Paul on slavery

[جوري]

In his letter to the 1st century Christian church in Ephesus, Paul writes: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5, KJV) These words are significant, for
they seem to put the most influential Christian missionary and apostle of all time squarely on the side of institutionalized servitude – even perhaps chattel slavery.

[mkh4JC]

In his letter to the 1st century Christian church in Ephesus, Paul writes: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5, KJV) These words are significant, for

they seem to put the most influential Christian missionary and apostle of all time squarely on the side of institutionalized servitude – even perhaps chattel slavery.

Leviticus Chapter 25, verse 44:

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

Well, Heberw slavery was not the same as American slavery, where an owner could cut the child out of the womb of an African women because he hated her. The way I have come to understand God's usage of slavery in the Bible, is that God is drawing paralles, between man's slavery to sin, and man's slavery to God and righteousness.


Look at these verses again in terms of being God's possession:
"Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession -- to the praise of his glory." (1:13-14)
Here is another reminder, Christian friend, that you are "God's possession" (NIV), "purchased possession" (KJV), and "God's own people" (NRSV). The Greek noun is peripoiēsis, "that which is acquired, "possessing, possession, property."15 "You are not your own, you were bought at a price" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). This is another reference to the redemption of slaves.

http://www.jesuswalk.com/ephesians/2_redemption.htm

[جوري]

what a shame all those africans had to suffer coming here and then when no longer desired sent back to 'Liberia' where they were 'liberated' until white man discovered rubber and then re-colonized it, if the whites had only understood this as 'God's possession' and not some lesser humans who should live far out in the plantation with disgusting houses and their own private churches and burned on crosses for sports and certainly thought of, as of a lesser status for why else would God have created them the missing link between whites and Apes? ..

Why do you re-weave Paul's words now, so after the fact of the matter? don't you think if that had been the intended meaning, millions of lives would have been spared the abominations that took place?

all the best

[Grace Seeker]

Thousands of Christians did look at Paul's words and find them complicit with slavery. There is no denying that reality. I think that they were wrong in drawing that conclusion and intentionally misused them for their own ends. Rather, I think Paul was a product of his time and recognized the existence of slavery as a reality; many of those who were coming to Christ were themselves slaves, and they needed guidance as to how to live in those circumstances. So, he spoke to that situation as Paul didn't personally have the power to eliminate slavery from the culture in which he lived.

Did he approve of it? I would argue that he did not. I would argue that Pauls' view was that all were equal in Christ whether slave or free. But he accepted slavery without speaking out directly against it. I would have liked to have seen Paul tell Christian slave owners to release their slaves and set them free. But I didn't live in those times and that may have not been a viable option.

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[جوري]

Thousands of Christians did look at Paul's words and find them complicit with slavery. There is no denying that reality. I think that they were wrong in drawing that conclusion and intentionally misused them for their own ends. Rather, I think Paul was a product of his time and recognized the existence of slavery as a reality; many of those who were coming to Christ were themselves slaves, and they needed guidance as to how to live in those circumstances. So, he spoke to that situation as Paul didn't personally have the power to eliminate slavery from the culture in which he lived.

Did he approve of it? I would argue that he did not. I would argue that Pauls' view was that all were equal in Christ whether slave or free. But he accepted slavery without speaking out directly against it. I would have liked to have seen Paul tell Christian slave owners to release their slaves and set them free. But I didn't live in those times and that may have not been a viable option.

don't you think if he didn't approve it, or perpetuate it, that in the least he'd have shut his mouth about it?
How strange that god in this case allegedly Jesus should make no mention (according to my understanding) of slavery, yet this self-appointed apostle would. Isn't it strange he made all sorts of allowances that are directly at odds with the OT yet this very important abrogation to display the nature of a god for 'all', he not only preaches but applauds?

all the best

[Grace Seeker]

Dividing my response because you present two different issues.

don't you think if he didn't approve it, or perpetuate it, that in the least he'd have shut his mouth about it? How strange that god in this case allegedly Jesus should make no mention (according to my understanding) of slavery, yet this self-appointed apostle would.

