I am teaching a Bible study on 1 Corinthians and relying on John Chrysostom, Calvin, and Matthew Henry to help me get through tough spots.

I come across this passage that says if slaves have the opportunity to become free, then take advantage of it (assuming it's done with the consent of his master). When reading Chrysostom on this section, he seemed to say the opposite - they should remain a slave even if they could become free. I cross reference the KJV and it does seem that the teaching could go either way - "use it rather." "it" could mean either freedom or slavery.

(ESV) 1 Cor. 7:21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.)

(KJV) Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.

Chrysostom:

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And that he might point out this with surpassing clearness, he says, "But even if you can become free, use it rather": that is, rather continue a slave. Now upon what possible ground does he tell the person who might be set free to remain a slave? He means to point out that slavery is no harm but rather an advantage.

Now we are not ignorant that some say, the words, "use it rather", are spoken with regard to liberty: interpreting it, "if you can become free, become free." But the expression would be very contrary to Paul's manner if he intended this. For he would not, when consoling the slave and signifying that he was in no respect injured, have told him to get free. Since perhaps some one might say, What then, if I am not able? I am an injured and degraded person. This then is not what he says: but as I said, meaning to point out that a man gets nothing by being made free, he says, "Though you have it in your power to be made free, remain rather in slavery."

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https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220119.htm

The word "it" isn't in there - literally it says "Were you called while a slave, let it not be a care to you; but if also you are able to become free, rather take advantage."

I see St John's point, as St Paul says before that, abide in your calling.

The continuation is worth reading:

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But if this be not the meaning, if he bade them forsake their masters and strive contentiously to become free, in what sense did he exhort them, saying, Let each one remain in the calling in which he is called? And in another place, (1 Timothy 6:1-2) "As many servants as are under the yoke, let them count their own masters worthy of all honor; and those that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren who partake of the benefit." And writing to the Ephesians also and to the Colossians, he ordains and exacts the same rules. Whence it is plain that it is not this slavery which he annuls, but that which caused as it is by vice befalls free men also: and this is the worst kind of slavery, though he be a free man who is in bondage to it. For what profit had Joseph's brethren of their freedom? Were they not more servile than all slaves; both speaking lies to their father, and to the merchants using false pretences, as well as to their brother? But not such was the free man: rather every where and in all things he was true. And nothing had power to enslave him, neither chain nor bondage nor the love of his mistress nor his being in a strange land. But he abode free every where. For this is liberty in the truest sense when even in bondage it shines through.
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Such a thing is Christianity; in slavery it bestows freedom. And as that which is by nature an invulnerable body then shows itself to be invulnerable when having received a dart it suffers no harm; so also he that is strictly free then shows himself, when even under masters he is not enslaved. For this cause his bidding is, remain a slave. But if it is impossible for one who is a slave to be a Christian such as he ought to be, the Greeks will condemn true religion of great weakness: whereas if they can be taught that slavery in no way impairs godliness, they will admire our doctrine. For if death hurt us not, nor scourges, nor chains, much less slavery. Fire and iron and tyrannies innumerable and diseases and poverty and wild beasts and countless things more dreadful than these, have not been able to injure the faithful; nay, they have made them even mightier. And how shall slavery be able to hurt? It is not slavery itself, beloved, that hurts; but the real slavery is that of sin. And if you be not a slave in this sense, be bold and rejoice. No one shall have power to do you any wrong, having the temper which cannot be enslaved. But if you be a slave to sin, even though thou be ten thousand times free you have no good of your freedom.

For, tell me, what profit is it when, though not in bondage to a man, you lie down in subjection to your passions? Since men indeed often know how to spare; but those masters are never satiated with your destruction. Are you in bondage to a man? Why, your master also is slave to you, in arranging about your food, in taking care of your health and in looking after your shoes and all the other things. And thou dost not fear so much less you should offend your master, as he fears lest any of those necessaries should fail you. But he sits down, while you stand. And what of that? Since this may be said of you as well as of him. Often, at least, when you are lying down and sleeping sweetly, he is not only standing, but undergoing endless discomforts in the market-place; and he lies awake more painfully than thou.

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chimpanzee said:

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It's really hard for me to see through my 21st century American eyes into what the practical application of the faith was to people living in Biblical time or shortly thereafter. The condition of slavery was like the sunrise or the tides to them, it may help or hurt you individually, but it was always there.

