Slavery in the New Testament

[EphelDuath]

I was debating with a non-Christian, and he argued that Christianity teaches that slaves should obey their masters, and thus our beliefs are immoral for being pro-slave. The best rebuttal I could come up with is that slavery in ancient Rome was much closer to serfdom than the slavery of the Confederacy or ancient Sparta, which is why the Catholic Church vehemently fought against the African slave trade but not feudalism.

Can anybody provide a better argument, or at least provide more details for the one I used?

 

[seekerz]

I cannot offer Church doctrine, but this song ran through my head on reading your post:

“He sent me to give the good new to the poor…and set the downtrodden free…and go tell everyone the news that the kingdom of God has come…”

I believe God created us to be free (first spiritually but also temporally/physically). However, I also believe that He sometimes slowly weans man from bad traditions/habits rather stopping him ‘cold turkey’. For example divorce was allowed under the law of Moses until Christ came to show us God’s perfect will.

Lots of areas of life have slowly changed over the ages as man ‘grew towards God’ if you will; for example, polygamy, society’s treatment of women, child labor, to name a few. Slavery was one of the unacceptable practices that also faded with time as Christian values reshaped society; of course, greed and man’s delusions of superiority over other men stalled that progress considerably over the course of history.

I think that God continues to call us collectively to progressively higher standards of behavior and treatment of others.

 

[AveSantaMaria]

Teaching that slaves should obey their masters is not being anti-slave. In the United States, slaves generally did obey their masters. In Haiti, they violently overthrew them. In which country are former slaves doing better? Haiti or the United States. Nelson Mandela, Mahatama Gandhi, and Reverend Martin Luther King popularized non-violent resistence. That’s obedience to legitimiate authority.

Besides, the Bible also has many of the apostles signing their names as “slave of Christ.” Paul tells the slave-master that his new slave is his brother in Christ and to treat the slave as he treats Paul (I think ) How should one treat St. Paul? How should one treat Christ? Its a very subtle rebuke of slavery, or not so subtle as the case may be. So Paul is instructing both the slave and the slave-master to moral perfection, imitation of Christ who was crucified as a criminal. He does not suffer from the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that would lead him to condemn the slave-master and have no words for the slaves.

Slavery is actually considered a blessing by St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, and His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Anyone who follows True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin calls himself or herself a slave of Jesus through Mary. Like the cross, a great curse, one day the concept of slavery itself may be redeemed.

Polish Saint Maximilian Maria studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and physics as a college student, before earning a doctorate in philosophy and a doctorate in theology in Rome, while suffering from tuberculosis. He became a priest, changed his name to Maria from Kolbe to venerate the Immaculate Heart of Mary, sheltered 2,000 Jews in his friary during the Holocaust, and when taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp offered to die in place of another man since that man had family and he did not as an abstinent fiar. During his time in the cell, he led the men in songs and prayer. Finally, after three weeks of dehydration and starvation, he was injected with carbolic acid and died. He is reported on the Jewish Virtual Library as Righteous Among the Nations. It shows that no matter how dire the situation God can continue to strengthen us. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Kolbe.html.He founded **Slaves of the Immaculata, ** www.consecration.com. More information: acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2005/09/st-maximilian-kolbe.html

Online Adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament louisville-catholic.net/WebCameras/AdorationChapel/tabid/825/Default.aspx
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin fisheaters.com/totalconsecrationmontfort.html
**Secret of the Rosary ** montfort.org.uk/Writings/Rosary.html
Reflections on True Devotion to Mary by His Holiness Pope John Paul II http://www.michaeljournal.org/montfort.htm

 

[AveSantaMaria]

Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the holy ones in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and ministers.Philippians 1:1

James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.James 1:1

Symeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of equal value to ours through the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ 2 Peter 1:1

Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not human beings, knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. Masters, act in the same way toward them, and stop bullying, **knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.**Ephesians 6:5-9

 

[seekerz]

Teaching that slaves should obey their masters is not being anti-slave. In the United States, slaves generally did obey their masters. In Haiti, they violently overthrew them. In which country are former slaves doing better? Haiti or the United States. Nelson Mandela, Mahatama Gandhi, and Reverend Martin Luther King popularized non-violent resistence. That’s obedience to legitimiate authority.

Say what??!!!

If you want to know the real reason Haitians are doing worse than US blacks, Google “Hatian restitution”. And in case the word restitution for slavery is an idea that turns you off, just consider how any nation could grow that had to pay an approx. 100-year debt for its freedom instead of sending its children to school. Add to that trade embargoes by countries who couldn’t stand to see Haitians free and you have the answer. ***It has nothing to do with obeying legitimate authority *** and everything to do with human greed and presumption. God never once gave man absolute authority over other men - such authority is His preserve and His alone.

