The Dawn Treader

Jeff

Glad you ejoyed the article, but I think you drew a debatable conclusion from it. First, notice that she had to be told about the allegory -- she didn't make the connection on her own, and therefor would be no more receptive to the Gospels before she read the books. The two are completely unrelated in her mind. Even worse, they coudl diminish the Bible, equating it with a fairy story that she knows is made up.

Second, she makes an interesting case that Lewis was not actually writing a Christian allegory but an allegory for a Christian heresy:
"In essence, Goldthwaite argues that Lewis uses Narnia as a sheltered preserve for his own prejudices -- which, it must be admitted, were many and far from pretty. But closer to the heart of this critique lies Goldthwaite's assertion that "whenever a professed Christian feels he must create some wholly other world to explore the meaning of his religion, he is flirting with bad faith. When he fills that world with the make-believes of other religions, he is playing at polytheism. When he further sets sorceresses to rule over it, and werewolves, incubuses and wraiths, he is dabbling in Manichaean dualism, the idea that standing opposed to God's good creation is another, separate and equal, or nearly equal, creation given over to evil."

This argument is theological. If Christians choose to believe that evil is an independent entity (like Satan or the White Witch of Narnia), instead of understanding, as Goldthwaite puts it, that "the darkness that is in this world we are quite adept at casting ourselves, by eclipsing God's will with our own," they are lapsing into heresy. The true belief of Christianity is that God created everything and that because God is good, all creation is good. Evil arises when human beings exercise their free will by turning away from God and putting their own pride first. For purely evil creatures to exist, God would have had to create them, and God does not create evil.

As Goldthwaite sees it, whatever Lewis and his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien may have claimed about their work, it is not compatible with true Christian theology. These two men disliked and withdrew from God's creation -- the world as it is -- considering it corrupt, fallen away from an earlier period of grace that, strangely, they associated with various pagan religions. Both Lewis and Tolkien had theories about how pre-Christian myth prefigured the gospels, but Goldthwaite dismisses this as sophistry. Tolkien had an elaborate justification for the Christian value in creating "secondary worlds," but Goldthwaite finds it lacking in any "explanation for why renouncing the world for places lost in the abyss of time should be thought anything but a rejection of God's plan for the world ... Creating a Secondary World, after all, is in effect a declaration that God's creation is deficient." It would be easier to shrug off this claim as excessive if there weren't so much evidence that Lewis and Tolkien considered this world to be just that: deficient -- compared to the fantasy worlds of their own invention."

If that's the case, then what lewis is doing is harmful to a fuller understanding of Christianity.

Don't know myself, as I never finished any of the books. Didn't grab me for whatever reason, and I know that makes me weird :)

Kevin,

Not sure where you're getting your theology from, but it doesn't reflect anything near a balanced view of Christian orthodoxy. I'd encourage you, for example, to do a word study of the world "world" in the New Testament.

For example, Galations 3:22: "But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe."

And Ephesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

And 1 John 2:16: "For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world."

And 1 John 5:19: "We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one."

And on and on and on. In fact, it's fair to say that the Christian's struggle with the present broken "world" is one of the central themes of the New Testament literature.

You could also read Augustine's City of God and many other great works of Christian theology to see how Christians actually work out these themes.

In short, there is no doubt that Christian orthodoxy views this present world as broken, decayed, shot through with evil, and under the influence of personal evil forces including the "devil," even though it was originally created good.

I really don't understand these reactions to Lewis' fiction, and to a lesser extent to Tolkein's. If you understand Christian theology, and you understand something of the background of how Narnia and Rings were written, and you actually read the books, you can't posibly miss the Christian themes they contain. This is particularly true of the Narnia books -- I've read the whole series about three or four times, and the depth and breadth of its incarnation of Christian truth never ceases to amaze me.

