Split thread: Does the Bible speak out against slavery?
Cleon
King of the Pod People
So, one entry for "creative re-interpretation."
I think the obvious implication – and thus probably the most persuasive interpretation – of the NT texts is that the Golden Rule applies to humanity generally (a point I'll return to later in this post). This is clearly not the only possible interpretation, of course. And your point here is a good one: a "pan-human" interpretation of the Golden Rule is not, by itself, sufficient to permit someone to conclude that enslaving, say, Native Americans is wrong: you also need the additional premise that Native Americans are human beings. If you believe someone is not human – whether through ignorance, prejudice, bad science or otherwise – it won’t matter what your holy book says about how to treat your fellow man. You may have the right rule, but you’ll be applying it to faulty data (garbage in, garbage out!). That wouldn’t seem to be the Bible’s fault, however.
I think the foregoing interpretation is much less well supported by the texts. When someone asked Jesus your question – exactly who is my neighbor for purposes of the Golden Rule? – Jesus supposedly responded with the story of the the Good Samaritan (the parabolic Samaritan and the Jew he helped, of course, belonged to different religious and ethnic groups that regarded each other with hostility). When Jesus says “love your enemies, do good to those that hate you”, how likely is it that he meant only people within your clan or tribe? And when the Bible insists that all human beings are “of one blood”, and children of the same divine father – who, moreover, does not distinguish between Jew and Gentile, etc. – does that harmonize better with a narrowly-interpreted Golden Rule or a broadly-interpreted one? I could go on.
I do get your point, Fran, which is well taken. Thanks for your thought-provoking post.
Interestingly, pro-slavery types who debated abolitionists in the United States often acknowledged that the Golden Rule applied to the treatment of blacks, but resorted to all kinds of mental contortions in an effort to show why it didn’t actually require anyone to renounce the institution of slavery. For example, it would be argued that, technically, the master can’t want the slave to free him, because he (the master) is already free. Therefore, the Golden Rule doesn’t require the master to free his slaves, because the master himself does not desire to be freed by his slaves. Talk about tortuous and counter-intuitive interpretations!
zooterkin said:
(Let’s leave aside for a moment the implications of the fact that the institutions of servitude that prevailed in biblical milieus were not the same institutions as New World-style chattel and racial slavery.)
Condonation generally connotes an implicit or deemed forgiveness, disregard, excusal or approval, so I’m not sure what kind of “explicit” condonation you have in mind. But I’m not aware of any biblical moral instruction explicitly approving slavery. Perhaps one exists. At any rate, my point was that one has to ignore at least as many (and in my view more) clear biblical texts, and deny the logical implications thereof, in mounting a scriptural defense of slavery than in mounting a scriptural attack on it.
zooterkin said:
Possibly. But it’s not too clear on what bases they believed it was wrong other than on their interpretations of what they believed to be the word of God - and since the extant evidence of early anti-slavery arguments suggests that the speakers often thought that was the basis, I think my explanation is less speculative than your proposed alternative.
zooterkin said:
As I’ve shown, it doesn’t take much creativity (unlike, for example, the astonishing pro-slavery argument to which I alluded earlier in this post, which purported to show why the Golden Rule imposes no moral obligation on a slaveholder to renounce slavery).
Really, though, creativity isn’t the issue. It takes no creativity to look at the Bible, see that slavery existed in it and that there is no express, dumbed-down general injunction against slavery as such, and infer that God is OK with you keeping your slaves. What it takes to maintain that position in light of the kind of arguments I referenced earlier is, I submit, one or more of the following: ignorance, denial, personal or cultural prejudice, an unwillingness or inability to make more than the most basic demands of one’s critic reasoning faculties, a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance, or a vested interest in not challenging the status quo. (In the modern era, one might add to that list a desire to condemn Christianity or the Bible generally.)
joobz said:
While not the only possible scriptural interpretation, that’s not an unreasonable one, and indeed a not-inconsiderable number of Christian individuals and institutions espouse it.
joobz said:
Plenty of reasonable people do take a similar interpretation with homosexuality. Implementations may vary, of course. Also, homosexuality – or homosexual activity, anyway – has its own specific treatment in parts of the Bible, so those have to be accounted for somehow and the interpretive exercise is not going to be identical for the one for slavery. Finally, see the factors (ignorance, etc.) I listed earlier in this post – those can apply to homosexuality just as they historically often applied to slavery in a Christian context.
Cleon said:
It’s not a matter of creativity, as I’ve pointed out. This is one entry for the “reasonable inference and/or logical deduction” category. (And why re-interpretation as opposed simply to interpretation?)
