If I’m reading what you said right, you would say that buying a slave to let them literally go free even if the law still sees them as being your legal property is wrong? In other words if its not possible to legally emancipate a slave, your not allowed to buy them and let them go free? That is an interesting position to take but you could be right. The only way it would wrong to ever do so though, would be if legally owning a slave was intrinsically evil. If it is not, then it would fall to the principle of double effect and whether you are doing more harm than good buy buying a slave that you cannot set free legally. I would think the Church would have spoken on this point so that people who lived in places where slavery was still legal would know what to do though.
Dear Nate13,
Cordial greetings and a very good day.
What is very interesting, dear friend, is that when St. Paul appeals to Philemon as a Christian owner of a slave he neversuggests that slavery
per se is immoral. Yet surely this would have been most natural, since he was dealing with a situation within a local church setting and not preaching publicly in such a manner so as to inflame the Roman authorities.
In view of all the callous brutality which has been associated wth slavery all through the years, it becomes jolly difficult to see the institution apart from the savagery with which it has been surrounded. What then, we must ask, is the essential idea of slavery, when stripped of its accompanying abuses? It is surely the right of one man to share in the outcome of the labour of another, when the other is forced to render it. Now there is nothing intrinsically immoral in sharing in the fruit of another man’s toil. After all, in the relation between a master and free servant, when once the latter has agreed the terms of service, the contract means a sharing of one in the fruit of the other’s labour; and that labour must be rendered because of the terms already agreed. Thus in the O.T., there is envisaged the possibility of the slave, who voluntarily continues as such, relinquishing his freedom and preferring to remain as the slave of a man he both trusts and loves (Ex. 21: 5; Dt. 15: 16). Further, if a man becomes indebted to another, where is the essential immorality of his repaying the debt by means of labour rendered? Yet this labour by its nature is something forced, which is precisely the essence of slavery.
There may not have been a condemnation of slavery in the N.T., but it had something to say on the subject which entailed a radical transformation of the attitude to be adopted to it. St. Paul, for example, insists, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal”. So the labour of the slave is to receive an adequate and fair reward. However, if this is applied, then it elevates his status to that of the free man who is under contract. What it means, my dear friend, is that payment is not a mere pittance to keep the slave sufficiently healthy for further work. It means rather that he is to recompensed in accordance with the service rendered, and this clearly involves food, clothing and the ability to maintain family life. This kind of ‘slavery’ is far removed from the wretched servitude of the unfortunate serfs in your average pagan Roman household.
Then St. Paul teaches slaves that they are to consider themselves as persons. When he says “Servants,obey in all things your masters”, he actually taking a wholly new approach to slaves, for to exhort someone to a course of action is surely to treat them as responsible moral beings. However, this is precisely what had not been done hitherto; and the result must have been seen not only in the mind of the slave’s owner but of the slave himself. Treat a man with brutal disregard and he will loose all self-respect and will become a servile cringing creature. He will cease to look upon himself as a man. In short he will become brutalized. Thus what St. Paul does is to teach the Christian slave a new self-respect. He is not like the beast of burden compelled by force to do a job. No, he is achild of God, conscious of his responsibility before God, and seeing even his condition as one where he can indeed glorify his Saviour.
Now I do realize that masters were not always Christian, nor were they always kind. Nevertheless, the Gospel demanded that even harsh and unjust punishment was to be accepted without outburst of curse or threat. Slaves were to suffer patiently, following in Christ’s footsteps, who although guiltless, meekly submitted to cruel injustice in atonement for the sins of all and as an example to us (I Pet. 2: 18-25). In so doing they would actually be true
apostles of Christ by manifesting the attractiveness of their Saviour’s teaching (Titus 2: 9-10). Noble service of God, dear friend, imitation of Christ, the possible conversion of their cruel masters - the implanting of such lofty ideals in the hearts of slaves, was surely a greater triumph for Christianity than any immediate campaingn for the total abolition of slavery could have been. Indeed, the sudden destruction of an institution of so many centuries standing would have scarcely been less unjust and immoral than its maintenance without any qualification or mitigation.
Please forgive my lengthy and discursive post, dear friend, but I think it is of the utmost importance that we do not fall into the simplistic assertion, as some do,that slavery is always intrinsically immoral. It does not necessarily have to be and indeed can be an opportunity to bring much glory to God.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
