Slavery, women and the Bible's ethics

What you'll learn

• Compare servitude in the Law of Moses with transatlantic chattel slavery, naming both the protective laws and the hard texts honestly
• Explain how the New Testament and Christian abolitionists undermined slavery, while admitting that some professing Christians defended it
• Defend the equal dignity of women from Genesis 1:27 and the ministry of Jesus, and answer the charge that complementarian roles are misogynist

Facing the charge honestly

Few objections land harder today than this one: "The Bible endorses slavery and treats women as property. Why would I take my morals from it?" Sam Harris pressed it in Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), and Richard Dawkins presses it in the chapter of The God Delusion (2006) on the Bible's morality. The charge is not silly. The Bible does contain laws about slaves, and it does give men and women different roles in the home and the church.

Two wrong answers tempt us. One is denial: pretending the hard texts are not there. The other is embarrassment: quietly conceding that the Bible was simply wrong. Because Scripture is God's inerrant Word (Know Your Faith, Lesson 1), we neither hide its words nor sit in judgement over them. We read each text in its setting, let Scripture interpret Scripture, and ask where the critic's own moral standard came from.

Define terms first. Chattel slavery means owning a human being as movable property, usually for life, with the slave's children born as property too. That is what the transatlantic trade practised from the 1500s to the 1800s: Africans kidnapped, shipped across the Atlantic and held, with their descendants, on the basis of race. The question is whether the Bible endorses that.

Servitude in the Law of Moses

Most servitude in Israel was debt servitude. A poor Israelite could sell his labour to clear a debt, but he went free in the seventh year (Exod 21:2) and was not to be sent away empty-handed but supplied "liberally" (Deut 15:12-14). The reason given is striking: "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you" (Deut 15:15). Israel's identity was built on God's rescue from slavery. The law also contains protections with no parallel in the Atlantic trade:

• Kidnapping was a capital crime. "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death" (Exod 21:16). The Atlantic trade was built on exactly this crime.
• Injury meant freedom. A master who destroyed a servant's eye or knocked out a tooth had to set the servant free (Exod 21:26-27).
• Runaways were sheltered. Israel must not hand an escaped slave back to his master (Deut 23:15-16). The Code of Hammurabi (laws 15-16) made harbouring certain runaway slaves a capital crime, and the United States' Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required escaped slaves to be returned.
• Sabbath rest belonged to servants as well as masters (Exod 20:10; Deut 5:14-15).

The hard texts, read honestly

Now state the hard texts plainly. Leviticus 25:44-46 allowed Israelites to buy slaves from surrounding nations and keep them permanently, passing them on to their children; the seventh-year release applied to fellow Israelites. Exodus 21:20-21 says a master who kills his slave is to be punished, but not if the slave survives a day or two, "for the slave is his money." Do not explain these away.

Three truths help. First, these were civil laws for one nation in the ancient Near East. The Westminster Confession says the judicial laws given to Israel "as a body politic" expired with that state, binding others only by their "general equity" (WCF 19.4). Nowhere does the law command anyone to acquire a slave. Second, Jesus taught that some Mosaic laws regulated fallen practices "because of your hardness of heart" while pointing back to God's purpose "from the beginning" (Matt 19:8). A law can restrain an evil without approving it. Third, even a purchased foreigner could share Israel's Passover (Exod 12:44), and the laws on injury, kidnapping and Sabbath applied to him. Paul Copan works through these texts in Is God a Moral Monster? (2011, chs 12-14).

The New Testament and the abolitionists

In the Roman world slavery ran through the whole economy. The apostles did not call a tiny, persecuted church to armed revolt. Instead they planted truths that ate away at slavery's foundations: slave and free are "all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28); masters must stop threatening, because their Master is in heaven and shows no partiality (Eph 6:9); slaves should take freedom if they can (1 Cor 7:21); and "enslavers" are listed among the lawless (1 Tim 1:10). Paul sent the runaway Onesimus back to Philemon, but asked that he be received "no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother" (Philem 16), and offered to pay any debt himself (v. 18).

Those truths bore fruit. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in London on 22 May 1787 by twelve men, nine of them Quakers, with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp among the others. William Wilberforce (1759-1833), an MP converted in 1784-85 and counselled by John Newton, a former slave-ship captain and the author of "Amazing Grace", led the cause in Parliament. On 28 October 1787 he wrote that "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners." The British slave trade was abolished in 1807, and the Slavery Abolition Act passed the Commons on 26 July 1833, three days before he died. His friends were nicknamed the Clapham Sect.

Honesty requires the other half. Many professing Christians defended slavery; you met George Whitefield in The Story of the Church, Lesson 7. In 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention acknowledged that "many of our Southern Baptist forbears defended the right to own slaves" and apologised. Frederick Douglass saw "the widest possible difference" between "the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ". That is the right distinction: slaveholders were disobeying Exodus 21:16 and 1 Timothy 1:10, not reading them too closely.

Women: equal in dignity

Genesis 1:27 is the foundation: "male and female he created them," both in God's image. In the ancient world that was radical. Girl babies were especially likely to be abandoned: in a papyrus letter from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, dated 1 BC, a man named Hilarion tells his wife to keep the child if it is a boy but to cast it out if it is a girl. Christians refused infanticide, and the sociologist Rodney Stark argues in The Rise of Christianity (1996) that this, with the higher status the church gave women, helped draw women to the early church.

Jesus' treatment of women was startling. He taught Mary as a disciple at his feet (Luke 10:38-42), spoke publicly with a Samaritan woman to his disciples' surprise (John 4:27), defended a sinful woman's devotion against a Pharisee's scorn (Luke 7:36-50), and was supported by women who travelled with him (Luke 8:1-3).