David:

Did you read the Salon article? The objection seems clear, and if not mainstream, at least reasonable and sensible. There does seem to be a certain amount of hubris in trying to do a better job of telling God's story than God did. On the other hand, however, Jesus clearly used parables to teach certain lessons, so I don't see what's inherently wrong with modeling things after that.

All that said, I still think you miss the objection cited by Kevin in that article. The objection is not to the idea that there is evil in the world, or that the world is broken, but to the idea that a purely evil being can exist. And that objection is fairly straightforward, given that the existence of such a being would imply that God either intentionally created pure evil, or that pure evil was the result of some "mistake" that God made. Neither of these things is consistent with mainstream Christian thought.

All that said, I still think you miss the objection cited by Kevin in that article.

Ok, I went back and read the Salon article. She makes three objections:

Objection 1 is the one I already dealt with: "These two men disliked and withdrew from God's creation -- the world as it is -- considering it corrupt, fallen away from an earlier period of grace..." This objection shows the writer doesn't really understand Christian theology, nor does she understand either Lewis or Tolkein. For from withdrawing from God's creation, Lewis revelled in it. Read, for example, Lewis' discussion of "the pleasures" in The Screwtape Letters -- he viewed every pleasure as a gift from God to be enjoyed in its proper context. Of course, both Lewis and Tolkein were men of their social class and time -- somewhat eccentric Oxford Dons.

Objection 2 is the one you, Tom, dealt with: she doesn't think it's appropriate to re-cast or re-tell the original story. Seems silly to me, particularly since she apparently finds the original story objectionable anyway.

Objection 3 is the one you mention about dualism. That's a fair point. The "Good vs. Evil" theme in much fantasy literature can be dualistic, and you're right, a Biblical worldview is not dualistic. Interestingly, I read a Christianity Today movie review just a few moments ago that suggests the film watered down Aslan's kingly presence and gave the White Witch too much power. In the book, it's crystal clear that the Witch never has any power over Aslan except that which Aslan willingly gives her -- Aslan goes to the stone table knowing the "deeper magic" that will redeem Narnia -- just like the Christian understanding of how Jesus willingly went to the cross to gain a greater victory. Haven't seen the movie yet, so I'll have to try to reserve judgment.

David:"Is there any such thing as 'goodness,' 'freedom,' or 'justice'"? A true materialist must hold that there is notI'm not sure I agree with you about this. Certainly a materialist has a very different idea of what the source of these things is, but I haven't seen anyone seriously claim that there's "no such thing," at least not in the way you seem to be claiming. Certainly not any more than they'd deny, for example, that certain social orders exist.

There are many differences other than the one I cited, of course. Another question (which I'm sure you've heard before) is "Did God create man in His own image, or was it the other way around?" You view the imperfect justice of the world as evidence of man's fallen nature; I view it as evidence that justice is a creation of imperfect man. That sort of thing.

But now we're WAY the heck off topic. :) Sorry about that!

Interesting discussion.

Those who think that Narnia presents a false theology are way over analyzing things. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is not the gospel of John, after all.

This is lengthy, but important.

In Selected Literary Essays, Bluspels and Flalanspheres: A Semantic Nightmare, C.S. Lewis writes this about our imagination:

It must not be supposed that I am in any sense putting forward the imagination as the organ of truth. We are not talking of truth, but of meaning: meaning which is the antecedent condition both of truth and falsehood, whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself. (Qtd. in “Lewis, Tolkien, and Myth, Part I.”)

Re-read that quote a couple of times and think about it. It is really, really important.

Imagination gives truth a context in which to work. Stories are important. Narrative is critical. Truth gains traction and meaning by means of the imagination.

This is Lewis' gift to the world. His imagination which is grounded in a worldview based on absolute truth. To read the LWW as the gospel of John is to totally miss the boat. For this reason, I think that Goldthwaite's comments about the LWW slices badly off into the weeds.