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Cleon
King of the Pod People
You can "point out" that the sky is purple, that don't make it so.
You're fishing for some justification in the Bible for an opposition to slavery. You managed to find one. Congratulations. Of course, up until 150 years ago or so, Christians didn't see much of a problem with the practice. Even when the tide began to turn, a number of churches (the Southern Baptists, for one) decided that scripture supported slavery.
Which is why it's "creative re-interpretation." With a little creativity, you can pretty much re-interpret the Bible to support any cause you want. Slavery, abortion, the death penalty, civil rights, war, socialism, capitalism, whatever--people on both sides of all of these issues have claimed the Bible as justification and inspiration.
That doesn't stop the fact that the Bible does not condemn slavery. If you want to infer a hostility to slavery based on your interpretation, hey, that's your prerogative, and I for one certainly don't blame you.
But a genuine, clear, unequivocal condemnation of slavery? Not there. At all.
Originally Posted by bokonon
Disciple of Christ, I apologize for that one, the "deception" was unintentional.
Me neither, but God does work in mysterious ways.
Disciple of Christ, I apologize for that one, the "deception" was unintentional.
That's what DOC stands for? Never occurred to me before
Me neither, but God does work in mysterious ways.
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Short answer: Yes, but see below.
Longer answer: I think there's a rational basis for arguing that the Bible supports slavery; I just don't think such arguments are quite as strong as the opposing arguments. I'd have to qualify that opinion with a few caveats, though. First, by "supports", I mean "condones" more than "endorses". Second, by "slavery", I mean the institutions of human servitude that existed in the communities of the Bible's authors, and probably not New World-style chattel slavery and racial enslavement. Perhaps
But to reiterate, I think the position, while not irrational, is not as well supported overall as its contrary.
Good points! I see it, and it might very well have been so. All I am saying is, that the idea that all (a literal 'all') human beings really are to be considered as having the same value, is, as far as I know, a fairly new idea. Most, if not all examples of expressions of equality from older times that I have come across (I do not claim to have come across all, and there are sure exceptions) has only appeared that way to our modern eyes, but in reality always meant to exclude some parts of humanity.
Many older statements that talked of human value, or equality, or brotherhood, and so on, often excluded women and/or children, slaves, foreigners (barbarians) and so on. And in the time and context that the idea was expressed in, it was probably such a given thing that this or that group was not included that it hardly needed mentioning, people would know who was, and wasn't included.
So, yes, maybe Jesus really meant ALL human beings, but as soon as an older text talks of things like this --- I get suspicious, and wonder who was meant to be included, and who was not, and I am trying to be careful about applying modern thoughts about what defines equality and similar things onto their definitions of it. Jesus may very well have meant for you to love all your free enemies... he doesn't mention slaves?
I think that we do not really try to twist the words of the bible when we say that, yes, it most likely supports such things as slavery, not if we put it in the context of its times and how people thought about, and defined such questions then (which I am not an expert on by all means, there are people here that knows much more about that, I suspect). I still think that we put a certain modern flair on Jesus' words, and other bible texts if we conclude that it was meant to object to slavery (and so did people a few hundred years back, it was still "modern" thoughts compared to the bible). I do think it demands a bit more creativity (as someone put it) to do that, than just to acknowledge the times in which the books were written. And the question is still if the bible condones slavery, and not how later people interpret the texts.
I agree though that my "tribe example" wasn't the most well thought out argument in connection to the "neighbour" example that Jesus talked about, it had more relevance to OT slave law, that did mean your literal neighbour when it clairfied who you should and should not enslave. Screwed up a bit there
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joobz
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And here is where I see a problem. You could also use the bible to condone "consentual" sex between a child and an adult. An even easier justification from the bible would be one to say that it is moral to kill the children of my enemy. In the end, it simply means that the bible can be used to prop up the moral conclusion someone has come to. As such, the bible's morality is simply a reflection of society's morals and not the source of them.
This, to me, is the primary complaint I have with DOC's initial position and why the slavery argument was originally made. He claims you must have god for morality. And for best results, it must be the christian god. However, I have seen no evidence to support such a position.
Of course not. However, it should be fairly obvious, to anyone without a vested interest in denying it, that the examples I provided do not not require or depend on any particularly "creative" or tortuous reasoning, I think the point is demonstrated. I haven't simply made a naked assertion of it.
I managed to find half a dozen, and that was chiefly the result of applying about 15 minutes' worth of commonsensical thinking to an online Bible. Not much of a fishing trip, really. More like shooting fish in a barrel.
