And so you know, no one becomes a slave against their free will unless they are kidnapped first.
Absolutely false. The law was that fathers owned their children. A parent could sell their children into slavery at any time.
Plus, people who were not Jews were not considered the same as people who were. It was always fine to make servants and slaves (or commit genocide) against the others.
When slaves have children...the children are the property of the slave owner.
The Bible does not condemn slavery.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
ldsfaqs wrote:I already told you the context of the chapter was about slavery.
No one has said that the Bible doesn't address "how" slaves and servants should be treated. It after all was the culture of the time.
However, what you ignore is that God makes clear that no one is to be a "slaver" i.e. someone who makes slaves of men. It's another thing to "help" and to have slaves, since that was the society of the time. I don't at all deny any of that.
Thus, you don't debunk anything I've said.
Even more clear you don't debunk 1 Timothy 10.
It makes clear that "man stealing" i.e. kidnapping is among the bad things to do. And so you know, no one becomes a slave against their free will unless they are kidnapped first. Bottom line, you are trying to apply today's values on yesterday, when they operated by different systems and standards.
Fact is, no matter the context, the verse clearly says what it says. And even more, it shouldn't be surprising that a statement condemning the "creation" of slaves and slavery would be indicated in context with statements on also how to treat slaves since that was the society of the time.
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
2 To Timothy my true son in the faith:
Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Timothy Charged to Oppose False Teachers
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners —of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
18 Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith. 20 Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.
I see a condemnation of slave traders, but where is the condemnation for slavery as an institution in the Bible. Slave traders are listed as not being moral but what of slave owners? All I see is ambiguity and thus we have to go to the Old Testament scriptures which are more concrete. And if you're going to go the "New Testament is a new covenant" argument that means we can jettison the entire Old Testament as superfluous. Right?
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07
MASH quotes I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it. I avoid church religiously. This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.
What the leftists here, in their ingrained sanctimonious obtuseness, do not and will not understand, is that there is a substantial difference between the ideals and laws as written down by Israel's prophets, and the actual conduct of the ancient Israelites as a people over long periods of time.
The ancient Israelites were a tribal and, by out standards, barbaric people. The Law of Moses was a sea change and vast improvement over similar laws governing other ancient peoples, but was, in the end, a body of law. Ancient Israelite society, on the other hand, did not always follow the Mosaic law, and the Bible reports on cultural states of affairs under various conditions over time. The ancient Israelites engaged in pagan ideology, gross immorality, widespread apostasy, and child sacrifice to pagan gods, over ancient historic time.
Slavery was a part of ancient Israelite society, as it was in all ancient societies, but the very fact that an ideal existed tending toward a moral critique of slavery within the Mosaic framework militates against a claim that the Old Testament is "pro-slavery." The Old Testament accepts this state of affairs as normative within the cultural context in which it was written, just as the New Testament, and Jesus himself, never critique or condemn the practice.
This does not imply an overt support of slavery qua slavery, but it does point to the overwhelming acceptance of certain key social and cultural structures of the time being present when the gospel is present in the same society and being coexistent with it.
This points the way to an understanding of the way that the gospel was never primarily political in nature, but approached normative political/social institutions in an oblique manner, through individual conversion and "endurance to the end."
In New Testament times, there were both Christian slaves and Christian masters, without apparent sense of contradiction. This could not work today, because of the way in which human society (and in particular, Western, Judeo-Christian influenced classical liberal society) has long moved away from and delegitimated slavery.
It isn't that slavery wasn't wrong, in an ultimate sense, and wrong from time immemorial. Its that the gospel has never been a "social gospel" in the sense of being primarily concerned with overturning all unjust human social structures and righting all mortal wrongs. God, having all power, could have done that long ago if that was his desire. As Jesus said, his Kingdom is "not of this world,"
Jesus could have been another Barabbas, become a radical social reformer, and spared himself the cross, but that was not, as before said, the nature of his mission. This doesn't mean that LDS do not concern themselves with politics, or changing things for the better grounded in gospel ideals. It does mean that we withhold judgement on peoples living thousands of years ago, in very different cultural settings, and wholly unprepared for the acceptance of things we take as inarguable, from too harsh a judgement based upon the blessings of having been born in an age and society in which these things have long passed on.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
Droopy wrote:What the leftists here, in their ingrained sanctimonious obtuseness, do not and will not understand
Droopy can be as stupid ass as he wants, with this type of words he is secure against ignored status.
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco - To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
Buffalo wrote:LDSfaqs = pwnd. The Bible says you can have as many slaves as you like, as long as you have the receipt.
Mormonism teaches we can have slaves (servants) in the Celestial Kingdom as long as they are black. In fact, by having them as slaves we are doing their race a service by getting them into the CK via the tradesman's entrance, as it were....
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
What's funny about attributing biblical pro-slavery arguments to "leftists" and "liberals" is that, if you read some Southern antebellum pro-slavery literature, you'll find that it was abolitionism that was associated with atheism and liberalism. Abolitionism came from "the North," which had also produced heresies and socially odious movements like women's suffrage, transcendentalism, universalism, restorationism, and *gasp* Mormonism. It was the Southerners who were good social conservatives and good Christians, wholly convinced that the Bible supported their way of life and God would grant them victory in the "the War of Northern Aggression."
That isn't to say that there weren't Christian abolitionists. Of course there were, and abolitionism was much more of a religiously-driven movement in the UK. But even American Christian abolitionists usually began their arguments against slavery from the Declaration of Independence, not the Bible. Southern slaveholders could usually run circles around Northern abolitionists with biblical pro-slavery arguments.
If you want to disagree on whether the Bible supports slavery, okay. Northern abolitionist Christians certainly did. But don't tell us that biblical pro-slavery arguments come from "liberals" or "the left." The very best biblical pro-slavery literature out there comes from 19th century antebellum Southern Christians, mostly Protestants, and there was nothing "liberal" about them.
(by the way, other than the potshot at "leftists" in his intro, I actually think there is a lot of sense to what Droopy has said on this thread.)
"It seems to me that these women were the head (κεφάλαιον) of the church which was at Philippi." ~ John Chrysostom, Homilies on Philippians 13