6. A Model for Interpreting Wives’ Submission: Slaves in Ephesians 6:5–9
A Model for Interpreting Wives’ Submission—Slaves in Ephesians 6:5–9
Paul’s admonitions to wives are similar to his admonitions to children and slaves, although wives, unlike children and slaves, are never summoned to “obedience.”[1] Modern writers who argue that Paul’s charge to wives to submit to their husbands “as to Christ” is binding in all cultures must come to grips with the fact that Paul even more plainly tells slaves to “obey” their masters “as they would Christ” (6:5). If one is binding in all cultures, so is the other.[2]
To interpret the whole passage consistently, therefore, we must insist that what we grant today concerning slaves (that Paul’s call to submit is not a transcultural approval of the master’s authority) we must grant concerning wives (that a call to submit is not a transcultural approval of the husband’s authority). The arguments for the subordination of each were roughly the same in ancient household codes,[3] and a brief examination of the relevant New Testament passages will show that they are roughly the same there as well.[4] This is not to suggest that many wives today experience the same level of oppression slaves experienced; it is simply to require that we use the same principles of interpretation for both passages.[5]
Although this chapter will give attention especially to the question of Paul’s treatment of the slavery issue, we must also briefly address his treatment of the obedience of children, since Paul treats that issue in the same context with wives’ and slaves’ submission, as do many other ancient household codes. Most of our culture values the obedience of children, and it is to this model, rather than to that of slavery, that advocates of modern wifely submission appeal.
But examining all three of these models of submission reveals the critical point: Paul advises his readers in the setting in which they lived; he does not make their setting valid for all times. He employs the standard household codes of his world, but these are not the standard codes of our world. His principles are illustrated by their concrete application in this letter, but need to be applied differently in different cultures and situations. In short, we must always submit to those in authority in Christian love, but Paul in no way requires the same authority structures for all cultures.
CHANGING SOCIETY OR CHANGING HOUSEHOLDS?
Before examining Paul’s views on children and slaves, we must ask why Paul addresses only the treatment of slaves, children, or wives in the household, and not the institutions of slavery and patriarchal authority over child and wife, in a broader societal way.
The only logical answer is that Paul simply had no reason to address the broader societal question in a letter of instructions to a local church. Paul was not in a position to change the social structures of his day; no one else was arguing for the abolition of slavery, including the very few who, like Paul, apparently considered enslaving people immoral.
The ancient world was not a modern democracy in which people of all classes could dissent and protest without anticipating violent suppression. In recent times, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., accomplished reforms by nonviolent protest, but the same tactic did not work so well in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and it has failed to work in many cultures, particularly those with less respect for human life than our own.[6] Reformers who wished to accomplish the emancipation of all slaves in Roman antiquity could have sought to do so only by starting a bloody war they were certain to lose or by converting the rest of the empire to their beliefs in a God before whom all persons were equals.
Paul, a pastor and a missionary, was out to change the world by starting where he realistically and reasonably could: by spreading Christianity and demanding that all Christians love and respect one another as themselves. Whether he considered the possibility of Christians being able to radically alter even basic socioeconomic structures is uncertain; they were a small, persecuted minority in his day with no visible way to affect social structures controlled solely by the aristocracy. The radical implications of his teaching would ultimately be realized in a new kind of society after the return of the Lord, but if Paul ever considered that Christians might someday wield enough power in this present world to change all societal injustice, he had no reason to mention it in letters to congregations struggling with issues closer at hand. The few lines he did write, however, were among the most progressive words of his time, and he certainly wanted Christians to work for justice in the ways they had available to them—by transforming the relationships among and around them.
A writer to a small but growing Christian community in the first century cannot properly be faulted for not advocating a wholly impractical course in his letters, and to read him as if he wrote to people in our modern situation is to read him with an incredibly ethnocentric historical naïveté. Such naïveté may characterize the more faddish literary critics and some of the most radical feminists, but it is a tragedy when Christians read Paul in this same thoughtless way. It is especially tragic when Christians who read the Bible in this insensitive manner hurt other people by means of their interpretation, keeping them down and “in their place,” as racist churches in the United States and South Africa have had a history of doing.
But because Paul’s letters do not overtly recommend violent revolution does not mean that Paul did not care about the problems confronting his readers in their daily lives. Slavery was painful to slaves, and the insensitivity of authoritarian heads of households was painful to wives and children; these were issues that Paul as a pastor had to address. Paul addresses these issues not by recommending the immediate overthrow of existing structures, but by insisting that Christians act within those structures in a very different way than the world around them was acting.[7] Although Paul did not call for the violent overthrow of these structures, the principles Paul lays down for acting within them—mutual submission and equality—ultimately challenge the moral right of structures such as slavery to exist.
THE OBEDIENCE OF CHILDREN: A BETTER MODEL?
Some writers have argued that if Paul would not have required wives in all cultures to submit, we must assume that children also do not need to submit to their parents in all cultures. But this argument is not as consistent as it might appear to its proponents.
First, Paul explicitly bases wives’ submission on mutual submission in 5:21–22, and defines submission in terms of respect rather than obedience. When he tells slaves to obey their masters as they would Christ, he turns this around by calling on masters to “do the same things for them” (6:9), even though his first readers might well have balked at taking him literally. But the analogy with parents and children is lacking at precisely this point; his call on parents to look out for their children is the closest he comes to reciprocal submission between parents and children.
Second, the situation Paul addresses compels him to use household codes in which wives, children, and slaves are called to be submissive. He does not tell us which of these instructions might be carried out in all cultures, because that is not the issue he is addressing in this text. But it is noteworthy that the Old Testament law clearly enjoined the submission of children under penalty of death, whereas the same was in no way true for wives or slaves.[8]
Third, it may also be pointed out that the common characteristics shared by wives, children, and slaves in antiquity were (1) they were in positions of inferior power; (2) they were viewed as economic dependents; (3) they were considered less knowledgeable in the matters in which the household head ruled.[9] All three of these assumptions can be challenged for women in our culture, but they remain to a much greater extent true of minors. The younger and less mature the child, the less independent the child can safely be.
