The Bible is OK with slavery

== Brief Line-by-line == 1) Colossians 4:1 My opponent never contests that this passage requires masters to treat their slaves humanely, which includes not beating them. This point flows to Con. 2) 1 Timothy 1 My opponent claims that I never answered his argument that "menstealers" means "kidnappers" and has nothing to do with the slave trade. However, I have provided more modern translations that read the original Greek as meaning "enslavers," not merely kidnappers. My opponent never explains why my translations are wrong, he merely cites to a bunch of older translations. Regardless, enslavement is a form of "kidnapping" and would be banned equally if the NT banned "kidnapping." == Overview == I"m just going to go over the major points in the debate. (1) Non-textualism in a valid interpretive model My opponent concedes this point in his last round. For example, as far as the Constitution is concerned, the right to privacy exists nowhere textually, but has been said to come from the spirit of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Without the right to privacy, there would not be the rights to bodily autonomy that led to the Roe v. Wade decision (invalidating a law that made it a crime to get an abortion) and the Lawrence v. Texas decision (invalidating a Texas law that made it a crime for gay men to have sex with each other). My opponent concedes that one can read the unexpressed intentions of the drafters of a document, rather than the mere words. However, this concession is fatal to his argument because the overall intentions of the drafters of the NT were to express clear reservations about the institution of slavery. If you read the spirit of Colossians 4:1 (banning the beating of slaves) and 1 Timothy 1:8-11(banning enslavement) together, you get a clear picture of a group of drafters who had deep reservations about slavery. My opponent claims the drafters were okay with owning other humans beings, but the "spirit" of the Colossians and 1 Timothy passages says otherwise. The Founding Fathers who owned slaves obviously wanted their *own* slaves to obey them, yet they expressed serious reservations about the institution of slavery. No legitimate historical scholar would claim that Jefferson or Washington were "okay" with or pro-slavery. As I've said before (and my opponent has never disagreed with), "okay" expresses a state of mind, not actions. People can be hypocrites, i.e. fail to follow through on their beliefs with action, and yet still hold a state of mind that is "not okay" with slavery. The Founders prove this. (2) My opponent changes his faulty premise from "The Bible is the word of God" to "The drafters of the NT believed they were writing the words of God." However, my opponent utterly fails the BOP here. He never cites a Biblical passage saying that every word in the Bible was written under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Matthew and Luke did not believe that every word they were writing were God's words. When they directly quoted Jesus, they may have believed they were quoting God. But many of the words are their own. And regardless, the implication of this argument is quite weak. My opponent tries to argue that God wouldn't have cared about what was feasible to advocate at the time. However, Matthew and Luke clearly did. The drafters were humans who cared about contemporary thought, which was against abolition of slavery. The fact that so many pagan traditions were preserved in Christianity (such as Easter eggs and Christmas falling on the Winter Solstice) proves that the drafters of the NT were worried that if they tried to change people's lives too much, people wouldn't accept Christianity. It is *unreasonable* to think that they would tell slaves to *disobey* their masters at a time when there was open hostility to the abolition of slavery. (3) Being "not okay" with something does not require advocating a ban As I have explained, "okay" expresses an overall sentiment and does not mandate a particular policy outcome, such as a ban. I have given examples like abortion and nose-picking to show that you don't have to advocate a ban on something in order to be "not okay" with that thing. In addition, under my opponent's position, regulations that *limit* something but do not ban it outright would still mean that the drafters of the regulations are "okay" with the thing they are regulating. For example, if a legislator drafted legislation to limit carbon emissions, his failure to advocate a *full ban* on carbon emissions would constitute him being "okay" with carbon emissions and global warming. It should be self-evident that my opponent's advocacy is absurd. I have proven how the Bible attempted to *regulate* slavery. The NT made it immoral to engage in enslavement, which invalidated most of the slave trade at the time. And the NT said it was immoral for masters to beat their slaves. In fact, the NT went farther than the Founding Fathers in regulating slavery. The Founding Fathers only ever tried to regulate enslavement by putting a provision in the Constitution ending the importation of slaves after 30 years. The NT went a step further by not only outright banning enslavement, but also regulating the type of punishments that could be imposed on slaves, by requiring that slaves be treated humanely. No serious historical scholar contends that Jefferson or Washington were pro-slavery; they all agree that most Founders were anti-slavery. Yet, the NT went farther in regulating slavery than the Founders did. Clearly, the NT was not "okay" with slavery. My opponent tries to hedge and say that a full ban is not required but that the drafters of the NT would have had to construe slavery as a bad thing in order to be "not okay" with it. Again, he is mandating that to prove you"re "not okay" with something, you must take a *particular action.