I agree that slavery is addressed in an “accommodating” fashion, like polygamy. Neither were meant in creation and neither will be present beyond the eschaton. As for the harmonization of Pentateuchal laws, I was thinking specifically about the laws on slavery. Some scholars have balked since there is no evidence that Israel actually practiced the Sabbath year and there is a text that points the seems to say the opposite (2 Chr 36:21). That God would give contradictory law doesn’t quite do it for me; but I might be open to development (still, Lv as written allows for not much time between its events and those of Ex). I seem to remember Chirichingo dealing with it well but forgot what he said because it wasn’t my interest at the time.

Also, I’m American. I heard about the German mother through the Reuters or some other news source. It just struck me at the time since it was so tragic. Not German. Or British.

Thanks for the bit about Scotus. I’m starting an independent study on natural law and need to understand thomism, scotism, nominalism as the philosophical backdrop for the Reformed tradition’s appropriation of natural law. If the book I’m reading now doesn’t do it for me, I will definitely check out your series.

Have fun with the Iliad. Now there are some deities who went way beyond morally accommodating that culture…

Barrett

Oh you know you were (and still are) Scotus-bashing, but I’ll address your question anyway. (This should be perceived as a bit of American “in your face” humor, since we are less sophisticated than you folks across the pond : ). Scotus’s argument is rooted in his view of the will as a self-determining active power. (If you want a detailed account of Scotus’s notion of the will along these lines, I have a multi-part series which begins here: http://percaritatem.com/2007/11/23/part-i-scotus-and-the-will-as-a-self-determined-active-power/ ). In short, for our purposes, we might simply state that according to Scotus,
both natures and wills are active powers, yet the two are distinguished in terms of the mutually exclusive modalities in which they operate (operating either necessarily [nature] or contingently [will]). If one claims that the will acts necessarily, then it ceases to be a will, as will qua will (that is a person with a genuine will that is free) for Scotus cannot be determined from anything outside of itself, lest it cease to be a will and lose all claims to acting as a moral agent. One who acts necessarily and hence cannot act otherwise, cannot justly be held to be morally responsible for his/her actions. Much more could be said; however, hopefully, this will suffice. To willingly reduce oneself to the status of property (which is a position that could justly be held only by an animal or an inanimate object, given Scotus’s distinctions), is according to Scotus “foolish.” This makes a good deal of sense to me. Scotus is addressing the issue from a predominantly philosophical perspective. He is not addressing the other issues that you mention. So there is no way that I can answer the questions that you address from what Scotus says in the text. Perhaps he addresses the kinds of questions that you raise elsewhere.

The citation from the Code of Hammurabi is §117, ANET, p. 170f, as cited in S. S. Barthchy’s entry on slavery in the ISBE. Bartchy also notes that if a freeman had children with a slavewoman, “the Code of Hammurabi required that all the children have a share [in the inheritance] if the father ever declared his children by a slave ‘my children,’ i.e., if he had changed their social status” (§ 170; ANET, p. 173). So if we claim that some of the OT codes exhibit “humanizing” elements given their ANE context, so are some of the pagan law codes. Yet, there are also de-humanizing elements in the OT laws as well. E.g., Ex 21:4, “If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone.” The husband could of course choose to remain with his family, but then he forfeits his freedom. Bartchy notes other difficult texts. In Deut 21:10ff, an Israelite male may take a female captive of war for his wife. “Neither the woman nor her family had any say about the marriage; thus the slave-master relationship took precedence over kinship rights. Furthermore, the man could divorce her without just case” (ISBE, Vol 4, Q-Z, p. 542). With the last example, the Hebrews do not seem to be treating foreigners humanely, or do women simply not count?
You ask, can the CC, HC, and DC “be harmonized?” Perhaps they can, I simply do not know the OT well enough to be able to answer that. If they can, I’d love to hear how, as that would be great news to me (and I mean that quite seriously).