Jesus' ministry was largely confined to Judea and Galileel where slavery was not normative among those that he spent his time. But even he used the illustration "no man can serve two masters". Paul on the other hand was ministering to a group of people who were themselves slaves, thus he had to address it. Even then, the majority of his discussion is merely in the form of using the reality of the experience as an illustration for his larger points, not to comment on the pros or cons of slavery.

Isn't it strange he made all sorts of allowances that are directly at odds with the OT yet this very important abrogation to display the nature of a god for 'all', he not only preaches but applauds?

First, I disagree that Paul made any statements that are at odds with the OT. Paul is one of the biggest supporters of the OT message and wanted to see its message applied in ways that reached out to include those that were not included as a part of God's initial covenant with the Jews.

Second, I think you are misinterpreting Paul if you see him applauding slavery. He accepts it. But I don't see him applaude it. Where do you see it?

[جوري]

Dividing my response because you present two different issues.



Jesus' ministry was largely confined to Judea and Galileel where slavery was not normative among those that he spent his time. But even he used the illustration "no man can serve two masters". Paul on the other hand was ministering to a group of people who were themselves slaves, thus he had to address it. Even then, the majority of his discussion is merely in the form of using the reality of the experience as an illustration for his larger points, not to comment on the pros or cons of slavery.





First, I disagree that Paul made any statements that are at odds with the OT. Paul is one of the biggest supporters of the OT message and wanted to see its message applied in ways that reached out to include those that were not included as a part of God's initial covenant with the Jews.

Second, I think you are misinterpreting Paul if you see him applauding slavery. He accepts it. But I don't see him applaude it. Where do you see it?

really so eating pigs, a tri headed god, no circumcision are all on the OT? it is a wonder why all those Jews aren't christians? How can it not be applause when the 'god of the matter' said you can't serve two masters yet this self-proclaimed apostle, made it almost into a religious edict upon the slaves? fascinating ..

all the best

[Grace Seeker]

really so eating pigs, a tri headed god, no circumcision are all on the OT? it is a wonder why all those Jews aren't christians? How can it not be applause when the 'god of the matter' said you can't serve two masters yet this self-proclaimed apostle, made it almost into a religious edict upon the slaves? fascinating ..

all the best

According to the OT no non-Jews is compelled to eat pigs nor are they compelled to be circumcised. So, Paul was entirely consistent with the OT in his approach to non-Jews.

It is the disciples Peter and John who, respectively, preach or write of Jesus as both Lord and God, not Paul. Paul's argument that Jesus Christ is Lord, elevated to the right hand of God, and is based entirely on OT passages.

Paul's admonition to slaves is to be content in their circumstances. He doesn't applaude the institution of slavery. Neither does he preach against it. He merely uses it as illustrative material, just as he does with other human relationship: father/son, husband/wife. But with regard to the slave/mastor relationship, Paul sets the larger burden on the masters: "And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him." (Eph 6:9)

What is this same way that the masters are to treat their slaves? With the same sort of fear, respect, and sincerity of heart that Paul just told the slaves to treat their masters. In other words, they were to see each other as equals because of their common relationship with one another in Christ.

[Predator]

According to the OT no non-Jews is compelled to eat pigs nor are they compelled to be circumcised. So, Paul was entirely consistent with the OT in his approach to non-Jews.

It is the disciples Peter and John who, respectively, preach or write of Jesus as both Lord and God, not Paul. Paul's argument that Jesus Christ is Lord, elevated to the right hand of God, and is based entirely on OT passages.

Paul's admonition to slaves is to be content in their circumstances. He doesn't applaude the institution of slavery. Neither does he preach against it. He merely uses it as illustrative material, just as he does with other human relationship: father/son, husband/wife. But with regard to the slave/mastor relationship, Paul sets the larger burden on the masters: "And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him." (Eph 6:9)

What is this same way that the masters are to treat their slaves? With the same sort of fear, respect, and sincerity of heart that Paul just told the slaves to treat their masters. In other words, they were to see each other as equals because of their common relationship with one another in Christ.

