and think the Bible is commending slavery, but you have to understand what the term meant back in the first century. We are reading a text from the first century with our 21st-century mind. This can cause confusion if you are not careful. One practice of good Biblical interpretation is to not confuse a modern word’s usage for how that word was used in Biblical times. You want to know what the word meant when it was written, not what the term means now.
 
The same word can have different meanings even in the same century. I remember watching a baking competition on TV with my family. This competition took place in England. The British speak with an accent, but they also use a few words differently than Americans. They talked about being in their “garden”, but Americans would call it their “yard”. We may wrongly interpret what they are trying to say if we don’t take the time to understand what they mean when they use this word. They talked about making a “biscuit”, but Americans would call it a “cookie”.
 
Because of streaming platforms, our family has been able to show some children’s British shows as our kids were young. I was surprised to hear one of my sons get upset one day and say he was “cross” (a British word meaning “upset”). Another time, one of my other sons said he was going to go on a “holiday” (a British word meaning “vacation”). I only use these examples to illustrate that words can mean different things, and good hermeneutics (the study of Bible interpretation) requires you to understand what a word meant to the original audience.
 
For instance, Acts 1:8 says, "But you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, in Samaria, and even to the uttermost parts of the earth." The word “power” is the Greek word dunamis. I have heard preachers mistakenly say, “This word power in Acts 1:8 means dynamite.” The Holy Spirit does want to give “power”, but the word “dynamite” was coined by Alfred Nobel in 1867 to describe a stick of explosive material. You shouldn’t read an image from 1867 into a first-century word. The better approach is to let the Bible speak as it was written in the first-century and then apply it to today.
 
Another example is the word “wine”. I have written a book on this subject entitled “Don’t Drink Responsibly”, where I seek to bring clarity to what the Bible means when it uses words like “wine” or “strong drink”. I've heard people argue, "If the Bible were against wine and wanted us to drink grape juice instead, it would have specifically mentioned grape juice rather than using the word wine." Sometimes “wine” in the Bible referred to grape juice that was not fermented (or intoxicating) and sometimes it would refer to wine that was fermented. All of it would be referenced using the same word “wine”. The Bible student has to discover through the context what is intended.
 
I’ve heard people argue, "Well, Jesus turned water into wine (see John 2:1-11)," but really they're not seeing it through a first-century lens. They're imagining what is sold in stores today, referring back to what Jesus did, and then stating, "Well, the Bible must not condemn it." Take time to consider Proverbs 20:1, which says, "Wine is a mocker; strong drink is a brawler. Anyone who's seduced by it is not wise." Proverbs 23:29-35 explains when to avoid wine.  
 
Proverbs 23:29–35 (NKJV)
29 Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes?
30 Those who linger long at the wine, Those who go in search of mixed wine.
31 Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it swirls around smoothly;
32 At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like a viper.
33 Your eyes will see strange things, And your heart will utter perverse things.
34 Yes, you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, Or like one who lies at the top of the mast, saying:
35 “They have struck me, but I was not hurt; They have beaten me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake, that I may seek another drink?”
 
Verses 30 and 31 are describing wine that is fermented or intoxicating. Therefore, note this Biblical line of reasoning:
 
1)     Jesus is the living Word, and He would not contradict the written Word.
2)     The Bible says to avoid fermented wine, which is intoxicating.
3)     Yes, Jesus turned water into wine, but it could not have been intoxicating.
 
The Bible would use the word “wine” the same way we today use the word “drink”. If an adult is attending a party where they are serving alcohol and asks for a “drink” the context would assume they are referencing something intoxicating. But if a child comes in on a hot summer day and asks for a “drink” the context would assume they are referencing something that is not intoxicating. Context helps you understand how the word is to be used. The same is true with the word “slaves”, “servants” or “bond-servants”.
 
Is the Bible promoting slavery?
 
1 Peter 2:18-19 says, “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable…” Definitions matter when reading the Bible. This is true with the word “slave” (“oiketai” – household slave) in 1 Peter 2:18. If we simply read the Bible with our modern concepts, we truly will misread the Scriptures.
 
