A More Positive View of Slavery: Establishing Servile Identity in the Christian Assemblies

Abstract

Recent scholarship calls attention to violence, sexual exploitation, and other indignities experienced by slaves. For most slaves in the Christian assemblies, however, the abuses associated with slavery were not an issue, and so slavery functioned as the place where countless servile believers demonstrated their faith in Christ by serving the neighbor. Three subpoints support the basic position: (1) Paul called himself a slave repeatedly to form an identity with epistolary audiences, large portions of which were servile; (2) directives to slaves to endure suffering for doing good (1 Pet 2:18–21) were paradigmatic for all Christians, not just slaves; and (3) Jesus' death by crucifixion (servile supplicium = "the slaves' punishment") was presented as the common experience of every Christian, not just slaves. Since slaves were the ones for whom much parenesis was intended originally, the argument can be made that biblical slavery remains pertinent for its applicability to Christian vocation.