From our perspective, yes. But even we’d accept that writing which doesn’t take an anti-slaver stance isn’t supporting slavery in quite the same way as writing which takes an explicit pro-slavery stance.
We also need to read what the NT has to say about slavery in the light of the wider NT agenda. The NT texts were produced at a time when most Christians expected the imminent return of the Lord, and the complete sweeping away of the existing social order. In this context, social reform is not a priority; what is the point of tinkering with a social system that is about to be swept away? So the NT writers don’t tackle slavery, and they don’t tackle questions like the Roman occupation of Palestine, and they have nothing to say about the transition from Republic to Empire which is going on throughout the period that the NT texts are written. In so far as they deal with social issues at all, they talk about how Christians should relate to one another within the existing social order, but it’s a mistake to see that as an endorsement of the existing social order. Rather, they think the existing social order is destined for irrelevance.
The average antebellum plantation owner actually twisted the bible to amazing degrees to justify their slavery. They claimed that God considered any slights a slave might have to their masters as a slight to God himself and that it was up to the Master whether or not the slaves went to Heaven. They also claimed that all wrongs inflicted to the slaves by their masters would be paid back in full in Heaven which makes you wonder of the people saying that knew religion was bunk, otherwise they’re admitting the slaves would be above them in heaven.
Christianity (orthodox and otherwise) absolutely questioned the economic basis of society, “including the relationship of rich and poor”. One only needs to look at the writings of Ambrose or John Chrysostom, for a start, to see that. I think smiling bandit goes too far in implying that that necessarily means they also condemned slavery: that might be correct but I’d want to see some more specific evidence. It’s possible in principle to believe in a highly egalitarian economy with a slave population (Thomas More’s Utopia had slavery, after all, though only for convicted criminals). There are certainly some Christian church fathers who condemned slavery in principle, e.g. Gregory of Nyssa. Some of the Gnostics went further and encouraged slaves to desert their masters, and the Orthodox Christians condemned that at one of their regional synods.
Not to mention, the curse of Canaan, son of Ham, who took advantage of his father, Noah’s, drunkenness. That was used to justify black African slavery. There is still an African language group called “Hamitic”, I believe.
Genesis 9
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
The passage I was referring to, which is given in Latin upthread, is translated by Riley as follows:
“Don’t let slaves be occupying the seats, that there may be room for those who are free; or else let them pay down the money for their places; if that they cannot do, let them be off home, and escape a double evil, lest they be variegated both here with scourges, and with thongs at home, if they’ve not got things in due order when their masters come home.”
The following section directed at “nurses” is also somewhat relevant, since the nurses were probably largely slaves.
The “Don’t let slaves be occupying” part is a little awkward to render in English, as the Latin uses a “jussive” subjunctive here. It is basically equivalent to an imperative in English: sort of like in some contexts “Let the slaves speak” is more an order to them to speak than an order to someone to allow them to speak, if that makes sense (E.g., if it were a king saying that in his court.)
As I mentioned above, the comment is directed at real slaves (and nurses), who were sitting in the audience.
This is the main thing - Roman slavery was more like an indentured servant working for food and board. (Plus, of course, whatever offspring produced). Educated Greeks for example were often the slaves that ran the master’s household, taught his children, and so on. Anyone could become a slave, the fortunes of war. Slaves were often freed by their master and fit right into society. Slavery was a way to take care of the homeless class and the destitute - and prisoners of war displaced - in the days before the welfare state and prison terms as punishment. Slaves were allowed to have their own possessions. For some it was no different than being a servant. (I recall reading something about a slave to some influential man who was a rich man in his own right, by the way he managed his money and business. And, in some cases, slaves had the right to buy their freedom).
that’s not to say some slavery was not brutish, nasty and short. Slaves often did the work that freedmen did not want to do, with the appropriate feedback cycle. Galley slaves and gladiators could find that life was short.
I was sort of serious about not wanting to take this thread too far off topic. Anyway, it would probably end up with me quibbling about what I really meant in my probably-too-snarky post that you cited rather than contributing anything of value to the discussion. My point was that you can try to understand the political and economic thrust of “Christianity” by looking at selected writings of theologians, or by looking at what happened when “Christians” came to power. Sort of like you could try to understand Bolshevism by looking at the writings of Lenin or the history of the USSR. In both cases, with rather contradictory results. Or like how you can judge someone by what they say or by what they do.
We wouldn’t get a very clear picture of the world by judging the Romans by what they did, and the Christians by what they said.
Even Jesus (allegedly) said “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. St. Paul’s version of Christianity was not advocating social upheaval, rather he (it seems) wanted worshipful contemplation and all that meditative folderol and charity and reciprocal good works. If that meant that a man could not in all honesty keep owning others, IIRC Paul never came out and claimed a contradiction himself. (But I’m not an expert on the early Christian message). But they did not advocate that slaves walk away from their duty and their masters, either. it goes without saying, that would be a much quicker road to mass lion feedings.
The same would go for anyone who advocated any practical end to slavery in the Roman empire. And as I said before, slavery was a solution to the problem of what to do with the poor and destitute with no welfare state and before church charity houses etc. If you had no food, you became the property of someone who would feed you.
This isn’t a very good argument, because 1) Christians aren’t supposed to worry about that kind of thing, 2) St. John’s Revelation, at least, does gloat over the foretold destruction of the Roman Empire, so Christians weren’t above dreaming of social upheaval, even if they couched it in mythological and archetypical terms, 3) Christians disapproved of lots of other Roman social mores, and 4) at least one early Christian or quasi-Christian heresy, the Manichaeans, did denounce slavery and call for slaves to desert their masters.
I think there are other decent reasons why Jesus and Paul didn’t explicitly denounce slavery (specifically, while slavery is an immoral example of hierarchical relationship, not all hierarchy is immoral, and they wanted to use the structures of their time, in this case slavery, as context in which to teach a broader message about relations between superiors and inferiors). And as you point out, their message wasn’t primarily or even secondarily about describing the ideal form of society. When it comes to explicit teaching about social morality though- i.e. when they were called upon to say explicitly ‘is slavery good or bad’- early orthodox Christianity certainly could have and should have done more (after all, some of the heresies certainly did).