I've had many discussions with people about what the doctrine of inspiration actually entails. An exegesis of 2 Tim 3:16-17 seems to me to provide results which are theologically underdetermined (as far as I can tell, theopneustos first appears here in Greek literature). But whatever it means it must include literature that includes both apocalyptic visions and prophetic revelations, as well as historical works that basically compile sources to produce a work of history or biography (in the same way any other secular author would have done), as well as things like aitiological literature (I guess falling under the genre of myth), as well as other literature which can, for the most part, be grouped together and understood with non-inspired works, and more or less understood in a secular manner.
For me the inspiration must be understood at the level of the whole of revelation, and one should be careful in bringing presuppositions into what inspiration ought to mean before one approaches the texts.
Put your focus where it should be, on the "man of god" as a technical term that is grounded in OT language and is still recognized as such in the time of Constantine.
Coming to 2 Tim 3:16-17, Hutson takes the standard view that theopneustos means “God-breathed,” in the sense that it originated with God (p. 195). I think that may well be the case, but there is a minority view worth considering, championed by Luke Johnson and Jack Poirier, that the word means “life-giving,” that is to say, Scripture is a means of divine life through divine instruction.
Anonymous, I've often wondered if the human writers could be called "authors" of what they produced. In a sense, they seem to be. As for the active/passive distinction, compare 2 Peter 1:20-21.
Roman, whatever "inspiration" means, we know that even the Jews considered some books to be canonical, but other works, pseudepigraphal. A number of writers say that only the "autographs" of the NT or original texts of the OT are inspired. I also have a thought-provoking article on 2 Peter 1:20-21 about this issue. I think Charles Ryrie offered some interesting points as well in his Basic Theology and there is the classic article by Warfield.
Duncan, I posted the info to reflect on the meaning of theopneustos, which I've admittedly done before. Bird allows for the possibility of "life-giving" as a definition but favors "God-breathed."
As for the "man of God," I grant that the usage in Timothy likely reflects OT exempla/language and in the strict sense, Paul mean "man of God" in that sense. However, Bible verses can have broader applications and regardless of how we understand that part of the verse, it's important to know whether one is reading God's Word or the words of mere humans. I choose to believe the former.
I watched Luke Johnson's lecture, and I must say that, unfortunately, he is a much better scholar of early Christian literature and history than he is a philosopher and theologian.
His reduction of a correspondence view to a kind of verificationist view is just incorrect, as is his assumption that somehow a correspondence view cannot make sense of apocalyptic symbolism, myth, parable, etc etc; it can, and in fact it often better does, not because it assumes these things exist, but rather that the language symbolize, or communicate, realities and truths which cannot be reduced to either verifiable sense data or syllogistic formulas. I.e. the truth of the myth is not its coherence within some language game, or its ability to be verified, but it's correspondence to realities.
Also his idea of the bible being true in that they call us to make it true if we believe just makes nonsense of the concept of truth and the truth/falsehood dychotomy. If someone is calling me to action this "calling" is neither true nor false, if they are calling my on the basis of some claim then that claim could be true or false, but its truth or falsehood cannot depend on my response to the calling since it is the basis of the call.
If the "truth" of the bible just is that call is has no more authority or normative claim on us than literally anything else.
This is not to say that his critiques of fundamentalist and purely critical approaches aren't correct, but that's not a problem with the broader theory of truth, i.e. the problem isn't that they have a corresondence theory of truth, it's that both of them basically presuppose a materialist/verificationist worldview (even the fundamentalists who will voice opposition to a materialist worldview), and ignore deeper metaphysical truths, spiritual truths, and so on, that were sidelined by modern philosophy. Basically the truth of Genesis 1-3 as opposed to say Mark 14 isn't whether or not it corresponds to some reality, if it doesn't it's false, the issue is just what do you allow in you're metaphysical options for the reality it might correspond to, and do you allow for the literary genre to help determine what metaphysical options it might be aiming at.
What he's saying about slavery is also historically ignorant. See Gregory of Nyssa's arguments against slavery, the point is he argues from scripture as normative and grounded in a correspondence to truth. Also the idea that the pro-slavery arguments were better only makes sense if one rules out the actual theological arguments (i.e. not just nit picking scripture, but seeing scripture as a whole) that abolitionists used and Gregory of Nyssa used.
This has made me more firm in my belief that New Testament scholars should be banned from doing theology.
https://academic.oup.com/book/9828/chapter-abstract/157076953?redirectedFrom=fulltext Just because Nyssa made good observations did not change anything at the time and he was definitely an outlier.
