Does the Bible approve of slavery, or remain silent on its immorality? Has the Roman Catholic Magisterium condemned slavery as intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral?

The Bible

The Old Testament had something more like indentured servitude. In ancient times, many people struggled merely to survive. If you could find a wealthy family, which owned cattle and land, and could obtain work with them, you would consider yourself fortunate. They gave you what you needed to survive, and you gave them work. Otherwise, with no hospitals, no police, no social safety net (welfare, unemployment, etc.), you could easily die if you did not have work. So agreeing to work for a certain number of years was not slavery. Even Jacob agreed to work for his uncle Laban for 14 years (in exchange for two wives!).

Now, other than among the holy men and women of ancient times, in ancient society in general, there was slavery itself, something much worse than indentured servitude. But it is clear from the Old Testament that God did not approve of this type of slavery.

Jeremiah 34 describes a situation in which Jerusalem was surrounded by an enemy army, and the prophet Jeremiah told the king at Jerusalem, Zedekiah, to open the gates and let the enemy in, because it was God’s will. The king refused to obey, but being crafty and knowing (despite his lack of holiness) that God hates slavery, he decided to free all the slaves instead of obeying the will of God through the prophet. God was so pleased by this act, that He caused the army to withdraw. Then, after the enemy had departed, the king ordered all the slaves to be rounded up. So God brought back the army and leveled the city. This shows that God hates slavery.

But was the situation in Jeremiah 34 indentured servitude, or slavery? It started as indentured servitude, which, under the Old Testament law, required the master to release the servants in the seventh year. But the Jews, at that time, had undertaken the practice of not releasing servants at all, turning indentured servitude into slavery (Jer 34:14-15). So God was pleased when the king released the slaves, but then He was angered when the king rounded up the slaves again, after the army had withdrawn. God hates slavery.

The passage in Exodus 21 about striking an indentured servant is interesting. First, it says that it is a crime to strike and kill a servant. Then it says that if the servant dies after some length of time, it is not a crime. These instructions to the Israelites were discipline; they were temporal regulations.

{21:20} Whoever strikes his male or female servant with a staff, and if they have died by his hands, he shall be guilty of a crime.
{21:21} But if he survives for one day or two, he shall not be subject to punishment, because it is his money.

The issue, if a servant dies after some number of days in ancient times, is that it was practically impossible to know if the strike was the cause of death. People lived in very harsh conditions, with nothing even remotely like modern medicine, so deaths of servants were not uncommon. The Bible is not saying, it is not a sin to strike a servant if he dies later rather than soon. It is simply a practical regulation.

The point about money is that, if the person struck someone else’s servant, he would have to compensate him for the loss. But since it is his own loss, he does not compensate anyone.

The Old Testament doesn’t have a ‘Thou shalt not’ for slavery. What it has is a set of higher principles which plainly are incompatible with slavery, especially love God and love your neighbor (Deut 6:5; Lev 19:13, 18; Sirach 4:27; Proverbs 14:21; Psalm 14:3 (15:3); Tobit 4:16). Even very worldly persons realize, from principles like love your neighbor, that slavery is wrong. A separate commandment is not needed for every sin and every crime.

In the New Testament, the type of servitude that is tolerated among Christians was more of an indentured servitude. This was tolerated because the early Christians were a very small minority and could not yet hope to influence society to such an extent as to make new laws or change customs. God asks us to accept the difficulties and outright injustices in our lives, to some extent, as crosses to bear. However, Paul does say that if a slave (indentured servant) has the opportunity to be free, then take it (1 Cor 7:21).

The Magisterium

Cardinal Avery Dulles: “Radical forms of slavery that deprive human beings of all personal rights are never morally permissible, but more or less moderate forms of subjection and servitude will always accompany the human condition.”[Cardinal Avery Dulles, ‘Development or Reversal?’, First Things, October 2005.]

The term slavery has been used in past centuries to describe indentured servitude and similar “moderate forms of subjection and servitude”. These moderate forms are not intrinsically evil. Often, when a Bible translation uses the term slave or slavery, it is referring to indentured servitude.

However, when slavery is defined narrowly, that is to say slavery properly so called, it is intrinsically evil because it deprives the human person of fundamental human rights.

Pope John Paul II stated the essential moral nature of slavery when he taught that slavery is “a grave violation of fundamental human rights.” (Pope John Paul II, Letter to Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, Secretary for Relations with States, On the Occasion of the International Conference ‘Twenty-First Century Slavery: The Human Rights Dimension to Trafficking in Human Beings’, para. 2.)

Vatican II listed slavery among the acts that are gravely immoral (Gaudium et Spes, n. 27.). Subsequently, Pope John Paul II wrote that those same acts are intrinsically evil (Veritatis Splendor, 80). He actually lists “slavery” as an intrinsically evil act.

The Magisterium has long condemned the severe form of slavery, which is slavery narrowly defined, and which excludes moderate forms such as indentured servitude or requiring convicted criminals to work.

Pope Leo XIII: “This zeal of the Church for liberating the slaves has not languished with the passage of time; on the contrary, the more it bore fruit, the more eagerly it glowed. There are incontestable historical documents which attest to that fact, documents which commended to posterity the names of many of Our predecessors. Among them Saint Gregory the Great, Hadrian I, Alexander III, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Pius II, Leo X, Paul III, Urban VIII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, and Gregory XVI stand out. They applied every effort to eliminate the institution of slavery wherever it existed. They also took care lest the seeds of slavery return to those places from which this evil institution had been cut away.” (Pope Leo XIII, Catholicae Ecclesiae, Encyclical on Slavery in the Missions, n. 1.)

However, this type of unequivocal condemnation of slavery was only applied to the narrow form of slavery. Pope Pius X refers to slavery in the narrow sense as “slavery, properly so called.” He thereby excludes such forms as indentured servitude, and various other degrees of subjection and servitude.

Pope Pius X: “It is true that soon afterwards the worst of these indignities — that is to say, slavery, properly so called — was, by the goodness of the merciful God, abolished; and to this public abolition of slavery in Brazil and in other regions the excellent men who governed those Republics were greatly moved and encouraged by the maternal care and insistence of the Church.” (Pope Pius X, Lacrimabili Statu, Encyclical on the Indians of South America to the Archbishops and Bishops of Latin America, n. 1.)

Magisterial documents that seem to permit slavery are actually references to indentured servitude and similar moderate forms of subjection and servitude.

The Bible condemns slavery and tolerates indentured servitude. The Magisterium teaches that slavery is intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral, but that indentured servitude is not always immoral.

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian and
translator of the Catholic Public Domain Version of the Bible.