THEOLOGY - APOLOGETICS

Theology - Apologetics



Theology - Apologetics

Introduction

In this we will critically analyse the issue of slavery as presented in the book of Philemon and Paul's view regarding Slavery. Paul's private letter to Philemon is a brief and short letter, deals a private issue that is mainly focused on slave and his master. The short letter is about a runaway slave, Onesimus and his fate, as he came back to his slave master. Moreover, it gives us a look about the Christians of first century and moves us towards the approaches of problem solving. In the Roman Empire, there were approximately 60,000,000 slaves that were considered as their assets. These slaves were under the complete control of their master or mistress (Bahr, 2008).

However, owner of the slaves were free to do whatever they wanted to do with the slaves. They have also right to kill and beat their slaves. As a rule, in the Roman Empire slaves cost was relatively high. In addition, punishment for the slaves who escape or runaway was usually strict and cruel and could implies a death sentence or capital punishment. The slaves who escape or runaway was usually indentified with the letter “F” that denotes "fugitivus" or runaway. The main reason behind the strict and cruel punishment for slaves was to discourage the rebellion among Roman population. It would be considered as a social chaos for the slaves who raise their voice against Rome (Bahr, 2008).

Discussion

Letters of Paul are basically the thirteen books belonging to the New Testament with the name of “Paul” written as the first word, thereby claiming the authorship by Paul the Apostle. Apologetics deals with everything from the existence of God to the reliability of the Old and New Testaments. In contrast, evangelism is address one particular message: the good news about what Jesus Christ has done in order to save sinners (Aland, 2001). It is important to note that among these 14 letters by Paul exist some of the earliest of existing Christian documents.

These documents provide a thorough insight of the events, beliefs, happenings and the controversies of the Christianity in the early time. In addition, as an essential part of the New Testament's canon, this text has also been, and will continue to remain the foundational of the Christian theology and various Christian ethics. This is perhaps the reason why these letters holds a central position in Christianity and it's all the other related aspects (Bahr, 2008).

Philemon, a rich slave owner found himself in exactly this position after receiving the Apostle Paul's letter. As do many of Paul's letters, he began and ended with greetings to certain individuals and encouragement to continue in the faith, as Paul himself was bringing their needs before the Lord in prayer (Carson, 2000). The apostle was under house arrest in Rome and wrote to Philenion about 0nesimus. From what we know of the letter's background, Onesimus was one of Philemon's slaves. Slavery was not uncommon in the Roman ...