David:In fact, many materialists do claim there's no such thing in any objective sense.Well, they're generally operating from a different sense of "objective" than you are. A friend of mine is a graduate ethicist and an atheist, and we've had some long discussions about this. The bottom line is that virtually no one who has seriously studied this suggests that morality is arbitrary (which is generally what Christians view as the only alternative to God-given morality). What it comes down to is whether the morality of an action is determined by its adherence to hard-and-fast rules (deontological ethics) or by its consequences (consequentialist/utilitarian ethics). He writes at great lenght about it here, if you're interested.many [materialists] also are wiling to go the extra mile and acknowledge that their views eliminate any concept of free will.Sigh. We've been through this a number of times, but it bears repeating: So does Christian theology. "Free will" in the sense we generally understand it is logically impossible in a universe with an omnipotent, omniscient God. To get around this, one has to toy with the definition of free will to make it fit, or ignore time (neat trick), or toy with the meaning of "omniscient."

This isn't to say that materialism doesn't have serious problems with free will -- it does. But Christianity is no better off in that regard.So, for you, what's the source?My thinking on the source of morality is largely in line with what KTK writes. But it's not a trivial question. First I'd have to define what morality actually is, and that's not something I've been able to do succinctly.

But as I've argued before (principally before Jeff's friend's apologetics class), Christians have similar problems. Even if God is the source of morality, he did a lousy job of making clear what the rules are. That, or He created a race that has a vastly different sense of right and wrong than His (perhaps He never explicitly forbid, and at times directly commanded and condoned, slavery and genocide because in His mind those things aren't immoral, but most of us have a gut reaction against those things).

by its adherence to hard-and-fast rules (deontological ethics) or by its consequences (consequentialist/utilitarian ethics).

Excellent. Are you really a strict utilitarian?

"Free will" in the sense we generally understand it

Agreed that it raises questions for both Christian and materialist worldviews. But how would you say we "generally understand" free will?

But Christianity is no better off in that regard.

I'd disagree strongly here. But I can't make the point in 50 words or less today -- that pesky "work" thing keeps getting in the way.

perhaps He never explicitly forbid, and at times directly commanded and condoned, slavery and genocide because in His mind those things aren't immoral, but most of us have a gut reaction against those things

This is an interesting argument atheists / consequentialists always like to raise. The fact that most people in most places and cultures have that kind of "gut reaction" to some degree or another suggests to me a serious weakness in consequentialism. Yes, I know that evolutionary theory tries to account for group behavior and altruism, but even if we grant evolutionary theory's explanatory power with respect to biological morphology, it's pretty weak as applied to ethics, IMHO.

I'd say this -- at least Christianity has an ontological basis for rejecting slavery and genocide. Consequentialism, it seems to me, has no real basis for doing so. If the majority of people are able to maximize their utility as a result of slavery and genocide, a principled consequentialist should not oppose slavery and genocide in those circumstances. The evidence of our "gut reaction" against such thinking -- what I'd call the evidence of the "natural law" -- seems compelling.

As to God condoning slavery and genocide, again, I wish I had more time to write today. Indeed there are a number of difficult passages in the Bible about these things. The slavery issue doesn't concern me so much -- the passages in the Old Testament law dealing with slavery, as well as the New Testament book of Philemon, generally are very forward-looking for the cultures and times in which they were written. Most Christians acknowledge that there is a certain ethical progression reflected in scripture and in the life of the Church over time regarding the civil law with respect to cultural institutions like slavery.

As to genocide, for me, those passages are much more difficult. Here, though, I think much of the criticism results from a failure to place those passages into historical context, a failure to take the decision-maker's perspective, and a failure to appreciate the dire consequences of sin.

As to the historical context, Israel's conquest of Canaan was a unique historical circumstance that is not repeatable. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that genocide or holy war is generally justifiable today.

As to the perspective of the decision-maker, only God is entitled to make the sort of decision He made concerning Israel's conquest of Canaan. God, being perfectly knowing, wise, and just, knew fully how the Canaanites would have responded had Israel made peaceful overtures. Also, God, being sovereign over all of history, ultimately directs the course of all nations to establish His ultimately good purposes.