One of the best books ever written on ancientr slavery: Garnsey, Peter D. A. Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
In the New Testament, during the time of Jesus in Palestine, slavery was a part of the social order. Jesus used the concept of slavery in His parables without any reservations (Mt 24:45-51; Lk 12:42-48; 17:7-9) and never explicitly opposed it. However, He showed the way that eventually led to the abolition of slavery. The apostles emphasized that all people are equal before God (1 Cor 7:21; 12:13; Gal 3:28; Eph 6:8; Col 3:11) and discussed in their letters the relationship between master and slave, as well as their mutual rights and duties (Col 3:22-24; 4:1; Eph 6:5-9; 1 Pt 2:18; 1 Tim 6:1; Titus 2:9). Saint Paul, in the case of the slave Onesimus who fled to him, provided the gospel solution to the issue of slavery (Philemon).
Christianity did not demand the immediate abolition of slavery, as this would have fundamentally disrupted society. However, from the beginning, it introduced a new perspective on slavery. Even this brought about revolutionary changes in society. The greatest commandment, the law of love, applies to everyone, even to one's enemies. Jesus’ followers urged that the relationship between master and slave should be fraternal: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13), writes Saint Paul.
The tenderness with which he welcomed the slave who fled to him is touching. After baptizing him, he sent him back to his master, but "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philemon 16). Saint Cyril of Alexandria mentions that among bishops, priests, and deacons, there were also slaves (Catech. 17, 35). During the 2nd and 3rd centuries, some popes were former slaves, such as Pius I and Callixtus I. Christian tombs never indicated whether the deceased had been a slave or a free person. "We make no distinction between rich and poor, slave and free person," wrote the apologist Lactantius (Div. inst. V. 17).
The Church Fathers, especially Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, and Saint Augustine, harshly criticized those who mistreated their slaves. With the public recognition of Christianity, the condition of slaves improved. Emperor Constantine the Great prohibited branding slaves on their foreheads. He also forbade crucifixion, gladiatorial games, and the separation of slaves from their wives and children. He authorized the clergy to redeem, even by force if necessary, those female slaves whose masters had abused them. It was the apostate Julian who reinstated slavery in the 4th century. However, Emperor Justinian, in his legal code, called it a barbaric institution contrary to natural law. Under his influence, the condition of slaves began to resemble that of household servants and agricultural serfs.
A significant step toward the gradual alleviation of slavery was the spread of monasticism, the promotion of agriculture, and the Christian adoption of industry. Although the dependent status and serfdom persisted in some places throughout the Middle Ages, and even into the 19th century, it was incomparable to pagan slavery. The occasional resurgence of slavery was significantly influenced by the centuries-long struggle between Christianity and Islam. Muslim conquerors everywhere enslaved large numbers of defeated Christians, not just prisoners of war but also the civilian population. For example, when Carthage was captured (695), the entire population became the spoil of Muslim slave traders. After the fall of Antioch (13th century), 8,000 people were taken to Egyptian slave markets. After the capture of Constantinople (1453), a large part of the city's population suffered the same fate.
The Christian world faced significant challenges in freeing slaves or at least alleviating their plight. The primary goal of King Louis IX of France's crusade was to liberate Christian slaves.
Two monastic orders were established specifically for this purpose: the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians. Members of these orders took a vow to offer themselves as ransom if necessary to free Christian slaves. The Trinitarians, or the "Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives" (Ordo SS. Trinitatis de redemptione captivorum), were founded by John of Matha, a professor at the University of Paris, and Saint Felix of Valois, a hermit. Pope Innocent III approved the order in 1198. Besides freeing captives, they were also involved in establishing hospitals and caring for the sick. The order spread rapidly, especially in France, England, and Ireland. The Mercedarians (Ordo Sacer et Militaris B.M.V. de Misericordia de mercede redemptionis captivorum) were founded by Saint Peter Nolasco in 1223. Its members were mainly drawn from the nobility and were divided into three groups: knights, priests, and lay brothers. The order spread particularly in South America.
Many others followed the heroic example of these monks. Historians mention, for instance, a Spanish bishop who, after being enslaved in Africa, used the ransom money sent for his release on two occasions to free others, remaining a slave himself until his death.
Throughout the Middle Ages, slavery continued in the Mediterranean region among both Muslims and Christians. The archives of Marseille and Perpignan are filled with documents regulating the slave trade.
While it is by no means justifiable, it is understandable from a human perspective that Christians, upon victory, also took slaves, as did Genoa and Venice, the two great powers of medieval maritime trade.
Pope Eugene IV, in his bull "Dudum nostras" (1430), strongly condemned slavery and threatened those who kept slaves with excommunication. He prohibited the deportation of natives and was the first to proclaim the natural right to one's homeland.
Pope Paul III, in his 1537 bull, also forbade the enslavement, deprivation of freedom, and property of Indians and all peoples discovered by Christians. Similarly, Popes Urban VIII in 1639 and Benedict XIV in 1741 took action against slavery. However, these papal decrees had little effect.
After the discovery of America, the modern slave trade and hunting began among African peoples. Slaves were transported to America based on a contract ("assiento") between the Spanish king and slave traders.