Unlike women and slaves, children were reared with a view to eventual maturity and economic independence;[10] their subordination was more like a temporary apprenticeship than a lifelong servitude, and thus it ideally functions today. Unlike wives and slaves, children were not considered to be of a permanently inferior nature. Roman male children were always expected to honor their parents, but becoming old enough to enter society provided them a position of practical independence, in which the demands for obedience were less than they had been when the son lived at home. Further, many adult children no longer had adult fathers, who often passed away early in their children’s adulthood. Submission to parents was a lifelong duty, but it demanded far less from an adult child than from a younger one; indeed, Aristotle’s household codes specifically addressed only minors.[11]
Roman wives, however, remained subject to their husbands’ legal control as long as their husbands remained alive, much as slaves did. As we pointed out in the last chapter, many men felt that women were by nature less rational than men, and thus men kept women in a state of social dependency, as if they were perpetual minors. But Paul nowhere paints the wife’s or slave’s submission in these “natural” terms. Ought we to suppose that women, who in our culture are usually as educated as men (and often more so), should be treated as permanent minors, while seeking for our male children to become independent?
The proper parallel for interpreting the wife text is not that of children, who attain more freedom as they grow older, but that of slaves, who remained under the direct authority of the head of the household until his death. If Paul teaches the permanent subordination of wives, we must accept that he also teaches the permanent subordination of slaves.
SLAVERY AS A DIVINE CONCESSION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Those who wish to save this passage’s power structure in the home regarding wives and children but not regarding slaves will have a difficult time. It is true that the Bible enjoins children’s obedience more clearly than it does that of slaves; but it also enjoins the submission of slaves more clearly than it does that of wives.
Slaves as Property or People?
Old Testament law, like other ancient Near Eastern law and that of later Roman society, had to address slaves from two standpoints: first, they were persons; second, they were bought and sold, and therefore functioned as a commercial commodity. If this strikes our ears uncomfortably today, it would be well for us to note that wives’ sexuality, secured by the husband’s brideprice, was likewise treated as a commodity as far as some aspects of law went. Law could proceed on an analogy of commercial exchange, without necessarily reflecting an assumption on the part of the legislators that slaves or wives were not human.
The Old Testament picture of Israelite slavery suggests that most slaves worked as household employees or, if field hands, labored alongside their masters.[12] The latter point has little in common with the way slaves were treated in the history of the United States. Israelite slavery also did not adopt the kind of racist ideology to perpetuate itself characteristic of slavery in the Americas. Still, a significant portion of the following data about the Israelite practice of slavery permitted by the Bible will be troubling to most of us.[13]
Slaves could be treated as less valuable than a son or daughter (Exod. 21:31–32), perhaps because, from a commercial standpoint, they were a more replaceable commodity.[14] Among the laws demanding proper treatment of slaves is one that today we find quite troubling:
And if a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property (Exod. 21:20–21, NASB).
Examining this passage alone would give us an inaccurate picture of Israelite slavery. The harsh force of the above law calling the slave “property” is somewhat qualified by looking at related laws in the context:
(1) “Property” is qualified by the fact that the slave owner is to be punished by a civil court for killing his slave; no other “property” is treated accordingly.[15] The punishment implied here is probably corporal (Deut. 25:2) rather than capital,[16] since the slave owner presumably acted out of anger rather than lying in wait (i.e., it was not a premeditated murder; cf. Exod. 21:12–14).
(2) The “eye for eye” ruling that applied to free people did not help the person who lost the eye, except as a vindication of his or her honor (Exod. 21:24);[17] the slave does not get the same vindication, but gets a more practical benefit: his or her freedom (21:26–27).
(3) The owner is not punished if the slave survives a day or two; but the case may be the same here as with a free person (21:18–19).[18]
The broader context of Moses’ laws[19] further qualifies this “property” view of slaves. The Sabbath laws show concern for slaves as well as for children[20] (Exod. 20:10; 23:12); they can also be placed alongside one’s wife as well as one’s possessions in such lists (20:17). In Exodus 21:7–11, a female slave who becomes a man’s concubine is treated functionally as his wife; the law requires him to treat her fairly (even if she is a prisoner of war, as in Deut. 21:10–14).[21]
Israelite regulations about escaped slaves are also significant here. Although one who found his neighbor’s stolen or lost property was to restore it or hold onto it for his fellow Israelite (Exod. 22:1–15; Deut. 22:1–4), and although other ancient Near Eastern laws applied this requirement to lost slaves as well,[22] the Bible does not mention slaves in this list of lost property. Slaves were people, volitional beings, who could leave in a way that other property could not. Israelite law in fact required escaped slaves to be given refuge (Deut. 23:15–16), just like foreigners in the land.[23] Someone who believed that slavery was a concession to human weakness, but that God’s ideal demanded that we work against it, could certainly use such a passage to justify helping slaves escape to freedom. Harriet Tubman and others associated with the Underground Railroad in the history of our own country were well within the spirit of Israelite law.
But we still cannot get around the fact that this law calls the slave “property.” The owner is disciplined—presumably beaten—if he or she in striking the slave causes the slave’s death. But there is no law against striking the slave per se, just as there is no law against physically disciplining one’s children. Whether the slave had entered servitude semivoluntarily, and so chose to put his or her life at risk (like volunteers for the Israelite army, Deut. 20:5–9), or whether the slave had been taken as a prisoner of war in lieu of being put to death, what the text does not say is more troubling than what it says. The point of the text is surely that the slave must be treated rightly, and that the master can be legally punished if the slave is abused; but this text still does not offer enough safeguards for the slave. The principle it states has to be extended to make it sufficient to cover all that is not stated.
An Israelite slave was to be treated rightly and released after a fixed period of time (Exod. 21:1–3; Lev. 25:34–43; Deut. 15:12; Jer. 34:8–22),[24] and given provisions to get on his own feet economically (Deut. 15:13–14).[25] This protection for the slave transforms slavery from a hereditary institution into a temporary period of economic dependence and hard labor in someone’s life (Lev. 25:39–43). Like childhood, slavery could function as a temporary apprenticeship of sorts, with economic benefits to both master and servant.
Here, however, we run into other difficulties. If a male slave married while in slavery (Exod. 21:4), he would need to remain in slavery “voluntarily” to keep his family (21:5–6).[26] It is not so disconcerting that an individual’s family bonds might take precedence over ideal justice; what bothers us is that the slave is forced to choose between family and freedom. The master may have permitted a freed slave to buy his family’s freedom later, and probably would have; but this possibility is not required by law.
