new testament pauline criticism is extraneous in the new testament section the arguments about who wrote or didn't write the pauline epistles are irrelevant to this article which is about christianity's historic and modern positions on slavery the pauline epistles were universally accepted as canonical by the church by the end of the fourth century see biblical canon for history furthermore there are no citations given of church fathers who argued against the authorship of any of the pauline epistles or against theirs statements regarding slavery i am modifying this paragraph to reflect what the accepted bible of church history says about slavery while removing the questions about authorship this change is not a judgment on the legitimacy of such questions