Few things in the Bible are more countercultural than what we read there about slavery. It runs contrary to ancient Greco-Roman slave culture. It runs contrary to nineteenth-century American slave culture. It runs contrary to twenty-first-century libertarian culture. There’s something here to afflict everyone.
First, the data:
- Jesus nowhere advocated the abolition of slavery. Search for it in vain, for there is nothing in the gospels (or anywhere else in the New Testament) that delivers to us a clear abolitionist message. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Man, if I lived somewhere that practiced slavery, one of the first things I’d do is work to eliminate slavery,” then it has to make you uncomfortable as a Christian to see that neither Jesus nor any of the apostles ever did so.
- Jesus did not ignore slavery. If He had, maybe you could reasonably say, “Well, Jesus had more pressing issues—what with the salvation of the world from sin and all—and the apostles had no political power to do anything about slavery. Therefore, they never got around to saying much about it.” And yet, they had enough time to write about the problems of eating meat sacrificed to idols and the wrong of filing civil lawsuits and the sinfulness of homosexual sex. What’s more, when Paul DID have the power to influence a slaveholder (see the Book of Philemon), rather than influencing him to abandon his slaveholding ways, he urged him to take back into slavery a runaway slave.
- In fact, beyond refusing to push for the abolition of slavery, Jesus embraced slavery as one of the most prominent models used to describe Christianity. Christianity IS slavery, or else neither Jesus nor the apostles knew what Christianity was. This phenomenon is pretty ubiquitous in the New Testament. Consider a brief survey of the data:
- The most prominent word family in the New Testament relating to slavery (doulos) appears more than 160 times in its various forms across the New Testament.
- Salvation is described as a process of being enslaved (Romans 6:18).
- Jesus’ favorite metaphor to describe the relationship between God and His followers—used in parable after parable—was the image of the master and his slaves.
- Paul bragged that he had enslaved himself to God, that he had enslaved himself to other people, and that he had enslaved himself to himself (1 Corinthians 9:19, 27; Philemon 1:1).
- We are commended to make slaves of ourselves just as Jesus made a slave of Himself (Philippians 2:7).
- The pathway to greatness in Christianity is found through exploring the depths of lowly slavery to all (Matthew 20:27)
- An entire office of the church is named “the slaves” (“deacons,” 1 Timothy 3:8)
That’s a lot of data. I can’t say it any better than John MacArthur did:
When you think about terms used to describe Christians in the New Testament, we’re called children of God, right? We’re called heirs and joint-heirs. We’re called members of the body of Christ. We’re even designated as branches, sheep. And you don’t want to mix all those metaphors because each of those gives you a facet of understanding and aspect of our relationship to Christ. But the dominating word inside of which our full understanding of salvation is best seen as this word “slave.”
Now there’s a corresponding word that I want to mention as well, and that is the word “master,” right? If I were to ask you…let me ask you a fundamental question: “What is the foundational reality that defines what it means to be a Christian? What is the fundamental reality that distinguishes the believer’s relationship to Christ? What is our great confession in three words?” Jesus is Lord.
In fact, if you want to be saved, Romans 10:9 and 10 says, “You confess Jesus as Lord.” Kurios is the corresponding word to doulos. Kurios is “lord and master.” Doulos is “slave.” You can no more eliminate doulos from the believer’s relationship to the Lord than you could eliminate kurios. [emphasis mine]
You’re a lot more libertarian than Jesus ever was. That’s why discussing what the Bible has to say about slavery makes us all uncomfortable. And that’s what it needs to do, not in order to make us into Simon Legree nor to take us back to that awful place where we condoned nineteenth-century chattel slavery of blacks based upon race, but to teach us some other lessons.
