At best, Paul is sending Onesimus back as a slave with the request that he be set free. I think that these kinds of attempts to render some passages consistent with what we know to be right are unnecessarily painful, not to mention intellectually dishonest (if perhaps well meaning). I want to point out, however, that the logic of Paul’s rhetoric outdistances the political restrictions to which he remains true. To say it another way, in reading Philemon, the moral telos of the discourse transcends the limitations of the speaker.