Emperor Charles V, after long hesitation, allowed in 1517 the transportation of 4,000 African blacks to the American plantations. This shameful example was followed by many. After the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms (1580), the slave trade gained significant momentum. Between 1595 and 1640, approximately 5,000 people were deported to the colonies annually.
The English government was the first to sign a contract with Spain for the transportation of blacks. Oliver Cromwell not only sold blacks into slavery but, driven by religious hatred, also sold thousands of Catholic Irish as slaves to America. In 1701, Philip V granted a French trading company permission to deport 48,000 blacks as slaves over ten years. The history of colonization is among the darkest chapters of world history. It is an eternal shame of the West that the foundations of American capitalism were laid by the labor of thousands of slaves.
Saint Vincent de Paul (1576–1660) and his companions, the Lazarists, did much to alleviate the plight of slaves. Their efforts prompted Western governments to attempt to curb the most significant supporters of modern slavery, the sea pirates.
The Jesuit Saint Peter Claver (1581–1654) dedicated forty years of his life to the physical and spiritual care of the Africans brought to Cartagena, the center of the South American slave trade. He committed himself to this work with a special vow. Pope Leo XIII later declared him the patron of missions to black people.
The work of the Jesuits in Paraguay, where they saved masses of indigenous people from slavery and maintained a Christian Indian community for 150 years (1610–1767), is worthy of all recognition and admiration. This community was not dissolved due to internal discord, as happened with modern utopian experiments, but due to the inhumanity of the Portuguese and Spanish colonists and the violence of freethinking dictators opposed to the Church and the Jesuits.
Efforts to abolish slavery began in the early 19th century.
Brazil theoretically freed its slaves as early as 1752, but in reality, it still had 2 million slaves by the mid-19th century. The Congress of Vienna (1815) persuaded European powers to ban the slave trade, but only public slave hunting ceased. Although the French Revolution declared human rights, freedom, equality, and fraternity, slavery in the French colonies was not abolished until 1848.
The English controlled about 50% of the slave trade in the 18th century. However, they were the first to ban it in 1807 and even abolished the institution of slavery in 1833. This can be explained by economic considerations.
Economists showed that the productivity of slave labor was very low, and the yield barely covered the cost of labor. Slavery could only be maintained on plantations, where profits still exceeded production costs.
Mechanization, which philosophers hoped would liberate humanity, made forced slave labor increasingly unprofitable. The emerging economic liberalism favored free labor, which could be utilized or dismissed according to the fluctuations of economic cycles.
Slavery was abolished in Dutch East India in 1859, in North America in 1865—where nearly 4 million slaves lived at the outbreak of the Civil War (1861)—in Portugal in 1878. Spain was the last in this process. Slavery was abolished in Brazil only in 1888, after Pope Leo XIII issued a powerful encyclical calling on the civilized world to eradicate slavery permanently.
Despite all prohibitions and international controls, slavery still existed in parts of Africa in the 1930s.
Slavery only petered out in its traditional form due to civilisation being able to tap into other forms of abundant energy from coal and then oil. Slaves became more expensive to maintain than machines. Population explosion coincides with that energy and the ability to turn it into food. Those who were about better conditions for there slaves before this were more about good business rather than altruism. Healthy slaves get work done. Slavery is an artefact if civilisation and it's grain based power. The two grew hand in hand but it did not exist in the horticultural societies that we now now existed in many places on the planet.
"Horticultural societies have agricultural systems that are relatively unproductive per unit of human labor compared to plow agriculture" - unfortunately this can demonstrated as a blatant lie.
Profits might have been a factor in slavery's legal end, but contra Marx and Voltaire, not everything humans do is motivated by profits/economic concerns. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3rj7ty/revision/2#:~:text=The%20Industrial%20Revolution%20and%20advances,were%20benefiting%20the%20British%20economy.&text=Since%20profits%20were%20the%20main,trade%20ceased%20to%20be%20profitable
Duncan, the BBC article did not say Wilberforce was the 1st to fight against slavery. I think the BBC knows better than that, but it merely gave him as an example of abolitionist around that time. Not that he was the first. But the reason I cited the article is because it takes exception to the economic argument for why chattel slavery ended.
Slavery started to become expensive - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/portchester-castle/history-and-stories/the-haitian-revolution/#:~:text=The%20Haitian%20Revolution%2C%20slavery%20and,Atlantic%20world's%20sugar%20and%20coffee.
I'm not totally discounting the profit motive that potentially ended slavery, but I think some people opposed slavery based on principle. There is another paper that I might pass along later: it argues that slavery costs society not only financially but also socially. A number of people who argue against slavery today appeal to moral principles in their opposition.
"Although slavery might benefit slaveholders, it negatively affects everyone else—ranging from slaves to the global consumer—in different ways. The negative impact for global consumers is not economic but moral and political."