First, slavery in the Bible teaches us that the way of salvation is counter-intuitive. I think sometimes we who have the job of explaining the teachings of Christ may do our jobs better than we ought. If you have made the gospel make perfect sense, then you have made it something other than what Jesus purported that it was. To lose your life for Christ’s sake is to find it. The path to exaltation is to humble yourself. The way to defeat your attacker is to forgive him. The way to inherit the whole world is to be meek. Christians embrace slavery because to be enslaved to righteousness is to be free and to become enslaved to the most people is to gain rank above them in the Kingdom.
The roles of slave and child are compared and contrasted in the New Testament (John 15:15; Galatians 4:7). Both slaves and children generally own nothing, can be compelled to obey, are not free to determine their own living arrangements, daily activities, relationships, or manners of behavior. When Jesus stated that one must become as a little child in order to enter the Kingdom, I believe that He was referring to that suite of attributes that children and slaves share in common. The way of salvation is the way of subservience.
Modern libertarian thought (I’m referring not to the political party but to the philosophy, which greatly influences all of American politics and culture) is not counter-intuitive at all. You have rights. Fight for them. Never allow yourself to be enslaved. Maintain your independence at all costs. The only path to freedom is to seize it and defend it. There’s no nuance there. The contrast between these two ways of thinking could not be more profound.
Second, God teaches us in the Bible that slavery is universal and that we cannot eradicate it. Rather we can only choose better forms of slavery over worse ones. We are slaves to sin or we are slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:16-18). There is such a thing as freedom, to be sure, but it is found in slavery, not outside of it. Emancipation, therefore, is a phantasm, a useful fiction.
Jesus did not advocate for emancipation for the same reason that He didn’t encourage riding pink unicorns down the streets of Atlantis—not because the experience would be so horrible, but because Jesus, rather than being Mr. Roarke, was someone who spoke honestly with us about our nature and our prospects.
Emancipation is not merely a simple fiction; it is an elaborate, carefully constructed fiction. It has a supporting legal fantasy: The notion of “property in the person.” The idea of “property in the person” is that when you sell your time, your effort, your skills, and even your health to your employer, you are not selling away yourself; you are merely selling away these items of “property” that you “own” and that just happen to be located within your body. This philosophical conceit masks the truth that everyone who has a job is selling away his or her freedom. Just try sending your skills off to your employer while you stay home. That’s one of the reasons why a definition of slavery is so difficult to create.
“Let’s go fishing next Tuesday.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘I can’t’? You’re a grown-up. You’re free. You can do whatever you want.”
“I have to work.”
Freedom gone.
Although this truth appears in greater eloquence and clarity in the Bible than anywhere else, you don’t have to turn to the Bible to find the truth of it. You can find it in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”: that adolescent dread of the inevitable servitude that is American adulthood. You can find it in Liberal, Feminist, Anarchist critiques of the wage-labor system that dominates our economy. The person determined to avoid enslavement is doomed to failure.
Look at the phenomenon of consumer credit. God explains it to us in the Bible: “The borrower is slave to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7) In theory you can leave your job, but not if you’re walking off the graduation stage with a diploma in one hand and a promissory note for $100,000 of college debt in the other hand.
Look at the phenomenon of addiction. How many people are enslaved to alcohol? How many to drugs? How many to pornography? How many to cigarettes? How many to gambling? How many to gluttony? How many to their uncontrollable anger?
Look at domestic violence. How many husbands, wives, and children are in every way slaves to a bully in their homes?
Look at the entrepreneur. Ah, the great American dream! “I’ll be my own boss! I’ll answer to no one!” Only to discover that now your banker, your investors, and every one of your customers is your boss. You’ve traded one boss for one hundred.
Look at divorce. “I’ll get a divorce and get free of that rotten spouse of mine.” But you’ve got children together. You can’t be rid of one another. You live the rest of your life stuck with that relationship, only now it is more toxic than ever, and it hangs over every graduation, wedding, funeral, and holiday from now until death.
