Why Does God Allow Slavery? A Three-Faith Comparison

Judaism's Torah doesn't abolish slavery, but it's crucial to understand that it dramatically restricts and regulates it compared to surrounding ancient cultures. The Hebrew Bible distinguishes between Israelite debt-servants and foreign slaves, setting limits on how each could be treated. Exodus 21 is a key legal text — it stipulates, for instance, that if a master betroths a female slave to himself and she displeases him, he cannot sell her to foreigners but must allow her to be redeemed Exodus 21:8. This is a protection, not an endorsement of exploitation.

Perhaps the most theologically significant point is that God himself is portrayed as the great emancipator. The LORD redeemed Israel 'out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt' Genesis 44:7, which means slavery is associated in the Jewish imagination with Egypt — the paradigm of oppression — not with divine will. Scholars like Nahum Sarna (writing in the 1980s) argued that the Exodus narrative fundamentally reframes slavery as something God opposes in principle, even while the law codes accommodate its existence in practice.

There's real disagreement among modern Jewish thinkers about how to read these texts. Some, like Rabbi David Novak, argue the Torah's regulations were a form of moral progress within their historical moment. Others are more critical, acknowledging that the tradition failed to extrapolate its own liberationist principles to all people. The mercy and forgiveness attributed to God Daniel 9:9 are seen by many as the theological seeds that should have — and eventually did — inspire abolitionist movements.

Christianity inherited the Hebrew Bible's ambivalence and added its own layers of complexity. The New Testament doesn't call for the immediate abolition of slavery, which has troubled theologians for centuries. Paul's letters instruct enslaved people to obey masters, yet simultaneously declare there is 'neither bond nor free' in Christ (Galatians 3:28). The tension is real and hasn't been resolved neatly. What the New Testament does offer is an eschatological horizon: creation itself 'shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God' Romans 8:21, suggesting that slavery — in every form — is incompatible with God's ultimate purpose.

Hebrews 11 gestures toward a divine plan that unfolds across history, with God 'having provided some better thing for us' Hebrews 11:40, implying that earlier accommodations were provisional. This is the argument made by 19th-century abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and theologian Charles Finney — that the trajectory of scripture points away from slavery even if individual texts don't condemn it outright. The gospel itself, Paul says, was 'preached before' to Abraham with a promise of blessing for all nations Galatians 3:8, which many theologians read as an implicit universalism that undermines racial or social hierarchy.

It's worth being honest: Christianity was also used to justify slavery for centuries, particularly in the American South. The same texts were deployed on both sides of the debate. Modern mainstream Christian denominations have largely concluded that slavery is a sin, but the exegetical history is messy and shouldn't be sanitized.

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, did not abolish slavery at its founding in 7th-century Arabia, but it introduced significant reforms aimed at reducing its prevalence. The Quran and Hadith repeatedly encourage the freeing of enslaved people as an act of piety and atonement, and Islamic law (fiqh) developed elaborate protections for enslaved persons. Classical scholars like Ibn Khaldun and later Abdullahi An-Na'im have debated whether the Quranic framework was intended as a gradual path toward abolition or a permanent legal accommodation.

The theological framing in Islam is important: God is understood as supremely merciful and just, and the concept of human dignity (karama) is foundational. Many contemporary Muslim scholars argue that the spirit of Islamic ethics — rooted in justice and mercy — demands the rejection of slavery even where classical fiqh permitted it. The question of why God 'allowed' slavery is typically answered by pointing to the principle of gradual reform (tadarruj), the same principle used to explain the phased prohibition of alcohol.

It's worth noting that Islamic civilization both practiced and eventually abolished slavery, with the Ottoman Empire formally abolishing the slave trade in 1857. Modern Muslim thinkers like Khaled Abou El Fadl argue forcefully that any reading of Islamic sources that permits contemporary slavery is a profound misreading of the tradition's moral core. The divine attributes of mercy and forgiveness Daniel 9:9 — shared across the Abrahamic traditions — are central to this reformist argument.