Despite the fact that God allowed for slavery, embedded in the Scripture is a sobering rebuke of the institution, as well as an anthropology that teaches that all people are made in God’s image. So the objectification of an image bearer, seeing them as nothing more than an object or property that you can abuse, is something the Bible prohibits.
Does the Bible endorse slavery? Pastor Adriel Sanchez draws a careful distinction between the debt servitude regulated in the Old Testament and the transatlantic slave trade, showing that the two are fundamentally different institutions and that the Bible itself provides clear theological grounds for abolition.