Finally as to the gravity of sin, God, being perfectly holy and perfectly deserving of our worship, is justified in judging individuals and nations, like Canaan, that reject Him. Sin is not trivial; it has real consequences. Canaan chose to reject God, and the consequences of that choice, in the manner God acted in history at that time, was judgment through war. God is indeed a God of mercy, and the time in which we now live, after the death and resurrection of Jesus but before his return, is a time of grace. But the Christian story is that the time of grace and another time of judgment will come. In this sense, the stories of Israel and Canaan serve as pictures of the telos of all of history. A full-bodied understanding of the judgment of Canaan, then, must involve more than taking that unique incident out of context and calling it "holy war" or "genocide."

Now, before you tell me this, I know that all of this assumes a certain view of God's nature, and that none of it will convince someone who assumes otherwise. You're absolutely right, Judeo-Christian ethics ultimately depend on a certain view of God. Why it's reasonable to believe in that God is a whole 'nother discussion.....

David

"at least Christianity has an ontological basis for rejecting slavery and genocide."

I am not sure how you arrive at that. How can you say that Christians have justification derived from reason alone when Chrisitians have often used the Bible as justification for both? I mean, how can we say their is an ontological argument agaisnt something that a large number of Christians down the ages have claimed was supported by God's Word? I am missing a step in your logic.

" Consequentialism, it seems to me, has no real basis for doing so. If the majority of people are able to maximize their utility as a result of slavery and genocide, a principled consequentialist should not oppose slavery and genocide in those circumstances. "

Based on hsitory, some of that obviously took place. But I think you do not take the consequentialist arguments/rasoning far enuogh in this situation. It is easy to see that if slavery exists, if genocide is allowed to take place, then any individual is subject to both, and a consequentialist can rightly argue that the fear of such outcomes, or the instabality of such outcomes, is more than enough to change the utility equations.

" But how would you say we "generally understand" free will?"

No none-physically imposed restrictions on my choices.

Tom,

It's interesting to me that you seem to want to insist on a hyper-literalist reading of the Bible that even "Biblical literalists" don't insist on. You're effectively setting up a straw man by misinterpreting (badly) scripture to mean stuff any reasonably competent exegesis establishes it doesn't mean. To say that God progressively revealed how slavery should be treated in civil law, for example, is obviously different than endorsing relativism. You have to understand how, when, and why God gave civil legal rules to the nation of Israel first, which takes a little work. If you want to present a charicature of the text rather than doing the hard work of understanding it, I can't say much more about it.

My point is that if things like genocide and slavery are sometimes condoned and never condemned by scripture,

I don't agree with your premise.

How about this summary of Biblical ethics from Jesus: One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'There is no commandment greater than these."

Or this summary from Paul: The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet,"and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Would you say this ethic leaves any room for slavery or genocide? You have to read the whole of scripture together, not cherry pick one narrative you think proves a point.

I am concerned that this good discussion is buried beneath a post about C.S. Lewis and Narnia.

Tom, you basically ignored my idea to have David O. host a discussion on natural law on his blog.

I assume you just read past it. What I suggested was having David host a discussion on natural law on his quiet and well mannered blog. His audience is extremely well behaved over there, unlike the tomato throwers you and I seem to attract with our blogs ... okay, more so with your blog :-)

Seriously, I would like to hear how you engage natural law theory ... I am already familiar with the tactic you are taking with David here ... you bring up slavery and insist that the Bible teaches (implicitly) us that is morally acceptable for all of us to go out and get slaves ... yada yada. Then when someone applies basic Biblical hermenuetics to refute your claim, you throw a penalty flag or cry that someone moved the goalposts. That is old. Let's cover some new ground.