A recurrent theme that I pick up on that seems relevant here is that whatever you have going on in your life on earth is insignificant to the glory of God that you should strive for. Simple, but very difficult to accept.

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Not defending it, but slavery did serve a purpose in antiquity; for some born without resources, it was a means of survival despite the forced servitude. There was no other safety net except for begging or depending on the alms and charity of others.

21st century eyes can be an impediment to seeing that even in their captive state, God had a purpose for the lives of his people. I would never want to be in a slave's situation and I can imagine their rewards in eternity for bearing up under such conditions.

I believe the Aramaic is the prime text. In Roth's translation, 1 Corinthians 7:21 reads:

If you are called, being a servant; let it not trouble you. But if you can gain your freedom, choose it rather than to serve.

Why would St Paul, a Jew from Tarsus, and a co-author named Sosthenes write a letter to a bunch of Gentile converts in the Greek city of Corinth in Aramaic?

I find it hard to reconcile being a slave with the "can't serve two masters" principle. You can't be a slave to God and a slave to a man. You can't serve God and a literal master. I can cross my eyes really hard and see how we should make the best of bad situations like slavery under the "love those who hate you" principle, but that's a hard sell even to saints. The idea that Christians should spurn freedom from enslavement to other men is something I can't even wrap my head around

Col 3:22-23
Eph 6:5-8
1 Tim 6:1-2
Titus 2:9-10
1 Peter2:18-20

Posting chapter verse numbers without the verses or your interpretation/opinion/tradition of them makes me feel like you're giving me homework. Like you want me to look up the verses, write them all down, and then solve them like a puzzle to guess what you are trying to say

I don't think they need much explanation. St Paul is very clear, and St Peter is to boot, that when a Christian is a slave they are to serve their master joyfully.

The reason is because, as he says, it is the Lord we serve.

So let's talk real world scenarios that existed during early Biblical times. These situations may not be the majority, but they were very common nonetheless and pretty ubiquitous.

Let's start with a female viewpoint. An enormous amount of female slaves, likely a majority, were sexually abused by their masters. This is unabashedly documented in ancient times. From a male viewpoint, many were sent to the mines. Once there they underwent horrible labor and abuse. The life expectancy for a slave in the mines was just a few years after arrival.

Just so we're clear, those slaves are supposed to spurn freedom so they can continue to be raped and worked literally to death even though they have been offered freedom? Is someone trying to make the argument that the Bible wants them to stay in their station and suffer for literally no reason?

I get the "don't repay evil with evil". So Christians shouldn't be murdering our tormentors in order to gain freedom. We shouldn't be orchestrating slave uprisings. But refusing freedom when offered? In order to continue to have a man as master instead of God? Paul talks about not marrying so your attention isn't divided, but I am supposed to think he's totally fine with dividing ones attention between a human master and God? The whole notion is appalling

Simple answer? It doesn't matter. Christ Jesus says - only one thing is necessary. And that is to attain the kingdom of a God. He also says do not fear the ones who can kill you and do nothing else.

I think the issue here is not to say, yeah, slavery is great! St Paul actually attacks the institution in his writings; the entire notion of slave and free is upended in the Kingdom, in Christ. But who is a slave who is free? And who is free who is a slave to Christ?

I think you're looking past the point St John is making. There is no station in this life, good or bad - no matter how good, or how bad in any extreme - which is of consequence in the kingdom. And if being in a good station is a hindrance, better to stay in a bad one. And if a bad one doesn't harm you but aids you in aspiring to things of Heaven, better a bad one. In this he echoes the Lord.

That being said. It wouldn't surprise me to see St John interpret this verse the other way, at another time, or another homily. He is speaking to his congregation, in a homily. At this time maybe that is what they needed to hear. They're holy fathers, not holy spirits.

The bottom line take away is wherever you are called, remain in that situation - because things of this life are not what are important.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Just so we're clear, those slaves are supposed to spurn freedom so they can continue to be raped and worked literally to death even though they have been offered freedom? Is someone trying to make the argument that the Bible wants them to stay in their station and suffer for literally no reason?

