That Hideous Sense; Part III

2: "Why does the Bible condone slavery?

This question is quite possibly more pervasive, problematic and pernicious than the previous (why doesn't God heal amputees?), but it is still an argument based upon entitlement. The basic tenets of the slavery argument, as it will be called from here on out, is that it is always immoral to own slaves, thus Biblical allowances or dealings with slavery mean that the Bible has condoned that which is immoral, making the Bible and all which relies on it (most atheists suffer from the delusion that Christianity, like Islam, is a religion of the book, we have Sola Scripture to thank for this) faulty and immoral. The only reason I say that this argument is more dangerous for the Christian is because few people are willing to actually analyze slavery. Slavery is a taboo subject, and suggesting that a further examination of slavery's morality, or its historical continuity (or lack thereof), to determine whether it is acceptable or not is automatically rejected. It is rejected, of course, because modern entitlement has preconditioned Westerners to think that freedom is the highest good, and that if you are a slave, you have lost this most precious good, and thus slavery must be evil. This is false, as we will soon see. This mindset is prevalent amongst Christians and atheists alike, who do not wish to be viewed as supporting slavery, thus they continue to assume that slavery is immoral without inspection.

This assumption, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, just in a basic sense, we have several major problems to address within it.

The first is the most practical. It is, "How do we know that slavery is objectively immoral?" The second is almost as practical, it is, "How do we know that what we think of as slavery is the same as the slavery found in the Bible?" These two questions must be addressed before any progress can be made on this particular question. They are also very difficult questions for many atheistic challengers to the faith to answer.

Morality is always a tricky subject. To say that something is immoral, in the manner of this argument (that slavery is always immoral), requires objective knowledge of both morality and slavery. When a religion claims that some act is immoral, the religion makes this claim based on divine teachings, for only divine teachings can possibly be objective sources of authority on whether an issue is moral or immoral. But when an atheist makes recourse to claim something is good, evil, or immoral, that atheist is attempting to use an objective adjective when he or she doesn't know the objective truth of the subject in question. He or she cannot even entertain the pretense that they do, because they cannot rely upon God. They have no recourse to objective authority, and thus their claims are problematic. The atheist who can objectively define morality does not exist, and no claim concerning morality from an atheist is ever truly troublesome for the Christian. Atheists simply have no ground to stand upon in this area.

Now, there are certainly plenty of philosophers now and in the past who've attempted to construct objectively moral systems without appeals to the divine, based upon various principles and axioms that they've established. In the case of slavery, the most likely recourse would be to appeal to the idea of humans having an objective right to liberty, such that slavery must be immoral, as I stated earlier. The problem, as we know, is that this alleged right is indemonstrable, leaving the objective morality claim weakened to the point of collapse.

Should an atheist attempt to skirt this by making a relativist argument, such that slavery has become evil now, or that our morality has changed to make slavery immoral, etc. then they have (in addition to making an absurdly fallacious claim) violated the terms of their own argument. For their argument is that the Bible is wrong because it supports a practice that is always immoral. If morality changes, or if slavery's morality has changed, then the Bible didn't support an immoral thing when it was written, and any attempt to force such an interpretation upon it is mere anachronism, and fails easily. No, the question is objective. The subject is objective. And the atheist has no recourse outside of appealing to a sense of human rights.

Now, one could say that while the atheist may not have an answer, the theist cannot demonstrate that slavery is moral either, now can he? Even aside from its false shift of the burden of proof, this argument is hardly any trouble. The theist can, and this particular theist will, demonstrate that being a slave is not necessarily an objectively evil thing. Indeed, this is easy to do, as Christianity has always posited that the very nature and purpose of our existence is to exist in a relationship of perfect Agape Love with God and our fellow humans. And the nature of Agape love is such that, contrary to philia love which asks us to make brothers of all Mankind, agape demands that we make masters of all Mankind, with ourselves the slaves. This is self-sacrificing Love. Surrendering the self, one's desires, ambitions, motives, wants, needs, even one's life or will, for the sake of others' good. This is agape. And slaves, interestingly enough, have an incredible opportunity in their bondage. By virtue of the fact that they are slaves, they are presented with the opportunity to live a perfect Christian life. The slave is placed into a situation wherein obedience, humility, and self-sacrifice are not only encouraged, but demanded, just as Christianity demands them from us.

Indeed, this is precisely what I believe the Apostle Paul noted when he wrote about the relationship of slaves to masters and masters to slaves in his epistles. He reminds slaves that they are servants, and that service is neither demeaning, nor is it evil. Service is the highest and the holiest calling of human kind. It is no shame, nor is it wrong to serve others, though it is best to choose to do so instead of being forced to do so. The interesting point of slavery is that slaves do still choose. There has yet to be a system of slavery in this world where the slaves were absolutely without choice. Even in the American institution of slavery, slaves rebelled, ran away, etc. They had a choice, and they exercised that choice. And like all choices, theirs had certain intendant risks and variables that they measured before choosing. But Paul's exhortations were not to run or to fight, Paul's instructions were to recall that we can also choose to serve and be content, and that choosing to serve is what agape love is all about. How can slavery be wrong if slaves can express the greatest love of all, perhaps more than anyone else?