While this allowance may have seemed fair to the slave owner who paid for the male slave’s wife when he bought her, it is fair only if the slave is viewed as property rather than as a person of value equal to that of his or her owner. History is replete with examples of slaves and masters who loved each other, where bonds of intimacy developed within the roles already established by society; yet nearly all of us would today agree that the very nature of a slave/master relationship was always far from God’s ideal purpose. We have to live with all kinds of inequity and injustice today, but we also believe that it is God’s will for us to work against that injustice.
Another weakness of Moses’ “indentured servant” laws was that they applied only to Israelites. Israelite slaves had to be freed in the seventh year, or when the Jubilee year arrived; but this did not apply to foreign slaves (Lev. 25:44–46). Then again, one need not read the texts about foreign slaves as harshly as they could be read. What if this foreign slave converted and became an Israelite, a situation later Jewish interpreters of the law were forced to address?[27] And what happens when the principle behind one law is extended in such a way as to infringe upon another law (for instance, a slave as person in his or her own right versus a slave as property, a dependent of the owner)? But slave owners, like most people, act in their own economic interests and would probably take advantage of any opportunity afforded them in the law.
Interpreting and Applying Biblical Slave Law
The spirit of some of the laws noted above seems to conflict with that of some of the other laws. This is no doubt true in slave laws in any society, since they must deal with the fact that the slave is a human being, but also with the economic reality that the slave is being treated as property. While Israelite law requires masters to treat their slaves benevolently, and what we gather from Israelite history suggests that this was the way the institution was generally practiced in Israel, we must still ask whether slavery in even its mildest form was ever God’s ideal purpose.
Some of God’s laws were concessions to human weakness, as Jesus clearly stated (Mark 10:5; Matt. 19:8).[28] One can see this, for example, in the institution of cities of refuge (Deut. 19:1–14). If one person killed another person accidentally, the slayer was not guilty of intentional murder and should not be put to death. But because in that culture a relative of the dead person might seek revenge, God provided the slayer a place of refuge. Ideally, the accidental slayer should have been able to remain safe in his own town; at best, the avengers of blood might serve as a good deterrent to negligence, but God did not institute them—God instituted instead a merciful way of coping with them.[29]
The law is clearly dealing with less than ideal situations. It takes the institution of slavery for granted, and never rules on the institution itself, merely on the most humane ways to practice it. Though its principles of humanity could ultimately undermine its cultural practice, that is easier seen in hindsight than in the time of the law itself. We have here a case in which God permits a measure of injustice so that at least some measure of justice and mercy could be required. But that slavery was not God’s permanent intent we can learn from our equality as human beings created in God’s image, just as God’s original purpose for marriage shows that a husband and wife are to be one and that divorce was just a later concession in Mosaic law (Matt. 19:1–9).[30]
Indeed, certain principles in the law itself would militate against slavery if extended to their logical conclusions. As those who had been foreigners in the land of Egypt, Israelites were always to be kind and hospitable to foreigners in their own land (Exod. 23:9); they were likewise to give justice to the poor (Exod. 23:6; Deut. 24:14–15). By extension, we could argue that because Israelites had been slaves in Egypt, they were also to respect their slaves, whom God might also favor above their masters if they mistreated them. They were not to oppress hired servants (Deut. 24:14), and, remembering that they had been slaves in Egypt, they were not to oppress any of the poor (Deut. 24:17–18). Not only were they not to oppress them, but they were actively to provide for them (Deut. 24:19–22).[31] And they were to treat well and eventually free and provide for Israelite slaves because they had themselves been slaves in Egypt (Deut. 15:15), a principle that, if extended like the other principles in the law, could eventually demand the same treatment for all slaves. The law was so concerned with economic justice that it considered withholding a poor man’s wages for even one night a form of robbery (Lev. 19:13); as an abolitionist preacher charged in 1835:
If it was a sin against God, for one under the Mosaic economy to retain the wages of a hired servant for the space of one night only, how much more guilty must one be now, under the gospel dispensation, who compels a man to work during his whole life time, and pays him nothing for his hire?[32]
When Jesus healed the sick and proclaimed release to the oppressed, he was demonstrating the ideal purposes of God, which the law had been able to address only halfway because of its allowances for the fallen structures of this world order around us.
Unbiblical Uses of the Bible in American Race-Slavery
Nevertheless, white slave owners in the United States used biblical texts about slavery and created a heretical interpretation of the Bible to support racism, to justify their own economic advantages. They valued the concessions addressing a certain culture above the principles that call Christians to advocate justice and mercy. Abolitionists, to the contrary, began with the principles of Scripture that showed how those concessions should be repealed by love and by the ethics of God’s kingdom in Christ.[33] They demanded that slave owners explain how loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18; cf. Mark 12:31) was compatible with violently withholding a slave’s liberty.[34] Abolitionists also pointed out that kidnaping (Exod. 21:16; 1 Tim. 1:19), and thus holding as property those who had been violently abducted, merited a death sentence under biblical law.[35]
Yet even many Christian abolitionists in the United States balked at full integration, usually due to fear of alienating society by being too radical for their day; after all, they were already going against the grain of their culture.[36] Only a few were willing to take a stand for full equality. When black and white abolitionists met together for the 1838 convention of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, their meeting hall was burned to the ground by rioters protesting that whites and blacks ought not to meet in the same building. Not only the mayor but also the male abolitionists pleaded with their female colleagues to exercise reason and to meet separately. Instead, these women met together again the next morning, issuing the following statement:
Resolved,
That prejudice against color is the very spirit of slavery, sinful in those who indulge in it, and is the fire which is consuming the happiness and energies of the free people of color.
That it is, therefore, the duty of abolitionists to identify themselves with these oppressed Americans, by sitting with them in places of worship, by appearing with them in our streets . . . by visiting them at their homes and encouraging them to visit us, receiving them as we do our white fellow citizens.[37]
We may be glad today that these women chose to submit to God rather than to men in this case. Yet the truth they articulated remains difficult for many conservative Christians to live out a century and a half later; even after segregation was legally abolished, the cost in societal pressure remains too great for many Christians to cross the boundaries our history has created. May God grant us repentance.
It is all too easy for us to look back on the abuse of Scripture by white slave owners in the past and say, “It is good no one abuses Scripture like that today.” Unfortunately, we are probably ignoring significant parts of the Bible in dealing with the history of slavery in the United States. In the wake of race-slavery and the continuing scourge of racism (originally advanced as its ideological justification), the Bible gives some clear and uncomfortable guidance to our nation as a whole, regardless of how many of its citizens descend directly from slave owners.