The evidence piles up all around us: The American libertarian experiment is an utter failure in delivering upon the promise of independence and emancipation. We trade one master for another. We can trade up or we can trade down. The black American who traded chattel slavery on a cotton plantation for slavery to debt and materialism has, in my opinion, traded way up. The black American who traded for a crack cocaine addiction instead? Not so much. It is always a trade up to become the slave of Jesus Christ. But nobody gets off scot-free. Nobody ever gets fully emancipated. That’s what the Bible says. That’s how the data stack up.
Third, the idea of the “Christian slave” is embraced with much greater enthusiasm in the Bible than is the idea of the “Christian slaveholder.” New Testament commands to slaves always make them more slave-like. New Testament commands to masters always make them less master-like. This is largely because of the Christian conception of personal rights. In my previous post, I almost defined a slave as a person without rights. The Christian life as presented in the New Testament is a life in which rights are relinquished and obligations are taken up. This idea fits well with the role of the slave. Indeed, God makes it clear that Christian slaves ought to make the very best slaves (1 Timothy 6:1-2, and please note how sharply verse 3 upbraids those who object to this biblical concept). When the master, however, begins to relinquish his rights and to take up additional obligations, this transformation alters the fundamental fabric of the master-slave relationship.
When you live as a slave, you are imitating Jesus (Philippians 2:7). When you live as a master, you are far less likely to do so in a Jesus sort of way. American libertarianism recoils against slavery because of what it does to the slave. From what I can tell, Christianity worries profoundly about what it generally makes of (reveals in?) the slaveholder.
Fourth, without condemning slavery, the New Testament actually condemns virtually every system of slavery that you know.
If a system of slavery is built upon any notion that the slaves are inferior to the masters, then that line of thinking stands condemned in Galatians 3:28.
If a system of slavery favors one’s countrymen and disfavors foreigners, then it collides smack into Leviticus 19:33-34.
If a system of slavery involves any form of sex slavery (and most do…just ask Thomas Jefferson), then it runs afoul of biblical sexual morality.
If a system of slavery keeps slaves in line by means of threats or outbursts of anger, or if it in any way denies due process and justice to a slave, then it is a violation of Ephesians 6:9.
If a system of slavery involves greedy masters, then it violates everything the New Testament says about the relationship Christians should have with material possessions.
In the comment thread, I welcome you all to identify which historical instances of slavery live up to this standard. I think there are a few, but they are very few, and none of them constitute the reasons why we hate slavery so much.
Of course, superiority complexes, xenophobia, lust, anger, and greed also show up quite frequently in wage-labor economic systems. After careful study, you may find that you are less troubled with what the Bible says about slavery and more troubled about what is says regarding the way you behave at your workplace.
Fifth, what rightfully displaces slavery in the New Testament is not liberation but love. We read that we are no longer slaves but are friends (John 15:5). We read that we are no longer slaves but are children (Galatians 4:7). We do not read that we are no longer slaves but are now emancipated freedmen. What is the difference between friends and children on the one hand and freedmen on the other hand? The latter is the termination of a relationship; the former is the maturation of it.
Hugh Lindsay’s Adoption in the Roman World provides some insight into the Roman phenomenon of adopting trusted slaves as sons. The servitude did not go away (for example, the adoptive father retained rights over all of the adoptive son’s possessions). The adoption was less about things taken away and more about things added. The adopted slave remained in the household and gained inheritance rights. The primary gain was not, however, something gained because of the adoption, but something gained that caused the adoption in the first place: the development of affection between slaveholder and slave that eventually transformed the relationship from master-slave to father-son. “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease.”
Perhaps this teaches us something about what it means to mature as believers? Can those aspects of Christian living which may start out feeling like the obligations of the enslaved eventually blossom, well watered with love, into something more intimate and familial? I think so.
In conclusion, a culture that pridefully insists that we will be slaves to no one is a culture that will lead us away from Christ.
This was a sermon illustration that I heard years ago in chapel at SWBTS. A preacher told this story as true, so there’s at least a 30% chance that it actually happened.
