I recently read this article from The Gospel Coalition that discussed points made by Alex O’Connor and his interpretation of how scripture can be dually used to support and condone slavery.
I feel like it made a lot of interesting points and mentioned things that I had previously overlooked on past read-through of the Bible. However, I also know that many in this forum (myself included) treat many of the events laid out in the Old Testament as poetry laid out with history, or as people superimposing their cultural norms onto God.
With this in mind, I want to know how you guys viewed mentions of slavery in the Bible.
Slavery was both cultural and considered a better alternative to killing or genocide. It should be noted that slavery was only banned comparatively recently in the so called civilised world.
In many ways the attitudes to slavery and the appropriate behaviours within the system can be correlated to any situation involving authority and staff.
It is not our place to judge or condemn biblical cultures or practices that are now considered wrong.
O’Connor is definitely wrong, yet the article misses the biggest point, one Peter invokes,that we were bought “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ”.
Oswald Hoffman noted that given this, slavery violated the commandment “Do not steal” because every human being has already been purchased by the most precious price every paid. Claiming to own another human being defrauds God, and besides insults Him by suggesting that there is – or even could be! – something on this earth of greater value than the blood of Christ.
He’s right in line with those who have pointed out that slavery is thus also blasphemy, requiring that the owner have a status above that of God.
So why does the Bible tolerate slavery at all? For the same reason we don’t teach trigonometry to six-year-olds: human cultures, just like individual humans, can only learn so fast.
I have some difficulty with the apologetic that prohibiting slavery would have been a ‘bridge too far’ (or woke) for Israelites at the time. Was there simply no way an omnipotent, omniscient being could possibly have gotten His Favored Tribes to give up something which is horribly immoral, that they were instead really, really into. I could see why some would feel compelled by ideas of Biblical infallacy to work this angle. But…
One could instead take the position that slavery, along with genocide, wasn’t actually advocated by God but a cultural norm that fallible humans introduced into the stories they passed down. Like the position taken by a rabbi that 0’Conner interviewed in another video. The rabbi noted his belief that slavery and genocide were not something He sanctioned, but the stories and justifications that the people of the time incorrectly attributed to God and contrary to the God he knew with his heart. Mind you, this is a group that requires circumcision of male converts at any age. So, we should probably rank slavery as less essential and culturally divisive than circumsion, and even odd behavioral and dietary requirements that marked Jews apart from the much of the rest of world already.
I guess one can try to adhere to rigid interpretation and thus stick with trying to defend the indefensible, or take the position that the indefensible was not God’s actual position and thus not a fault of His. I think the latter appears the better approach, particularly if one holds to morality as being embodied by or defined by God. This is the sort of stuff that falls into the Problem of Evil area.
I hadn’t gotten as far in the New Testament (only really through the four Gospels), so I hadn’t gotten to the teachings of Paul yet. However, I was still surprised to learn that the issue of slavery was something being actively discussed, which I suppose goes to show that the writers of the Bible weren’t naively assuming all the things they did were good.
That is a unique way of putting it. Makes me wonder what issues today we still need to get through (meaning, what do we see is culturally okay today that, generations from now, will have been thought cruel?).
I certainly agree that, despite the Divine backing the writers of the Bible had, many couldn’t help but insert their own cultures into their works. Even today, people try to get the oldest and least changed translation of the Bible possible because too many translations have warped messages through stockings of interpretations.
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SkovandOfMitaze
(One 8 ounce steak used as much water as 6,000 ai searches. )
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This is one of the strongest reasons for me leading to me abandoning the belief that the Bible is solely the word of god and that accomondationism applies to more than just myths. The people in the Bible under modern lenses were horrible people. The people to most get along with these monsters of old would be modern monsters. Much like certain nations of this day.
The Bible 100% supported war and genocide against other nations and taking the people into slavery and even at time murdering almost all the males and elderly women and keeping the younger prettier virgins for themselves as concubines. So you murder a girls father, uncles, brothers and cousins and then make them into essentially a sex maid. However, that was somehow supposed to be better than if the Canaanites did it to you because they may sacrifice the babies to some horrible god of theirs…… however most of the stories are fake. They were written later on. It would be like if somehow a disease spread into America and wiped out all the white people and then a nuclear blast went off wiping out almost everyone else and just a few thousand indigenous people survived and they wrote a religious book about how they danced a magical dance and their god of love and justice came down and battles all and they helped and killed us and now they are leaving in peace. They wrote about epic battles. They rewrote the history of colonization and etc… it seems that often after being in captivity and one nation failing they wrote about their god overthrowing those powers or they found the ruins of some place and they wrote about how they did that.
So yeah in the Bible it supports slavery. In the Bible there are also verses where more loving people spoke out against it. It’s why the Bible is not actually a good argument to support something. Like ….
Oh we can completely exploit some sentient being and murder it after enslaving it because well the Bible did it or never condemned it. So therefore it’s ok. Because nothing in the bible condemns America’s military invading Mexico and bring back all the women for our concubines, not our wives, but to be concubines. There is no verse really condemning it. Not even in Paul’s one wife arguments does it really address concubines.