This has brought us to the Biblical perspectives on slavery. One obvious flaw in the argumentation of atheists regarding this subject is that their understanding of slavery is tied into, and rather rightly so, the slavery of the 16th through 19th centuries in the Western world (particularly the American institution of slavery). All of us tend to agree that the slavery practiced in the American South was immoral. It is a historical fact, even, that the Abolitionist movement grew out of Christianity, and that it was the arguments and strengths of Christianity that really brought Abolitionism to the fore in the 1800s. Now the atheist, in his ignorance of the reality of Biblical teachings on the subject, will take this to be a contradiction. To the atheist, this is like scenting blood in the water, for behold! The Christians, who believe in an objective and unchanging morality, have said that the American institution of slavery was immoral! Therefore slavery has always been immoral, and Christianity and Christians used to support it! Ahh, they rush to the attack, and headlong in their rush, they forget one or two tiny little facts.

Unfortunately for them, those tiny facts prove to be quite relevant to the argument at hand. The first fact is that the American institution of slavery was a peculiar example of slavery, and not at all the same as slavery in the ancient world, nor even close to the slavery in the Bible. These things are all quite different. Our second fact is that the Christian teachings regarding slavery found in the New Testament do more than simply describe the conduct that slaves should engage in, as I noted above. Paul also notes that there is proper moral conduct that the owner of a slave should follow. Paul says that slave teachers should not abuse their slaves, and Paul reminds all Christians that they are spiritually equals, that before the sight of God, they are all human. And let us not forget Christ's own words that in Heaven, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, said just as He washed the feet of His own Apostles, the conduct of a slave.

There is a standard of proper conduct for masters as well as for slaves in Christianity. Both groups are called to act in Christian fashion, which for the masters might mean that they release their slaves (In some cases that may well prove to be the worse alternative, as mere liberation might also result in our former slaves having no shelter, clothing, food, money, education, etc. Indeed, this is a problem still relevant in our own society, 150 years after the abolition of slavery...), but at the very least it means that masters must treat their slaves well. They are not to be abused, and they are certainly not to be treated as non-human, for in the Christian perspective, they are still HUMAN, they are spiritually equal, they are Brothers and Sisters in Christ. This is never to be forgotten in Christianity.

The problem with American slavery wasn't that the slavery itself was horrible (though to our modern sensibilities, obsessed as we are with liberty it seems that way), but that the institution of it was horrible. Christianity rejected American slavery because American slavery had rejected Christianity. Slaves in the United States were dehumanized in a way never before seen in the world. Not only were they treated strictly as property, but their very psychology was warped to reflect this. They were abused in horrific fashion, not only through physical means (like the whippings or back breaking labor) but also through psychological or emotional means. Women raped or forced to have sex with white masters, families sundered, the relationship of husbands and wives ignored, etc. etc. All of these are abuses that Christianity does not permit among its members, and it was American slavery that perfected them. Thus it was American slavery that brought down upon itself the power of Christianity and others, and in the end result it was American slavery that lost.

We can also see the other side of the coin. While Christianity was working against the institution of slavery from the outside in the Abolitionist movement, it also worked to support the slaves from within. It is well known that American slaves embraced Christianity in a very real sense, identifying with the Christian message and coming to understand the Christian view of service and suffering. We must conclude, if we are to be historically unbiased, that Christianity is not only largely responsible for ending slavery, it is also largely responsible for keeping those enslaved strong and with some sense of purpose and value in their lives. Slavery did its best to turn men into mere beasts of burden (and nothing more) in the United States, and the only thing that stood in its way was Christianity, both in the minds and hearts of the slaves themselves, and also in the legal/moral battle waged over the system.

With that, we have mainly addressed the two concerns that marked our foray into the slavery argument. But so far there has only been scant reference to entitlement.

I noted earlier that it is our obsession with liberty that brings us to the conclusion that slavery is horrible, because it strips us of the liberty that we desire. This is the entitlement at the source of this complaint. While the atheist who makes this argument will fail because of the two questions already covered, the reality is that this argument isn't even truly worthy of being dealt with fully in such a manner. This argument is entirely dependent on this idea that humans are entitled to freedom, that they are entitled to liberty, and most of all that this freedom and liberty are what the libertarian philosophers say they are. But we have already seen that everything to which we previously felt entitled to is, in fact, a gift, and something we are not entitled to at all.

This slavery argument attempts to stand upon legs which it doesn't possess, there is no entitlement to freedom, there is no right to liberty, and there never has been. The only relevant right here is again the one Christianity has practiced all along. And it is that we have no right to abuse our fellow humans, but we have every right to serve them. As always, entitlement fails. And once we realize that there is no right to freedom, we are forced to admit that there is no legitimate argument against Christianity here, and there cannot be a legitimate argument against Christianity here.

Now, it is interesting to note that in the long history of the Church, there have been several Councils which spoke out against slavery, indeed, the practice of slavery virtually vanished from Europe in the Middle Ages thanks to the Church. These Councils universally decried the capture and enslavement of free Christians by pirates and slave traders from the Barbary Coast, and argued that such actions were, in fact, objectively immoral. Should anyone attempt to use these arguments to declare that slavery is always objectively immoral, I must note for them that they will have one simple problem to overcome. That the Church's actions in those cases reflect exactly what I have said all along. That no one has the right to strip another of God's gift of liberty where that gift has been given. Taking a free man and unjustly enslaving him is wrong, because it rejects a gift of God to that person. Beyond that, where is the evil?