An evangelist was preaching a youth revival in Texas. Toward the end of the week, down the aisle at the altar call came a young man. He was one of the most popular boys on the local high school campus. He was a “high-value target.” Friends had been inviting him to the services, sharing their faith with him. The congregation held its breath as the evangelist took the young man’s hand.
“I’ve been told,” he began, “that if I believe in Jesus He will forgive my sins and will take me to Heaven when I die. I’m ready to do that. But I want it to be clearly understood by you, by this church, and by God Himself that nobody, including God Himself, is going to tell me what to do or how to live my life.”
Behold, the libertarian spirit! It originates in Hell, and like a boomerang, it takes back to its origin all whom it catches along the way. “Better to reign in Hell than to be enslaved in Heaven!” Yes, few things are more countercultural than what the Bible says about slavery, and few things speak more poignantly to the rebellion of the sinful heart.
In the next post we will consider this question: Is slavery ever an improvement for anyone, considered strictly as an economic phenomenon? If we have something better available to us now (and I think we do), then have those economic alternatives always been available to all people? Can we, like the Prodigal Son, ever imagine a circumstance in which entering slavery would be an upgrade? We will bark over that bone next time.
Wow, Bart…great thoughts! I do hope that you elaborate on the OT system of slavery a bit more, and how it fits with this mostly NT explanation.
Thanks, Andy. I think the next post, when it comes, will satisfy your curiosity. I agree that I have dealt primarily with the New Testament data. In the New Testament we have more teaching about slavery; in the Old Testament we have more narrative about it. The Old Testament material, therefore, lends itself better to treatment in my next post.
Very good essay Bart. Lots to chew on.
TLDR. Plus what I read was convicting. It’s Monday morning – “ain’t nobody got time for that”. 😉
Seriously. Of course I read it. Wow! Great article!
Doulos it is!…… Jesus truly did explain the essence of slavery! Bart,…an excellent exegetical view of this important term. I look forward to your next issue in this series!
-Chris
Wow, great post and it has been more than an hour before the first self righteous, politically correct, ‘your choice’; has ignored everything said in the post and declared his opposition to slavery.
But that great insight will soon appear (see the first post in this series). I wonder if that indicates that such folk sleep late? Unfortunately I, like most of you, have a much larger task list than hours today, and may miss it.
You’re welcome
Bart,
This summary quote of yours keeps ringing in my head –
“In conclusion, a culture that pridefully insists that we will be slaves to no one is a culture that will lead us away from Christ.”
If it’s OK – I’d add that “preaching and teaching that we are slaves to no one is preaching and teaching that will lead us away from Christ.”
Good post, Bart, and I do see your point. You and I have been allies in this debate and we will continue to do so. I have contended for some time that the problem with the “Bible condones slavery” argument that is used against the Bible is that what people today mean by “slavery” and what occured in Biblical times are two very different things. Plus, we miss the liberating aspect of the gospel that undermines all of the structures of slave societies until they collapse upon their own weight and everyone is free in the social/political sense. I do think that the gospel does that and I believe that Paul’s categories in Galatians 3:26-29 addressed Aristotle’s categories of Natural Slavery in Politics, Book I. In other words, I think that Paul was dismantling the philisophy of the Greco-Roman world that had proliferated everywhere by saying that if we are in Christ, we are one.
The only problem with this post is that we live in a world in America where “slavery” always brings up images of white master and black slaves on cotton plantations being treated terribly. So, it is a word that is warped and lost, in a sense. I agree with the Biblical doulos, but in trying to help us see slavery differently, we end up bringing up images that are irredeemable. That is the problem with language and why this is such a loaded issue. When a white Southern Baptist does it, it brings up our horrid theology from the past that still affects us today.
In other words, my disagreement is not with the thrust of your post, but it is with the fact that the world “slave,” especially as used by Baptists, is not uttered in an historical vacuum, especially when we talk about the actual institution of slavery and not just the spiritual dimension of being “slaves to Christ.” I am not asking for the Biblical language to change, obviously, and I agree with what you are trying to do here in rooting our imagination in the Biblical call, but at the same time, I think that the liberating aspect of the Gospel to the captives is pretty important in this conversation, and I do not just mean spiritually.