However most of us all agree it’s horrible and evil. Same with slavery. I know it’s horrible and evil to enslave another person. I mean the Code of Ur-Nammu written like 4,000 years ago wrote about punishing people helping slaves escape. So much like nowdays, the ones in power almost always got there by being horrible. Same for the rich. Musk is a trillionaire, and most of his workers live check to check after he helped gut their social benefits. The Epstein island was a place for the rich, famous and powerful. Anyone who was poor who was on that island was probably a victim.
So in the Bible since it’a not a unified story like The Bible Project claims we see different stories with different perspectives on right and wrong. But yeah 4,000 years ago the majority of the powerful supported slavery and the majority of the bootlickers with a dream to be powerful one day supported it as well, at least until they fell victim to it. But you can definitely find verses used by abolitionist who fought against it. Often by reinterpreting the hidden woven stories of the Bible.
Could it be that the Bible views the abolition of slavery as a long-term project – something to be dismantled piece by piece over the centuries, rather than something to be eliminated overnight? I’m no expert on what ancient civilisations were like, but from what I can make out, slavery was so deeply ingrained in the culture and the economy back then that getting rid of it all at once might have been practically impossible.
Another issue worth considering is the role played by industry and technology. A lot of work that was once done by slaves is now done by machines, and this is a switchover that has been going on for centuries.
Perhaps it’s also worth considering chattel slavery as the extreme end of a continuum of worker/employer (or client) relationships. The other end is where you’re self employed and have a source of income that you’re able to manage largely on your own terms. In between, there are all sorts of different debates and restrictions that might be at play, such as noncompete agreements, or intellectual property assignments, or annual leave or maximum working hours for example. Clearly there comes a point beyond which things cease to be acceptable, and perhaps the Bible’s intent is that that point should gradually move in favour of better pay and working conditions as economic, industrial and technological factors allow.
All in all, the question is this: what could we realistically expect of a society three or four thousand years ago that did not have the benefit of modern technology, modern industry and the modern accumulation of wisdom and experience?
So ironic that the Gospel Coalition concerns itself with Alex O’Connor’s (true) statement that the Bible can be used both to condone as well as condemn slavery. They have no problem – even endorse – nay! yet even expect the subjugation of free Christian women in the name of Complementarianism, aka “Biblical” womanhood.
’Cuz Jesus’ work on the cross only did so much for us super sinners.
Alex O’Connor is not the only person thinking about the biblical nature of slavery. Doug Wilson and Alisa Childress, and others who are CHRISTIANS, and some “christian apologists” think the Bible supports slavery.
I’ve seen so many varied arguments around the web arguing for so many different things. I haven’t watched it (and probably won’t) but I have seen a video from a smaller Christian channel that explains how to address criticism of why we condemn same-sex marriage but also don’t follow the rules of not eating unclean food. Then on the reverse, I’ve seen people say that the Bible actually supports LGBTQ activities by pointing how small details in different texts, like God making day and night (and since there is in between from day and night, they applied that to gender as well).
I think @SkovandOfMitaze is right in that using an ancient text to argue modern ethics is perhaps a wrong decision. Is the Bible a great source of Hope (mostly the New Testament and the Resurrection)? Yes. Can we better our own lives from the wisdom within (such as Jesus’ teachings)? Yes. However, I think taking every verse in the Bible to its most literal extreme and extent is doing a bit much.
If slavery is so wrong why does Paul use it for an analogy for discipleship? Either slave to sin or slave to God? Neither is very appealing. Does God make us slaves to him?
No! We give him our lives and He gives them right back! I am slave to no one. That is the whole point of forgiveness. We are still free to sin snd make mistakes but no longer bound by the guilt of sinning or the forced holiness of the Pharisees.
It seems that the guidelines in the biblical scriptures, especially OT, were given to the prevailing context. Instead of trying to wipe the whole society and culture away and replace them with something totally different, the guidelines told how to live in the prevailing context.
For example, the cultural context in much of OT is strongly patriarchal and the guidelines did not attack that culture. Instead, the guidelines told how to live better in such a cultural context.
The same with slavery: slavery was part of common culture, the guidelines tried to improve the treatment of the people who had ended in slavery.
In his letters, Paul gave also guidelines about how to live in a society where slavery was part of the everyday customs of the society. Paul himself did not seem to think that slavery is ok. He lists slave traders among the ungodly and sinful, in the same group as murderers (1 Timothy 1:9-10).
The irony is that our modern lenses are due to the Bible.
Not quite – it supported a campaign against a specific kind of nation, specifically ones which harbored (alleged) offspring of the Nephelim (Anakim, Rephaim, etc.).
It condemns engaging in wars that Yahweh hasn’t commanded.
That’s implicit in my point: to get to teaching trigonometry there are steps that have to be achieved first.
Pragmatic theology? Definitely not impossible.
Whoa – I’ve never heard of this.
This I’ve heard of. It always strikes me that such people ignore the prophets and the development they make plain, from law to mercy.
No, the issue is thinking in terms of LAW and forgetting the Gospel – and ignoring the fact that even the prophets condemned following Torah as Law! The prophets make plain that Torah is meant to teach principles, not rules.