To your final question, my only stab at a decent, in process answer at this time is that (1) none of what you’ve mentioned (slavery, polygamy, divorce) would have come about had the fall not occurred. (2) Moreover, since none of these are creational-ly ideal (to use your Wendham phrase), then they are un-natural, as they go against God’s telos for what humans are, how they are to be treated, and how they are relate to one another (both in marriage and society). (3) Perhaps the reason why we do not see whole scale condemnations of slavery in the OT and so much detail given in the OT concerning slavery is because, God, who knowingly spoke into history at a particular time and to a particular culture, knew exactly where human beings “were” morally speaking with regard to views of slavery, and accommodated to their situatedness and limitations—in a way analogous to his speaking in ANE myth language (the raqia in Genesis etc.). Not sure if works, but it’s my stab at an answer at this point.

Best wishes,
Cynthia

p.s. I do think that it’s easier to build a case for the problematic nature of polygamy in the OT, that it is to do the same for slavery, which is probably why Wendham focuses on it : ) I may not be able to respond much after this exchange (or I may be very slow in getting back to you), as I am behind on my reading of the Iliad (though I would much rather engage in this conversation).

I can now understand why he would say “foolish”. After all, Paul commands freedmen and freemen to “not become slaves of men.” Fair enough. I suppose a modern German Christian might substitute “slave” for “prostitute” in Scotus’ evaluation, thinking about that poor unemployed mother a few years back who was denied unemployment benefits because she refused to work as a prostitute.

Still I am hesitant to say that indentured servitude was “foolish” at the stage of the game in the ANE, especially if your master was someone like Joseph or a law-abiding (and law-transcending?) Israelite and you and your family would otherwise perish.

Barrett

Since I was perceived as Scotus-bashing, I’ll speak to that first. The statement was conditional and meant to evoke a correction or affirmation of the prodosis. I can see now that I should have just phrased it as a question. I certainly did not mean to offend your respect for theologians of the past who took their work seriously. Still, did Scotus expect people to starve before working as indentured servants or debt-slave?

As for Wenham’s gap: if one holds to it, then one does not want to see a return to any kind of slavery anymore than one wants to see a return to polygamy or divorce. I find slavery to be intrinsically unnatural and am very glad that it has been abolished in the modern West. I have been deeply disturbed to hear of men, women, and children in slavery now, especially in Easter Europe and Asia. Most are in awful, even unspeakable, situations that anger God and he will inflict vengeance. When Babylon the Great falls in Revelation 18, one of the reasons appears to be the presence of the slave trade. May he end it soon!

I don’t remember positing that no pagan legal codes afford some limitations on slavery. Still, even the Hammarapi laws afford no basic rights to a slave while a slave! Hammurapi §282 allows a slave owner to mutilate a slave for disobedience. Compare with Ex 21.26-27, where a master must release a slave (doesn’t specify debt- or chattel-) if he causes mutilation or maiming. The only laws against harming or killing slaves in Hammurapi deal with harming someone else’s slave (§116, 199). In Ex 21, however one interprets it, a master does not have absolute sovereignty over his slaves. In Hammurapi §16 (and see the following laws), harboring a runaway slave would result in death. In Dt 23.15-16, Israel is commanded to protect runaway slaves. I stand by my statement that the Law is “humanizing” in its ANE context. Israel’s own history as slaves at several points (and in various places in the Pentateuch) is invoked as their motivation to treat aliens, Hebrew brethren, and slaves well.

(By the way, do you have a citation for debt-slavery being three years long? I tried looking for it quickly but couldn’t find it.)

I respect that you’re taking the tensions between the CC, HC, and DC seriously. Can they not be harmonized, though? CC and DC speak of debt-slavery of fellow Hebrews, meant for a limited duration. HC speaks of slavery as the chattel type while speaking of debt-slavery in different terms (Lv 25.39-40 as you noted). Why does that require us to pit them against one another? I could be misunderstanding you. Please let me know if I’m not quite grappling with what you’re saying.

Is your fundamental objection to slavery that if it is intrinsically evil, why would God tolerate it in any form? If so, how is this different than divorce or polygamy?

