Does the Bible condone slavery?
The Bible regulates slavery instead of abolishing it. The Old Testament lets Israelites buy foreign slaves as permanent property, and the New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters. Christians used these very texts to defend slavery in America. How can such a book be a moral authority?
— A common objection; see e.g. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
Much of what the Old Testament calls 'slavery' was debt service, not the race-based, lifelong chattel slavery of the Americas, which the Bible condemns at its root by forbidding kidnapping and slave-trading. Some laws, especially those about foreign slaves, remain hard. They regulated a fallen institution in a fallen world rather than endorsing it as ideal. Meanwhile Scripture planted principles (every person made in God's image, master and slave equal in Christ) that Christians eventually used to dismantle slavery.
What Scripture says
26Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.” 27So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Every human being, of every status, bears the image of God; this is the root of biblical human dignity.
16Whoever kidnaps another man must be put to death, whether he sells him or the man is found in his possession.
Kidnapping a person, whether selling him or keeping him, is a capital crime. This strikes at the foundation of the Atlantic slave trade.
15Do not return a slave to his master if he has taken refuge with you. 16Let him live among you wherever he chooses, in the town of his pleasing. Do not oppress him.
A runaway slave must not be returned to his master but allowed to live where he chooses, unlike most ancient law codes.
26If a man strikes and blinds the eye of his manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free as compensation for the eye. 27And if he knocks out the tooth of his manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free as compensation for the tooth.
A servant permanently injured by his master goes free.
39If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor. 40Let him stay with you as a hired worker or temporary resident; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41Then he and his children are to be released, and he may return to his clan and to the property of his fathers. 42Because the Israelites are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt, they are not to be sold as slaves. 43You are not to rule over them harshly, but you shall fear your God.
An Israelite who sells himself through poverty is to be treated as a hired worker, not ruled harshly, and released.
44Your menservants and maidservants shall come from the nations around you, from whom you may purchase them. 45You may also purchase them from the foreigners residing among you or their clans living among you who are born in your land. These may become your property. 46You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.
The hardest text: foreign slaves could be bought and held permanently. It should be faced honestly, not explained away.
9We realize that law is not enacted for the righteous, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for killers of father or mother, for murderers, 10for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching
Paul lists 'enslavers' (slave-traders) among those whose behavior is contrary to sound doctrine.
28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
In Christ there is neither slave nor free. Status distinctions have no standing before God.
15For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for good— 16no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a beloved brother. He is especially beloved to me, but even more so to you, both in person and in the Lord.
Paul asks Philemon to receive the runaway slave Onesimus 'no longer as a slave' but as a beloved brother.
The case
Start with the right picture
When people hear "slavery", they rightly think of the Atlantic slave trade: Africans kidnapped, shipped in chains, bought and sold for life, with their children born into the same condition, all justified by racial ideology. The Bible condemns the foundation of that system. Kidnapping and selling a person was a capital crime in Israel (Exodus 21:16), and Paul names slave-traders among the lawless (1 Timothy 1:10). Every human being bears God's image (Genesis 1:27), and the Bible's laws apply to Israelites and foreigners alike in many areas (Leviticus 19:34).
What the Old Testament laws actually did
1. Most servitude was debt-related and temporary
In a world without bankruptcy courts or welfare, a person in poverty could sell his labor to pay off debts. Hebrew servants were to be released in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12) and sent away with provisions (Deuteronomy 15:13–14). In the year of Jubilee, families recovered their land (Leviticus 25). Israelites in debt were to be treated as hired workers, not ruled "ruthlessly" (Leviticus 25:39–43).
2. The laws protected servants in unusual ways
| Biblical law | Compare |
|---|---|
| Runaway slaves were not to be returned (Deuteronomy 23:15–16) | The Code of Hammurabi made harboring a runaway slave punishable by death (§§15–16) |
| Killing a servant was punished (Exodus 21:20) | Slaves were often treated as property with few protections |
| Permanent injury meant freedom (Exodus 21:26–27) | |
| Servants rested on the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:14) |
3. Some texts remain hard
Honesty requires admitting that Leviticus 25:44–46 allowed Israelites to acquire non-Israelite slaves and keep them permanently, and Exodus 21:21 treats a slave as the owner's property. Christians read these laws in different ways. Many see them as regulations of a fallen institution. Like divorce, which Moses permitted "because of your hardness of heart" (Matthew 19:8), they set limits and did not state God's ideal. Old Testament law often took existing practices and restrained them rather than abolishing them overnight.
The New Testament: transforming from within
The New Testament addresses slaves and masters in a society where slavery was everywhere and the church had no political power. It doesn't call for revolt. It does something more radical over time:
- Equal standing before God. "There is neither slave nor free" in Christ (Galatians 3:28).
- Masters are under authority. They have the same Master in heaven, who shows no partiality (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1).
- Freedom encouraged. Slaves who can gain freedom should take it (1 Corinthians 7:21).
- Brotherhood. Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus "no longer as a slave" but as a brother (Philemon 16), and hints he should do "even more" (v. 21).
