The following letter is written to a reader who reached out to me. Following his kind words about my work, he shared with me the ways in which the realities of slavery, polygamy, and genocide in the Old Testament have shaken his faith. He asked if I might be able to offer some insights on how to view such topics, with special attention to the Eastern Church fathers. This initial letter covers only the first of his questions — the realities of slavery in the Bible. Time permitting, I will produce an additional letter or two on the subsequent two topics. But for now, this first installment offers the beginning of a reply. Enjoy!
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Dear “Samuel,”
Thank you for your kind remarks about my work. Hearing that someone has found my writings edifying certainly offers fuel for the journey.
You mentioned in your message that the realities of slavery, polygamy, and genocide in the Old Testament have caused a tremor in your faith, as it were. Although I presume the reasons are evident, allow me to frame the issue with a bit more depth to ensure that my reply hits the mark.
The worry, I presume, is that the Old Testament seems to sanction slavery and polygamy and even mandate genocide, such as the slaying of the Amalekites. On the last of these, the narrative even goes so far as to brand Saul a villain for failing to complete the genocidal act. The objection that arises naturally enough from such observations is that if the God of the Bible is in fact real, then he is more likely to be a moral monster than the font of goodness, given the morally reprehensible nature of this trio. But the more likely explanation is that these moral artifacts are proof that the Scriptures are not, in fact, God breathed but the myths of a people less morally advanced than ourselves.
For my part, I do not think the objection is groundless. Granted, I think we too often treat our own cultural mores as a plumline for measuring past peoples as straight or crooked. I have no doubt that were our own culture’s values laid against the ruler of cosmic morality, we would discover our sensibilities to be quite crooked. Setting aside such self-flattering is, in my assessment, a suitable starting place when delving into such investigations. But having said this, I do not think our own culture’s resistance to slavery or polygamy or genocide is a mere cultural fad. Rather, I think there are morally sound reasons to bristle at such practices, and therefore, there is equally good reason to undertake a question such as yours.
Given time constraints, I’ll begin with slavery and see how far I can get through this troubling moral trio. The result may well be more than one letter. We shall see.
I trust I need not usher forth the evidence for the charge in detail. The Old Testament prescribed specific laws about the treatment of slaves, testifying to the fact that slavery was condoned within the OT. As for the New Testament, Paul plainly advocates that slaves should obey their masters, which looks to be prime facie evidence that the NT, too, supports the practice.
For my part, I have little sympathy for the response that the OT merely acknowledges the practice; it does not support it. Nor am I sympathetic to the argument for moral progress, as if God were slowly orienting humanity to the abolition of slavery, since the mandate would have been too much for them. I’ve heard both replies before, and neither rings true to my ear. To the first, the Mosaic Law offers detailed guidelines, indicative of complicity in the practice. As for the moral progress argument, the God of Israel institutes a host of practices contrary to the surrounding nations. This difference was, in fact, the purpose of this people. So the notion that the abolition of slavery was a bridge too far seems dubious.
Admittedly, God does make moral concessions to his people due to the hardness of their hearts — as Christ says about divorce. In this light, we do have precedent for such divine concessions, which makes it possible that slavery was tolerated for a time, despite divine disapproval. However, I would not opt for this line of response.
A dear friend of mine who teaches philosophy at Northern Arizona University enjoys disrupting discussions about racism with a simple question, What makes racism wrong? The inquiry typically sucks all air from the room because the hearers presume he must be an advocate of racism; for only a racist would dare ask such a question. So, he quickly dispels the presumption with a follow up — I’m not asking because I think racism is okay. To be clear, I think racism is wrong. But I want to know why you think it’s wrong.
Within our culture, certain moral givens are so commonplace that no one bothers to pause and scrutinize those givens. Slavery is no doubt one such given. And scrutinizing this given is where I think it best to begin. What makes slavery wrong?
The question carries our inquiry to a deeper level of discourse than if we simply presume the wrongness of slavery. I don’t know if you listen to my podcast or only read my Theological Letters, but if you are familiar with my podcast, you’ve probably heard me speak about four levels of discourse. The most superficial level of discourse is the sort of thing that occupies memes or bumper stickers. — It’s a child, not a choice. — This is the stuff of soundbite culture and short attention spans. At the second level of discourse, we lay bare our position by divulging more of our underlying premises and assumptions. — I don't think passing through the birth canal changes anything about that baby's status as human. So I think we're just talking about killing a human baby, which is wrong. — More words are used, more premises laid bare, but despite appearances to the contrary, the content of the discussion has not gone much deeper. Level three, by contrast, is where one begins to define his essential terms. — What is meant by “right” and “wrong”? Is morality objective or subjective? On what are these moral structures based, and how do we discern right from wrong? — Here, we delve into meta-ethics, and beneath this is metaphysics, or our understanding of reality generally, which is level four.
