Slavery

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Wootah
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Slavery

Post #1

Post by Wootah »

Does anyone else think slavery is a universal?

If it is a universal then addressing it would be a valid topic in the Bible right?

Hierarchy is universal as well, there will always be a top and bottom. The best we can hope for is a bottom with tvs and fridges and microwaves and cell phones right?
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Slavery

Post #2

Post by Tcg »

Wootah wrote: Does anyone else think slavery is a universal?
I've never owned a slave and have never been a slave, so no.

If it is a universal then addressing it would be a valid topic in the Bible right?
Why would it need to be a universal for it to be a "valid topic" in the Bible? The Bible claims many things we know are impossible. You can't get much more non-universal than never happened.

Hierarchy is universal as well, there will always be a top and bottom. The best we can hope for is a bottom with tvs and fridges and microwaves and cell phones right?
You've yet to establish that slavery is universal, so using the term "as well" is not justified. The correct wording for your post would be, "I am assuming slavery is universal, even though I've provided zero support for this claim, and I'm now going to assume the hierarchy is a universal, even though I've provided zero support for that claim."

We can hope for a great many things, so no, this is not the best we can hope for.

I've no idea what "tvs and fridges and microwaves and cell phones" has to do with the point of your post. In fact, I have no idea what the point of your post is.

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Re: Slavery

Post #3

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to post 2 by Tcg]

Slave to gravity and other fundamental forces of nature, slave to the clock, slave to biology, slave to work, slave to passions, yep universal.

Hierarchy in a capitalistic society at least provides more for those on the bottom.
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Slavery

Post #4

Post by marco »

Wootah wrote:
Does anyone else think slavery is a universal?

If it is a universal then addressing it would be a valid topic in the Bible right?
I neither know what a "universal" is in this curious sense nor understand why it would "universality" would be a prerequisite for valid inclusion in teh Bible.


Depriving humans of their freedom and perhaps being allowed to maltreat them, short of killing them, would surely be something that earns the condemnation of a moralist.
Perhaps it takes a man like William Wilberforce to see beyond his time and condemn slavery. Apparently Jesus was not such a man; he belonged to his time as we can see from:


"No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you." John 15:15 �


No condemnation, no awareness of slavery's immorality - just acceptance. Presumably his Father was at ease with slavery.

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Re: Slavery

Post #5

Post by Aetixintro »

[Replying to post 1 by Wootah]

As opposed to the Master-Slave principle, other people actually say Client-Servant principle or Customer-Servant principle or Master-Servant principle.

To be a human being is to serve people! And also to be served!

Golden Rule? Have a nice day! 8-)
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Re: Slavery

Post #6

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to marco]

Let's not appeal to the no true Scotsman fallacy, please.

Second, the Father sent the Son to free us from our slavery to sin. That is anti-slavery.

But slavery is built into the nature of the world. If you can't see it just look at where everything comes from. Your clothes, your mobile phone, if you dig a little you will see that to own any of it is to be complicit in slavery.

Let me add to the list of slavery: Slave to gravity and other fundamental forces of nature, slave to the clock, slave to biology, slave to work, slave to passions, ignorance is slavery, yep slavery is universal.

It's like this. Many illnesses are preventable but you can't prevent them until they are diagnosed. If we keep seeing the world as it is not, that slavery is not a universal, then how are we ever going to minimise it.

Death is universal, the Bible is anti-death, and we work to minimise death even though we still die.

Do you see this now?
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Slavery

Post #7

Post by marco »

Wootah wrote:

Second, the Father sent the Son to free us from our slavery to sin. That is anti-slavery.

This is a poor argument. This employs slavery in a figurative sense and ignores the real meaning of being a slave. It speaks not to the evils of keeping someone in slavery but to the merits of serve and supply, something entirely different.
Wootah wrote:

But slavery is built into the nature of the world. If you can't see it just look at where everything comes from. Your clothes, your mobile phone, if you dig a little you will see that to own any of it is to be complicit in slavery.