The Bible speaks of corporate[38] and transgenerational responsibility, even to the tenth generation (e.g., Deut. 23:3–8), and if our nation profited economically by enslaving another people (African-Americans) or from taking their land by force (Native Americans), and if the descendants of the profiting people had available better education and vocational opportunities for a number of generations than those they had oppressed, we cannot suppose that justice is done by simply saying now, “Let bygones be bygones.” As noted evangelical leader John Perkins points out,
The economic plight of American blacks today has its roots in slavery and in the center of oppression which followed emancipation. It is like a baseball game. In the ninth inning the team which is trailing 20 to 2 discovers that the winning team has been cheating all along. The leading team admits, “Yes, we were cheating, but we’ll play fair now. Let’s go out and finish the game.”
Now, it’s good that the team is going to quit cheating, but with the score 20 to 2 the trailing team still has the feeling they’re going to lose. When injustice has been done, establishing justice means something more than “playing fair from now on.”
In America today, one group has the capital, the other has the labor and the broken spirit. . . . Economic opportunity in capitalism depends on ownership of capital. . . . The oppressed among us know all too well that the oppressive forces which created their poverty in the first place keep them trapped in it.[39]
Scripture demands restitution, as costly as that will be. Slavery and its attendant and continuing sin, racism, are terrible evils that were practiced in this country in terrible ways that God’s law never allowed.
Many readers would protest that economic, corporate restitution on a national level would bankrupt the economy, and many would question how the resources should be distributed; such protestations might be right. But there is no reason why we cannot take restitution seriously as a Christian church in ways that the needs themselves demand. If we value people more than possessions, we can forsake our personal economic objectives and move into the areas of need across this country, making our skills and incomes available to those who need them. Many of the horrors of drugs and violence that now plague our cities are the direct result of ghettoes spawned by economic discrimination southern blacks faced when they migrated to northern cities in our century. Many of these problems were intensified through the psychological damage of racism, including forced suppression and denial of beautiful aspects of one culture by another culture.
It is easy to say that we are against slavery today, because slavery is now more than unpopular in our culture. But the consequences of the abuse of biblical texts by some a century and a half ago still haunt the United States today, and even some biblical principles of justice are as ignored by our generation as they were by many preceding generations. Is it possible that some of us interpret Scripture as selectively as those who once used it to support slavery against the abolitionists?
Cultural Concessions versus Eternal Purposes
Most of us today will acknowledge that slavery was a concession and that treating other people justly is a command. But what rules can we use for separating “concessions” from “commands”? One way is to try to distinguish what is taken for granted in the law from what is explicitly commanded or prohibited with specifically attached penalties, especially the penalty of death.[40]
Examples could be offered concerning sexual offenses and authority relationships. Most sexual sins, because they defraud one’s present or future spouse of the most important possession, his or her spouse’s faithfulness, are listed as capital offenses (Deut. 22:13–30; Lev. 20).[41] This suggests the permanence of rules emphasizing sexual faithfulness to one’s present or future spouse.
With regard to authority relationships, one dare not curse the king (Exod. 22:28; 1 Kgs. 21:10, 13) or one’s parents (Exod. 21:17), and rebellion against parental authority could be punished with death (Deut. 21:18–21)[42] But nowhere is the “disobedience” of slaves or wives condemned. Sometimes wives like Abigail (1 Sam. 25), as well as sons like Jonathan (1 Sam. 20) and daughters like Michal (1 Sam. 19), might have to choose faithfulness to what was right over allegiance to a husband or father.
But while the law forbids disobedience to fathers except in such extreme circumstances, and assumes—and thus regulates—the institution of slavery, it neither mandates nor even explicitly assumes the necessary subordination of wives to their husbands. Abraham was called to hearken to Sarah as well as the reverse (Gen. 21:12); God could choose to reveal himself to a wife first (Judg. 13:2–23); his most prominent or trusted spokesperson in Josiah’s time was a woman (2 Kgs. 22:13–20), and examples could be multiplied. The culture defined different roles for men and women, roles that changed from time to time and from culture to culture, and God worked with this aspect of the culture. But there is never any indication in the Old Testament that God mandated that men have sole authority over the home.
SLAVERY IN ROMAN SOCIETY
Before we can examine Paul’s comments on slavery, we must understand exactly what kind of slavery he was addressing. Because his comments to slaves occur within the context of household codes, we may be sure that he is addressing household slaves, members of his urban congregations whose situation was better in many ways than that of rural free peasants.
The Roles and Position of Slaves in Roman Society
Perhaps one-third of the inhabitants of early imperial Rome were slaves,[43] and many other cities of the Roman world boasted similar figures.[44] Probably only about one-quarter of the free families of Roman Italy actually owned any slaves (the same has been estimated for the U.S. South in slavery times).[45]
People had become slaves in a variety of ways. Some were enslaved by the Romans in wars, especially in earlier times,[46] while others were enslaved for violating certain laws,[47] were sold by poor parents,[48] etc.; most slaves, however, were born to enslaved parents.[49] But the way they had become slaves had less effect on their futures than the skills they could provide their owners.
There were many different kinds of slaves, and they found themselves in very different environments. The range of slave occupations, from land workers to managers, was roughly the same range one found among the free.[50] Their labor never quite replaced hired labor, although it competed with it. Free workers who were otherwise unemployed or underemployed had to be hired at harvest time, but slaves supplied a constant source of labor.[51] Slaves worked the massive estates as field hands[52] or household servants.[53] Petronius satirizes that one freedman was so wealthy that only one-tenth of his slaves had ever seen him.[54] There were also public slaves who served the state.[55]
Women slaves on estates and in households were employed domestically,[56] for instance, as weavers[57] or, less officially, as concubines or sexual objects;[58] other women slaves could be employed as prostitutes.[59] Male slaves could be employed as skilled professionals as well as laborers, though the latter were the great majority.[60]
Most slaves in the ancient world, like the nominally free peasants who made up most of the feudal, rural population, found little opportunity for social advancement. But the higher ranks of more skilled slaves could seek freedom or find upward mobility within slavery that brought social advancement beyond the ranks of many of the free.[61] To the chagrin of hereditary aristocrats, some freedmen (freed slaves) even became rich;[62] their chances to improve their conditions were better than those of the poor who were born free.[63]
This situation meant that many slaves in well-to-do households were better off than peasants outside those households; economically, socially, and even with regard to determining their future, such slaves held more options. Even field slaves were often fed better than free peasants in impoverished parts of the empire like Egypt;[64] hence the freer a person was politically from any patron, the closer he or she generally was to hunger.[65] In many peasant homes in Egypt, where twenty people would crowd into one-room dwellings and half their children died in infancy, a life of service to a well-to-do family in Italy may have seemed an appealing alternative.
