The Bible is OK with slavery

== Debate Theory == My opponent says that using contemporary Christian understandings of the relevance of the OT is meaningless because different sects of Christianity disagree about the relevance of certain passages. However, there is not a single sect of Christianity that keeps kosher, permits a rapist to escape punishment if he pays the girl"s father 20 shekels, or stones disobedient children. There is a reason that I made my argument here specific to *legal rules* from the OT. Christians may disagree whether the OT literally means that Genesis happened, but they don"t disagree on whether they have to keep kosher. The passages from Leviticus and Exodus that my opponent cites govern whom may become a slave and when they have to be set free (i.e. Israelites were only allowed to enslave people from other countries, had to free male slaves after 6 years, could not enslave their wives so they could marry someone new). You should prefer my interpretive model for the Bible -- that the OT laws are not binding parts of the Bible -- because otherwise you"d have to believe that all Christians go to Hell for not keeping kosher, so my opponent"s interpretive model leads to an absurdity. In addition, the OT says that menstealing is okay whereas the NT says it"s not. The only way to explain inconsistencies in the laws in the OT and NT is to decide that NT laws are not a binding part of the Bible. == Definitions == Pro says, "Here my opponent once again tries to argue in favor of this rather pathetic argument that opposing slavery was simply to [sic] avant-garde for the Bible, which is really something strange to say when we're talking about the supposed inspired of God." Let me make this very clear: I"m arguing that the Bible is a historical document. It is a collection of allegories, stories, and histories from the oral traditions at the time. I don"t believe God exists. I don"t think Jesus was divine. And I don"t believe the Bible is inerrant. The result is that what matters is whether the people who wrote the OT believed that slavery was okay and whether -- for practical reasons -- such people would have argued for a ban on slavery if they disagreed with it. Since the Bible is not divinely inspired, meaning God is not secretly pulling the strings, my opponent can"t claim that only a timid God would be afraid to advocate abolition. We"re not talking about God here, we"re talking about men. Matthew and Luke were men, not gods. My opponent answers my abortion analogy by saying the analogy does not apply since banning abortion has negative outcomes but banning slavery does not. First of all, I did give a negative outcome for banning slavery: immediate emancipation wreaks havoc on economies dependent on slaves and leads slaves that are unskilled labor to be homeless and broke, with no appreciable skills upon which they can depend for survival. Second, it doesn"t matter whether there are no negative outcomes to banning slavery. Some people in society were violently against banning slavery (as evidenced by the violence the issue of slavery caused in the U.S.). The hostility to abolition explains why the authors of the NT were afraid to advocate full abolition of ownership. The abortion analogy still stands for the proposition that failing to advocate for a ban on something does not mean you are "okay" with it. I am not "okay" with people picking their noses right in front of me, but I don"t want to make it illegal by banning it. As I said before, "okay" expresses an overall sentiment; it doesn"t mandate a particular policy outcome (i.e. a ban). == Rebuttal == R1) Leviticus and Exodus My opponent claims that arguing for a non-textualist interpretive model is conceding defeat because Christians follow the spirit and not the letter of the Bible. First, it"s not a concession because I"m still going to win my argument under Matthew 5:17-20, but I argued the non-textualist approach in the alternative. Second, my opponent ignores the fact that non-textualist approaches are a valid interpretive model. He drops my argument that there are competing philosophies about how to interpret the U.S. Constitution: whether we should interpret it in a textualism or non-textualist manner, that attempts to interpret the "spirit" of the Constitution. Using a non-textualist approach, there"s really no reason to give any import to the specific legal rules that are written into the OT because these were clearly for a society that no longer exists. Again, the Leviticus and Exodus passages are outdated legal rules, which my opponent doesn"t even think important enough of arguments to actually quote. So don"t vote on his OT arguments. R2) Matthew 5:17-20 My opponent ignores the fact that Jesus was talking about "Commandments," not all Jewish laws, when he says that Christians should not break even the "least" of the Commandments. My opponent claims that none of the Commandments are less important than others, so none can be considered "least." However, "Thou shalt not take the Lord"s name in vain" is obviously not a very respected Commandment. People break it all the time. There are obviously some Commandments that are less important than others. Thou shalt not kill is more important than doing acts to Honour thy father and mother, for example. Let"s look at another passage for further support for my viewpoint that Christ "fulfilled" the Jewish legal rules, so they no longer were binding. Let"s look to Colossians 2:14, which says that Jesus "canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross." [1] In this passage, Paul explains that Jesus canceled the old laws when he died on the cross. My opponent answers my argument about keeping kosher by saying that yes, we should interpret the Bible as saying that all Christians go to Hell because they don"t follow the words of Matthew 5:17-20. My opponent also says that you can"t look to this argument because its an appeal to consequences, which is a supposed "informal fallacy" that says something is not true because it leads to consequences we don"t like. However, when you"re interpreting a document, you absolutely should look to whether your interpretation leads to an absurd result. Doing so is an *accepted* method of textual interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court. My opponent"s interpretation leads to an absurd result: the Bible mandates that all Christians go to Hell. My opponent claims that Jesus was saying that people who break the Commandments still go to Heaven, they are just considered "least" among those in Heaven. However, my opponent misunderstands what the "Kingdom of Heaven" means in Matthew 5:17-20. When the Bible uses that term, it is referring to the Kingdom that Jesus will establish here on Earth when he returns (the so-called "Second Coming"). [2] Kingdom of Heaven does not mean "Heaven." In fact, it makes no sense to have people considered to be "lesser" in Heaven, since Heaven is a supposed utopia. A true paradise cannot contain social hierarchies. R3) 1 Timothy 1 My opponent essentially drops my argument about what "menstealers" means. He chooses to say literally nothing in response and just refers me back to his previous argument. Let"s look at what he actually said: "1 Timothy 1:8-11, where someone (NOT Jesus) condemns MENSTEALERS, not slave traders. This is condemning the action of kidnapping a men and then selling him as a slave. If you sell your own daughter, that is in no way menstealing. If you buy a slave, that is not menstealing either." I disagree with the part where my opponent said if you sell your daughter, that"s not meanstealing. By menstealing, the Bible meant enslaving a free person. However, I don"t think my opponent and I actually disagree all that much. When I said that the Bible condemned the slave trade, I meant the supply side of the slave trade, not the demand side. The Bible condemned enslavers. Next, my opponent just rehashes his arguments based on the faulty premise that the Bible is divinely inspired. He makes much ado about the Bible saying "obey your masters." However, this ignores a lot of the other context of Ephesians 6:5-8, which is saying that slaves can do "good works" by being good slaves and can thus get into Heaven. It"s supposed to be inspiring to a group of people that might have lost hope. My opponent claims the words "fear and trembling" are really bad words, but trembling is a mistranslation. The modern understanding of the passage is: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ." The Ephesians passage isn"t bad. It is saying to treat your master as you would treat Christ. Note my opponent drops the Colossians 4:1 passage, which is probably one of the most problematic for him since it says to treat slaves humanely, in stark contrast to the OT, which allowed masters to beat their slaves. This express abrogation of the OT rule on slave-beating should show that the NT authors did not really endorse slavery or the most common method at the time for controlling slaves, which were savage beatings. R4) Nothing new here. My opponent says Jefferson was not backed by God. Basically, this debate comes down to two very basic false premises from my opponent: (1) the Bible is the word of God, and (2) you must advocate a ban on something in order to show you"re not "okay" with it. I apologize to the reader for rehashing an argument at such length that essentially comes down to those two simple premises. [1] NIV [2] http://lifehopeandtruth.com...