Alan, I think you make an excellent and cogent point. The context and how kids hear about slavery today definitely shades the meaning.
A friend of mine in ministry with me in Nashville recounts slavery from his perspective of history… he harkened back to the earlier of the slave trade and how slaves were treated as far back as the 8th century in his line, and then in the colonies in North America. His slavery experience is White-slavery. Some historical accounts show the Scots-Irish have been enslaved longer than any other race in the world’s history. Most governments do not teach White Slavery in their World History classes. To your point,…children of modern times are only taught about the African slave trade.
“The only problem with this post is that we live in a world in America where “slavery” always brings up images of white master and black slaves on cotton plantations being treated terribly.”
This what I so inarticulately tried to address with my first comment of Bart’s last article.
It is hard, if not impossible, in our context to use the word “slavery” without minds immediately going to the unbiblical chattel slavery of early America. Especially given the recent discussions that are so fresh in everyone’s mind.
I think it’s such a charged term that before we can discuss the biblical concept of slavery – we must first clearly dispel any notion that chattel slavery is in any way biblical or morally justifiable.
I also think its important that we remove that barrier as best we can because, as Bart points out in his article, the biblical teaching and understanding of slavery (The unregenerates’ to sin, to unrighteousness) is absolutely essential to embracing the gospel (The regenerates’ slavery to Christ and to righteousness).
Tarheel, to your point as well,… Christ paid the highest price, of any slave owner, for His slaves. He purchased for His slaves their freedom. Oh to have slave owners with this same intent. Maybe that is what the Apostle Paul was communicating to slave owners during his day so that the slave owners and the slaves could worship God….together.
Since slave ownership was part of that culture, and now in American history is no longer part of the American construct whether it be white or black slavery;… it is what makes the way that this subject is addressed, extremely important.
Christ is the example both of the slaveholder and of the slave! He is Lord, but he is also the one who humbled Himself and took on the form of a slave.
absolutely… yes!
Amen – Preach Chris and Bart, Preach!
In the first post I tried to address the fact that images of Uncle Tom’s Cabin make it hard for us to talk about slavery. I appreciate, Alan, the work that you have done to demonstrate that slavery in ancient times was often different from nineteenth-century Euro-American slavery.
I also concur that liberation from slavery is also a New Testament theme. That concept appears perhaps most clearly in this post in the sentence “Christians embrace slavery because to be enslaved to righteousness is to be free and to become enslaved to the most people is to gain rank above them in the Kingdom.” And then, of course, there is the point about overcoming slavery with love.
I opened the post by noting that it is counter-cultural. Because the subject is counter-cultural, I admit that the ensuing post is counter-cultural. This is the nature of good exegesis, don’t you think—that if there is scandal in the source text it appears in the exegetical product? The same Christ who called rich young men to sell all of their possessions calls Euro-American libertines to surrender themselves to a Master and then to make themselves slaves to others.
In the forthcoming sequel I will consider some lessons that slavery as an institution might teach us. Some of that material would be appropriate here, particularly with regard to your observation that the Christian Way prompts the collapse of social and political slavery. I’ll have to beg for your patience to read the entire body of work before coming to any final judgment. Confining myself solely to what has appeared in this post, I would simply say that in part we definitely are in agreement with one another, while in part we may just see things differently. I think there is enough data in the Bible to support my suggestion that ultimately there is no such thing as social/political emancipation. Everyone is a slave to some degree or another. If you were a Scotsman who fled English occupation (as some Scots see it) to come to the United States and wind up in Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Mill, is there any non-propaganda data to suggest that you are emancipated in any real sense?
“I think there is enough data in the Bible to support my suggestion that ultimately there is no such thing as social/political emancipation.”
