Abolition

Why didn’t the apostles move more quickly to protest and attempt to abolish slavery? There are various answers to that, but Oliver O’Donovan’s gets to the heart of the issue: The church “believed that Christ had abolished it” (Desire of Nations, 185).

Of course, the church had little clout to change Roman law, as Wilberforce later did, but “it might have claimed to have taken a more direct route. It knew something about law and liberation from it. With this law, as with all law, the key to freedom was the way in which one understood oneself in Christ. It was the slave-mind which produced unfree behavior, and Christ had abolished the slave-mind.”

Did Paul hint that Philemon should free Onesimus? O’Donovan answers, “No: because Christ had freed Onesimus without consulting Philemon. Paul makes it clear that he feels under no obligation to send Onesimus back, and does so only that Philemon may be a party to the mutual charity which affirms the former slave’s status as a brother.”

Paul does encourage Christians to seek legal freedom if they have the opportunity (1 Corinthians 7), but “the essential element of freedom is already there. They have been liberated by the call of Christ. and they occupy their economic and social position with an altogether different standing, and as members of a community which affirms that standing.”

The slaves social role is no longer determinative for his or her person; but, O’Donovan makes clear, this isn’t a “spiritual” freedom, since it’s freedom within a different society, the church. Freed by Christ, and living as a free man in the community of the new age, the slave serves as Christ’s freedman, working not to please any man but to please his true Master.