Comment by sarchertech
14 hours ago
Compare it to the rest of the world in the first century, and it’s extremely enlightened. Compared to most of the world today, even many self-professed “Christians”, the teachings on rich vs poor, pacifism, and forgiveness are downright radical.
In addition the New Testament doesn’t endorse slavery as something that people should do or something that is morally correct.
It instructs people who happen to be slaves to obey their masters in the same way it instructs non slaves to obey their authorities. The principle is the same as when Jesus refuses to fight back against the Roman soldiers arresting him. Jesus isn’t endorsing the Roman soldiers’ behavior. He’s saying that the Christian response is not supposed to be rebellion (in most cases at least).
> Compare it to the rest of the world in the first century, and it’s extremely enlightened
This reads like somebody who doesn't have a lot of knowledge/experience with other religious texts.
A core principle in Theravada Buddhism, one of the oldest schools of Buddhist philosophy, is the practice of ahimsa [1] - avoiding actions which cause undue suffering to any living being and that even includes animals. You can find this concept in Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.
Abrahamic religions don't crack the top 10 of most empathetic and compassionate world views IMHO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa
>It instructs people who happen to be slaves to obey their masters in the same way it instructs non slaves to obey their authorities.
First, no one "happens to be" a slave.
Second, this is an implicit endorsement of slavery. Especially where slaves obeying their masters is made analagous to Christians obeying God. This is an argument made by the New Testament that slavery is a reflection of the natural hierarchy of God's design - that slaves are to their masters as all men are to God.
Or read Luke:
How deeply between the lines do we have to read to get to the part where slavery is seen as the problem, rather than slaves refusing to accept their lot? When you're using slaves as an object lesson for how Christians should view their relationship to God, you're endorsing slavery.
>He’s saying that the Christian response is not supposed to be rebellion (in most cases at least).
So if Christians aren't supposed to rebel against slavery, what should they rebel against? Were the abolitionist Christians who did rebel against slavery sinning against God in doing so?
Passive acceptance of the status quo in this regard is not what many would consider "extremely enlightened."
In a modern democracy slavery is detestible because non slaves are not the property of anyone and are (ostensibly) subject only to the rule of law. In such a system to take away someone's freedom, remove them from the rule of law, and place them under the rule of mere human is abhorrent.
But we're talking about a time period where everyone was a slave to someone else. Palestine was under Roman occupation and everyone owed absolute fealty to the Roman Emperor. Everyone was a slave to the emperor.
In this period there was no hope of creating a system that recognized the equality of all people through rebellion. If Jesus had urged rebellion against authority, the Roman Empire would have crushed the rebellion (as it did a few years later with the destruction of the Temple). If Jesus had urged slaves to rebel against their masters, all that would have happened was that slaves would have been killed.
The average Roman considered slaves and the people of Palestine in general to be morally beneath them. They didn't see them as equals. They had no problems slaughtering everyone in the entire province.
I think a major purpose of the Jesus' message was focused on spreading the message that we should "Love our neighbor as ourselves" which includes loving our enemies. Only once that message spread was it possible to begin to organize our societies in a more egalitarian fashion.
One way to spread that message is to demonstrate that love to everyone, even your cruel master. In that way it's not passive acceptance, but acknowledgment that long term change is your only option.
>Were the abolitionist Christians who did rebel against slavery sinning against God in doing so?
It's hard to answer that absolutely because we live in a very different world (as did the abolitionists of the 19th century). I don't think Jesus would have condoned political violence to overturn slavery. I don't know in what case Jesus would condoned political violence. But then again 19th century slavery was very different from 1st century Palestinian slavery, and it's hard to know how far pacifism extends. Jesus did chase the money lenders from the temple after all, but he also said turn the other cheek. And then yet again that isn't really "passive acceptance", it's deliberately provoking someone to unjustly hit you a second time, which is potentially a powerful weapon.
I do believe the abolitionists who advocated for change through political means and non-violence were doing God's work. And this was something completely impossible in first century Palestine. It was only made possible by centuries of advancement directly springing from the radical egalitarian teachings of the New Testament.
>In a modern democracy slavery is detestible because non slaves are not the property of anyone and are (ostensibly) subject only to the rule of law.
Slavery is detestable under any system and in any time. It being ubiquitous doesn't make it less so. It was ubiquitous in the 19th century as well.
>But we're talking about a time period where everyone was a slave to someone else. Palestine was under Roman occupation and everyone owed absolute fealty to the Roman Emperor. Everyone was a slave to the emperor.
One doesn't bother making a distinction between "slave" and "free" as the New Testament does in a society wherein everyone is a slave to someone else. Obviously not everyone was a slave in the context of the slavery being discussed here.
>In this period there was no hope of creating a system that recognized the equality of all people through rebellion.
As you mention, Jesus was willing to commit violence against the moneychangers in the temple just to send a message. He was willing to say the rich can never enter the kingdom of God. That it would be better that a millstone was hung around the neck of those who harmed children. That it would be better to gouge out one's eyes and cut off one's hands than give in to temptation. He invited persecution, and invited his followers to seek persecution, suffering and death. Jesus was obviously willing to be confrontational when he felt it.
But the morality of slavery never merited even criticism, not even in the abstract form of parable.
>One way to spread that message is to demonstrate that love to everyone, even your cruel master. In that way it's not passive acceptance, but acknowledgment that long term change is your only option.
That slaves should be expected to endure the cruelty of their masters indefinitely and, at least according to Luke, with pathetic scraping obsequience, in hopes that at some point in the future a change will come is grotesque. And there is still no condemnation of slavery here, because this is meant to be a metaphor of how Christians are supposed to treat everyone.
>It was only made possible by centuries of advancement directly springing from the radical egalitarian teachings of the New Testament.
The Bible was the moral basis for slavery.
The concept of innate human rights separate from any religious context is contrary to Biblical teaching - the Bible is clear that humans are entirely the property of God to dispose of as he will, with no inherent value beyond that will.
The concept that ownership of one person by another is fundamentally immoral contradicts Biblical teaching. The God of the Old Testament - also the God of the New Testament - the God Jesus worshiped and whose law Jesus claimed to embody - endorsed slavery. Verbatim. Full stop.
The concept of government by any means other than the absolute divine right is contrary to Biblical teaching. The Bible makes it clear that God creates the governments of the world and that they rule with his authority.
The concept of gender equality is contrary to Biblical teaching, because according to the Bible, women are created to be subservient to men and inherently unequal to and less than men, and inherently unclean, because Eve was the source of original sin.
The advancement of morality beyond this paradigm came as a consequence of diverging from the requirement that morality conform to Biblical doctrine. It would have been impossible otherwise, because Biblical morality itself cannot evolve beyond the canon. The Bible will never say that women are equal to men, it will never say that slavery is wrong, it will never endorse government of and by and for the people.
1 reply →