Then why conflate the ways that you use “slavery?” You are using it in the spiritual/social sense on the one hand and then are making applications to the political/economic sense on the other, all in a contextual environment that see slavery not as a “positive good” the way that our forefathers did, but as a demonic evil.
You are also writing primarily to Southern Baptists, whose theological and cultural heritage on this issue is abysmal. In addition to defending racism and race-based slavery from Scripture in the past, we also defended involvement in the Civil War, the Theology of the Lost Cause (which was fairly pagan), Jim Crow Segregation through the mid 1960’s, America as a “Christian” nation and God’s last great hope for mankind, and capitalism as God’s economy over and against the evils of Soviet Communism. The confluence of capitalism, democracy, conservatism, and white supremacy animated more than a few Southern preachers in the 20th century – I would say that it WAS the socio-political stance of the SBC during our glory days of growth in the 1950s and 60s.
I appreciate you being countercultural NOW on this issue and I understand that your claim that we are all slaves to something, so it should be Christ. However, when we can and have claimed to be slaves to Christ while enslaving other people based on their skin color and based on economic expediency, then the totality of the point that you are making is quite strange, in my opinion.
Better to say that we are to be slaves to Christ and nothing else and that we are then to help lift others up into that same freedom. How does it play out politically and economically? If we value freedom and prosperity/provision, and justice for ourselves, then we should value it for others as well, I would think. Plus, God does place a high value on justice and treating others fairly. So, there are lots of ways here that we can talk about social, economic, and political freedom and justice being ways that we should seek to live as we pursue and receive Shalom.
Alan,
I think that racism ought to be addressed as racism, not as economics. Racism is racism. Slavery is economics (and, to a degree, politics).
Racism plays out across a lot of different fronts. It plays out economically and I have seen that first hand in my own city as black middle class neighborhoods were effectively destroyed through decisions of city leaders using gentrification to create downtown entertainment zones while zoning black middle class neighborhoods as Section 8 causing property values to plummet for those who did own their homes and businesses to move.
White Flight is another way that racism plays out economically. Not everyone has enough resources to keep moving every time the property values decline, so many get caught upside down and lose their equity. This is all about race and it keeps going.
And, Bart, I am not trying to be argumentative. As always, I appreciate you and your work. I’m just discussing the difficulty of the subject, which you have already addressed. Obviously, I agree 100% that we should be slaves to Christ and that if we are not, then we are ultimately slaves to something else.
True statement. Slavery has always, from the first time one man enslaved another, been about economics.
“But those who want to get rich fall into temptations and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Slavery has always been about three colors: green, gold, and silver.
History teaches us that any “flesh tone” that will “translate” into those three colors [green, gold, and silver] will suffice to fulfill the love of money and human lust.
Absolutely, CB. Racism was a philosophy that developed to give credence to African Slavery for economic purposes. We don’t understand racism if we do not see the economic basis for race-based slavery to begin with. Eventually, it took on a life of its own, but it still carried with it the desire to be accepted by others. If a white man sided with blacks in Alabama in the 1920s, he would be ruined in every societal and economic way.
I agree wholeheartedly that bad economics motivates bad slavery. But here’s the thing: That whole message can get lost if we make the economic FORM of slavery (which we no longer have with us) the culprit here. The Thirteenth Amendment did away with slavery. It did not do away with greed. I think the issues for which you are advocating, Alan, are STRENGTHENED by an approach that says, “This isn’t really about whether you call someone an employee or a slave; it’s about whether the rich and powerful deal fairly with the poor and weak.”
But here I’m already quoting from a post that you haven’t yet seen. 🙂
“I think the issues for which you are advocating, Alan, are STRENGTHENED by an approach that says, “This isn’t really about whether you call someone an employee or a slave; it’s about whether the rich and powerful deal fairly with the poor and weak.”
Bart, I absolutely agree and that transcends Race and nationality. We are doing a lot of work in Haiti right now and I have read a good deal about American economic policy in regard to that country. It is horrible and is a significant source of much of that country’s misery. Actually owning slaves today would not be economically beneficial. But, how do we treat the weak and use them for our own benefit?
