“Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis” by William J Webb, the second half

[joannebethel]

Here's the second half of the book review I read earlier this week that got me to thinking.  Thanks for weighing on yesterday's post.

What I realized is that I do contextualize scripture when I read it and study it, seeking to understand the full meaning of God's word for the original hearers (and readers) and for me today.  But how can I tell what'

Comments

[underlankers]

My question is that support of slavery from a Biblical standpoint can far more easily be argued than an egalitarian approach to gender relations or opposition to homosexuality, and thus: if slavery can be considered to be culturally limited despite being emphatically not so either Biblically or for most of Christian history.....why is the question of gender in general taken to be either cultural or transcultural?

Just because Man says it's wrong doesn't mean God thinks so, and unfortunately the apologetics for slavery from a Christian standpoint kind of had a stronger case than its critics.....which does not mean that slavery is any less immoral or hideous from a moral standpoint.

However, I feel that from a Christian standpoint also that the case is less clear-cut than I might make it seem to be. Two of the first popes in Traditional Christianity were freedmen, and some of the most eloquent speakers for Christian ethics have come from the slave world. Some of the most courageous Christians as well also came from that world, and that has been recognized in the Church throughout its history, not to mention that the Traditional view was that Christians should not enslave Christians.

I suppose my primary bewilderment with strict literalist/Fundamentalist interpretation and with liberal/Spongite interpretation is that both take an extremely complex issue like hermeneutics and make it a political one, losing sight of Christ as the center of it first and foremost, and second, both try to make something very complicated boil down to a simplicity it actually doesn't really have.

For the record, my view of Biblical inerrancy is that the Bible testifies to Christ and thus must be interpreted in the Light of Christ. As Christ is Creator of all, so is the Bible His testament and His word, and thus any question of its inerrancy must run into the harsh reality that Christ created everything in this world. Inerrancy can thus be taken to mean that while science testifies to the evidence of our own eyes, Christ is the creator of it all, and thus we have what He chose to reveal to us. The Revelation of Nature and the Revelation of Spirit come from the same source, and thus on cultural v. transcultural, the two sides in the dispute need to keep Christ in mind even as they dispute with each other, so that the argument can be to His Glory and the edification of the Body.

[rest_in_thee]

If you wouldn't mind, make a strong and lucid argument in support of slavery using Scripture.

[napoleonofnerds]

St. Thomas thought it was socially justifiable.

St. Thomas is right, just like scripture.

Therefore, slavery is a-okay.

No, just kidding, his thought on slavery is actually culturally bounded and really nuanced.

[rest_in_thee]

Yeah, I always here people say it's biblically justified, but I think that's a stretch. It's certainly in Scripture, but it's really difficult to make an argument for Scripture that makes a positive moral case for the institution of slavery.

[underlankers]

"A slave is not greater than his master," the Epistle to Philemon, "Slaves obey your masters in everything," the various OT Laws that justify beating slaves nearly to death, the law that a male Israelite slave may leave bondage but a female may not....don't justify slavery?

By the standard given to homosexuality, slavery is far better justified. And if one is now Biblically meaningless due to military force in outlawing the trade and due to the 1861-1865 war here, then so is the other.

[napoleonofnerds]

This just tells us how to deal with the institution, not whether it should exist.

[underlankers]

And never raises the possibility that it can be erased, which is the more significant factor. A world without slavery is not raised as a possibility Biblically.

[martiancyclist]

Seeing as such a world has never existed since the first slave was enslaved, so what?

[chaeri]

there has never been a time when everyone loved their neighbor as themselves, but that didn't stop Christ from telling people that this is the ideal.

[napoleonofnerds]

It doesn't raise the possibility of Democracy, the New World, nation states, or the internet either.