Scott Bartchy, graduate of Harvard and professor of history at UCLA, has researched first-century slavery.[1] He states, ''Central features that distinguish 1st century slavery from that later practiced in the New World are the following: racial factors played no role; education was greatly encouraged (some slaves were better educated than their owners); many slaves carried out sensitive and highly responsible social functions; slaves could own property; their religious and cultural traditions were the same as those of freeborn and (perhaps above all) the majority of urban and domestic slaves could legitimately anticipate being emancipated by the age of 30.''[2]
 
Bartchy also writes, “In stark contrast to New World slavery in the 17th–19th centuries, Greco-Roman slavery functioned as a process rather than a permanent condition, as a temporary phase of life by means of which an outsider obtained ‘a place within a society …’” [3] He also explains how one would become a slave in the Roman Empire:
 
Kidnap or capture: Before the death of Caesar Augustus in ad 14 and during the time of Rome’s foreign expansion, many slaves were either captured in war or kidnapped by pirates and then sold at auction. Paul listed this kind of enslavement among other detestable practices, such as sexual immorality, homosexuality, and perjury, earlier in this letter to Timothy (1:10, where “kidnapper” translates andrapodistēs [405], or “man-stealer”; cf. Exod. 21:16).
 
Birth: By the time of Paul, birth had become the primary source of new slaves. According to Roman law, if you were born to a woman who was a slave, you were bound to her master as well.
 
Self-sale: An extremely common means of escaping the hardscrabble life of freeborn poverty was to sell oneself into slavery. Many non-Romans chose voluntary indenture as a way to gain work skills, climb socially, earn citizenship after release (known as manumission)—a reasonable expectation, according to Roman law—and even serve in public office. Many believe this had been the path chosen by Erastus (Rom. 16:23), the city manager of Corinth.
 
Abandonment or sale of children: A common method of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy was to bear the infant and then abandon him or her to the elements, a practice called “exposure.” Infants found alive were often raised as slaves. Extremely poor parents might elect to sell their child into slavery instead—not for the money, necessarily, but as a crude form of adoption.[4]
 
Charles Swindoll adds,
 
Roman law considered slaves to be property. A slave could be owned, traded, or sold like a beast of burden. A slave could not legally marry, bring a suit against someone in court, inherit property or money, or do anything without his or her master’s consent. While slaves received more severe punishment for crimes than their freed counterparts, they did enjoy some legal protection from excessive abuse, not unlike our laws against animal cruelty. Enforcement, however, was inconsistent.
 
On the bright side, slaves could own property, which they legally controlled without interference from their masters. Some even acquired their own slaves, whom they sold for a profit. Slaves also could accumulate wealth and then use it to purchase their freedom, a common method of wiping out debt and reentering free life with advanced social status. Legally, slaves occupied a decidedly subordinate status in Roman society; but socially, they often rose to relatively high ranks. In fact, few could distinguish slaves from freeborn workers-for-hire, who carried out the same kinds of duties.
 
In Greco-Roman households slaves served not only as cooks, cleaners, and personal attendants, but also as tutors of persons of all ages, physicians, nurses, close companions, and managers of the household. In the business world, slaves were not only janitors and delivery boys; they were managers of estates, shops, and ships, as well as salesmen and contracting agents. In the civil service slaves were not only used in street-paving and sewer-cleaning gangs, but also as administrators of funds and personnel and as executives with decision-making powers. Most slaves could expect to be freed by the age of thirty, or even sooner, as many owners set all their slaves free as a part of their final testaments.[5]
 
In Jesus Skeptic, John Dickerson writes, “Because of my American-centric education, I once had the impression that slavery was created and perpetrated only in the United States, from the 1600s until the Civil War. I have since learned how ignorant I was about the evils of slavery and its history in most major civilizations. While slavery is an ugly and heinous part of America’s history, the unpleasant reality is that it was a global norm among many civilizations, dating back thousands of years before the United States existed.”[6] “In her cross-cultural and historical research on comparative captivity, Catherine Cameron found that bondspeople composed 10 percent to 70 percent of the population of most societies, lending credence to Seymour Drescher’s assertion that ‘freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution.’”[7]
 
The Bible does not condone or commend slavery. Consider Deuteronomy 24:7, which says, "If a man is found kidnapping any of his brethren of the children of Israel and mistreats him or sells him, then that kidnapper shall die; you shall put away the evil from among you." This verse says capital punishment will be the penalty for taking a person against their will and selling them into slavery. In 1 Timothy 1:9-11, Paul lists commandments that help people know what is right and what is wrong. In the list, he says “men-stealers” or “kidnappers” is against God’s law. This is describing the practice of stealing and selling a person as a slave.
 
These comments may seem too detailed, but it is necessary to explain the context in which 1 Peter 2:18 (as well as other Biblical passages that express slavery imagery) is written. When Biblical and historical background is revealed, any honest assessment must conclude that there are similarities but there are also many differences. The Bible does not condone or condemn slavery.
 
