Paul and Jesus

During Paul’s lifetime, under the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the practice of slavery was widespread and even those of modest means routinely owned a few slaves.⁹ It is estimated that out of a population of 45 million in the empire under Augustus (31 B.C. to A.D. 14), at least 20–30 percent were slaves. The majority of them had become slaves as a result of Roman military conquest. Slaves worked in private homes, on farms and estates, in factories and mines, on public projects. They were absolutely essential to the vast imperial governmental network spread throughout every Roman province, not to mention the bureaucratic central administration in Rome. In Italy the percentage of slaves was much higher, estimated as high as 40 percent of the population. Some were poor and destitute, others were quite privileged and educated, but even household slaves were provided food, clothing, and shelter of significantly less quality than family members enjoyed. Slaves were considered property and owners exercised absolute dominium or “lordship” over them. Legally, slaves had no rights, even to family or property. Children born to slaves belonged to the owner. Even though there were some laws against the extreme abuse of slaves, they could be beaten, punished, and used sexually as their owners pleased.¹⁰

There were also large numbers of ex-slaves or freedmen, called libertini, who enjoyed limited rights of voting and ownership of property after their legal manumission. Many visitors to Pompeii have marveled at the luxurious House of the Vettii, owned by the Vettius brothers, who evidently were freedmen. Cicero, the first-century B.C. Roman philosopher and statesman, had a slave named Tiro who served ably as his secretary and confidant. Cicero and his children loved him. In A.D. 53 Cicero freed Tiro when the latter was fifty years old. Tiro edited some of Cicero’s letters after he died and even composed a biography of his former master. He is credited with perfecting a form of shorthand and is thus responsible for the recording of so many of Cicero’s speeches.¹¹

Obviously, for a slave to obtain freedom was a highly prized opportunity. Paul has been roundly criticized for condoning slavery by not demanding that Christian slave owners free their slaves. But his position on slavery, as with all issues of social and ethnic identity, is consistent. Three times in this context Paul repeats what he calls his “rule in all the churches,” namely that everyone should lead the life that “the Lord has distributed to him” at the time he or she was “invited” through the gospel (1 Corinthians 7:17). He explains:

Everyone should remain in the calling in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Never mind. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of [the slavery].¹² For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. (1 Corinthians 7:20–22)

In Paul’s view, even if one is a slave he or she is actually free—in the Lord. And those who are free are “slaves” of Christ—so all such differences are of no consequence. They exist but they don’t exist, depending on which “world” is one’s reference point.

Paul repeats for a third time his general rule: “So, brethren, in whatever calling each was called there let him remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:24). His rule here is precisely parallel to what he says about marriage: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage” (1 Corinthians 7:27). And though he does not forbid marriage, he also would not forbid that a slave accept manumission—he just prefers that everyone remain as they are since God was the one who put them in such circumstances in the first place. Paul believed that all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purposes (Romans 8:28). That means to be a slave could potentially be a good thing, since God is the one who has ordered everything.

Paul’s rule, thrice repeated here, is laid down in the context of his expectation of the impending apocalypse, so that if the “appointed time has grown very short,” no current state of life in which one finds oneself is a lasting condition. But what is more important, any “calling” one finds oneself in is just that—one that he says the Lord assigned, for his own purposes.

As with marriage and sexuality, however, the short time left before Christ returns is not as important a factor as the spiritual reality one already has in Christ. With God there is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free. On the level of what he calls “the flesh,” such matters might seem important, but from the viewpoint of those in Christ, all such states of life are transcended by the new creation, which is already here—but has not yet arrived!