If some ancient writer had attempted a modern social justice critique of oppression in antiquity, that writer would have had to have indicted the entire economic system of the Roman Empire—the feudal estates, the urban slums, and so on—and not simply slavery. Most writers, however, were concerned more with giving positive advice to those within the system than with entertaining the hypothesis of a social revolution. We must especially expect this attitude for a writer like Paul, who in a brief letter addresses various issues with which a congregation is struggling and devotes only a few verses to how slaves and masters are to treat one another. Successful social revolutions have to await a time and place where they can actually take root, and there was no point in Paul proposing such an unrealistic agenda in a letter to the churches in the vicinity of Ephesus.
The slaves whom Paul addresses in Ephesians 6 were not the most oppressed of the slaves, those in the mines, or the slaves working in the fields like the nominally free tenant farmers, but the household slaves who in most households were better off than free peasants, having more economic security and control over their own future than peasants did.[66] This is not to say that they were well off, but to say that, in general, probably most of the ancient world was worse off. If we expected from Paul a critique of ancient social injustice, we would perhaps need to look for it first in a critique of the oppression of the field and mine slaves (a closer parallel to the majority of slaves in the United States) and the oppression of the rural peasants and urban poor—something outside Paul’s purview in this letter. That we expect a critique first of slavery as an institution is perhaps due to our own cultural limitations; we can easily denounce slavery as an institution because it is no longer practiced in our culture, while ignoring a similar critique of the poverty that continues in our country and in the world on a massive scale. Although it does not directiy concern our point here, we may note in passing that Paul did address stifling poverty in situations where his readers could do something practical about it (Rom. 15:26; 1 Cor. 16:1–4; 2 Cor. 8–9; Gal. 2:10; Eph. 4:28).
Paul’s lack of comment on the institution of slavery is thus no reason to assume that he supports it. But how can we know what view he would have taken, since he does not address this question directly? Whether he or other ancient writers would ideally like to have seen it abolished depends on two factors: (1) if they could have imagined circumstances that would have actually allowed its abolition; and (2) how the principles they do state would operate if such circumstances were realized. Many ancient writers emphasized the proper treatment of slaves and some argued for treating them as equal human beings. The idea that society would ever exist without slavery probably did not occur to them, but had the idea occurred to them, those who argued for human equality might well have appreciated the idea.
Ancient Slave Ideology
Most people in antiquity took the institution of slavery for granted; some praised it. A few critiqued slavery, although these usually addressed the mistreatment of individual slaves rather than the institution of slavery as a whole. We shall first survey some general views on slavery among the people with power in antiquity, then turn to our closest parallels with Paul’s statements, which critiqued the fundamental philosophical presuppositions on which slavery had been justified.
Despite the occupational commonalities between slaves and nonaristocratic free persons, there was a great distinction between slave and free in the minds of the traditional aristocracy.[67] Indeed, the difference was often perceived as one of character as well as one of status: “slavish” character was considered base,[68] the “bad” slave was an object of criticism,[69] slaves were sometimes thought distinguishable by their appearance,[70] and the genuinely free person would find slavery intolerable.[71] In other words, the most powerful in society felt that social stratification, including the institution of slavery, was the only proper way for society to work.
Many of these ideas go back to the original codes of Aristotle: he regarded the subordination of a slave as something as natural as that of body to soul and viewed it as being in the common interest of both master and slave.[72] Nature showed that some people were inferior to others, and it was to these people’s advantage and security to be ruled by their superiors.[73]
Although the slave’s subordination was rationalized as being “for his own good,” the slave was legally considered a piece of his or her master’s property. Roman and Jewish law portrayed slaves both as property[74] and as people,[75] as slave laws generally do. In practice, of course, household slaves were recognized as people; the polemic of some of the American slave owners about slaves as subhuman or members of another species was not necessary to assuage ancient consciences.[76] Bonds between masters and slaves sometimes were such that slaves had loyally saved their masters’ lives.[77] Slaves could be addressed in the household codes precisely because domestic slaves were normally considered a part of the household.[78]
But Aristotle’s theories of slavery also give us a harsh perspective of slaves as property. The master could have nothing in common with a slave, who was a living tool.[79] Slaves could have no real goals or purposes for their own lives.[80] Slaves simply had a different nature than free people, and only those with such a nature would make real slaves.[81]
Hence there are by nature various classes of rulers and ruled. For the free rules the slave, the male the female, and the man the child in a different way. And all possess the various parts of the soul, but possess them in different ways; for the slave has not got the deliberative part at all, and the female has it, but without full authority, while the child has it, but in an undeveloped form.[82]
In a move that foreshadowed the racist slave ideology created by the economic interests of U.S. slave owners, Aristotle concurred with the typical Greek sense of Greek superiority by saying that barbarians were by nature meant to be slaves, whereas Greeks were by nature meant to be free.[83]
Slaves were legally treated as property and thus could be flogged.[84] This discipline was not limited to slaves, of course; it usually applied also to children, although it was applied to them more sparingly.[85] It seems to have been normal that slaves died young.[86] Slaves could also be examined under torture; for some reason the Romans believed this method was effective in exposing the truth rather than producing fabrications.[87]
Slave marriages were not legal under Roman law, although this did not always impose a practical obstacle to slaves’ living as if they were married.[88] It became more problematic if the master desired sexual use of one of his female slaves, or when the husbands and wives were sold to different masters.[89] Slave children could be sold away from their parents at an early age, although some slave parents seem to have crossed household lines to try to keep in touch with their children.[90] In U.S. slavery, according to some estimates (the real figures must be lower, but nonetheless traumatize), as many as 50% of all slaves could expect to be sold away from their families, and the average slave would witness eleven sales of family members in a lifetime.[91] Since ancient slave owners were probably less wealthy than their modern counterparts, the breakup of families may have occurred even more often.[92]
Slaves were viewed as people as well as property, but the law normally treated them as people only at the master’s discretion, rather than as a matter of policy.[93] Roman slave law continued to be used in other slavery codes throughout history, including in American slavery, although here it was modified further in favor of the slave owner against the slave.[94]
Ancient Critiques of Slavery
Many ancient writers opposed the mistreatment of slaves. Epicurus reportedly said that wise men would not punish their servants.[95] He treated his servants with moderation and allowed slaves to be members of his philosophical school.[96] Another writer lists among virtues “not to be overbearing with slaves.”[97]
In the early second century, Pliny boasts that he treats all his guests the same, including his former slaves; he could not afford to feed them as if they were on his social level, so he came down to their level instead.[98] But freed slaves were normally part of a well-to-do patron’s clientele; for Pliny to treat them as social peers would have outraged traditional Roman aristocrats, but it was far from the same as treating his slaves as equals.