I explore the point in my recent podcast series about anthropology and ethics. I show the ways in which what one thinks about the human person and his place within the world has a direct impact on how he understands morality. I explain that one of the first and most important forks in the road, as it were, is between the providentialists and the anti-providentialists. The providentialists, which were the majority report amongst the pagan philosophers, look at the world and see a structure and order indicative of Mind. Some called it the Logos (Word), others Nous (Mind), and others Philia (Love). But regardless of the name, the conviction was the same: The ordering of things according to genera, species, common properties, and other logical rules and principles indicates that matter is not haphazardly cast about but ordered by something like a mind. In a word, they saw in the cosmic structure the hand of Providence.
Now, the alternative was the anti-providentialists or atheists (though whether they were in fact atheists is disputed), embodied in the Epicureans. This school of thought understood the world to be nothing more than matter in motion that coalesces into various objects by happenstance. The mind’s desire to impose order upon these structures is mere projection — mental fictions to help organize its experiences of a fluctuating reality that is not inherently ordered.
This original fork in the road, as I discuss in that series, has fateful consequences for how one thinks about morality. If there is, in fact, no objective structure to the world, then morality quickly moves toward a subjective form of hedonism, as it did for the Epicureans. That is to say, if we follow the road of materialism and empiricism, good and bad quickly reduce to pleasant and unpleasant, or desirable and undesirable. And from this reduction follows a morality aimed at achieving a generally pleasant state of affairs, maximizing pleasure while minimizing pain. Such was the trajectory of the Epicureans, and such was the trajectory of the Empiricists who resuscitated the Epicureans.
The contrast, of course, was the objective morality of the providentialists. Because reality is inherently structured, being ordered by a divine Mind, created minds have the capacity to look at the order of reality, discerning their place and purpose within it, and choose whether or not to conform to the order of nature. Morality becomes inherently ontological, having to do with the nature and order of reality and our choices to either harmonize with that order or defy it.
I offer this prelude because I think it is important, when engaging any ethical inquiry, to consider these deeper levels of discourse — what I’ve labeled levels three and four. For unless one delves into these deeper levels when asking a question about abortion or slavery or polygamy or genocide, you’re not really getting to the root of the question at hand. So, I return to my simple question: What makes slavery wrong? Or to take the point further, What do we mean when we say slavery is “wrong”? And what is it about the practice that makes it wrong?
Before answering my own simple question, allow me one observation about your own. Your inquiry tells me that you believe slavery is wrong. Moreover, I gather that you mean something more than you find it unpleasant. Rather, you think there is something about the practice that is inherently reprehensible, whether one recognizes it or not. The practice is wrong.
In my series on the problem of evil, I pointed out that while I am deeply sympathetic to the problem posed, I am less sympathetic to the atheist conclusion. And the reason is that I do not believe evil of the kind presumed by the objection can exist in the world of the atheist. In other words, the one who levels the objection is not asking why God, if he exists, would permit the unpleasant. Rather, the objection claims that certain things are objectively wrong, and a Good Being would have a duty to prevent such evils. Such language holds water in the world of the providentialist, but it cannot survive the world of the atheist. A world of unguided, disordered matter in motion, where meaning and order and rights and wrongs are the invention of minds that emerge after the fact, there are no innate or objective oughts, no objective justice or fairness, and no objective goods or evils. So, one who turns to atheism in the face of the objection falls into contradiction, turning from the reality of evil to a worldview in which evil has no reality.
I point this out because I think the point is the sort of thing worth remembering when exploring your question. I cannot tell from your message whether your faith is shaken in Christianity only or in the whole of theism. But I would draw your attention to the fact that your objection to slavery is a moral one, indicative of the type of objective morality that is the sole possession of the providentialist. Hence, when diving into this question, your belief in God or providence or the order of nature should not tremble. For the very question you raise can find firm footing only upon these foundations.
So, I ask again, What makes slavery wrong? As I said, our culture treats the immorality of slavery as a given, such that any culture that ever practiced it is clearly immoral. But little explanation is offered as to why this is so. So, I will need to fill in the gaps here on behalf of the presumption.
When thinking on the immorality of slavery, I’m sure several things arise in the mind of the modern objector. Five come to mind:
I expect that most imagine slavery to begin with abduction — a person being snatched from his home in order to be shipped off and sold by slavers.
A second batch of images I expect to stir within the mind are images of coercion, both physical and psychological, meant to prevent the slave from escape. This might involve physical restraints, such as chains, or psychological restraints meant to break the enslaved person with fear, so that he never flees.
Closely related to such images are thoughts of brutality. Here, I have in mind the sorts of photos that display a slave’s back torn to shreds by lashes.
Added to this are, no doubt, images of squalor — slaves being forced to live with their families in tightly confined spaces without proper heating, cooling, or sanitation.
All of these feed a fifth conception, which is the general treatment of a person as sub-human — that is, reducing the human person to a commodity to be bought and sold, while being trained and treated like an irrational beast.