Historian Kyle Harper has shown that slavery remained part of the late Roman world long after it became Christian, so the change was slow. But the theological seeds were there, and some Christians, like Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, drew the conclusion that owning human beings is incompatible with the image of God.
The rest of the story
Christians bear real guilt for slavery, especially in the Americas, and some twisted Scripture to defend it. But the modern abolitionist movement was also driven in large part by Christian conviction: Quakers, evangelicals like William Wilberforce and many Black Christians who read the Exodus story as their own. The Bible was cited on both sides. The texts that won were Genesis 1 and the gospel of the crucified Lord who became a servant (Philippians 2:7).
Why it matters
The deepest biblical theme isn't slavery but liberation. God brought Israel "out of the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2), and Jesus came "to proclaim liberty to the captives" (Luke 4:18). The gospel frees people from the slavery of sin and makes former masters and former slaves members of one family.
Word study
hebrew · “servant, slave, subject, worker” · Leviticus 25:39
Ebed covers a wide range: a debt-servant, a royal official, a king's subjects, and Moses as 'servant of the LORD'. Translating it always as 'slave' can import modern images of chattel slavery. However, some texts (e.g., Leviticus 25:44-46) do describe a harsher, permanent status, so the word's range cannot settle every case.
greek · “slave-dealer, kidnapper” · 1 Timothy 1:10
Used only here in the New Testament. It refers to someone who captures or trades people into slavery. Paul puts it in a list that follows the Ten Commandments, matching 'you shall not steal' and echoing Exodus 21:16. The trade on which the Roman and later the Atlantic slave systems depended is condemned as sin.
“But what about…?”
Why didn't Jesus or Paul simply call for abolition?
The early church was a tiny, powerless minority in an empire where perhaps a substantial fraction of people were slaves; a call to revolt would have been crushed. Instead they changed slavery from the inside: masters and slaves were brothers (Philemon 16), masters were accountable to the same Lord (Ephesians 6:9), and slaves were urged to gain freedom if they could (1 Corinthians 7:21).
But didn't Christians use the Bible to defend slavery?
Yes, and that should be admitted with sorrow. Many American defenders of slavery appealed to Scripture. But abolitionists also appealed to Scripture, and many of the leading voices against the slave trade, such as William Wilberforce, were driven by Christian conviction. Historian Mark Noll has traced how both sides read the Bible during the Civil War era.
What about Exodus 21:20-21, where a master who beats a slave isn't punished if the slave survives?
This is a difficult text. Verse 20 makes killing a slave a punishable crime, which was unusual in the ancient world, and verses 26-27 free a slave who is injured. Verse 21 still treats the slave as the master's 'money'. Many interpreters see this as Israel's law limiting a harsh reality rather than presenting God's ideal, as Jesus said of divorce law (Matthew 19:8).
Were any early Christians against slavery as such?
Yes. Gregory of Nyssa, in his fourth homily on Ecclesiastes (c. AD 379), condemned slave-owning outright: a person made in God's image cannot rightly be bought and sold. His view was rare at the time, but it shows the logic was present in Christian thought early on.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 2011Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament GodPaul Copan
- book · 2006The Civil War as a Theological CrisisMark A. Noll
- book · 2002Slavery in Early ChristianityJennifer A. Glancy
- book · 2004Old Testament Ethics for the People of GodChristopher J. H. Wright
- ancient · 379Homilies on Ecclesiastes, Homily 4Gregory of Nyssa
Sources (4)
- Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes 4 (on Ecclesiastes 2:7), c. AD 379
- Code of Hammurabi §§15-16: harboring or failing to return a runaway slave punished by death
- Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
- Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (Cambridge, 2011)
Related questions
Did God command genocide against the Canaanites?
These texts are genuinely hard, and Christians should not soften them. But several facts matter: the command was a unique judgment limited to one time and place, given after centuries of patience toward cultures that practiced child sacrifice; its main aim was to remove the Canaanite religious system, and it was not driven by ethnic hatred; and the same books show that 'leave none alive' was stock war rhetoric, since many Canaanites remained. It was never a standing command, and Jesus points to a different way.
Why don't Christians follow all the Old Testament laws?
Christians don't pick laws at random. The Old Testament law was the covenant God made with Israel as a nation, and the New Testament teaches that Jesus fulfilled it. Laws that marked Israel as distinct, like food and purity rules, sacrifices and many civil penalties, pointed forward to Christ and are not binding on the church. The moral will of God behind the law (love God, love neighbor) continues, and the New Testament restates much of it. The question isn't 'Is it in Leviticus?' but 'How does it apply after Christ?'
Isn't the God of the Old Testament different from Jesus?
The contrast is a caricature of both Testaments. The Old Testament's most repeated description of God is 'merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love' (Exodus 34:6). Jesus, for his part, speaks about judgment and hell more than anyone else in the New Testament. Both Testaments show one God who is both holy and loving. Jesus claimed to be the full revelation of the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, whose Scriptures he quoted and loved.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.