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On top of the reason Chrysostom gives for choosing this interpretation, I think Paul does answer your question 3 times in the passage, as if to stress it:
v17 Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.
v20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.
v24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

I'm still questioning which Paul meant since I don't see how he could have taught that, even given the opportunity, a slave should remain enslaved. But I think the surrounding text does seem to frame it that way. Wives/husbands who are married to unbelievers, remain married. Those circumcised, remain circumcised. Those uncircumcised, remain uncircumcised. Repeats 3 times to remain in the condition you find yourselves when called.

Zobel said:

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I think this is a tough topic to be open-minded on because of our societal sensibilities.

However, I believe we see a distorted view of slavery based on our imaginations of what slavery in the US was like. I don't think any of us have a clear picture of it. Our mental image suffers from media and cultural depictions that are relatively modern (like movies like Roots) and may or may not be based in fact. And, we certainly struggle from a kind of modern bias where we conflate the reality of living in a pre-industrial agrarian society in general with the struggles of slavery in particular.

The latter is important, because when we think of the worst part of slavery (aside from being property!) it's - what? Work, all day, outside. Back breaking work picking cotton or planting or plowing. But this was reality for the majority of humankind until very recently. Poor whites in the south worked this way. Poor farmers in the north, too - and indentured servants, and "free" serfs before that.

For example, I noted in a book that slaves in the US and Caribbean were permitted one or two days a month to tend to their own gardens or small fields. What they grew was theirs, but there was little time to tend to their own. But we should consider the modern attitude of an employer to their employees. How much time to work on your own business do you have? In a way, when it comes to intellectual property, our arrangement with our employer is actually somehow worse, that even our own ideas or inventions are theirs, even if we develop them on our own time!

But yes - we have the freedom to enter or leave these arrangements, in theory at least. In practice I think many people live in wage slavery. And in practice I think the bottom line in a practical sense is not so different for a free man of today than many slaves in history. Undoubtedly in some cases it is worse. Like monarchy, it depends on the monarch for better or worse. We've replaced the noblesse oblige of a patron or family with the faceless non-charity of government subsidy. We've simply moved the obligations of a slave as a member of the household onto a new structure - the employer and the employee. The bottom line is both are structures - generally stable, it seems - where society worked out how to arrange itself into a "suitable" means to survive.

I think the idea of egalitarianism across sex, age, social class, wealth, or status is taken for granted in our day. The truth is it was radical and revolutionary in history.

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The average life expectancy on a Caribbean plantation was 7-9 years. Get the hell out of here with this revisionist false equivalency.

http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_69.html

The average life expectancy at birth for a slave was 20-22 years.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3040

This is not an argument. What are we comparing that life expectancy number to? What was the life expectancy of whites in the Caribbean in this unspecified time frame? In the early colonial days of Virginia and New England it was around 25.




And that article is missing the key comparison. It says -

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What was life like for the enslaved person?
It was a life of endless labour. They worked up to 18 hours a day, sometimes longer at busy periods such as harvest. There were no weekends or rest days.

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This is basically the condition of the incredibly vast majority of people throughout the world until the industrial revolution.

Zobel said:

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This is not an argument. What are we comparing that life expectancy number to? What was the life expectancy of whites in the Caribbean in this unspecified time frame? In the early colonial days of Virginia and New England it was around 25.




And that article is missing the key comparison. It says -

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What was life like for the enslaved person?
It was a life of endless labour. They worked up to 18 hours a day, sometimes longer at busy periods such as harvest. There were no weekends or rest days.

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This is basically the condition of the incredibly vast majority of people throughout the world until the industrial revolution.

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the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites.

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Seems like a significant difference to me.

So you're really going with "slaves on a plantation were basically living the same life as the average person at the time?"

Can you source that data other than a random website?

Heres a review from a reputable source.

Review: The Demography of the Slave Population in Antebellum America
https://www.jstor.org/stable/202425

Some excerpts (it's free to read online).

"Most slaves enjoyed very good health by nineteenth century standards...in fact, the slave diet in 1860 actually exceeded the levels of nutrition recommended for the average person today."

"The quality of their medical care was poor by modern standards. This, however, was due mainly to the general backwardness of nineteenth century medicine. Most owners devoted considerable time and effort to care for sick slaves since they represented a large capital investment. As a result, they do not appear to have been excessively ill. The one study of slave morbidity...found that the average slave lost only 12 days a year due to illness."

"Although the life expectancy at birth of slaves was 12 percent below that of whites in 1850 (35.5 years for slave males vs 40.4 years for white males) it was nearly identical with that of persons in such developed countries as Holland and France at the time. Furthermore, slaves had a greater life expectancy than the free workers in industrial urban centers in England and the United States."