I want you to explain why you think C.S. Lewis and other natural law thinkers were wrong for believing in a natural moral law ... which of course, will cause you to fall on your own sword as you do so. :-)

Jeff:

I'll be happy to move the discussion over to David's as soon as he opens it up and lets us know about it. Meanwhile, I'm not complaining that people are applying "basic Biblical hermenuetics" to the problem, I'm complaining that they're ignoring the plain text of the Bible, or at best selectively reading it. I'm not the one doing the cherry-picking, to use David's phrase. The holistic picture of slavery according to scripture (setting aside genocide for the moment) is almost crystal clear.

And it would be easy as pie to defeat me on this point, too. Simply point me to the scripture that explicitly identifies slavery as being morally wrong, and you're off to a terrific start. Show how that supersedes all the pro-slavery and slavery-neutral verses, and you'll have me.

As it is, you and David haven't done anything to convince me (or, I'd argue, any reasonable, neutral observer) that the standard you're using to decide slavery is wrong comes from somewhere other than the scripture, and then trying to find scriptural verses that might fit that predetermined notion that slavery is wrong.

You have to understand what's at issue here: the source of morality. According to your worldview, slavery isn't morally wrong -- cannot be considered morally wrong -- unless God says so. And as far as I can see, God has never said so. Thus, slavery is not morally wrong.

Sure, you can point to verses that seem to imply that maybe it might not be okay, but I can point to far more that seem to contradict that notion. Further, I can point to people who interpret those same verses much differently. Which goes back to my original point: in a worldview with God-as-the-source-of-morality, either slavery is okay, or God did a lousy job telling us it isn't.I want you to explain why you think C.S. Lewis and other natural law thinkers were wrong for believing in a natural moral lawIn other words, you want to shift from the defensive to the offensive. :) Actually, what you're attempting to do is set up a fool's errand for me. Even assuming I knew very much at all about Lewis' thinking on the matter (I don't), any inconsistencies I may find with Lewis' (and, by extension, your) theory of moral law will simply be attributed to the fallen nature of man rather than a bona fide problem with the theory.

If you really want to head down that road, however, perhaps you should do a post summarizing the "Tertium quid" argument, and explain why you think it's irrefutable, and open that up to discussion. Then I can invite KTK to answer your challenge more directly, since he's the guy who's studied morality and ethics, and the guy whose view of morality you challenged above.

What I was trying to say was that the standard you're using to decide slavery is wrong comes from somewhere other than scripture, and that none of your arguments have done anything to convince anyone otherwise.

Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you won't enslave him, or murder him. The 19th Century Abolitionists got this. Abraham Lincoln got it. Martin Luther King, Jr. got it. Heck, even Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson get it. Why you don't get it, I don't know.

Tom,

Is slavery wrong?

Tom and Kevin -- ok, I've had my coffee and medication, so now I'd like to put the snark-o-phone away for a minute. It seems to me that we're working off of different understandings of what constitutes Christian ethics. You seem to think that Christian ethics is essentially a set of rules that are expressly spelled out in the Bible. If something isn't expressly prohibited in the Bible, then, Christian ethics would permit it, or at most be ambivalent about it. It's fair to say that many Christians think and live this way.

But, this is not a view anyone who has seriously thought about it holds, or has ever held, concerning Christian ethics. This is why I say "the Bible never expressly condemns slavery!" seems like a straw man to me. The Bible isn't primarily a detailed rule book concerning ethics. There are some specific rules, but mostly there are general principles, such as "love your neighbor as yourself." The Church is to draw out the implications of those principles and apply them within a given cultural and historical context. (I take a Reformed rather than Catholic view of what constitutes the "Church," but that's a separate issue). This isn't relativism or "situational ethics," because the principles never change -- "love your neighbor as yourself" is true for everyone, everywhere, always. How exactly that love gets worked out in a given context, however, may differ with the context.

I wish, for example, that I could physically remove all the crack dealers from the town of Paterson, NJ, near where I live. I wish I could give every honest poor person in Paterson a good job and a place to live. But I don't have the resources, ability, or authority to do that. I can, however, work with local ministries and shelters that provide drug counseling and food banks. (I have to admit I'm "getting convicted," as my old-school fundamentalists friends would say, by my relative lack of effort even in these small things!) My failure to do the best possible thing that conceivably could be done doesn't mean I condone drug dealing and poverty. It means I have to apply the "love your neighbor" ethic within the limits of the context in which I find myself.