On the other hand, a Cynic writer notes that the Ephesians did not want slaves to dine with them, but replies that virtue, not social status, should be the criterion for seating arrangements.[99] The same philosopher argues that slavery is an injustice, and that the God who did not make dogs or sheep slaves would not have done so with people.[100] Of course Cynics, who did not believe in sporting any possessions except their cloak, wallet, staff, and (usually) cup, had no more love for slavery than they had interest in the economy of antiquity as a whole.
Stoics were not as otherworldly as Cynics, but calls for proper treatment of slaves also emanated from their circles. Epictetus, who had been a slave earlier in life, felt that the gods wanted masters to be merciful to their servants,[101] for servants were brothers by nature, fellow children of Zeus.[102]
The Stoic philosopher Seneca felt that slaves should be free to talk with their masters, and that their bad attitudes toward their masters were often the result of mistreatment by these masters.[103] Beatings were for animals alone; masters should lash servants only with their tongue.[104] He even exhorts slave owners to recognize slaves as their equals in humanity;[105] the master should keep in mind that he, too, may have a master someday.[106] The slave can act as a benefactor by giving his services to his master willingly, rather than by compulsion.[107] Seneca did not advocate the abolition of slavery, but argued that slaves should be properly treated.[108]
Seneca’s views may not have been shared by all Stoics, of course; the founder of the Stoic school was said to have been beating a slave for stealing, when the slave objected, in good Stoic fashion, “It was my fate to steal.” “Yes, and to be beaten too,” the teacher is said to have replied.[109] This philosopher, like most men in antiquity, would presumably have beaten his son for the same offense, and Stoics in Paul’s day seem to have accepted the equality of slaves as humans by nature.
The early Jewish teacher Joshua ben Sirach exhorted masters to love slaves and to grant good slaves their freedom.[110] The wise servant is praised and it is said—perhaps hyperbolically—that the free would render service to such a servant.[111] Indeed, a master was to treat his slave to some extent as he would treat himself:
If you have a servant, let him be as yourself, because with blood you acquired him. If you have a servant, deal with[112] him as with a brother, because as your soul you need him; if you do him wrong and he runs away from you, where can you go to seek him?[113]
While this is not the same as freeing one’s servant, it certainly demands more of slave owners than most slave owners were willing to give; the writer seems to advocate treating a slave as a voluntary member of the family. Other Jewish slave owners may not have been as gracious as this writer, but Joshua ben Sirach was not the only giver of humanitarian advice in Jewish circles,[114] and the Jewish slaves, at least, appear to have been generally well treated by Jewish owners.[115]
But arguing that slaves should be well treated was not the same as arguing that slavery should be abolished throughout the Roman Empire. Few ancient writers ventured to make sweeping demands of society that society would clearly not concede, demands that if followed would have demolished the ancient economy and left widespread poverty, especially for former slaves.[116] Slaves themselves seem not to have opposed slavery in principle; inscriptions tell us that slaves, once free, were more than happy to acquire slaves of their own.[117] As Dale Martin writes:
The institution of slavery itself was never really questioned. Slaves may have resented their bondage, but given the chance they acquired slaves themselves. When freed, they simply moved up a notch in the system, becoming themselves masters and mistresses and pulling their dependents along with them. Almost no one, slaves included, thought to organize society any other way.[118]
To call for the universal abolition of slavery was to call for a widespread slave revolt, which was unlikely to happen. If such a revolt did happen, it was certain to result in much loss of life and equally certain not to succeed unless it could be renewed repeatedly, probably over several generations, with intense bloodshed.[119] Finley observes that the many outbreaks of slave violence in history have normally been
minute in scale, shordived and unanimously unsuccessful (apart from the success of a few slaves in escaping permanently from bondage). . . . Of the 250-odd outbreaks that have been identified in the history of the United States, the greatest and most famous, Nat Turner’s Rebellion of 1831, was a purely local affair involving a few hundred men for a few months, with the actual fighting restricted to three days.[120]
Finley claims—perhaps slightly overstating the case—that in all history there were only four actual slave wars, three in Sicily and Italy in 140–70 BCE and the Haitian revolt led by free blacks in the wake of the French Revolution. Only the Haitian revolt was successful.[121] Thus, although many of the strongest Christian abolitionists in the United States believed that God would side with the slaves in a time of revolt, in general abolitionists (both black and white) prudently counseled nonviolence.[122]
The most practical, nonviolent way to abolish slavery in a society more permeated by slavery than nearly any other society in history[123] was to change the way the people in power looked at slaves.