* The Founders never outright said "slavery is evil, period." But they proved their overall sentiments about slavery through their statements about the slave trade. If "okay" expresses an overall state of mind, it doesn't mandate that someone take a particular *action* or say *particular words* in order to be "no okay" with something. == Underview == First, I"ll note that most of my opponent's case is defense. While a lot of my arguments are aimed at showing that the OT is not binding law, these arguments are somewhat irrelevant given that my opponent does not mount much of a case that the OT is "okay" with slavery. My opponent never even quoted from the Biblical passages he cites, he merely listed them. Thus, he fails the BOP on these points regardless. Given my opponent's failings and the doubt I have cast on whether the OT laws are a binding part of "The Bible," my only job is to show that the NT is not "okay" with slavery. Second, I have proven that the NT is not "okay" with slavery. My opponent's entire case hinges on one quote: "Slaves obey your masters." However, my opponent has conceded that this debate is about reading the Bible as a whole, and (1) when you read Ephesians 6:5-8 as a whole, the passage is telling slaves how they can be good Christians. The overall impression from the passage is not that the authors were trying to put down slave rebellions by telling rebellious slaves that they would go to Hell, but rather was trying to explain to slaves how they could still get into Heaven, even though their ability to do the "good works" that would normally get someone into Heaven was constrained by the chains on their freedom. The NT is saying, essentially, to slaves: given that you are struck in the institution of slavery, if you act as good slaves, you will get into Heaven. Ephesians evinced only a tacit acknowledgement by the drafters of the NT that slavery existed and was not going anywhere, and within that framework, the drafters of the NT wanted to offer slaves a path into Heaven. The passage shows only a humanitarian desire on the part of the NT authors to also allow slaves to be "saved." (2) Reading the Bible as a whole also shows why my opponent's out-of-context quote from Ephesians is not sufficient to conclude that the NT is "okay" with slavery. Colossians 4:1 requires that masters treat their slaves in a humane manner. 1 Timothy 1:8-11 says that enslavement, which constituted most of the supply side for the slave trade, was impermissible. The 1 Timothy 1 passage went so far as to equate enslavement of a free person as being just as bad as murder. When reading these passages together, a clear picture emerges of a group of NT drafters that had serious reservations about slavery, not a group of people who were "okay" with slavery. The fact that they accepted the reality of their time that slavery was not going to be going anywhere anytime soon does not prove that they were "okay" with slavery. Like the Founders, the drafters of the NT were realists. They did the best they could for the times. Like the Founders, they were not "okay" with slavery, but operated within the parameters of the times to try to improve the treatment of slaves and end the practice of enslavement of free peoples. == Rebuttal == (A) The OT proves that the Bible is okay with slavery I've already refuted this argument above and shown how my opponent undercovers his own argument. However, here I'll continue my attack on this argument from the perspective of Matthew 5:17-20 and Colossians 2:14, both of which say that Jesus made OT legal rules non-binding. First, my opponent has no good response to the argument that under his view of these passages, the Bible must be interpreted to mean that all Christians are in violation of the Bible's strictures by failing to keep kosher. A basic precept of interpretation is that judges should avoid an interpretation of a document that "produces an absurd result." [1] The result that all Christians go to Hell or are in violation of the Bible is clearly absurd. Therefore, my opponent's interpretation should be rejected. The "appeal to consequences" fallacy does not apply to textual interpretation. Second, my opponent claims the Colossians 2:14 passage was referring to absolving Christians of original sin, but the passage refers to "legal indebtedness," not original sin. Pro gives us no basis for his conclusion. Thus, there is no reason to vote on his argument that the OT has legal rules that facilitate slavery. (B) The NT proves the Bible is okay with slavery Essentially, this argument comes down to a *single* quote from my opponent ("Slaves, obey your masters") versus the narrative richness of my approach to interpretation. At the point where Pro concedes that we look at the Bible as a whole, his strategy of honing in on one quote is not going to be sufficient to meet the BOP. Furthermore, by now, he has conceded that the Founders were "not okay" with slavery. By proving that the NT went at least as far and further than Founders did, I prove that it was ahead of its time in terms of its amount of "not okayness" with slavery. For these reasons, Vote Con. [1] http://www.reedsmith.com...