David

No, what Tom and I are doing is pointing out that your contention that the truth that comes form the Bible is not innerrant or absolute as you and jeff have claimed. The only way you can get to the notion that slavery is condemened is to look at the scope of human hisotry and notice that slavery creates practices and situations that are completely opposite of the teaching of Christ.

But that is your personal interpretation. You got it from your opinion of what history has taught you. It does not come form God, it comes from you, and it is no more evidence of natural law or the notion of a an absolute morality. You try to say that becasue the principle doesn't change, that it is not relative. I am sorry, but we used to burn witches becasue we loved them as we loved ourselves and wanted to save their souls.

People read the text and come to different conclusions.

BTW -- you a high school or college teacher? or have you done both?

I'm a college teacher -- business law. See my website, www.davidopderbeck.com, for stuff about my teaching and scholarship.

I don't claim my view of scripture is inerrant. Nor do I claim that scripture can be interpeted apart from the historical life and experience of the Church. That's not what inerrancy claims. Inerrancy actually is a highly nuanced position, although it's often popularly used like a sledgehammer. Evangelicals who are inerrantists generally agree that history and tradition, though not authoritative, are necessary and helpful aids in understanding what the text is teaching.

BTW, the key to inerpreting Ephesians 6, I think, is Ephesians 5:21: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Paul is telling husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters to submit to each other in Christ. In Ephesians 6:9, he tells masters to treat slaves in the same way that slaves are to treat their masters: "with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ" (verse 5), because the master should know that Christ is the common master over both the master and slave (verse 9). True, he doesn't say "masters free your slaves now." But what he does say, in its cultural context, was revolutionary. A master submitting to a slave? Unheard of. (It was revolutionary in terms of relationships between men and women as well). In Philemon he goes a little further and all but openly suggests that Onesimus should be freed.

And come on, Philemon? You have to squint pretty hard to read that as anything other than a plea for that particular slave

What's with the squinting thing? This is how interpreters throughout the ages have looked at the book of Philemon. I'm not saying anything novel about it. So here's where we are with hermeneutics: if we cut Philemon out of the Bible, ignore everything Jesus ever said, delete the "love your neighbor" and "do unto others" stuff, elide everything in Ephesians except for one verse in Chapter 6, pretend all that stuff in the Old Testament about "doing justice" and standing up for the "poor and oppressed" isn't in there, and forget about how the Jewish community has understood the OT law and how the Christian community has understood the new covenant, the Bible doesn't exactly condemn and therefore "condones" slavery. Talk about squinting!

If God wanted us to follow His will, He didn't make His will clear enough.

I think now, though, that you're taking the point too far. Yes, some things in scripture are reasonably differing interpretations, and no single interpretation is "inerrant." But that doesn't mean this is true of everything in scripture. Some things are clear enough that no reasonable interpreter, applying principles that reasonable people use to understand the meaning of all sorts of documents, could materially differ. And the overall redemptive arc of scripture -- the kerygma as theologians call it -- also is reasonably clear or "perpiscuous."

I don't pretend to understand why God didn't just give us a bullet-point doctrine and practice manual instead of the collection of texts we have. I suspect it has something to do with the way the written text must interact with the living Church in any given historical and cultural moment. I might agree with you on one thing -- many evangelicals take a view of scripture that is far too small and mechanistic, and that fails to account for the diverse nature of the texts we've received.

And I'll say that it seems more than a bit odd to me that the same (meta)book that describes in graphic detail what must be done in the event that a couple should have sex during menstruation doesn't bother to say that salvery is wrong.