Now, the first question we must ask is — assuming such things are, in fact, wrong — what makes these wrong? Notice that the above list still sits at the second level of discourse. I’ve itemized things that the objector (likely) considers wrong, but I have yet to say what I mean by wrong or delve into the reasons for their wrongness. In this light, let’s delve into these deeper questions.
Speaking for myself, I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian philosopher. As such, I believe that the world is created by God, displaying the Wisdom of his Logos. On this I’m in alignment with what I have labeled the providentialists. No doubt, my worldview diverges from many pagans — not least because I believe in the Incarnation and the resurrection from the dead — but on the question of whether our world is ordered by something like a mind, I sit on the providentialist side of the divide.
For this reason, I also believe that it is meaningful to speak about the order of nature, not as mental fiction but as a description of structures that are inherent to reality itself. In a word, I am a realist.
If you read or listen to me with any regularity, you’ve no doubt heard this term. But to avoid presumption, realism builds on an observation about human thought: All human reason begins with groups, observing common genera, species, and common properties. The question of realism is whether these apparent “structures” are mental fictions that the mind invents and imposes on a world void of such structures or whether the mind rightly identifies these structures as part of reality. If one takes the latter position, then he is a realist — thinking these rational structures to be real — whereas if he thinks them mental fictions that the mind imposes on reality, then he is a nominalist — from the Latin nomen (“name”), since these are nothing more than names imposed on the world.
Historically speaking, providentialists tend to be realists, since the former commitment implies that the structures of reality have objective footing in God.
Now, like all providentialist-realists, I see in nature not only structure and order but purpose or teleology. The eye exists for seeing, the ear for hearing, the leaf for photosynthesis, and so on. In other words, the what of a thing tends to carry a why for that thing. Or to use more technical jargon: Formal cause (what it is) tends to tell you the final cause (why it is).
The importance of this connection is that it clues us in to what it means to speak of good and evil. Rather than begin with goodness, let’s begin with evil. What would it mean to do evil to an eye? The question is not inherently moral. So allow me to rephrase: What would it mean to harm an eye? The possible answers are many, but the general consensus would be simple: Anything that damages the eye, preventing it from seeing would be harmful. This is what classical philosophy calls a physical evil. The point highlights the fact — or what the providentialist-realist believes to be a fact — that good and evil are ontological. The good of an eye is to be properly formed such that it can see clearly. The evil of an eye is to be malformed or harmed such that it struggles to see clearly.
Moral good and evil enters the frame when reason is added to the equation. As I’ve noted in other discussions of free will, every human person intuitively understands the two necessary conditions of moral culpability, knowledge and ability. When a child is caught doing something wrong, his only defense — aside from lying — is to claim: I didn’t know or I couldn’t help it. And though our adult defenses grow more sophisticated, they still reduce to the same defense. Why? Because we intuitively understand that if we know what we ought or ought not do and have the ability to do or not do, then we are morally responsible for our actions. Yet, if either condition is lacking, then moral responsibility disappears.
The point highlights the source of moral properties. When reason brings to an act knowledge and free will, moral properties now adhere to the act. Hence, the blinding of an eye is a physical evil, but if a person maliciously blinds the eye, this physical evil has become a moral evil — a willful violation of the order of nature.
So, speaking as a providentialist and a realist, when I speak about evil, this is what I mean. I mean divergence or violation of the order of nature. And when I speak of moral evil, I mean divergence or violation of the order of nature wrought by rational beings who have both the capacity to discern the order of nature and freely choose to violate it.
The view is a form of classical natural law. My own position, deriving from the Eastern Church fathers, is not the natural law of Thomas Aquinas, of course, but it does bear a certain resemblance in its core convictions. So, what is the natural law case against slavery? What about it violates the order of nature? To answer, allow me to return to the five presumptions noted above. For I think a very good case can be made that all five of these violate the order of nature.
Beginning with the first presumption — abduction — I think it is critical to remember that man is, by nature, a free or self-determining being. Now, importantly, such freedom is not one of many things that happens to be true of man. Rather, freedom is part of man’s “specific difference.” I am here harkening to Aristotle, who observes that a genus includes many species of things, but what sets one species apart from another is its specific difference. For example, an eye is a bodily organ, as is an ear. But an eye is a seeing organ, and the ear is a hearing organ. These predicates indicate the specific difference that sets this species of organ apart from the genus of bodily organs generally. And what Aristotle also observes is that the purpose of the thing is located in its specific difference.
Bringing the point to bear on man, reason is the specific difference that differentiates man from the rest of the animals. So, whatever the purpose of man is, reason plays an essential role. And as discussed above in the context of moral properties, freedom is an extension of reason — marking our ability to discern the order of nature and choose whether or not to conform to this order.
For this reason, anything that violates the free self-determination of man is inherently contrary to the order of nature. And no doubt, few things could be deemed more violative of freedom than an act of abduction by which a person is taken against his will. Hence, the immorality of this first facet of slavery is a moral evil.