In Jesus Skeptic, John Dickerson writes about the impact of William Wilberforce to abolish slavery. He states,
 
William Wilberforce was not a humanitarian. He was not a good person. He did not care about slaves. Then he became a Christian. As a Christian, he started to read the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.
 
Wilberforce then wrote a book titled Real Christianity in which he wrote that God opened his eyes to realize the evil of slavery. He gave the rest of his life to end slavery in Britain. When Britain outlawed slavery, it controlled a sprawling empire around the world. Wilberforce’s work thus spread to the British territories. Wilberforce remains credited, more than any other individual, with ending the slave trade in the vast British Empire, including India—which had an estimated eight to nine million indigenous slaves in the Hindu caste system.[8]
 
Wilberforce’s argument in “Real Christianity” was if you are a Christian, you should be against slavery. He worked so hard to see it abolished, but thought he might be wasting his time. He considered doing something else. John Newton, the great writer of "Amazing Grace" said, “Stay where you are. God has placed you there. Don't give up what God has put on your heart to do.” Ultimately, Wilberforce did see the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain.
 
The transformed heart of a Christian man helped to bring about transformation in society. God changes hearts and lives, and then it begins to influence society. Wayne Grudem, in Politics and the Bible, references the positive influence of Christianity on society. He writes,
 
“Historian Alvin Schmidt points out how the spread of Christianity and Christian influence on government was primarily responsible for outlawing infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion in the Roman Empire (in AD 374); outlawing the brutal battles-to-the-death in which thousands of gladiators had died (in 404); outlawing the cruel punishment of branding the faces of criminals (in 315); instituting prison reforms such as the segregating of male and female prisoners (by 361); stopping the practice of human sacrifice among the Irish, the Prussians, and the Lithuanians as well as among other nations; outlawing pedophilia; granting of property rights and other protections to women; banning polygamy (which is still practiced in some Muslim nations today); prohibiting the burning alive of widows in India (in 1829); outlawing the painful and crippling practice of binding young women’s feet in China (in 1912); persuading government officials to begin a system of public schools in Germany (in the sixteenth century); and advancing the idea of compulsory education of all children in a number of European countries.[9]
 
Our society continues to feel the effects of the Christians who have gone before us, and our Christian influence should draw people to Christ and influence society for the good. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:13–3:7 that our winsome witness should draw people to Christ in society, at work and in the home. God's people can transform society from the inside out, one heart at a time.
 
I remember walking on a long sidewalk as a child, and I saw different parts of the sidewalk bowed up right where a tree was. The cement was crooked, unleveled from block to block. I wondered as a child why anyone would lay cement down in such a way. Then I realized what occurred. They had originally laid the cement level and straight. But the little tree that was planted in the ground beside the sidewalk grew. As it grew bigger, so did its roots. Then the roots pushed the cement higher and higher until it looked like it did. No one really observes the roots until the cement begins to move. But the root-work under the surface is happening.
 
Society is like the cement sidewalk, and Christians are like those roots, ever growing under the surface. No one will notice the impact until the sidewalk begins to shift. Just patiently be the witness God wants you to be, and He will use you to transform society in a positive way. God can transform society, one heart at a time.
 
“Lord, thank You for Your Word that helps me see that every person is infinitely valuable to You. I do praise You that Your followers have been used throughout the history of the world to transform society for the better. I ask You to help me do my part today. I pray that I see people through Your eyes. I pray that I will appreciate the contribution of Christianity upon society. Lord, help me stand up for righteousness, even when it is unpopular. You are my King. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

*Picture credit: By Dennis G. Jarvis - Flickr: Tunisia-4718 - A Banquet, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22436409
[1] S. Scott Bartchy, “First Century Slavery and the Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:21,” (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series, No. 11), Scholars’ Press, University of Montana, 1973. (Reprinted by Scholars’ Press, 1985, and by Wipf & Stock 2003).
[2] As quoted by Jeff Lynn, “Honoring God at Work”, sermon manuscript from 1 Peter 2:17-20, www.sermonsearch.com.
[3] S. Scott Bartchy, “Slavery: II. In the NT” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, rev. ed., ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988), 4:544; quotation from T. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (London: Routledge, 1981), 2.
[4] S. Scott Bartchy, “Slavery: II. In the NT” as quoted by Charles R. Swindoll, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, vol. 11, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2014), 127–128.
[5] Charles R. Swindoll, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus,  127–128.
[6] John Dickerson, Jesus Skeptic: A Journalist Explores the Credibility and Impact of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing, 2019), 132.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 145-146.
[9] Alvin Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004; formerly published as Under the Influence, 2001), 51, 53, 59. And Wayne A. Grudem, Politics according to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 49–50.