This is another hermeneutical issue involving the role of the civil law given to Israel in relation to the moral law. Partly I think this is answered by Jesus, who made crystal clear that the greatest commandment is love. There's a major problem in understanding the text if you think the Bible "majors" on this small aspect of the Israelite civil law in light of the forceful and voluminous teachings of Jesus and Paul.

In fact, to apply a proper hermeneutic you also need to understand that Jesus is the logos incarnate. The written text is not the pinnacle of revelation, Jesus is. We aren't Biblians, we're Christians. The Bible is God's written word to us, but Jesus is the living word. Reading a passage from the OT civil law without understanding it through the lense of Jesus the incarnate word makes no sense to us.

Just think how much human suffering could have been avoided if God had simply told Moses "Thou shalt not take slaves," instead of hiding it in a nuanced argument 2 millennia later...

I don't agree that it's that nuanced or hidden given all that I've said about hermeneutics and revelation, but regardless, this leads to an endless regress. Imagine how much human suffering could have been avoided if God told Paul to write: "Chamberlain -- oppose Hitler from the start!" or lots of other such things. God could've written a book that scripted out the right choice in every decision in history, but He doesn't work that way. I don't fully know why God chose to reveal what He did when He did. This in part is the theodicy issue we've discussed before.

Re: Philemon, again, ...

But the book of Philemon is part of the canon, meaning the Christian Church believes it has normative significance for the entire Church throughout history. With that assumption, you can't limit it only to the one situation it directly addresses. You could argue that Philemon shouldn't be part of the canon, but that's an entirely different argument. If you want to talk about "the Bible" and slavery, you have to include everything the Church defines as canonical, and not interpret some portions to make the canonization decision meaningless.

Insightful. What Salon's Miller also misses is that the beauty that grabbed her in Narnia is indicative of the heart of Christian belief...much more so than "dreary Sunday school."

A Lewis-lover myself, I just stumbled across your blog via Semicolon, and I'll be back!

Jeff and David

Here's the thing. From my perspetive it looks as if you have to range far a field, into history, logic, and commentary, to reach the conclusion that the Bible condmens slavery. It is very, very hard to reconcile that position with the notin that the Bible provides a clear cut, absolute morality. That is the heart of my argument with your positions.

I put up a serious defeater to your argument and you respond like that?I'm sorry, but you did no such thing.I am having a very hard time accepting your premise that the institution of slavery is evil for all time in all cases in all cultures.s/slavery/abortion/g

But at least we're getting somewhere, and it leads to you (at least) having a Biblically consistent position: slavery isn't necessarily wrong. That frightens me, but it's at least Biblically consistent.I fail to see how an institution that considers persons as members of your family, deserving of your care and protection, fellow recipients of God's covenant promises and blessings, and eligible to inherit your entire estate, as evil.And I fail to see how an institution such as the one you describe is consistent with Exodus 21 (which you conveniently ignored). There you'll see that Hebrew servants are considered to be fundamentally different than other slaves, and that the latter group gets nothing approaching the level of treatment reserved for the former. And note, too, that these proscriptions for treatment come directly from the mouth of God. So you'll forgive me if I find your latest tack to be less than convincing.Instead of dissing me, take some time and research it a bit further.I only resorted to "dissing" you (and David) after you repeatedly dodged the issue (at least in my opinion, and Kevin seems to agree; lest you think Kevin agreeing with me is a gimme, we generally disagree on matters religious and scriptural).

OK, then, we'll put you on record: From a Biblical perspective, slavery is not objectively evil.There really is nothing frightening about taking people into your family, making them heirs, and making them fellow recipients of God's covenant promises and blessings.But there is something very frightening about equating them with property. But if God's acceptance of beating slaves half to death being acceptable as long as you don't beat them all the way to death doesn't bother you, then I suppose it shouldn't bother me.

And I must admit, you've got me: where do you get the "year of Jubilee" stuff? My annotated Bible simply lists the section as concering "personal injury," and I don't see Jubilee even mentioned until Leviticus 25.