This is not an argument for slavery. It is an argument against confirming your priors.

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So you're really going with "slaves on a plantation were basically living the same life as the average person at the time?"

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Average person where? Average poor person around the world? Yes. Doubly so if we remove the qualifier of "at the time" and replace it with "in history."

Zobel said:

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Can you source that data other than a random website?

Heres a review from a reputable source.

Review: The Demography of the Slave Population in Antebellum America
https://www.jstor.org/stable/202425

Some excerpts (it's free to read online).

"Most slaves enjoyed very good health by nineteenth century standards...in fact, the slave diet in 1860 actually exceeded the levels of nutrition recommended for the average person today."

"The quality of their medical care was poor by modern standards. This, however, was due mainly to the general backwardness of nineteenth century medicine. Most owners devoted considerable time and effort to care for sick slaves since they represented a large capital investment. As a result, they do not appear to have been excessively ill. The one study of slave morbidity...found that the average slave lost only 12 days a year due to illness."

"Although the life expectancy at birth of slaves was 12 percent below that of whites in 1850 (35.5 years for slave males vs 40.4 years for white males) it was nearly identical with that of persons in such developed countries as Holland and France at the time. Furthermore, slaves had a greater life expectancy than the free workers in industrial urban centers in England and the United States."

This is not an argument for slavery. It is an argument against confirming your priors.

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So you're really going with "slaves on a plantation were basically living the same life as the average person at the time?"

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Average person where? Average poor person around the world? Yes. Doubly so if we remove the qualifier of "at the time" and replace it with "in history."

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I hear many slaves were actually happy with their masters and didn't want to be free, they were treated so well!

Shrug. I'm not saying slavery is good or desirable. I'm saying situations like what we see in Roots are probably not representative of reality.

I mean just from a crass perspective... slaves were incredibly expensive. Treating them like crap would be bad business.

It's better for men to be free. That doesn't mean that in history at all times all slaves were in a worse condition than any particular free man today. It's doubly difficult for our sensibilities because we use the Roots or Uncle Tom's Cabin image for any and all slavery... and it's probably not a good image for Antebellum slavery, and even less applicable to slavery in the general sense in history.

Zobel said:

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Simple answer? It doesn't matter. Christ Jesus says - only one thing is necessary. And that is to attain the kingdom of a God. He also says do not fear the ones who can kill you and do nothing else.

I think the issue here is not to say, yeah, slavery is great! St Paul actually attacks the institution in his writings; the entire notion of slave and free is upended in the Kingdom, in Christ. But who is a slave who is free? And who is free who is a slave to Christ?

I think you're looking past the point St John is making. There is no station in this life, good or bad - no matter how good, or how bad in any extreme - which is of consequence in the kingdom. And if being in a good station is a hindrance, better to stay in a bad one. And if a bad one doesn't harm you but aids you in aspiring to things of Heaven, better a bad one. In this he echoes the Lord.

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Nothing objectionable there. Just saying, if nothing in this life matters then I'm going to opt out of all the unproductive suffering involved in slavery. There's no virtue in subjecting yourself to anyone but God

Ok, but does that lead to salvation? I think that's the point St John is making. If we decide with an eye to salvation - is it better to be free or a slave? That's the decision to be made. What's the advantage of a freeman or a slave? I think, in light of the gospel and epistles, the answer must be nothing.

Zobel said:

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Shrug. I'm not saying slavery is good or desirable. I'm saying situations like what we see in Roots are probably not representative of reality.

I mean just from a crass perspective... slaves were incredibly expensive. Treating them like crap would be bad business.

It's better for men to be free. That doesn't mean that in history at all times all slaves were in a worse condition than any particular free man today. It's doubly difficult for our sensibilities because we use the Roots or Uncle Tom's Cabin image for any and all slavery... and it's probably not a good image for Antebellum slavery, and even less applicable to slavery in the general sense in history.

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The notion that not all slaves were as brutally treated as the worst reports we have is not hard to buy, and those reports are the ones you see memorialized in media.

But any notion that the inhumanity of the act wasn't keenly felt by the people at the time is a peculiar revisionist history with a goal I can't see other than to try and soften our views about the shame of the act- a poor goal. Why were their slave rebellions in American slavery and ancient Roman and many others...