This [is] my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant. (Genesis 17:14)
When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. (Genesis 21:4)
And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. (Exodus 12:48)
On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived. (Luke 2:21)
And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, [and said], Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. (Acts 15:1)
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach [them], the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19)
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier [matters] of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)
The Jewish Law commands the circumcision on the eighth day. The reason why Christians are not circumcised is because they follow Paul. They have broken the covenant of Circumcision according to Jesus himself (5:19)
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. (Galatians 5:6, KJV)
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (NIV)
The Talmud states the following to those who break the Covenant:
"The one who voids the covenant of Abraham has no portion in the world to come (Avot 3:16).
Christians may not have any “portion in the world to come” because they have totally rejected the Message of Jesus, replacing the Gospel with the Gospel of Paul.
"The Christianity which the nations claim to follow is the religion of Paul, who is admittedly the chief and almost the only theologian that the Church recognizes. Because of his betrayal of the Master's teachings, the vision of true Christianity has been so dimmed that men have been able to defend war and a host of other evils, such as flesh eating and slavery, on the authority of the Bible." (Christ or Paul? Rev. V.A. Holmes-Gore)
"Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught.... For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message.... That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world.... The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness." (ibid, Rev. V.A. Holmes Gore)
"True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology." (Ernest Renan, Saint Paul)
"There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus.... There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus.... It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus... was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith. (Androcles and the Lion, George Bernard Shaw)
The Christian missionaries today are preaching the Gospel of Paul, and rejecting the Gospel of Jesus. Paul emphasized that salvation is attained through “faith and grace” which is blatantly opposite of what Jesus taught.
"Paul... did not desire to know Christ.... Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded.... What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?.... The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority.... The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it." (The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer)
“We have already noted that every teaching of Jesus was already in the literature of the day….. Paul, the founder of Christianity, the writer of half the NT, almost never quotes Jesus in his letters and writings." (Professor Smith in his “The World Religions”, p 330)

Paul had set out initially to subvert Jesus’ teachings. Later he used his new doctrines to undermine the power of the Jewish church as well as the defied Roman Emperor. Paul sought to torpedo Judaism in its calcified form, its narrow interpretation of the Judaic law. Jesus had initiated this process but did not subvert the law. Paul had no such inhibitions; he rejected wholesale many fundamental laws of God. In the attempt Paul succeeded in undermining both the Jewish and Nazarene teachings. He steered Christ’s teachings away from monotheism and from the Jews, (the lost sheep of Israel) and directed these teachings in a corrupted form to Non-Jews…As Jesus had not succeeded during his mission in converting the majority of his Jewish brothers and sister to his divinely inspired interpretations of Judaism, Paul ensured that after Jesus had departed, that Jews would not be temped to follow Jesus’ Teachings. To this end, Paul so adulterated Jesus’ life, purpose, mission and claims to make the new dogma (Paul’s version of Jesus’ teachings) repugnant to the Jews. (Farouk Hosein, Fundamentalism Revisited, Eniath’s Printing Company Trinidad, p. 49)
The Jewish Christians reacted strongly to Paul, they rejected his pagan ideas of the “divinity of Christ”, and they rejected the concept of the “divine sonship” of Jesus, whom they regarded as a Prophet and Messenger.
The Jewish Christians rejected Paul’s version of ‘Christ’, to them the ‘Christ’ was anointed and fully human. Many characters in the Bible were called ‘Christ’ (anointed) but they were never divine ‘god-men’. Paul changed the original meaning of this title to make it conform to the Gentile thinking. The Romans considered their Emperors to be the ‘sons of God’, or personages of the sun. Similarly, the Hindus consider their heroes to be the ‘incarnations’ of God.
“A true Jew would have immediately recognized the teaching of Jesus as a reaffirmation of what Moses had taught. But to many a pagan, it must have seemed new and strange and perhaps a little complicated. Most of the pagans still believed in a multitude of gods who, it was thought, mixed freely with human beings, mated with them, and took part in every sphere of human life. To the common people of Greece, any description of Jesus must have seemed like a description of one of their gods, and they were probably quite ready to accept Jesus in this capacity. There was always room for one more god. However, the actual teaching of Jesus negated all their gods, since it affirmed the Divine Unity”. (Muhammad Ataur-Raheem, Jesus: Prophet of Islam 1992 edition, p. 62)

