Paul's Letter To Philemon: Slavery Debates From The Bible

While Old Testament passages such as Leviticus 25:44-46 and Exodus 21:20 were at the center of the biblical slavery debates, several passages from the New Testament also played an important role in those debates. Perhaps the most widely quoted and famous text from the New Testament that made its way into the antebellum, biblical slavery debates was Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Paul’s Letter to Philemon was seen by pro slavery advocates as the story of Paul returning a fugitive slave to his master. Based upon this antebellum understanding of Philemon, southerners argued that the Bible confirmed the validity of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and more generally slavery itself. Southerners believed they were justified in using Philemon to sanction

They concluded that Onesimus was Philemon’s debtor, rather than his slave, since verse eighteen of Philemon implies that Onesimus owed Philemon a debt. Based on the lack of clarity concerning the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus and the evidence that suggested Onesimus was a debtor, abolitionists concluded that Paul’s letter to Philemon was not relevant to the fugitive slave law debate. In effect, southerners were using a letter which did not detail the return of a fugitive slave to his master to sanction a law which called for the return of a fugitive slave to his master. Paul’s letter to Philemon and the Fugitive Slave Law were

Though a northerner, Wheaton was very sympathetic towards southern slavery. In his 1860 sermon titled, A Discourse on St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon; Exhibiting the Duty of Citizens of the Northern States in Regard to the Institution of Slavery, Wheaton argued that Philemon sanctioned the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. According to Wheaton, “The law which reclaims the fugitive slave…demands no more than St. Paul thought it his duty to do in parallel case.” In essence, since Paul returned the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master, northerners were obligated to return fugitive slaves to their southern masters. To be fair, Wheaton did note one distinction that he believed existed between the circumstances that surrounded Paul’s return of a fugitive slave and the circumstances that surrounded northerners’ return of fugitive slaves. Quite simply, Paul had no legal constraints placed upon him. According to Wheaton, Paul “acted under no constraint of civil law.” Wheaton believed this to be the case because of Paul’s use of the words, “whom I would have retained with me.” For Wheaton, then, in returning Onesimus to Philemon Paul was willing to obey what he understood to be “the law of Christ and of justice towards a fellow Christian.” This is because he returned Onesimus under no legal constraint. Based on this