Life was harder back then, but the notion that typical people would look at a slave's life as similar to their own is nonsense.

I don't ascribe to that line of reasoning at all, and I hardly even know where to start. One of the reasons that drives me batty about the evangelical movement the the binary saved/not saved thought process. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But it's not the most important thing. For example, if you knew that someone would never ever convert no matter what, you should still treat that person with love and kindness. We are called to love and goodness above all else. A hyperfocus on some binary saved/not saved distinction leads to things like forced conversion, inquisitions, conquering and oppressing non-Christians, vacation mission trips and mass altar calls by preachers who leave town the next day. I don't think Jesus or any of the Apostles had any of that in mind when preaching The Way.

Also, slavery is not a neutral state. It's not the difference between being a farmer, a painter, a banker, and a judge. Slavery is evil. There are a multitude of writings by abolitionist Christians more eloquent than me. Slavery destroys the spirit of the enslaved and corrupts the spirit of the slave master. It's not to anyone's spiritual benefit to be enslaved or to own slaves. That's like saying that torture can be good for the soul. God in His infinite power can turn evil into good, but we should never confuse evil for good nor confuse evil for neutral.

In fact, I'd say that voluntarily remaining a slave would be evil. Even if the spiritual condition of the slave is somehow improved by this situation, it is a sin against their master. No man should have total power over anyone else. That is reserved for God alone. The temptations and almost inevitable abuses of that power cause damage to the spiritual condition of the slave owner, and this would be all the worse if the owner knows the slave has voluntarily placed themselves under his power.

Can't square that view with the Law.

And again this binary view of slavery is, I think, heavily influenced by modern sensibilities. A serf is nominally free, but not by modern standards. Likewise a bonded man, or an indentured servant.

Plenty of poor whites in the south lived lives not much different than slaves. Plenty of poor workers in the 19th century did as well - or worse. Or have you never read Dickens? Or the Jungle?

We moderns tend to conflate the difficulty of life in general with the idea of slavery - I mean, look at that quote. Slavery "was a life of endless labor" with "no weekends or rest days." This sentence couldn't have been written until last century. That description was normative. The idea of a weekend is a 20th century one. The rest day was unique to Judaism in the ancient world.

Again, I think we need to be more careful about what terms we use and the images we ascribe to them (intentionally or no). Here in the US we are heavily influenced by our recent past, so "slavery" means hereditary chattel race-based slavery to us immediately- which, I think, is a particularly evil thing, but not the norm "as slavery goes" in history.

The word "slave" is everywhere in the NT. All modern translations soften it to servant, but its prevalent. Immediately we jump to the image of a black person with a back scarred by whipping, but look at the cases in the scripture - that simply doesn't cover it. I mean look at the sentiment of the centurion about his slave in Luke 7. Look at Exodus 21:5.

I think we need to consider both this, the reality of the view of slavery as normative and as moral as we view employment in antiquity when we read these words. There is a path from there to here, in terms of how we view slavery and why. That is as important as our views, because it informs us. The pagan audience of the majority of the new testament would have felt absolutely no shame in owning a slave. None, none at all.

If we can't get that, we miss a good deal of the beautifully subtle radical views that St Paul puts out there. His positions on slavery are challenging to the institution but also nuanced and insidiously against it. Not by challenging it directly, but by turning the entire thing on its head. He doesn't say - masters, free your slaves, don't you know slaves are evil? But he says - whoever is obedient to something is a slave of that thing. And, masters, you know you and your slave have a common master. And, slaves, serve your master with all diligence - because it's Christ who you are truly serving. This turns slavery inside out and upside down, just as much as his writings and those of the gospels elevate women and children to places of honor and value, and destroy racial and class barriers.

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Those circumcised, remain circumcised.

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Well, yeah...I would think so.

How were serfs free? They were required to work the land and were not allowed to leave. They were pretty much slaves of the state. In most serf countries the entire agricultural class, usually 90% of the population or more, were serfs. The only reason those places didn't have slaves was the fact that everyone was pretty much a slave already.

Indentured servitude is another discussion entirely as it was usually a voluntary contract or a criminal punishment. Almost no one was born an indentured servant

Your statements are uninformed on the subject and present half truths as facts and betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the dehumanizing nature that slavery requires and makes naive statements about preserving the value of the slave.