Paul’s reasoning had two major consequences. It not only resulted in further changes being made to what Jesus had taught, but also prepared the way for completely changing people’s ideas of who Jesus was. He was being transformed from a man to a conception in people’s minds. Divinity had been attributed to Jesus even when he was on earth by some of those who marveled at his words and miracles, and who, mistakenly, considered him to be more than a prophet. Some of his enemies had also spread the rumor that he was the “son of God”, hoping to rouse the orthodox Jew’s anger against him for associating himself with God. Thus, even before he disappeared, there had been a tendency to obscure his true nature and ascribe godhood to Jesus. This imaginary figure of Christ, who apparently had the power to annul what Jesus had previously taught, was clearly no ordinary mortal, and, inevitably, became confused by many with God. Thus, this imaginary figure became an object of worship, and was associated with God. (Muhammad

Ataur-Raheem, p. 70)
The great scholar Mawdudi alludes to the deification of Jesus by the “Christians”.
The false tendencies, born of centuries of deviations, ignorance and malpractice, now took another form. Though they accepted their Prophets during their lives and practiced their teachings, after their deaths they introduced their own distorted ideas into their religions. They adopted novel methods of worshipping God; some even took to the worship of their Prophets. They made the Prophets the incarnations of God or the sons of God; some associated their Prophets with God in His Divinity. (Towards Understanding Islam, p. 39)

[Trumble]

Like Mohammed, Paul was a product of his own time and culture.

[جوري]

There is no comparison between charlatans and messengers of God .. I understand that to you there is no fine line of distinction, but there really is.
If Jesus were 'god' in this picture and he willed that one can only serve one master, just like all the other things he 'willed' in his OT, then a self-appointed apostle coming in well after the fact of the matter shouldn't abrogate most if not all of that 'god' willed.. whether you believe in God or not, it really doesn't take a genius to notice that something is terribly amiss, when an alleged god asks for one thing and a self-appointed apostle does away with the will of that god. One can only conclude that his intentions are less than honorable!

Islam came to free slaves, and many verses of the Quran speak to that affect, of something already entrenched in the roots of society.. paul is simply appealing to the average pagan mind that existed at the time, with a tri-headed zeus like god, copulating with an earth woman begetting Hercules/jesus, enabling them to keep all their old practices and then some...

Religion is a life time commitment, it isn't an easy road.. when someone comes and makes it easy for you to keep all your bad habits.. I'd be frankly quite suspicious..


all the best

[Supreme]

This 'Paul' sounds like a right *******!

[Trumble]

There is no comparison between charlatans and messengers of God .. I understand that to you there is no fine line of distinction, but there really is.

In one sense there can't be, of course, if you do not believe there is a God for anyone to be a messenger of. That said, I wouldn't choose to use the word 'charlatan' in relation to either (or any other significant religious figure); it is inappropriate in both cases.

[Grace Seeker]

Thread is moving off topic again to a discussion of whether or not Paul abbrogated the OT. I propose that he did not, but that is for discussion in another thread. In this one, his views with regard to slavery and how they influenced others are what is being discussed.

I proposed that while he did not rebuke it, neither did he applaude it, he merely accepted it as a given feature of his day and dealt with it accordingly. I've not seen this addressed yet.

As for how he influenced others, I contend that it was immoral men of another day and time who noticed his acceptance of it, then either intentionally misused it or deluded themselves in order to justify a type of slavery that was not even practiced in Paul's day. But, because Paul he had not spoken out to rebuke it, they were able to twist his words to their own ends.