BOOK REVIEW:
Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions. By J. Albert Harrill. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. 322 pp. (paperback). ISBN 978-0800637811. 

J. Albert Harrill undertakes a number of tasks in this well written and thoroughly researched book. He situates the New Testament’s various statements about slaves within the broader context of Greco-Roman thought on slavery. In doing so Harrill argues that the depiction of slaves and views on slavery found in the New Testament reflect themes, stereotypes, and stock figures drawn from literature, philosophical handbooks, and the theatre. To illustrate this point he offers careful re-readings of New Testament texts and seeks to correct the interpretations of other biblical scholars who believe that slavery was viewed by early Christians as somehow being in tension with their faith. In place of such attempts to take the New Testament writers off the hook here, Harrill argues rather convincingly that the New Testament is implicated in the ideologies that supported the institution of slavery in the Roman Empire.

Turning his attention from the ancient to the modern world, Harrill provides an illuminating analysis of how the Bible was used by advocates of both pro-slavery and abolitionist positions in the United States in the period leading up to the Civil War. Given what he has already taught his readers about early Christianity’s relation to slavery, Harrill forces us to face up to the uncomfortable realization that those who justified their pro-slavery position by appeal to the Bible were actually more correct in their exegesis of what the Bible says than were the abolitionists. To argue their position, the abolitionists had to approach the Bible in a less literal way. The debate about slavery thus created a chasm in American culture between fidelity to the Bible’s literal sense and moral intuition that is still being felt today with respect to other issues such as the meaning of marriage and family.  

Finally, Harrill poses larger hermeneutical questions about the use of the Bible in contemporary moral debate. Although he works as a historian and not as a Christian theologian, he makes a compelling moral argument of his own: the Bible should not be used to arbitrate controversies regarding moral matters.  On the opening page he cites an Episcopal bishop who defended his position on slavery with these revealing words: “If it were a matter to be determined by personal sympathies, tastes, or feelings, I should be as ready as any man to condemn the institution of slavery, for all my prejudices of education, habit, and social position stand entirely opposed to it. But as a Christian . . . I am compelled to submit my weak and erring intellect to the authority of the Almighty.” If ever there was an argument against subjecting moral considerations to the authority of scripture, this is it. Harrill wants us to view the New Testament as a human document that is completely a part of its ancient social and cultural milieu and, as such, is ill equipped for resolving contemporary moral problems.

It is rare that a first-rate historical study is published in the field of New Testament studies that has important implications for a readership beyond that of the professional guild of biblical scholars. It is even rarer when a historian forces us to face up to our own moral failures on account of the way Christians use the Bible as a warrant for their moral opinions. How the Bible is used in Christian ethical deliberation is itself a serious moral question! This book should be read by all Christian theologians and ethicists today. If its lesson would be taken seriously by scholars and leaders of the churches, it might undermine the authoritarian appeal to the Bible which is still used by Christians (and not just fundamentalists) to put an end to real moral debate.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it is timely and of great import for the question of Christianity’s role in this society and whether this role is one of moral integrity or abdication of moral responsibility. 

Paul E. Capetz
Associate Professor of Historical Theology
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, MN 

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING/SUMMER 2007, VOL. 7, #1.