Further, you seem to have completely ignored the fact that Hebrew servants are considered vastly different than other slaves. It is the Hebrew servant that you make an heir, and who can voluntarily remain a servant. Heck, the NIV even uses a different word ("servant" versus "slave") to differentiate between the two.

As to Genesis (and Exodus 21), I've already addressed this, even if you ignored it or misunderstood it. Enslaving the Hebrews by the Egyptians is clearly against God's will, but that goes to my above point that God only seems to get upset if you enslave the wrong people. He doesn't seem to have a problem with slavery in general (or if He does, He never says so). See also Lev 25 -- the Jubilee part to which you seem to have referred, where the "do's and don'ts" of slavery are spelled out. It pretty clearly spells out that foreign slaves are okay, but Israelite slaves are not. Ditto for 2 Chronicles. Same again for Jeremiah 34.

The picture is actually quite consistent, and I suggest that it is you who need to do some research. The "kinder, gentler" slavery to which you are referring is Biblically reserved for the Hebrews and Israelites. All others are subject to the more traditional slaves-as-property interpretation. That you refuse to see this does not make it any less true.

At the least, you can try to explain how Exodus 21:20-21 is consistent with the picture of God-condoned slavery you're trying to paint.

"OK, then, we'll put you on record: From a Biblical perspective, slavery is not objectively evil."

Please do. But only after you esplain that slavery as practiced in ancient Israel was the social security system of its day. It was a welfare system. It enabled the poor and disenfranchised the opportunity to be accepted into families that could offer them protection, food, care, covenantal blessings, and even the possibility of inheriting the owner's entire estate.

If you do that, it will make more sense. If you don't, then they will probably assume all of the same things you do ... e.g. slavery = American slavery .... i.e. racism / abuse / cruelty / dehumanization etc.

We would not want them to leap to the wrong conclusion.

Jeff:The unborn child is the mother's property and she gets to decide if her unborn son or unborn daughter lives or dies.I don't know who you've ever heard argue this way, because I certainly have never done so. Abortion is not (to my mind) a property rights issue, but (primarily) a personal autonomy issue. Should a woman be allowed to decide whether or not to have children? This question has nothing to do with "property." The other thing that comes into play is what happens when the interests of the unborn child conflict with the interests of the woman carrying it? If you have to choose one or the other, which gets priority?slavery = American slavery .... i.e. racism / abuse / cruelty / dehumanization etc.Except that this is exactly the picture painted of slavery in the Bible for everyone except the Hebrews/Israelites. It's okay to take slaves from foreign lands (racism); it's okay to beat them as long as you don't kill them (abuse / cruelty); your slave is your property (dehumanization). All of these conditions are listed in the plain text of the Bible. And, in fact, those were used to defend slavery right here in America.By the way, when do David and I get to put you on the witness stand and cross examine you over your view of slavery?When it's relevant, which right now, it isn't. The topic that's been consuming us for most of this thread is whether or not morality comes from God. If it does, then the only insight we have into morality is the scripture, which is our only authoritative word of God. If the Bible says something is wrong, it's wrong. If the Bible doesn't say it's wrong, it isn't wrong.

The whole point of bringing slavery into the equation was to illustrate the fact that in order to come to the conclusion that slavery is wrong, you not only have to go outside of what scripture teaches, you have to ignore large segments of what scripture teaches.

The "what is my view of slavery" thing, in that regard, is a waste of time, because what you really want to get at is "what is my source of morality," or, more directly "how do I determine what's moral and what's not?" And the answer boils down to the same way you do; you just don't realize it. And by "it," I mean the extent to which your morality comes from extra-biblical sources. Those extra-Biblical sources that help you conclude that slavery is wrong, and that genocide is wrong, are the same sources I use in determining morality.

"Should a woman be allowed to decide whether or not to have children?"

That question is only relevant to a woman who is not pregnant. A pregnant woman already has a child. She is already a mother. The question is, does a mother get decide if her child lives or dies?