[underlankers]

First: Paul tells Philemon to take Onesmius back. He does not say that slavery is wrong, or that Onesmius being a slave was immoral. Nor does he condemn the idea that some are born to be servants, others to be the served, a contemporary pagan idea. Second, in Ephesians, Paul tells the slave to obey his master in everything. Everything presumably included things like Emperor Hadrian, I believe it was, gouging out his slave's eye with a writing stylus. Third, Jesus stated that a slave will never be above his master. Now, that especially seems to indicate Messiah Himself saw little problem with the institution, and again, the implication is that some are born to servitude, others to be the beneficiaries of service.

Also, in the Old Testament, God gives codes about slavery including such lovely tidbits as being able to beat your slave to within an inch of his life and if he lives a day or two, you get off scot free (Exodus 21), a slave worth 30 pieces of silver (a reference to Christ and to his humiliation, yes, but all the same: that's the worth of a slave to God: 30 pieces of silver), and also endless references to slaves belonging to all the prominent patriarchs and in the Land of Israel itself once the Israelites had gained it.

If Leviticus and a few references in Paul are sufficient to make homosexuality irrevocable, an entire epistle, Christ sanctioning it directly, and quite a few OT verses should more than qualify to equal that the South had God on its side in 1860 and Wilberforce was wrong.

Now, slavery is entirely immoral and wrong, but the Bible does not, and never does do this, say that it is.

[napoleonofnerds]

Onesimus is the best argument, I think.

Your biggest problem is that you conflate servitude with bonded labor. Just because someone is born to serve doesn't mean they can't be accorded rights - every butler and laborer and white collar grunt in the corporate economic structure prove that. You also have the historical problem of conflating slavery in the ancient world with other forms, notably the American institution - there are subtleties there which create problems for you.

St. Thomas says slavery is okay as a means of demilitarization - when a nation attacks you and there's a good chance they will again, you take some of them into bondage to prevent them attacking you. This is a different view of slavery than the race-based and rather brutal form practiced in the Americas. Most ancient societies also accorded slaves a fair number of social and legal protections and I think you also need to explain why all of these disparate understandings are immoral in order to carry the argument.

Thirdly, I think you need to explain why Homosexuality is or is not the same sort of question as slavery.

It's downright silly to say a slave is worth 30 pieces of silver to God, and I think you know that. Stick in general to the New Testament arguments, because we already know that the law is perfected and its specific dictates superseded.

[underlankers]

1) The major problem with the difference argument is that the latifundia was precious little different from the plantation, and can be said to be a precursor as an idea. In the time of early Christianity, the Latifundia was the primary seat of slavery, and seldom were Latifundia slaves anything approximating non-chattel. While slavery was not racial in Roman culture, the fact that approximately the same percentage of Romans were enslaved as were Southerners and the plantation and the latifundia met the same basic requirement, which in all likelihood meant that to the slave, the lot of the Latifundia colonus was precious little different to that of the American black slave.

2) Perhaps because slavery itself was not entirely without criticism in all those cultures? Traditionally, freeing slaves was an act of charity in Christianity, and the concept of the urban liberti rising Horatio Alger style was not unknown to the pagans either, to judge by their poets. All the same, those protections likely were as significant as the 14th and 15th Amendments in the period from 1865-1964, which is to say, meaningless beyond law. The separate disparate understandings are all immoral in that they presume that it is natural that some should be slaves, and others free. Freedom is not to be rationed, it is for all.

3) The usual justification for Sodomy Laws and other niceties is that the Mosaic Law forbids it. It is only mentioned in a few contexts. Then, when that is pointed out, it shifts to a few lines in the Epistles of Paul, James, Jude, and Peter. Fine, granted, they condemned buggering boys. So do we today. Modern homosexuality did not exist then, so to say Paul had the modern gay community in line is not entirely applicable. To state that the American form of slavery would be unrecognizable is slightly different, as Latifundiae were again scarcely separate from the plantation in overall intent. If homosexuality can be condemned on a relatively tiny record compared to slavery, slavery should be legalized on a relatively stronger by comparison argument. Both arguments are ridiculous, and that's the point that I'm getting at.

4) I realize that the argument is silly, but then I consider the cherry-picking often engaged in by the Religious Right on the gays and not on much more Biblically backed ideas to be silly also.