Christianity, as a classless religion in which slaves became prominent church leaders and heroes of the faith,[124] was well equipped to ultimately abolish slavery by this long-term route. In the meantime, it had the moral power to give slaves self-esteem and strength for their task until slavery had been abolished. On a practical level, church funds were often used to free slaves, and sometimes Christians even became slaves themselves to ransom others; regarded as spiritual equals, slaves could rise to the position of bishop in the postapostolic church.[125]
Not everyone caught the liberating message present in the gospel; some church leaders like Augustine wanted to maintain the structures of society, including slavery, while arguing that slaves must be treated well.[126] Many of these writers argued only for treating slaves better; some even echoed their culture’s prejudice against slaves’ morals.[127] It was this element of social conservatism rather than the liberating power of the gospel that came to predominate in the centuries following Paul, and it is for this reason that Christianity did not become the decisive force of abolitionism that it could have been in late antiquity.[128]
But other Christian leaders, like John Chrysostom, had the insight to perceive the radical equality proclaimed in the Christian gospel; he argued that free Christians should buy, empower with skills, and then free slaves.[129] This strain of Christian pietism continued in the modern period through figures like Wesley and Wilberforce into the strongly evangelical abolitionist movements of Britain and the United States. Until proslavery polemic was created, most slaves and many masters in the United States recognized this truth of Christianity.[130] In my opinion, it is the abolitionist Christians who rightly captured the spirit of Paul’s message; but it took a long time for their views to be heard above the din of tradition.[131]
PAUL’S VIEW IN EPHESIANS 6:5–9
Although household codes regulated relations between masters and slaves, they rarely addressed slaves directly.[132] The fact that Paul addresses slaves in Ephesians 6:5–8 indicates that his letter is intended for a congregation that includes many slaves. No matter how interested Paul may have been in convincing the authorities that Christians were not subversive, he does not write as a philosopher or moralist whose work is meant to be read only by a social elite. He writes as a pastor to members of his congregation.
What Paul Does Say
When Paul calls slaves to direct their service toward God, not toward their master, he is giving the same sort of advice he gives to anyone else under authority (Rom. 13:1) or in a hard situation (2 Cor. 12:7–10; cf. 1 Pet. 5:6–7).[133] As an abolitionist preacher pointed out in the nineteenth century, advocating submission to current masters no more means advocacy of slavery as an institution than commands to submit to the Roman government or to pray for persecutors meant that New Testament writers supported imperial policy or persecution against Christians.[134]
Paul is saying, do your best, recognize that God is sovereign, and know that your reward ultimately comes from God.[135] By making God and not the master the one to whom the slave directly answers, he relativizes the real authority of the master.[136] Seneca tells masters that they may have masters of their own someday;[137] Paul reminds masters that they already have a Master in heaven who regards their servants as highly as he regards them.[138]
By saying that slaves and masters are equal before God, and that masters should keep this in mind, Paul is saying that slavery is not part of God’s purpose. To an ancient thinker like Aristotle, this position was unsatisfactory, for it declared that slavery as an institution was unjust.[139] This is the position that Paul articulates for equality in the community of God, the church, which models the future kingdom, God’s ideal social order (1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:11)—for women’s equality as well as slaves’ (Gal. 3:28).
Those slaveholders who understood Paul’s instructions as supporting the slaveholding system read into his words something that simply is not there; people who read Paul today and wish that he explicitly condemned slavery as an institution are asking Paul to have written something that would have had little practical value for his readers, while simultaneously missing that Paul’s words imply the moral wrongness of slavery.
Slaveholders would indeed have profited from Paul’s instructions. Many slaves in antiquity were regarded as slow and careless with their masters’ property.[140] This makes good sense from the perspective of modern capitalism, of course: laborers who derive no profit from their labor have less incentive to work hard.[141] Paul’s instructions could give the slaves a basis for self-respect and a motivation to excel in their work, and this would in the process also benefit the masters and restrain aristocratic charges of subversion, strengthening the church’s witness to all levels of society.
While Paul commands slaves to submit to masters as they do to Christ (Eph. 6:5), his understanding of mutual submission is also at work here. His very brief command to masters is that they treat their slaves “in the same way” (6:9), literally, they should “do the same things to them.” Although much of the rest of what he says is within the conceptual bounds of the other progressive writers in antiquity, the principle of mutuality on which he bases this exhortation calls for more than a measured application of authority. At the very least, even if taken figuratively, it includes looking out for the slave’s interests in a nonpaternalistic way;[142] but if it means what it says, then Paul was even more radical than those whom Aristotle condemns for believing that slavery was against nature and therefore wrong. Paul not only holds that it is wrong in theory, but also that this wrongness should affect how Christians act, and this goes beyond the counsels of any other ancient writer whose work remains. Who else called for mutual submission between masters and servants?
Between the Lines: Would Paul Have Been an Abolitionist?
Paul had no reason to tell local congregations to challenge the institution of slavery, as we have said, since the early church still had no power with which to challenge it. Paul also does not seem to have the recognized authority in his congregations to order the well-to-do members around, as we may gather from his reasonings with them in 1 Corinthians. Probably he could not even have expected the house-church sponsors to follow a unilateral order to free slaves.[143] But where Paul did have influence, he was willing to follow his convictions about human equality to their logical conclusion.
Trusted slaves were often sent on errands or to oversee business somewhere for their master. Sometimes one of these slaves would run off and seek a new life as a free person somewhere else in the empire. This may be how Onesimus escaped from Philemon.[144] But runaway slaves, when caught, would be taken back to their masters, to await whatever discipline their masters might impose on them.[145]
Sometimes, however, a slave might take refuge in another master’s household. Pliny, who, as we noted above, was by ancient standards very sympathetic toward slaves, took in a slave and wrote on his behalf to the slave’s master, pleading for clemency when he sent him back. It would not have been legal for Pliny to have held onto the slave indefinitely,[146] but he could at least successfully secure the master’s mercy.[147]
Paul’s letter to Philemon ranks among the most liberating documents of ancient times, in the same general category as Pliny’s appeal for clemency. But Paul’s writing goes beyond Pliny’s,[148] in that he not only appeals to Philemon to have mercy on Onesimus, but he also uses the spiritual brotherhood of master and slave in Christ to argue that Philemon should free Onesimus (vv. 15–16, 21).[149] Nor is Paul simply asking for a transferral of Onesimus’ slave title from Philemon to himself (vv. 13–14)—Paul really wants Onesimus back to labor with him as a fellow worker in the gospel, i.e., as a colleague.[150] And Paul, reminding Philemon that he owes him a favor anyway,[151] lays himself on the line and offers to make good any loss Philemon incurred when Onesimus escaped (vv. 18–19).[152] (The loss may refer to Philemon’s loss of Onesimus’ labor rather than implying that Onesimus had stolen anything.)[153]
Like Pliny, Paul had no formal, legal authority over the master on whose behalf he wrote.[154] But he did have significant influence, and he used it to achieve Onesimus’ freedom. The fact that the letter is preserved would seem to testify that Philemon granted Paul’s request. While Paul was in no position, even in the church, to require masters to free their slaves, it is clear that he believed that slavery was contrary to God’s purpose and that, to the extent he could do anything about it, he would appeal for slaves’ freedom.