That's simply not true, and this has a lot to do with why, by the Middle Ages, slavery had by and large been stamped out in Christian countries. For almost as long as the religion has existed, there have been Christians condemning slavery as inconsistent with biblical precepts. This did not stop when slavery made a comeback, in a particularly vicious form, shortly after the discovery of the New World.
Sure. No one said this wasn't possible or that it didn't happen. See my earlier post, however, on what is ordinarily required in order for intelligent people to endorse such arguments (e.g., prejudice, ignorance, conflicting interest, and the like).
That's rather a function of human nature and the nature of textual interpretation. People on both sides of most of those issues have also claimed the U.S. Constitution as justification for their position, too. That doesn't mean that one interpretation is not better supported or more reasonable than another.
Any position on a textual question - yours, mine, or anyone's - turns on interpretation.
More importantly, for all practical purposes, asserting any proposition X is the very real equivalent of asserting each other proposition that is necessarily true if X is true. If (hypothetically) my holy book tells me I have a moral obligation to move to Utah, it's highly problematic for me to argue that it doesn't disapprove of making Ohio my primary residence, because it's difficult to see how both courses can be adopted simultaneously - even if there's no explicit condemnation of staying in Ohio. Likewise, if my holy book lays down the Golden Rule, it's highly problematic to argue that the book is OK with my enslaving fellow human beings, because it's hard to see how it's possible to obey the one while doing the other. That's the argument - one among other biblically-based anti-slavery arguments - made by many Christians. The condemnation is implicit, but no less real and present for it.
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Depending on the circumstances, possibly. Whether it would be a reasonable use of the Bible is another question.
I think that would probably be harder, not easier. I expect it would be extremely difficult to extrapolate rationally a general moral principle from the Bible as a whole, that a human being can freely kill the children of his enemy. It would necessarily involve credibly demonstrating why killing my enemy's children is actually a way of fulfilling (1) Jesus' explicit command to love my enemy and do good to him and (2) Jesus' explicit instruction not to bring children to harm. And that, my friend, is kind of a tall order.
Depending on how radically someone is willing to divorce their interpretive approach from what is reasonable, I suppose just about any complex text can be used to rationalize just about any moral conclusion. But your suggestion that the Bible has no inherent moral substance is just a bit too postmodern for me.
Also, just taking the issue of slavery as an example, if you're going to argue that the Bible is nothing more than a moral mirror that reflects whatever a person brings to it, then I think we need to come up with a plausible alternative hypothesis for why fairly significant changes in social attitudes toward slavery in the Western world historically tended to correlate in place and in time with the spread of Christianity.
joobz
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I'm afraid you are being highly selective of Jesus' Teachings.
Don't forget
Mathew 10:34-39 said:
Coupled with Mathew 11:20
plus the countless texts of child killing in the OT. Sure, the golden rule applies, but the bible gives you exceptions to the rule.
I apologize if I made it sound such, that wasn't my intent. I do not claim that the bible is devoid of moral teachings. but it is clear that some selection must be done to get at the heart of the matter. Interestingly, I would even say that some of Jesus' teachings agree with this. Jesus' rejection of the sabbath was an indiction of such teachings.
But it is no where near clear that the bible/Jesus opposed slavery.
slave vs. surf. Opens property of a merchant the other the king, who has power by god. I'm sorry, but the spread of christianity simply patterned a change in the kind of slavery not the concept.
I feel like I should make it clear. I do not think Jesus and the bible are useless and I respect the good that can be gained from it. But they are not unique in thier ability to teach morals.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I thought the question was "does the Bible speak out against slavery?" I don't see any evidence that that is the case, even if, as Ceo Esq. points out, it collaterally provides us with moral grounds for doing so, or can be interpreted as compatible with doing so.
The Bible doesn't really seem to present those as exceptions to the Golden Rule. Interpretations of Mt 10:34-39 and Mt 11:20 as an exhortation to Christians to violent conduct are generally implausible. Child-killing episodes in the OT may set a bad contrary example, but unless you can point to one of them that incorporates an express rule of conduct for human beings to the effect that we should generally take the initiative to kill our enemies' children (which presumably, in light of the NT, would no longer be in effect anyway under the theological equivalent of the doctrine of implied repeal), then you're still left with an uphill climb. Those passages might suggest hypocrisy on God's part, of course, but I think a far easier project to argue around the child-killing passages than it is to argue around the anti-child-killing passages, which are far more direct and unambiguous. Moreover, the anti-child-killing ones tend to be phrased in the imperative.