Looking forward to your final post.
Alan, I also do a lot in Haiti. I’m there a lot. You’re right. US policy, and other country policies, have often done more harm than good.
I will say, as you are probably aware, slavery still happens even in Haiti. Dark colored skin people still enslave dark colored skin people…children known as restavecs. And it is all economic based. It’s horrible.
Outstanding article!
I want to point to a tension that faith in Christ requires we live in regarding the kind of sociological slavery (obligation, service, beholden-ess, indebtedness, subordination, etc) that you described. It is such that in Christian fellowship we are to subordinate (enslave) ourselves to each other in various ways. However, it is often seen as a social weakness rather than a spiritual strength. It often seems to be more respectable, even in our churches, to strive to achieve dominance over others rather than willing submission to others. Consequently, those who achieve dominance are seen as spiritually strong leaders whether they are spiritually strong or not and those who willingly submit are seen as spiritually weak whether they are spiritually weak or not. Nevertheless, we are called to submit despite the fact that we may be looked down on for doing so. We end up with church leaders who either shouldn’t be in church leadership or who shouldn’t be exulted for their greatness. Now, perhaps there’s something I’m missing here, but that’s what I observe to be the case.
I agree. Sometimes beatitude-qualities do not rank high in what churches consider valuable qualifications for leadership positions.
Question – until the recent HCSB (Hard Core Southern Baptist Bible, or Holman Christian Standard Bible – take your pick) haven’t all the translations basically robbed the use of the word and understanding of slavery by so often translating it bond-servant or servant?
Take Matthew 6:24 for example – ONLY the HCSB translates it this way…there are many other examples but I am sure the point is made here…the translated words carry much different meanings – do they not?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A24&version=HCSB;NIV;KJV;ESV
I was never able to get past the HCSB’s failure to translate baptizo as “immerse.”
🙂
LOL!
But seriously – have you noticed that only the HCSB that consistently translates the word Doulos as slave?
Thought I might add some to this discussion. Sometime in the 1700s the Moravians decided to send missionaries to the slaves in the Caribbean. Two men volunteered and traveled to the New World in the bilge, and, in view of the conditions of that area of a sailing ship, one wonders how they could do it. In any case, when they arrived in the Caribbean, and I do not remember what island it was, they found the owners would not let them preach to the slaves. The result was that they sold themselves into slavery in order to be able to preach to the slaves. We forget that often in the early days of the Roman Empire and the Christian Faith that believers who were slaves won their masters to Christ. There were instances of this happening in the South, the reverse of what one would expect. There is also the reality that Baptists demanded of their church members that they treat their slaves in a humane manner. This, very likely, was not always carried out as it should have been even under those conditions, and it depended in part upon the condition of the churches and the state of the society in the area being considered. The African Americans were very much aware of the fact that they were referred to as Brothers and Sisters in the Church records and, no doubt, in conversations in the gatherings of the congregations. No doubt, James Petigru Boyce was very much aware of the cases of church discipline involving Black folks in the membership of FBC Charleston. His awareness of that fact might well have been a factor in his thinking, when he said that the South would lose the war due to the way they treated the Black families. A sad tragedy of the war is that some of the best and brightest of southern young men died on the battlefields. Ken Burn’s document on public tv some years ago told of a town in Tennessee, where virtually all of the men were killed in battles, leaving that town with a population of mostly females. Quite a price to pay for racism and slavery. There is also the reality that the war was not really all that we think or conceive it to be as to its causes. There is information that indicates that the war was planned in Europe, more… Read more »
The presuppositions of the article are way too narrow. There is choice in slavery and slavery in choice. Those enslaved to sin are free to do good, and those enslaved to righteousness are obviously free to sin. We become enslaved to what we choose to obey. Not only that, the Jews were the only culture in ancient times that had laws upholding the rights of slaves. The article is an information train wreck.