Even if we are so utterly naive as to only compare mere work hours, it's estimated that working hours for blacks dropped around 30 percent immediately post slavery.

But slavery isn't just work it's to be bereft of virtually every societal right, dignity and protection.

2.9 million slaves were shipped to the new world and 600k died along the way. The brutality of the passage was not an accident-and worked against the financial interests of the slavers. It was however essential in breaking the human spirit of their captives, destroying the dignity that allows men to resist and to forcefully ensure they understand their position as property in the new world.

There is a reason historians make a distinction between slavery and even seldom which itself is a level well below what most poor Americans knew at the time. And also a reason there were calls for abolition and slave revolts. Serfs still had a number of rights and protections even in some historically severe examples such as in Eastern Europe.

Such notions are incompatible with the idea that slaves were little different than the poor. Black lives being just a step sideways or down from poor whites would have hardly garnered a glance. Slavery both in ancient times or in American history requires an understanding of a dehumanized subclass who deserves what they experience. They were branded literally as such. The 19th century version was particularly nefarious because it was tied to an immutable physical characteristic rather than a reflection of internal being.

The same nonsense goes for Roman slavery which also caused revolts. Graffiti from the time read: "Take hold of your servant girl whenever you want to; it's your right."

Rape as you please. You can beat as you please, work as you please. The relationship is fundamentally different than hard long work with no other compensation than food enough to live.

This is from Apuleius' Metamorphoses:

The men there were indescribable - their entire skin was coloured black and blue with the welts left by whippings, and their scarred backs were shaded rather than covered by tunics which were patched and torn. Some of them wore no more than a tiny covering around their loins, but all were dressed in such a way that you could see through their rags. They had letters branded on their foreheads, their hair had been partially shaved off, and they had fetters on their feet. They were sallow and discoloured, and the smoky and steamy atmosphere had affected their eyelids and inflamed their eyes. Their bodies were a dirty white because of the dusty flour - like athletes who get covered with fine sand when they fight.

The source of this softened view of slavery be it modern or ancient is to try and reconcile the obvious reality that both the OT and NT have indefensible views regarding slavery.

I think you're missing the point entirely. First, I never said slaves were "little different" than the poor and I didn't say they were the same because of working hours. I said we often conflate slavery with a hard life, and our modern views of what constitutes hard work give us a distorted view of the past. The comparison with the poor was to point out that none of us would want to switch with either a slave or an urban worker in the early 19th century, and often the evils we ascribe to slavery are as applicable to lower class people everywhere. It would be better if we understood that life was hard - as I mentioned, in the early days of the colonies the life expectancy was 25! - and that slavery was on top of that, not the unique and chief cause of it.


My point wasn't about the US. Societal rights are a relatively new concept. Societal rights outside of the tribe, to all people (not just men, or not landowners) is an utterly modern concept. Globally.

This bias toward projecting what we enjoy as normal backwards in time should be avoided. It makes for a naive view of the past.



I really think you're .. I don't know what. Arguing against something I'm not putting forward. I know there's a difference between indentured servitude, selling oneself into slavery, serfdom, and chattel slavery. What I said was something very distinct: the particular evil of hereditary, chattel, race-based slavery. This is not the norm for slavery in the world, and it certainly wasn't at the time of the writing.

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dehumanized subclass who deserves what they experience

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I think this is over the top and unsupportable.

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The source of this softened view of slavery be it modern or ancient is to try and reconcile the obvious reality that both the OT and NT have indefensible views regarding slavery.

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Ridiculous. I just got through explaining how the NT condemns slavery, and promotes race, sex, age, and class egalitarianism in a radical way.

There's a straight line from history to your views on slavery, and the only way there is through the moral force of Christianity. It's silly to suggest that somehow the NT is counter to it or is condemned by abolitionist sentiment.

The entire discussion at this point is missing the entirety of St John's point: your station in life is of no significance when we look at things from the view of eternity. Even in the most extreme, which includes being the emperor and slavery.


I'm curious - have you read the Golden Ass? Or did you just google the passage?

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Can't square that view with the Law.

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What exactly about the Law makes this hard to square?

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Slavery is evil.
... voluntarily remaining a slave would be evil. Even if the spiritual condition of the slave is somehow improved by this situation, it is a sin against their master.

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Exodus 21:2-5, Deuteronomy 15:12-17.