[Vision2020] slavery, Bible, 10 commandments

[Donovan Arnold]

I agree with most of what Keely had to say except two points:
 
1) I don't think the OT condones slavery as we understand the world slavery to be in the 21st Century. But I was taught the Bible is about emancipating the soul, not the body, so it allows it and lays down rules to prevent, deter, and severely limit abuses of authority, included that of those with slaves and men debited to them. The economics of the past and men depended on their ability to sell themselves for about 7 years to get food, clothing, shelter, and pay off debt. Wealthy men depended on the ability to buy men to do labor. That is the way the system worked, they didn't have an employer -employee  union relationship the way we do now. 
 
2) As a Catholic, I disagree that the First Commandment doesn't include loving God and your neighbor. That was the point of the Ten Commandments. If think if you talk to any Catholic Priest they will tell you that loving God and you neighbor are in the Ten Commandments and must be followed above any other commandment.
 
I believe if your interpretation of the Bible suggests that you violate Loving your God or Loving your Neighbor, you are reading it incorrectly, because I don't think God would never lay down a command that violated Him.
 
"But slavery is and always was wrong.I agree with Ralph that IF the Bible says otherwise, it is wrong. My view is that it doesn't always mean what it literally says."--Joe C. 
 
Joe, that made no sense to me whatsoever. I don't think there are any phrases about slavery in the Bible that Ralph quoted that were not meant literally. 
 
Best Regards,
 
Donovan
 
 


--- On Thu, 4/16/09, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] slavery, Bible, 10 commandments
To: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
Cc: "<vision2020 at moscow.com>" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Date: Thursday, April 16, 2009, 10:58 AM



Keely,


With all due respect, I don't think the move to justify slavery is the right way to save Christianity. Slaves in Greece were property and could be beaten. Not good.


A better way would be to say that the moral lessons of the Bible are best understood within a virtue ethic than a deontological ethic. It does not give a list of rules but a way of life, a way toward virtue.


Slavery is wrong but even the slave owner has some virtues; he is not virtuous since he also has some vices. Maybe that is the message. 


But slavery is and always was wrong.I agree with Ralph that IF the Bible says otherwise, it is wrong. My view is that it doesn't always mean what it literally says. 

Joe Campbell

On Apr 16, 2009, at 10:20 AM, keely emerinemix <kjajmix1 at msn.com> wrote:




I'll try not to get us further off topic, but a few points I'd make:

1.  Ralph is correct.  The Old Testament does condone and regulate slavery, and the New Testament, while presenting a Gospel that is incompatible with slavery or any other form of social hierarchy or oppression, does not explicitly condemn the practice.  It is important to realize, however, that Hebrew slavery was not only more beneficient than that of the pagan cultures around the Jewish people, but that it was radically different than the race-based, permanent, violence-controlled, man-stealing, hate-based slavery of the antebellum south, which could not be justified, period, under any circumstance for these very reasons.  Hebrew slavery was not race-based, not permanent, and more correctly what we would likely call, even as we properly find it abhorrent, an indentured servitude.  The New Testament slavery discussed by Paul was basically of the same sort and, again, an improvement over slavery practices of other non-Yahweh-worshipping cultures
 (this is how I'm using the term "pagan").  The Gospel of Jesus Christ had as one of its inevitable outcomes the eventual end to the slave practices of the day among Christians -- again, a slavery entirely different from the inexcusable slavery of the antebellum south.  The movement of the Spirit in Christiandom, and, later, the work of thousands of Christ-worshipping abolitionists (including my great-great-great grandparents, both ordained ministers) brought about the end of slavery in "Christian" America and the understanding, finally and comprehensively, that the "owning" of another person's labor and security, not to mention the attempt to rob them of body, soul and spirit, is wrong.  Why God moved incrementally in abolishing any form of slavery, I don't know.  But it's foolish to pretend that the OT doesn't lay out strict regulations of an accepted practice, and equally so to pretend that the NT either encouraged slavery or specifically
 condemned it.  The NT church, instead, affected society by adopting in itself the egalitarian spirit of the Holy Spirit.  The Apostles weren't social reformers, and we might wish they were, but they preached a message that believers came to understand, and not as rapidly as we wish they had, was incompatible with the Kingdom of God among them.

2.  Nowhere in either OT account of the Ten Commandments does it say to love your neighbor as yourself.  It shouldn't need to, and nothing in the Decalogue makes it possible to legitimately not love your neighbor.  Rather, the Ten describe how to love God and how to live lovingly amongst humanity.  It's nonsensical to claim that "love your neighbor as yourself" is part of the Decalogue -- it isn't -- and it's absurd to claim that the idea of loving one's neighbor isn't the whole point of the Ten.

3.  Yeah, I said Christ-worshipping abolitionists, and to claim that the slavery of the antebellum south was somehow in any way Godly is only a bit more offensive, and wrong, than claims by Wilsonites that those who worked to abolish it were motivated by hatred of God (Southern Slavery As It Was/Black and Tan, Wilson and Wilkins).  And, further, the Gospel message is an egalitarian one, and Federal Vision, patriarchy, "complementarianism" and any other male-favoring message is at odds with it.  

Period.

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/





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