I am not arguing the detrimental effects of slavery on the psyche of all involved. I know that people can morally recognise it to be wrong, but the blunt is that from that first mention of Gregory in this blog is that it changed nothing of importance as the defective social structure of civilisation perpetuates it and regardless of claims to the contrary it is still in full flow today in different guises that are still part of a social structure run by money of whatever kind. Sweat shops, and other forms of modern slavery. It is worth reading "north and south" by Elisabeth Gaskell. A friend of the Brontë sisters who was deeply interested in the morality of living.
Yes, slavery still exists and persists, but more people find it repugnant for moral reasons and regardless of its financial advantages or disadvantages. Aristotle writes that a slave is the property of his master, but should one human own another like I own my car? Moreover, is it moral to view some humans as less than whole persons such that they are inferior to non-slaves? While the church has a jaded history where slavery is concerned, Bible principles paved the way for the abolition of chattel slavery in the West.
Slavery was not abolished in the west it was just relocated to the east. Is it any different to recycling regulations in the UK of resources from reclaimed electrical products. No one can afford to do it safely here so they just pack containers with it that are sent to the far east to be processed with no safety measures on a pitiful peace work rate. It just kept out of sight. Very few query it including Christians.
Believe me, I know the system is corrupt and injustice prevails, but if slavery was not abolished in the West, try owning slaves today in the UK or USA. You won't get too far.
Slavery was happening in the East before the UK or USA (etc.) came along: it's been a world phenomenon for some time. A lot of people here in America don't query it because they know nothing about eastern slavery and there is not much that they can do about it. But anytime that humans are abused, it's bad and not in line with God's will.
No, it does not and that is why the term had an upgrade - "modern slavery". Ownership implied responsibility and the need to maintain those in your charge - however one saw fit. Today the slaves have no owners and can easily be discarded for another set of victims, which usually leaves them with nothing. This is the outcome of globalisation. I am not going to knit pick a dictionary definition that does not reflect the modern reality. So this whole idea of an amendment to a constitution that was built for trade is underwhelming and unimpressive. Things overall have got worse not better, but as I said it is kept out of sight and so I am not a Christian patting myself on the back for a resurgence of Christian morals. It has not happened and ignorance is no excuse.
Let me start backwards. Things have gotten worse, so we agree there and it is kept out of sight. No disagreement there either. Does someone have to be a Christian to find slavery contemptible or wrong? You know the answer to that question and I'll wait for a resurgence of Christian morals. I've never seen any such thing in the world. And please tell me what the average citizen can do about slavery today? Not much.
Concerning ownership, Aristotle's very definition of slavery has it baked into it. For hundreds of years, slavery meant owning another human. Has that component changed in our time? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slavery
For contemporary definitions of slavery, see https://www.state.gov/what-is-modern-slavery/
Duncan, although material conditions played a definite role, (De Croix's Class struggle in the ancient Greek world makes a very good case for a materialist explanation).
One cannot deny the intellectual and moral revolution in Christianity which made slavery a moral issue, Gregory of Nyssa didn't change anything, you're right, but the fact that Gregory made it a moral question on theological grounds is evidence of the seeds Christianity laid.
I also think the materialist explanation can be overblown also, of course one can ALWAYS retrospectively find material conditions that play an explanatory role, and then act as though it's deterministic (i.e. a vulgar Marxist approach), but the moral imagination is necessary to take into account, since how the material conditions affect historical movements will depend on the moral imagination available, of course there is a dialectic here (ideology is shaped by material conditions and material conditions are shaped by ideology).
Nevertheless, I do agree with you that modern Capitalism is in many ways just as exploitative and dehumanizing. I would also say that secularization has not helped (in the 1900s, when industrial capitalism became extremely brutal, secularization was also on the rise, and notice that the rise of contemporary neo-liberalism from the late 70s and forward also coincide with secularization in europe and the US).
I'm not making any deterministic claim here btw, I have no confidence that a nominally "christian" society will reflect christian notions of justice at all. My main point is just that moral imagination matters just as much as material conditions.
Anonymous, a thief might "own" a stolen car in a sense until he/she gets caught and the car is given back to its legal owner. I'vve also heard people in relationships say to a husband/wife, "You don't own me." But I'm reminded of Paul, who speaks of a person's body not totally belonging to him/her.
One last thing from me: Generally speaking, I don't trust human "solutions" to injustices. Even though slavery was legally abolished in the USA, Jim Crow laws followed.
46 comments:
I haven’t looked but likely the verbs are passive most of the time indicating active agency rather than man being the “author” of the bible
Tho an argument could be made that man is the literal author of the bible
I've had many discussions with people about what the doctrine of inspiration actually entails. An exegesis of 2 Tim 3:16-17 seems to me to provide results which are theologically underdetermined (as far as I can tell, theopneustos first appears here in Greek literature). But whatever it means it must include literature that includes both apocalyptic visions and prophetic revelations, as well as historical works that basically compile sources to produce a work of history or biography (in the same way any other secular author would have done), as well as things like aitiological literature (I guess falling under the genre of myth), as well as other literature which can, for the most part, be grouped together and understood with non-inspired works, and more or less understood in a secular manner.
