St Paul's Letter to Philemon raises for some people the question of the early Church's attitude to slavery. Why did Paul send the "slave" Onesimus back to his master instead of demanding that Philemon release him immediately? The answer to the question is not simple, for an adequate answer demands an understanding of the socio-political and economic world which was the background to the life of early Christians. While Paul speaks of Onesimus as a "slave", we should not understand it in the modern sense of "slavery" with its terrible overtones of exploitation. In many cases slaves were educated men who, with an equitable economic arrangement, offered themselves as tutors to the children of wealthy families.

Then, too we must remember that the early Christians were a tiny minority in society and could not possibly have dared to start a revolution to bring about social justice in our modern sense of the word. Paul did what he could do and dared to do: he asked for a change in the deeper personal relationship which, for a Christian underlies any economic or socio-political arrangement and adds a new dimension to life.