ABOLITIONISTS AND EGALITARIANS: A FAIR COMPARISON?
Those who today will admit that slavery is wrong but still maintain that husbands must have authority over their wives are inconsistent. If they were consistent with their method of interpretation, which does not take enough account of cultural differences, it is likely that, had they lived one hundred fifty years ago, they would have had to have opposed the abolitionists as subverters of the moral order—as many Bible-quoting white slave owners and their allies did. Many of the traditions which today use Scripture to subordinate women once did the same for slavery before that idea was anathema in our culture. In contrast, the method of interpretation we favor in this book is closer to the methods favored by the abolitionists.
George Knight III tries to avoid this conclusion by arguing that this is not a fair comparison. Slaves, he argues, had to submit to those in authority, but there was no indication that slavery was a God-ordained institution; marriage, by contrast, is God-ordained.[155] Knight is quite right that marriage and slavery differ in this regard, but his observation simply begs the actual question. The issue is not whether marriage itself is God-ordained, but whether a wife’s submission to her husband is a permanently God-ordained part of marriage. It was the subordinationist link between the two that made them part of ancient household codes and forced Paul to address the issue in Ephesians. Knight assumes the very point he wishes to prove, which means that his argument is nothing more than an assertion.
This is the question our comparison between a wife’s submission and that of a slave is meant to raise: Are all role relationships forever normative, or are we just to submit to whoever is in authority? And if we are just to deal with life “as is,” as Knight suggests for the slaves, what would we do if we lived in a culture where wives could be their husbands’ bosses (a situation not inconceivable in our own culture)? The issue is not whether it was right for slaves and wives to submit; the issue is whether it was also right to seek freedom for slaves and more rights for women.
It is true that there is no Old Testament support for slavery as an institution; it is assumed, not advocated. But a wife’s submission to her husband is also not advocated in the Old Testament, and not even explicitly addressed as an institution. The wife’s subordination is presented only as a result of the Fall—as a result of her husband’s sinful abuse of power over her (Gen. 3:16). It is true that Paul argues from the creation order for wifely submission; he also derives from this the requirement for head coverings, and he also explicitly qualifies his argument, when he has used it most forcefully, to argue for mutual dependence and equality.
Nothing here supports the subordination of women any more than what was used to support the subordination of slaves, and those who appeal loudly to the several texts that they think demand women’s subordination ignore quite a few other texts that demand subordination to slave masters, kings (1 Pet. 2:13, 17), etc. Knight rightly points out: “The principle is not that there must be kings and governors, but that Christians must submit to the human institution of government in whatever form or shape it may take and whoever the civil authorities may be.” After all, 1 Peter 2:13 says to “submit to every human institution” before it says to submit to the king.[156] Despite Knight’s wish to contend that the submission of wives is different from this submission, precisely the same method of application must be given to Ephesians 5:22— which prefaces the submission of wives with “submit to one another.” Other civil authorities besides the king are mentioned in 1 Peter precisely because there were other civil authorities besides the king, and if we ignore the historical context of Scripture, we disrespect its own claims about itself and end up with a lot of “useless” texts left over—such as Paul’s and Peter’s claims that they were writing letters to specific audiences.
CONCLUSION
Wives were to submit in a Christian way to those in authority over them in that culture, but neither the authority structures nor the expressions of submission are the same in all cultures. Although we respect governments and those in authority, we do not try to reinstitute the monarchy so we can obey New Testament demands that we submit to the king; nor would we reinstitute slavery so slaves can submit to their masters. Neither should we reinstitute old authority roles in marriage and thereby ignore the kinds of authority structures now standard in our culture. In a time of transition between old and new authority structures, we must choose structures most in harmony with the principles of God’s kingdom; and given the fact that Paul was one of the most progressive writers in his day, I think that there is no question where we should stand today.
Should all women stay home cooking and cleaning and rearing children, or should they work in the fields as is customary for submissive wives in some cultures? Were women unsubmissive to demand the right to vote? Should they be allowed an education, and should they be allowed to use that education in the workplace? The implications of submission vary from culture to culture, and the most conservative of Americans would demand change in the nature of submission as it is required by some cultures.
Again, I believe that the Christian women’s movement arose in the context of the Christian abolitionist movement because they both approached Scripture in an entirely different way than those who tried to take every commandment they could as binding on their own generation. Many readers today view only the chronologically later parts of the Bible as binding; but even among the later parts, they must concede that some matters are situationally conditioned (e.g., 2 Tim. 4:13, we wouldn’t think to take Paul’s cloak to him now!) or culturally conditioned (head coverings). Almost no one will try to duplicate the exact conditions of the ancient world so that the commandments can be fulfilled in precisely the same way as when they were first given. Yet many believers today unconsciously regard as commandments only those points that their traditions tell them to “keep.”
I am arguing that, if we are genuinely to respect the authority of Scripture, we must know what all of it addresses in its own historical context. That means that we must understand how to apply all of its message to different cultural situations, and we must also understand the difference between what God has us put up with in less than ideal circumstances and the ideal for which we should strive if we have the opportunity.
The church has often simply sided with the most conservative and traditional social position rather than exploring the intention of Scripture, as Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out to some of his colleagues in the clergy in a letter he wrote from the Birmingham jail:
The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.[157]
One of the greatest tragedies of history is when God’s holy Scripture, addressing one situation, is uncritically applied to another situation while ignoring the larger tenor of Scripture. It is doubly tragic because God’s word is subverted to serve an unjust purpose, on the one hand, and God’s word then is brought into disrepute for its unjust use, on the other.
Paul is addressing the authority structures of his day, not mandating the same authority structures for all periods. Paul does call on us to submit to those in authority, though he qualifies that authority by summoning those in authority to respect those under them as their equals. This is hardly the same as giving unqualified license to those in authority or saying that we must submit to the same structures in the same ways as people did in the Greco-Roman world, simply because that was the culture in which Paul happened to dictate his letter.
The earliest church was powerless to abolish slavery and to invert the social structures of its day, except by treating one another as equals and serving one another in their own homes. But the radical conception of self-sacrificial service was the seed that was bound to lead to abolitionism and other protests against human oppression. Through much of history, the true church’s voice has been muzzled, as society’s powerbrokers came to run the church; but the voice of our Lord, who came to serve and lay down his life for many, has never been and never will be silenced. May he speak to our hearts and our societies today.