Five leading theologians recently visited Saddleback for a teaching series titled How Do I Know I Can Trust the Bible? We asked our friends on Facebook and Twitter to submit their answer to the following question: If you could ask a Bible scholar any question about God, Christianity, or the Bible, what would it be? Read on to hear the speakers answer your questions.
Today, we’re hearing from Paige Patterson and Sean McDowell as they answer the question, How Do You Explain Why the Bible Condones Slavery?
Paige: “That is a misunderstanding actually. The Bible, nowhere, condones slavery. Unfortunately, the Bible was written in a era where slavery was widely practiced. And what the Bible actually does is set the whole thing forward by prescribing rules in which, if people do have slaves, they have to treat them a certain way. They are not allowed to treat them like animals or anything like that, but they are cautioned because God is watching the treatment of the slave owner.
And then gradually, in the greater light that comes in the New Testament with Christ, you have the reversal of slavery. So for example, Paul writes to Philemon about his runaway slave, and he says, ‘I want you to receive him back, I want to send him back to you. But this time you don’t receive him as a slave you receive him as your brother,’ and that chartered the future for the rejection of slavery all together. So the Bible doesn’t condone slavery at all.”
Sean: “There are undoubtedly some difficult questions and concepts within the Bible, such as slavery. Part of the challenge of dealing with this is that in our minds we have certain understanding of slavery and how it was practiced here and other parts of the world. And we import that on the scriptural practice.
But, when we go back to the original culture, we understand what was taking place with the people and what slavery meant, and we realize that the biblical understanding of slavery was very very different from our modern notion of slavery today.
One major difference was that slavery was actually voluntary. Because people had no jobs, no food, they didn’t have security, and would actually offer themselves to be slaves for others for a period of seven years. Then after seven years they had the opportunity to be set free or they would permanently become a slave to that person for life. So worked into the system was a way for slave owners, at least within the Hebrew culture, to treat the people with dignity and respect.
One way we definitely know that the way slavery in the United States was practiced differently is that most slaves we had here were kidnapped. In the book of Exodus in chapter 20 or 21, it explicitly says that kidnapping is wrong, so right away we have a biblical principal that would undermine any way that slavery was practiced in our own country and in our own nation.
The bottom line is that when start to look at how slavery was actually practiced in the scriptures we see it is the very first nation in the world where human rights were introduced, where slaves were not just property, that they could not just be abused, and that they were human beings to be treated with dignity and respect.
And then finally when we get to the new testament, we see Paul saying things like ‘Slave or free, male or female, Jew or gentile, all are one in Christ Jesus.’ So the scriptures took a fallen institution and through time transformed it until ultimately everyone can see that we are one with Jesus Christ.”
Missed the teaching series? You can watch all of the Ahmanson messages here.
Have more questions about the Christian faith? Don’t miss Examine the Evidence, a free one night class for skeptics and believers that will discuss why it's important to ask questions and seek the truth by exploring a variety of common issues such as the existence of God, the historical accuracy and alleged contradictions in the Bible.
January 9, 2012 from 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. in the Refinery on the Lake Forest campus.
For more information, click here
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