Again, if you can think of a way it would be possible to reconcile the Golden Rule (and the other biblical concepts I mentioned a while back) with slavery, then be my guest. Consider two alternatives. Alternative #1: Christ was opposed to slavery, but either he passed up opportunities to spell out that slavery was inconsistent with his moral system, or else his biographers did not record them. Alternative #2: Christ was opposed to violations of the Golden Rule and related precepts, but he was not opposed to slavery. Alternative #1, you may say, seems improbable - perhaps very improbable. Yet Alternative #2, many have argued, is simply impossible, unless perhaps JC was profoundly insane. Remember how Sherlock Holmes said "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"?
You have objected that the Bible never speaks out against slavery in clear and unambiguous language. But isn't logic as a clear and unambiguous language in its own right? If one proposition is a logical consequence of another proposition, does it matter that one of them was formulated in words and the other was expressed via the principles of reason? Both of them will speak, if anyone is inclined to listen.
Lest I be accused of forgetting that I recently conceded that there were rational arguments that JC was OK with slavery, I think that there are some mostly rational arguments to that effect. I think they have serious weaknesses, however, and tend to break down in the presence of the counterarguments I mentioned.
That's actually not the case; I addressed why in this post from another thread.
I completely agree with you; well put joobz.
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six7s
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Once the impossible has been eliminated, there may well be two or more possible truths - seemingly something overlooked by both Arthur Conan Doyle and those with a confirmation bias that can be reinforced by judicious cherry-picking from an arcane, archaic and ambiguous text of which there are - in English alone - at least 5,000 versions according to Dr K. Dino Hovind, who can count to at least 6,000... maybe more
I think everyone recognizes that that's the case, although arguably not with respect to the past - which of course was Holmes' concern as a detective. One could argue that the determinacy of the past is logically necessary and thus a statement about the past (e.g., "the butler did it") is either true or impossible (so that if Holmes really manages to eliminate all impossibilities, whatever is left actually must be true). This leads into arguments about conceivability versus possibility and all manner of other things, though, so best not to veer into a discussion of Doylean modal logic, such as it is. But I digress. This isn't really material to the Conan Doyle allusion, and it's late ...
Could you elaborate on the charge of confirmation bias? Also, what do you view as the specific consequences, for this particular discussion, of the multiplicity of versions of the Bible?
Did you see the list of references that H3LL provided on the first page? References which refer to slavery as an accepted practice. For example:
That's Paul talking, a follower of Christ, not an Old Testament patriarch. Notice he does not instruct masters to free their slaves, only to treat them well. If that's not condoning slavery, I'm not sure how much more explicit it needs to be.
Yes, it's possible to construe certain other passages as implying that slavery is not a good thing, but that's partly because the bible is so self-contradictory. And you are having to ignore passages which go against your position, and take ones which only imply support for yours. I'll refer you again to the title of the thread; "Does the bible speak out against slavery?". Even if you can construct your argument from biblical sources, it's by careful choice of reference, and hardly constitutes as definite a statement as I would expect to meet the definition of 'speak out'.
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six7s
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Recognition? Perhaps... by many, but not by "everyone", esp amongst theists
Acknowledgment? My observations suggest that, amongst theists, this is as common as milk teeth in poultry
I can try
Each of us has, in varying degrees, a confirmation bias
Active scepticism requires that this is recognised
Passive acceptance of theological dogma doesn't even consider it
Inconsistent interpretations leading to, at the very best, only one accurate 'school' of conclusion makers
Note that Hovind (approx 4'30' through his video) asserts that the Vatican, in adopting the Latin Douay-Rheims version, has been duped into accepting a version based on the "wrong manuscript"
Considering both the alleged omniwhatevernessness of Yaweh and the numbers and populations of the various (other) 'schools', it strikes me as farcical to consider that ANY version was 'divinely inspired'... either that or vacancies in paradise are limited
Ladewig
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I am having a hard time with this claim. In the late 1700's in the United States, the number of Christians "condemning slavery as inconsistent with biblical precepts" must have been noticeably less than the number of Christians in favor of slavery.
As I said before, it's easy, if it's a given thing that the golden rule and the other concepts mentioned, do not apply to all physical human beings, which I suspect actually was the case! (Does anybody know more of this?) Exactly which groups of humans it did refer to, and which it didn't refer to, other people, such as experts of history and biblical times, can sure give a much more plausible answer to than I can. But I do think it's probably rather likely that slaves was one such groups of humans.
In later times, and in modern times, it was/is no longer possible to reconcile the golden rule with slavery, but I can't see why it wouldn't have been rather easy to do so back then.