It isn't "built in". We can introduce a metaphor and illustrate how good our metaphor is. That's got nothing to do with slavery.
Wootah wrote:
Death is universal, the Bible is anti-death, and we work to minimise death even though we still die.

This extension of the metaphor is just sophistry. The Bible is no more anti-death than it is anti-leprosy. Death is used freely as a handy punishment by God in the Bible; we still die today - it was never put aside, exceept in metaphor, of course. This use or abuse of metaphor would not have been a good argument against the slave trade.

I suppose one can grant grudging praise to an attempt to get round a tough criticism: why was slavery not condemned?

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Re: Slavery

Post #8

Post by marco »

Aetixintro wrote: [Replying to post 1 by Wootah]

As opposed to the Master-Slave principle, other people actually say Client-Servant principle or Customer-Servant principle or Master-Servant principle.

To be a human being is to serve people! And also to be served!

Golden Rule? Have a nice day! 8-)

To serve is something entirely different from being in slavery. We can choose to serve; slaves have no choice.


To introduce the golden rule here is at best rather cynical in view of the atrocities visited upon slaves.

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Re: Slavery

Post #9

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to post 7 by marco]
Why was slavery not condemned?
See this thread so far: viewtopic.php?t=34608

Also add that, just because you don't see slavery condemned doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't condemn slavery.

Also add that, what you are asking for is that God explicit deny an infinite number of things in a book that needs to be useful to us. Am I to believe you are pro water torture until I see you deny it?

But the Christian answer is that: God wants Christians to be slaves (in the literal sense) to the world so that as many people as possible can be saved. Good works require slavery.

Jesus was obedient unto death on a cross, he was a slave so that we could be saved.

To be an abolitionist and not just virtue signal about it is to to be a slave to the cause of anti-slavery.
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Slavery

Post #10

Post by marco »

Wootah wrote:

See this thread so far: viewtopic.php?t=34608


There is an invitation to regard "slavery" as a universal practice and a demonstration of the aptness of this view. The flaw in this invitation is that whatever merits there may be in offering and receiving service, they don't apply to the cruel practice of slavery, where people have no choice but to carry out the orders of someone who effectively owns them.
Wootah wrote:
Also add that, what you are asking for is that God explicit deny an infinite number of things in a book that needs to be useful to us. Am I to believe you are pro water torture until I see you deny it?
(i) I am not God - what applies to him, does not apply to humans necessarily.
(ii) There will be many obscure wicked practices that are not specifically condemned; I am not arguing that Christ's silence is his approval of these. That would be silly. I am saying that Jesus talked freely of slavery -it was no obscure issue - and in his oratory did not oppose it. He appears to comply with it and accept it and it was left to other philanthropists to point out the evils in its practice.
Wootah wrote:
But the Christian answer is that: God wants Christians to be slaves (in the literal sense) to the world so that as many people as possible can be saved. Good works require slavery.

Well that's an answer - whether it can be elevated to the universally accepted Christian answer is something else. I'm always suspicious when people say what God wants, except in the simple case of "God wants us to be good." Though you use the term "in the literal sense" you are in fact speaking figuratively.
Wootah wrote:
Jesus was obedient unto death on a cross, he was a slave so that we could be saved.
Servitude and service come from the same Latin verb, servire: to serve, which perversely takes a dative case since service is given TO something or someone. Obedience and compliance are of course linked to service, but in a discussion on slavery, are misleading. Your observation about Christ's service to mankind is interesting but does nothing for a discussion on slavery. Perhaps it even distorts the argument.
Wootah wrote:
To be an abolitionist and not just virtue signal about it is to to be a slave to the cause of anti-slavery.

And those who are left handed are slaves to their left hand as opposed to the slaves of their right digit. It is wrong to argue for or against slavery by observing that service is something we see across the globe. This ignores the pejorative meaning of slavery and belittles a huge injustice. By finding regular innocence in a figurative meaning we play down the wickedness in a literal one. And it is the literal that is the point of the argument.

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