For me the inspiration must be understood at the level of the whole of revelation, and one should be careful in bringing presuppositions into what inspiration ought to mean before one approaches the texts.
Put your focus where it should be, on the "man of god" as a technical term that is grounded in OT language and is still recognized as such in the time of Constantine.
Coming to 2 Tim 3:16-17, Hutson takes the standard view that theopneustos means “God-breathed,” in the sense that it originated with God (p. 195). I think that may well be the case, but there is a minority view worth considering, championed by Luke Johnson and Jack Poirier, that the word means “life-giving,” that is to say, Scripture is a means of divine life through divine instruction.
Anonymous, I've often wondered if the human writers could be called "authors" of what they produced. In a sense, they seem to be. As for the active/passive distinction, compare 2 Peter 1:20-21.
Roman, whatever "inspiration" means, we know that even the Jews considered some books to be canonical, but other works, pseudepigraphal. A number of writers say that only the "autographs" of the NT or original texts of the OT are inspired. I also have a thought-provoking article on 2 Peter 1:20-21 about this issue. I think Charles Ryrie offered some interesting points as well in his Basic Theology and there is the classic article by Warfield.
Duncan, I posted the info to reflect on the meaning of theopneustos, which I've admittedly done before. Bird allows for the possibility of "life-giving" as a definition but favors "God-breathed."
As for the "man of God," I grant that the usage in Timothy likely reflects OT exempla/language and in the strict sense, Paul mean "man of God" in that sense. However, Bible verses can have broader applications and regardless of how we understand that part of the verse, it's important to know whether one is reading God's Word or the words of mere humans. I choose to believe the former.
It was just interesting to note that Luke Johnson is now added to my list.
Just come across this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCBUxWXlvqQ
I watched Luke Johnson's lecture, and I must say that, unfortunately, he is a much better scholar of early Christian literature and history than he is a philosopher and theologian.
His reduction of a correspondence view to a kind of verificationist view is just incorrect, as is his assumption that somehow a correspondence view cannot make sense of apocalyptic symbolism, myth, parable, etc etc; it can, and in fact it often better does, not because it assumes these things exist, but rather that the language symbolize, or communicate, realities and truths which cannot be reduced to either verifiable sense data or syllogistic formulas. I.e. the truth of the myth is not its coherence within some language game, or its ability to be verified, but it's correspondence to realities.
Also his idea of the bible being true in that they call us to make it true if we believe just makes nonsense of the concept of truth and the truth/falsehood dychotomy. If someone is calling me to action this "calling" is neither true nor false, if they are calling my on the basis of some claim then that claim could be true or false, but its truth or falsehood cannot depend on my response to the calling since it is the basis of the call.
If the "truth" of the bible just is that call is has no more authority or normative claim on us than literally anything else.
This is not to say that his critiques of fundamentalist and purely critical approaches aren't correct, but that's not a problem with the broader theory of truth, i.e. the problem isn't that they have a corresondence theory of truth, it's that both of them basically presuppose a materialist/verificationist worldview (even the fundamentalists who will voice opposition to a materialist worldview), and ignore deeper metaphysical truths, spiritual truths, and so on, that were sidelined by modern philosophy. Basically the truth of Genesis 1-3 as opposed to say Mark 14 isn't whether or not it corresponds to some reality, if it doesn't it's false, the issue is just what do you allow in you're metaphysical options for the reality it might correspond to, and do you allow for the literary genre to help determine what metaphysical options it might be aiming at.
What he's saying about slavery is also historically ignorant. See Gregory of Nyssa's arguments against slavery, the point is he argues from scripture as normative and grounded in a correspondence to truth. Also the idea that the pro-slavery arguments were better only makes sense if one rules out the actual theological arguments (i.e. not just nit picking scripture, but seeing scripture as a whole) that abolitionists used and Gregory of Nyssa used.
This has made me more firm in my belief that New Testament scholars should be banned from doing theology.
https://academic.oup.com/book/9828/chapter-abstract/157076953?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Just because Nyssa made good observations did not change anything at the time and he was definitely an outlier.
https://scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992013000100017
One of the best books ever written on ancientr slavery: Garnsey, Peter D. A. Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/view/146051/135563
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26796168?seq=2
In the New Testament, during the time of Jesus in Palestine, slavery was a part of the social order. Jesus used the concept of slavery in His parables without any reservations (Mt 24:45-51; Lk 12:42-48; 17:7-9) and never explicitly opposed it. However, He showed the way that eventually led to the abolition of slavery. The apostles emphasized that all people are equal before God (1 Cor 7:21; 12:13; Gal 3:28; Eph 6:8; Col 3:11) and discussed in their letters the relationship between master and slave, as well as their mutual rights and duties (Col 3:22-24; 4:1; Eph 6:5-9; 1 Pt 2:18; 1 Tim 6:1; Titus 2:9). Saint Paul, in the case of the slave Onesimus who fled to him, provided the gospel solution to the issue of slavery (Philemon).