Above all, women were the first witnesses of the resurrection (Matt 28:1-10; John 20:11-18). That honours women, and it is also evidence. Josephus records a rule that women's testimony should not be admitted in court (Antiquities 4.219), and the apostles first dismissed the women's report as "an idle tale" (Luke 24:11). No one inventing a story to persuade first-century people would have chosen women as the key witnesses. God did.

Different roles, equal worth

This course holds the complementarian conviction shared by the teachers it follows: men and women are equal in worth, and God has given them distinct, complementary roles. In marriage the husband leads by loving his wife "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25), and the wife submits to that loving leadership (Eph 5:22-24). In the church the office of elder belongs to qualified men (1 Tim 2:12-13; 3:1-7), a pattern Paul grounds in creation rather than local culture. Many evangelicals hold an egalitarian view, opening every role to both sexes. That is an in-house debate, not a gospel issue.

Role difference is not inequality. The incarnate Son is fully equal with the Father yet came "not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38; 1 Cor 11:3). Headship in Scripture is a call to die for another, not a licence for selfishness: husbands must not be harsh (Col 3:19), and wives are "heirs with you of the grace of life" (1 Pet 3:7). Men who abuse women in the Bible's name sin, and the church must say so.

Finally, beware chronological snobbery, C. S. Lewis's name for "the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited" (Surprised by Joy, ch. 13). The critic assumes our age has reached moral heights the Bible never saw. But where did our conviction that every person has equal worth come from? You met Tom Holland's Dominion (2019) in Secular Society, Lesson 3: he argues that such values grew largely from Christianity. When a friend condemns slavery and misogyny, he stands on ground that Genesis 1:27 laid.

Example: In the staffroom: "Your Bible is pro-slavery and anti-women"

Colleague: Honestly, how can you teach from a book that endorses slavery and treats women as second-class?

You: Fair question, and I won't pretend the hard passages aren't there. Can I ask what you mean by slavery? The Atlantic trade was built on kidnapping.

Colleague: Well, yes. Chains, ships, people sold as property.

You: Exodus 21:16 makes kidnapping someone and selling them a capital crime. Deuteronomy forbids sending a runaway slave back. Israel's law regulated a harsh world, and I'll admit some of those laws are hard to read. But it never endorsed what happened on those ships.

Colleague: Christians still owned slaves, though.

You: Many did, and they were wrong. Paul calls enslavers lawless. It was Christians like Wilberforce who fought for twenty years to end the trade, from the conviction that every person bears God's image.

Colleague: And women?

You: Genesis says male and female are equally made in God's image. Jesus taught women as disciples, and he chose women as the first witnesses of his resurrection, in a culture that wouldn't let them testify in court.

Colleague: I didn't know that.

You: Here's what strikes me. You believe every person has equal worth. So do I. I think that belief makes most sense if we're all made by God, who sent Jesus to die for slaves and masters, men and women alike.

In their own words

“The Bible's God expects his people to keep slaves and tells them how to do it. The civilised world now rightly agrees that slavery is an abomination, so the Bible is a poor moral guide.” (Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006); citing texts such as Leviticus 25:44-46)

“Nobody actually takes their morality from Scripture. We pick and choose its texts using a changing moral Zeitgeist, which is why we now reject its slavery laws and its treatment of women.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), ch. 7, 'The "Good" Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist')

“The claim that the Bible ended slavery is a myth. Christians used the Bible to sustain slavery, and abolitionists increasingly had to move away from biblical authority to oppose it.” (Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011))

“The Bible's teaching on women, from Eve's role in the fall to commands of submission, has degraded women and been used to keep them subordinate.” (Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, The Woman's Bible (1895, 1898))

Key texts

• Genesis 1:27: Male and female both made in God's image. The root of human equality and the standard by which slavery and misogyny are condemned.
• Exodus 21:16: Kidnapping and selling a person is a capital crime. The Atlantic trade was built on exactly what this verse forbids.
• Deuteronomy 23:15-16: Israel must not return a runaway slave. Contrast Hammurabi's code and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
• 1 Timothy 1:10: 'Enslavers' (NIV 'slave traders') are listed among the lawless. The New Testament condemns slave trading.
• Philemon 15-16: Onesimus to be received 'no longer as a bondservant' but 'as a beloved brother'. The gospel undermines slavery from inside.
• Galatians 3:28: Slave and free, male and female, are 'all one in Christ Jesus'. Equal standing before God, without erasing God-given differences.
• Ephesians 5:25: Husbands love 'as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her'. Biblical headship is sacrificial, never domineering.

Objections and answers

Try answering each one yourself before you open the response.

Written task

A Year 10 student writes in her reflection journal: "I can't believe in a God whose Bible supports slavery and keeps women down." Write a 300-450 word reply she could read. Address both concerns honestly, including at least one hard text, and end by pointing her to Christ.

Hand this in to Mr Scott. He will look for:

• Distinguishes Old Testament servitude from chattel slavery with at least two accurate texts (e.g. Exod 21:16; Deut 23:15-16), and names at least one hard text without explaining it away
• Explains how the New Testament and Christian abolitionists undermined slavery, while admitting that some professing Christians defended it
• Grounds women's equal dignity in Genesis 1:27 and the ministry of Jesus, including women as first resurrection witnesses
• Explains complementarian roles as equal worth with distinct roles, without contempt for egalitarian believers
• Shows that her own moral standard rests on the image of God, and ends graciously with the gospel

Further reading

• Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin: Accessible and warm. Chapter 8 ('Doesn't Christianity denigrate women?') and chapter 10 ('Doesn't the Bible condone slavery?') model this lesson's tone.
• Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan: Detailed treatment of women in Israel (ch. 10) and three chapters on slavery in Israel and the New Testament (chs 12-14).
• Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (eds): The standard complementarian collection, explaining equal worth and distinct roles from Scripture.