Before expounding on slavery, go back in time and live on a Caribbean plantation - then come back and tell us how good actual physical punitive bondage is. Yes, there is merit in bearing suffering patiently - but that does not make deliberately inflicted suffering a good thing; it is always evil and man has a duty to resist evil using proportionate means. Had violent resistance been eschewed by the ANC, apartheid would still likely still contaminate our world today.

 

[seekerz]

Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the holy ones in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and ministers.Philippians 1:1

James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.James 1:1

Symeon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of equal value to ours through the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ 2 Peter 1:1

Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not human beings, knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. Masters, act in the same way toward them, and stop bullying, **knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.**Ephesians 6:5-9

If Paul had demanded emancipation for slaves it would have been equivalent to declaring women equal to men and would likely have led to social upheaval that would have hindered the spread of the Gospel. In that cultural context, his words were both prudent and suitable to the times. Just like admonitions against hair-braiding…some instructions had to be relevant to the age in which he lived. Nowhere in that quote do I see him saying human bondage was good or in tune with God’s perfect will.

 

[seekerz]

Way to kill a thread……but I believe that even my forum patron saint would have been offended by the idea that slavery is somehow a desirable state!

 

[Lujack]

Teaching that slaves should obey their masters is not being anti-slave. In the United States, slaves generally did obey their masters. In Haiti, they violently overthrew them. In which country are former slaves doing better? Haiti or the United States. Nelson Mandela, Mahatama Gandhi, and Reverend Martin Luther King popularized non-violent resistence. That’s obedience to legitimiate authority.

Haiti is doing poorly because the United States spent the first half-century that the island was in existence sabotaging her at every turn. Maybe if we had recognized them and traded with them, they’d be in better shape, but the we treated them like lepers until after the Civil War.

Besides, there was no general obedience to masters in the United States. Leaving out the Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner rebellions, you have to account for runaway slaves (that isn’t obedience to the slaveholder), and for day-to-day resistance, something on which much study has been done, and involves doing the work as slowly as possible, or causing as much trouble as possible (it is, in fact, the ironic origin of the “lazy black” stereotype, despite it being a deliberate act to resist the unlawful authority of slaveholders).

I would also argue that the authority of one man over another in the state of racial slavery is never legitimate authority.

Besides, Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi did not obey anyone. They disobeyed nonviolently, which is a crucial difference.

 

[Madaglan]

I was debating with a non-Christian, and he argued that Christianity teaches that slaves should obey their masters, and thus our beliefs are immoral for being pro-slave. The best rebuttal I could come up with is that slavery in ancient Rome was much closer to serfdom than the slavery of the Confederacy or ancient Sparta, which is why the Catholic Church vehemently fought against the African slave trade but not feudalism.

Can anybody provide a better argument, or at least provide more details for the one I used?

God freed us from slavery to sin and the Devil; why should we still be in bondage to one another?

The New Testament does not endorse slavery, and should be seen as pointing to an ideal rather than perpetuating the situation of 1st century Christians.

We are slaves of Jesus Christ, yet, unlike slavery as the world knows it, it is a voluntary servitude, one in which we are also adopted sons.

 

[Cluny]

**
I was debating with a non-Christian, and he argued that Christianity teaches that slaves should obey their masters, and thus our beliefs are immoral for being pro-slave.**

This is a good example of what happens when you take something out of context. (BTW, it was chattel slavery, as in the Southern USA, in the Roman Empire.)

It was a command for Christian slaves to obey their masters FOR THE LORD’S SAKE. This was followed by the totally revolutionary idea that Christian masters were GOD’S slaves–and they were the brothers to their Christian slaves.

Considering that slaves were not even looked upon as being humanb beings, you see how revolutionary this was.

In a related issue, while wives are supposed to merely “submit” to their husbands–the angry depressed women in sensible shoes never quote the next verse, which sommands husbands to LOVE their wives.

Which would you rather be–loved or merely submitted to?

 

[luciasclay]

My understanding of this simply that we are called to obey civil and ecclesiatical authority. We are to serve both God and Man.

In this life we will suffer many things. Indeed many great men were sent to the Roman copper mines for their faith. Besides all the other places like the lions, the rack, the sword, etc.

This life is not about the physical comforts its about serving God. The life to come is the life that matters. We will suffer even as the Christ suffered for us. And to a large degree we do not determine our own fates.

In this life, whatever your lot, live it fully to God and seek, by your life, even your suffering in life, to save as many around you as possible.

I think questions like this come from a distorted perception of the importance of man, the idea this life is what matters, and our ability to be masters of our own fate.