Christianity did not demand the immediate abolition of slavery, as this would have fundamentally disrupted society. However, from the beginning, it introduced a new perspective on slavery. Even this brought about revolutionary changes in society.
The greatest commandment, the law of love, applies to everyone, even to one's enemies. Jesus’ followers urged that the relationship between master and slave should be fraternal: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13), writes Saint Paul.
The tenderness with which he welcomed the slave who fled to him is touching. After baptizing him, he sent him back to his master, but "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philemon 16).
Saint Cyril of Alexandria mentions that among bishops, priests, and deacons, there were also slaves (Catech. 17, 35). During the 2nd and 3rd centuries, some popes were former slaves, such as Pius I and Callixtus I. Christian tombs never indicated whether the deceased had been a slave or a free person.
"We make no distinction between rich and poor, slave and free person," wrote the apologist Lactantius (Div. inst. V. 17).
The Church Fathers, especially Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, and Saint Augustine, harshly criticized those who mistreated their slaves.
With the public recognition of Christianity, the condition of slaves improved.
Emperor Constantine the Great prohibited branding slaves on their foreheads. He also forbade crucifixion, gladiatorial games, and the separation of slaves from their wives and children. He authorized the clergy to redeem, even by force if necessary, those female slaves whose masters had abused them.
It was the apostate Julian who reinstated slavery in the 4th century. However, Emperor Justinian, in his legal code, called it a barbaric institution contrary to natural law. Under his influence, the condition of slaves began to resemble that of household servants and agricultural serfs.
A significant step toward the gradual alleviation of slavery was the spread of monasticism, the promotion of agriculture, and the Christian adoption of industry. Although the dependent status and serfdom persisted in some places throughout the Middle Ages, and even into the 19th century, it was incomparable to pagan slavery.
The occasional resurgence of slavery was significantly influenced by the centuries-long struggle between Christianity and Islam. Muslim conquerors everywhere enslaved large numbers of defeated Christians, not just prisoners of war but also the civilian population. For example, when Carthage was captured (695), the entire population became the spoil of Muslim slave traders. After the fall of Antioch (13th century), 8,000 people were taken to Egyptian slave markets. After the capture of Constantinople (1453), a large part of the city's population suffered the same fate.
The Christian world faced significant challenges in freeing slaves or at least alleviating their plight. The primary goal of King Louis IX of France's crusade was to liberate Christian slaves.
Two monastic orders were established specifically for this purpose: the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians. Members of these orders took a vow to offer themselves as ransom if necessary to free Christian slaves. The Trinitarians, or the "Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives" (Ordo SS. Trinitatis de redemptione captivorum), were founded by John of Matha, a professor at the University of Paris, and Saint Felix of Valois, a hermit. Pope Innocent III approved the order in 1198. Besides freeing captives, they were also involved in establishing hospitals and caring for the sick. The order spread rapidly, especially in France, England, and Ireland. The Mercedarians (Ordo Sacer et Militaris B.M.V. de Misericordia de mercede redemptionis captivorum) were founded by Saint Peter Nolasco in 1223. Its members were mainly drawn from the nobility and were divided into three groups: knights, priests, and lay brothers. The order spread particularly in South America.
Many others followed the heroic example of these monks. Historians mention, for instance, a Spanish bishop who, after being enslaved in Africa, used the ransom money sent for his release on two occasions to free others, remaining a slave himself until his death.
Throughout the Middle Ages, slavery continued in the Mediterranean region among both Muslims and Christians. The archives of Marseille and Perpignan are filled with documents regulating the slave trade.
While it is by no means justifiable, it is understandable from a human perspective that Christians, upon victory, also took slaves, as did Genoa and Venice, the two great powers of medieval maritime trade.
Pope Eugene IV, in his bull "Dudum nostras" (1430), strongly condemned slavery and threatened those who kept slaves with excommunication. He prohibited the deportation of natives and was the first to proclaim the natural right to one's homeland.
Pope Paul III, in his 1537 bull, also forbade the enslavement, deprivation of freedom, and property of Indians and all peoples discovered by Christians. Similarly, Popes Urban VIII in 1639 and Benedict XIV in 1741 took action against slavery. However, these papal decrees had little effect.
After the discovery of America, the modern slave trade and hunting began among African peoples. Slaves were transported to America based on a contract ("assiento") between the Spanish king and slave traders.
Emperor Charles V, after long hesitation, allowed in 1517 the transportation of 4,000 African blacks to the American plantations. This shameful example was followed by many. After the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms (1580), the slave trade gained significant momentum. Between 1595 and 1640, approximately 5,000 people were deported to the colonies annually.