Pax,
Barrett

I am certainly no OT scholar and this is really the first season in my Christian life so to speak that I’ve thought more deeply about these kinds of issues. Personally, I’d like to see more emphasis by Christian scholars on the fact that slavery is unnatural and immoral (instead of the sugar-coating that is so often presented), as it reduces a human being to the level of property. I imagine that African American scholars (or others who have experienced the horrors of slavery) tend not to highlight only the positives, when it comes to slavery. I grant that there are significant differences between the slavery that occurred in ancient days and that which occurred in America (see note 3 of my post); however, the common element of reifying another human being and treating them as property is still (at least to me) quite problematic.

Whether or not only agrees with every aspect of what is stated below, the following paragraph is worth pondering: “What, however, of the enslavement of man by man? In life slavery was the most despicable and shameful condition that humans could experience. Slaves, legal slaves, were at the bottom of the social heap, and the quintessential master/slave relationship was one of fear. How could the Church Fathers’ lofty view of divine sonship coexist with this grim reality? Christian spokesmen did not neglect legal slavery altogether, and more than Stoics did, but their attitude was conformist. Paul and Seneca advised masters to be humane to their slaves, and Paul instructed slaves to obey their masters (and wives their husbands) as if they were serving God. Such quietism was born of the conviction that physical slavery was a matter of no importance alongside virtue (for the Stoic) and salvation (for the Christian). It is deeply troubling that people with a positive view of human nature and its potential were unable to resolve, once for all, that slaves were persons and not things. Inconsistency, as Vernsel has reminded us, is part of the regular fabric of history. This particular inconsistency has understandably evoked embarrassment and condemnation from modern observers of ancient society” (Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, p. 19).

Best wishes,
Cynthia

p.s. I wouldn’t be too to judge Scotus “naive”. I’m interested in this conversation so long as the tone stays civil, otherwise I’m happy to sign off.

The OT scholar Gordon Wenham has written on the “gap between law and ethics” in the Pentateuch. The idea being that although there are creational ideals, after the fall these are not always enforceable by law for various reasons. Thus the Mosaic law is not the ceiling of ethics but merely the floor of enforceable rules. The Israelite after God’s own heart was to go beyond this. Think Matthew 19 where Jesus notes that God allowed divorce (which he hates) because of the hardness of the Israelites hearts.

Wenham’s primary example is polygamy. It is not a creational ideal, yet it is part of the culture of the day and thus tolerate to an extent. In the end, however, the stories of Genesis (and the downfall of the later monarchs) shows how it is against creational norms by the large amount of pain it causes, well, everyone. Rivalry between wives, concubines, sons, etc.

Wenham identifies slavery as another example but does not spend the time on it as with polygamy. Rather, from what I’ve learned from Chris Wright (another OT scholar specializing in the Pentateuch and OT ethics) is that slavery’s pervasive nature in the Ancient Near East would have made outlawing too difficult. Instead, slaves are humanized in Israel. He cites an Akkadian text where “man is the shadow of a god, slave a shadow of man”. Yet in Israel a master who kills his slave can face the death penalty (Ex 21.20–lit. “he will be avenged”). Slavery is undermined in two ways. One, slavery of fellow Hebrews (Ex 21; Dt. 15) is functionally indentured servitude and was a means of preventing long-term poverty for individuals and families. Second, the chattel slave owned by Israelites (Lv 25:44-46) were from neighboring populations. These were always landless peoples who had no hope for livelihood except as workers on other people’s property. For them to be under a Hebrew owner, who himself was a slave YHWH (Lv 25:55) and bound by the humanizing reforms for the Law, was much better than to be a mere piece of property under other ANE peoples. In Israel, the slave was ruled by his master–but at least he was recognized as made in the image of God and even accorded rights! For God to have proscribed any slavery at this point would have left many landless peoples “unemployed” and thus on the verge of death. Think about how Joseph is commended by the Egyptians he enslaves for feeding them and keeping them alive (Gn 47:25 and other passages).

So I think the “unnatural” objection of Augustine/Scotus is rather biblical. But maybe Scotus is too strong on slavery as a means of economic survival. Slavery is not a creational ideal, but it is permitted so long as the slave is accorded basic protections due to all humans and no conditions exist for giving that slave his own land/trade/etc.