No, it’s an example of the convoluted silliness required to be a certain sort of Christian. There are some Christians who’ll say that not every word in the Bible is true and that some parts of it – maybe vast swaths – have to be chucked.
How can it be necessary for an omnipotent God to tolerate a necessary evil?
Scholars who base their arguments on faith rather than evidence. Scholars who may have some legitimate academic foundation, but who still start with certain religious assumptions about the Bible.
I don’t expect them to have different values, no, but those who believe that Jesus was God, or that God spoke through Paul should. I don’t see their lack of enlightenment about slavery as anything that makes them particularly bad, it just shows that they lacked any special, divine insight into the matter.
God as a moral relativist has already been mentioned. But are you saying God endorsed slavery because it would be too tough to eliminate?
God: Now, to show you love me, cut off your foreskin.
Random believer: Okay. <snip> Yow, yow, yow. I wish they’d invent topical anesthetic already!
God: Good work. Now, seeing that all men are created equal, free your slaves.
RB: No way! That’s just too hard!
Yeah, right.
Ineffability clause. As an argument it may be cheaper than a jonesing crack whore (and about as satisfying), but at least it’s dependable.
I am pro-Union.
Great. Is slavery endorsed by the bible?
He did give his thoughts in the OP.
It’s not really hypocritical to prefer not to be a slave, but at the same time to not have an objection to the institution of slavery in general. By comparison, I’d prefer to be rich, but I don’t have any fundamental objection to the fact that some people are richer than me. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
To the contrary; an alternative interpretation is, simply, that the two are analogous situations in that they contain slavery. You don’t require a moral standpoint on the situation to draw an equivalency; indeed, the question the Jews is not one of how the moral situation is equivalent but the practical situation.
It’s not an implication. Jesus comes right out and states it in his analogy; being a slave is a bad thing because a slave has no permanent place in the house or family. That’s his summation of the price of a lack of freedom. It’s not particularly impressive.
Ignoring Jesus’ continued words, it still doesn’t work. That the truth will set you free only implies that the particular freedom gained through truth is a good thing. We might also say that having a family grants you responsibilty, or that freedom gives you choice; that doesn’t mean that all responsibility or all choices are necessarily good.
This isn’t opposition to slavery. It is acceptance of the existence of it, nothing more; he’s saying, “In Jesus’ eyes, all of you, no matter the status others place upon you, are one in this regard”. But he does not say that that status in this life is good or bad, simply that, for the purposes of being one in Jesus, Jesus doesn’t care whether you’re a slave (or a Jew, or a Gentile, etc.). Someone might equally say “We all, slaves and free people, have kidneys.” That’s not opposition.
As pointed out, the belief in equality in some standard does not forego the exitence of or even acceptance of slavery. That these ideas have been the basis for opposition to slavery isn’t very helpful, given that there is practically no philosophy that has not been used for radically different ends at some point. And, of course, you haven’t actually proved this point with your cites thus far.
Sorry, that was so outrageous I figured he must have something more to say.
It would seem in this case one is believing in Moses,( who is not a proven historical figure) not God, anyone can say God said something ,and some (even many) will believe it. There is no proof that God said or did anything it is all of human teaching,writing and thought! The Bible has no more proof that it is the word of God than the Koran!
The Bible writers are just human beings with their own ideas. Some may want slavery(as some people do today) many do not!
Many people are mental slaves, either taught through fear of going to a Hell or by guilt.
Polititicians, and many religions use this to keep people in line,or follow their ideas.
While I agree with this in general, I’d say it’s hypocritcal for a Christian to have such beliefs. Consider Matthew 7:12 – the Golden Rule.
It’s a fairly mainstream Protestant Christian concept called “progressive revelation” which is also, and usually, used to explain why Jesus didn’t come earlier than he did.
You’re preaching to the choir in my case and that of many others here, but to most Christians Moses was a real figure and one who spoke directly with and took dictation from God. Proceeding from the notion that he was divinely inspired, those passages would imply God endorsed slavery at least within parameters, for He could easily have called it abomination as He labeled many other things.
Butterfly McQueen, is that you?
Huh? Jesus certainly wanted people to be free from sin. If he drew an equivalency between sin and slavery then we can draw the conclusion that Jesus wanted people to be free from slavery as well. But regardless, some people in this thread started by flatly stating that Jesus never spoke out in opposition to slavery. Now we’ve seen that He did. If you want to backtrack to the stance that he said it but in a way that’s not phrased correctly or “not particularly impressive”, so what? I’m sure the hundreds of millions of people who have been set free because of what Jesus and the Apostles taught will take it, even if folks on an internet message board centuries or millenia later do criticize the wording.
It seems quite helpful to me, and again, probably for the great many people who became free because of it. As others have pointed out, slavery was universal in all civilizations in ancient times. It was simply a fact of life that, once a civilization became orderly enough that some people could benefit from holding slaves, they held slaves. In many places slavery persisted for thousands of years, and during all that time there was no record of anyone showing up and saying that slavery was bad because humans should be free. The institution of humans owning humans was as fully accepted as that of humans owning animals. So as far as I know, Jesus and the Apostles and other early Christians were bringing something wholly new into the world when they advanced the philosophy that all people should be free and slavery was a bad thing. Christian civilization became the first civilization that did not permit slavery. So you can argue, I suppose, that it’s a fantastic coincidence that Jesus opposed slavery and that Christian civlization was the first to get rid of slavery, but I still suspect a logical connection between the two.
Not a valid comparison. In some cases, civil disobedience has a chance of making a positive impact against an unjust law, and in other cases not. But nonetheless each individual must choose whether he or she wants to engage in it and bear the punishment or not.
Well no, Dio incorrectly stated on many occasions that Jesus never changed the OT Law, but Jesus did on many occasions, such as when he did healing and other work on the Sabbath and urged his followers to do likewise. However, we’re discussing the relevance of Matthew 5:17-18 to this thread, and the truth about what Jesus meant in those passages is well enough known that I’m not sure who exactly you’re hoping to fool.
He didn’t say he wanted people to be free from owning slaves. he did not admionish the Roman Centaurion for owning a catamite, for instance, so he must not have thought owningslaves was a sin.
Not once.
Jesus never once said that Mosaic law invalid. He sometimes took creative interpretations of it, or cited precedent for breaking in times of need, but he also said emphatically that ever letter of it was still valid. The apologist commentary you link to is not a cite, it’s just apologist commentary.
Cite that the Centurion’s beloved servant was a catamite, please?
So we’re clear, I haven’t changed my distaste for rhetorical question. Does the original Greek use a word suggesting that, or are you merely drawing a conclusion because the slave is described as beloved?