The English government was the first to sign a contract with Spain for the transportation of blacks. Oliver Cromwell not only sold blacks into slavery but, driven by religious hatred, also sold thousands of Catholic Irish as slaves to America. In 1701, Philip V granted a French trading company permission to deport 48,000 blacks as slaves over ten years. The history of colonization is among the darkest chapters of world history. It is an eternal shame of the West that the foundations of American capitalism were laid by the labor of thousands of slaves.
Saint Vincent de Paul (1576–1660) and his companions, the Lazarists, did much to alleviate the plight of slaves. Their efforts prompted Western governments to attempt to curb the most significant supporters of modern slavery, the sea pirates.
The Jesuit Saint Peter Claver (1581–1654) dedicated forty years of his life to the physical and spiritual care of the Africans brought to Cartagena, the center of the South American slave trade. He committed himself to this work with a special vow. Pope Leo XIII later declared him the patron of missions to black people.
The work of the Jesuits in Paraguay, where they saved masses of indigenous people from slavery and maintained a Christian Indian community for 150 years (1610–1767), is worthy of all recognition and admiration. This community was not dissolved due to internal discord, as happened with modern utopian experiments, but due to the inhumanity of the Portuguese and Spanish colonists and the violence of freethinking dictators opposed to the Church and the Jesuits.
Efforts to abolish slavery began in the early 19th century.
Brazil theoretically freed its slaves as early as 1752, but in reality, it still had 2 million slaves by the mid-19th century. The Congress of Vienna (1815) persuaded European powers to ban the slave trade, but only public slave hunting ceased. Although the French Revolution declared human rights, freedom, equality, and fraternity, slavery in the French colonies was not abolished until 1848.
The English controlled about 50% of the slave trade in the 18th century. However, they were the first to ban it in 1807 and even abolished the institution of slavery in 1833. This can be explained by economic considerations.
Economists showed that the productivity of slave labor was very low, and the yield barely covered the cost of labor. Slavery could only be maintained on plantations, where profits still exceeded production costs.
Mechanization, which philosophers hoped would liberate humanity, made forced slave labor increasingly unprofitable. The emerging economic liberalism favored free labor, which could be utilized or dismissed according to the fluctuations of economic cycles.
Slavery was abolished in Dutch East India in 1859, in North America in 1865—where nearly 4 million slaves lived at the outbreak of the Civil War (1861)—in Portugal in 1878. Spain was the last in this process. Slavery was abolished in Brazil only in 1888, after Pope Leo XIII issued a powerful encyclical calling on the civilized world to eradicate slavery permanently.
Despite all prohibitions and international controls, slavery still existed in parts of Africa in the 1930s.
NT and OT scholars should be unbiased
Slavery only petered out in its traditional form due to civilisation being able to tap into other forms of abundant energy from coal and then oil. Slaves became more expensive to maintain than machines. Population explosion coincides with that energy and the ability to turn it into food. Those who were about better conditions for there slaves before this were more about good business rather than altruism. Healthy slaves get work done. Slavery is an artefact if civilisation and it's grain based power. The two grew hand in hand but it did not exist in the horticultural societies that we now now existed in many places on the planet.
"Horticultural societies have agricultural systems that are relatively unproductive per unit of human labor compared to plow agriculture" - unfortunately this can demonstrated as a blatant lie.
Profits might have been a factor in slavery's legal end, but contra Marx and Voltaire, not everything humans do is motivated by profits/economic concerns. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3rj7ty/revision/2#:~:text=The%20Industrial%20Revolution%20and%20advances,were%20benefiting%20the%20British%20economy.&text=Since%20profits%20were%20the%20main,trade%20ceased%20to%20be%20profitable
A romantic view. William Wilberforce was not the first to fight slavery, as we have also touched on earlier attempts.
Duncan, the BBC article did not say Wilberforce was the 1st to fight against slavery. I think the BBC knows better than that, but it merely gave him as an example of abolitionist around that time. Not that he was the first. But the reason I cited the article is because it takes exception to the economic argument for why chattel slavery ended.
Slavery started to become expensive - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/portchester-castle/history-and-stories/the-haitian-revolution/#:~:text=The%20Haitian%20Revolution%2C%20slavery%20and,Atlantic%20world's%20sugar%20and%20coffee.
https://taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/
I'm not totally discounting the profit motive that potentially ended slavery, but I think some people opposed slavery based on principle. There is another paper that I might pass along later: it argues that slavery costs society not only financially but also socially. A number of people who argue against slavery today appeal to moral principles in their opposition.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1027&context=polisci-faculty-publications
"Although slavery might benefit slaveholders, it negatively affects everyone else—ranging from slaves to the global consumer—in different ways. The negative impact for global consumers is not economic but moral and political."
I am not arguing the detrimental effects of slavery on the psyche of all involved. I know that people can morally recognise it to be wrong, but the blunt is that from that first mention of Gregory in this blog is that it changed nothing of importance as the defective social structure of civilisation perpetuates it and regardless of claims to the contrary it is still in full flow today in different guises that are still part of a social structure run by money of whatever kind. Sweat shops, and other forms of modern slavery. It is worth reading "north and south" by Elisabeth Gaskell. A friend of the Brontë sisters who was deeply interested in the morality of living.
Yes, slavery still exists and persists, but more people find it repugnant for moral reasons and regardless of its financial advantages or disadvantages. Aristotle writes that a slave is the property of his master, but should one human own another like I own my car? Moreover, is it moral to view some humans as less than whole persons such that they are inferior to non-slaves? While the church has a jaded history where slavery is concerned, Bible principles paved the way for the abolition of chattel slavery in the West.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247.amp
Slavery was not abolished in the west it was just relocated to the east. Is it any different to recycling regulations in the UK of resources from reclaimed electrical products. No one can afford to do it safely here so they just pack containers with it that are sent to the far east to be processed with no safety measures on a pitiful peace work rate. It just kept out of sight. Very few query it including Christians.
Believe me, I know the system is corrupt and injustice prevails, but if slavery was not abolished in the West, try owning slaves today in the UK or USA. You won't get too far.
Slavery was happening in the East before the UK or USA (etc.) came along: it's been a world phenomenon for some time. A lot of people here in America don't query it because they know nothing about eastern slavery and there is not much that they can do about it. But anytime that humans are abused, it's bad and not in line with God's will.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment
From Gregory onwards, talk is cheap, as I keep demonstrating.
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/
Note that UK & USA are not on the highest list but they are not on the lowest either.
You don't have to "own" people to destroy them - https://youtu.be/HbwF8k4SDuc?si=qm6ngUNsiF-lvJnb
Hey Duncan, I never said ownership is the only way to destroy people. But we're talking about slavery, which usually involves owning people.
No, it does not and that is why the term had an upgrade - "modern slavery". Ownership implied responsibility and the need to maintain those in your charge - however one saw fit. Today the slaves have no owners and can easily be discarded for another set of victims, which usually leaves them with nothing. This is the outcome of globalisation. I am not going to knit pick a dictionary definition that does not reflect the modern reality. So this whole idea of an amendment to a constitution that was built for trade is underwhelming and unimpressive. Things overall have got worse not better, but as I said it is kept out of sight and so I am not a Christian patting myself on the back for a resurgence of Christian morals. It has not happened and ignorance is no excuse.
Let me start backwards. Things have gotten worse, so we agree there and it is kept out of sight. No disagreement there either. Does someone have to be a Christian to find slavery contemptible or wrong? You know the answer to that question and I'll wait for a resurgence of Christian morals. I've never seen any such thing in the world. And please tell me what the average citizen can do about slavery today? Not much.
Concerning ownership, Aristotle's very definition of slavery has it baked into it. For hundreds of years, slavery meant owning another human. Has that component changed in our time? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slavery
For contemporary definitions of slavery, see https://www.state.gov/what-is-modern-slavery/
Still sounds likke ownership to me.
Not all ownership is of the "legal" kind
Duncan, although material conditions played a definite role, (De Croix's Class struggle in the ancient Greek world makes a very good case for a materialist explanation).
One cannot deny the intellectual and moral revolution in Christianity which made slavery a moral issue, Gregory of Nyssa didn't change anything, you're right, but the fact that Gregory made it a moral question on theological grounds is evidence of the seeds Christianity laid.
I also think the materialist explanation can be overblown also, of course one can ALWAYS retrospectively find material conditions that play an explanatory role, and then act as though it's deterministic (i.e. a vulgar Marxist approach), but the moral imagination is necessary to take into account, since how the material conditions affect historical movements will depend on the moral imagination available, of course there is a dialectic here (ideology is shaped by material conditions and material conditions are shaped by ideology).
Nevertheless, I do agree with you that modern Capitalism is in many ways just as exploitative and dehumanizing. I would also say that secularization has not helped (in the 1900s, when industrial capitalism became extremely brutal, secularization was also on the rise, and notice that the rise of contemporary neo-liberalism from the late 70s and forward also coincide with secularization in europe and the US).
I'm not making any deterministic claim here btw, I have no confidence that a nominally "christian" society will reflect christian notions of justice at all. My main point is just that moral imagination matters just as much as material conditions.
Can’t you technically “own” something tho it’s stolen?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/dialogue-canadian-philosophical-review-revue-canadienne-de-philosophie/article/abs/an-argument-against-slavery-in-the-republic/8C1F1B379F06B600E17DFBE3DBF172A5
https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/
Anonymous, a thief might "own" a stolen car in a sense until he/she gets caught and the car is given back to its legal owner. I'vve also heard people in relationships say to a husband/wife, "You don't own me." But I'm reminded of Paul, who speaks of a person's body not totally belonging to him/her.
One last thing from me: Generally speaking, I don't trust human "solutions" to injustices. Even though slavery was legally abolished in the USA, Jim Crow laws followed.
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