Dispelling the Notion that the Bible Condones Slavery
Of all the arguments atheists wield against Christianity, the most popular and most effective at deterring interest assert that the Bible teaches immoral practices. That effectiveness is due to the fact that the assertion of being immoral often coincides with a belief that the teachings and rules of the Bible are supposed to be ideal. The tactic used is exceptionally simple: begin by claiming a Biblical teaching is immoral by contrasting it with a modern interpretation of morality. If that does not work, retreat to showing the teaching does not meet a related ideal. That way one can argue that the Bible is not divinely inspired.
That’s a bit confusing, so let me provide an example: say one argued that requiring chastity until marriage is immoral because it requires a man and a woman to commit to each other before seeing if they are sexually compatible. A good response would be to declare that founding a relationship on love is more important, more fulfilling, and more stable than founding it on sexual compatibility, and having premarital sex often distorts the foundation laying process. A huge variety of methods to establish these truths could be utilized, everything from using the data on divorce rates among virgin couples vs non-virgin, to simple logic chains (if sex is foundational, the loss of sex will be much more likely to destroy the relationship) are useful. Once refuted, the attacker moves on to rebutting the ideal. In this case that could be by asserting the fact that not everyone is capable of finding love, and then arguing that if a loving God is truly loving, he would make sure everyone finds someone to love.
Generally speaking, most non-believers are looking for excuses to stay non-believers. While this usually means that they are satisfied with the arguments for biblical immorality alone, it is important to understand that these attacks generally come in a one-two punch combo like in the example above. To be successful defenders, we should know how to counter both jabs. Since the most common version of these attacks use the Bible’s treatment of slavery, I will focus there.
Assertions of Immorality
Most of the arguments claiming that the Bible condones slavery derive from the regulations the Bible provides to govern servitude. The arguments generally follow these lines of thought:
The Bible regulates slavery, therefore the Bible condones slavery
If the Bible is the inspired word of God, then God condones slavery
Slavery is immoral, therefore a moral god would never condone it
The Bible condones slavery, therefore it cannot be divinely inspired by a moral god.
On its face, this chain of logic seems sound. This is why so many non-believers are fooled by it. But, a deeper analysis of this argument’s presuppositions quickly undermine its conclusion.
The Purpose of the Law
The first faulty presupposition stems from the idea that if something is legal in the Bible, then it is also representative of God’s moral ideals. In this particular case, the belief that the Bible allows certain forms of servitude is taken as an indication that God considers servitude morally ideal. This belief carries into a second closely associated presupposition that God would never allow anything other than what He considers moral ideals to be permitted under the law.
A simple analysis of scripture shows that neither presupposition is true. Case in point; the moment when Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about their interpretations of divorce laws:
The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
-Matthew 19:3-9 NKJV
The conclusions to be drawn from Jesus’s words are obvious: God does not require His ideal to be the law; therefore, the law cannot be considered His moral ideal simply because it is the law. The obvious question that comes next is: “Well, if it is not a moral ideal, what kind of ideal is it?”. That same passage provides a clue. The reason the men of Israel were given the option to divorce without cause was due to the “hardness of their hearts”. This means that in the writing of the law, the Israelite’s nature was a factor. Maybe the ideal God used was confined within the limitations of current human nature and the constraints of free will? We must remember that in giving free will, God gave everyone the choice to reject God. Rejecting God also means rejecting His authority. This means that the morality presented in the Bible must be presented in a manner that appeals to both believers and non-believers alike, if the goal is for the moral ideal to be maximally applied worldwide.
When taking the events and teachings of the Bible as a whole, this seems to be the case. After all, God took the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, which gave them a natural distaste for subjecting any slaves they owned to the horrific treatment they underwent, and then gave them laws that granted protections and recognized intrinsic human rights for the slaves. In those laws, there was an underlying message: no matter what arrangement you have with your fellow man, you will treat him or her with dignity. It was this underlying message, combined with other Biblical teachings like the Golden Rule (do unto others…) and One Blood (we are all descendants of Adam), that Christian thinkers like William Wilberforce and John Newton used to end the reign of slavery in the West.
What’s the Big Ideal?
Ironically, if asked what they think the ideal would have been, the usual response the attacker gives is some form of “No slavery allowed at all!” By “slavery” they usually have in mind the brutal, kidnap-based slavery observed against Africans in Europe, Brazil and the United States in the 1700s and 1800s. If they had read the rules, they would have realized that this form is strictly forbidden, and anyone caught kidnapping people and selling them into slavery would be executed under Biblical law. That alone would have stopped the African slave trade. What they object to is their own incorrect interpretation that says such evils are Biblically legal.
Of course, that is beside the point. The real point is that they do not know what the ideal would have been. They cannot even show how their ideal, “no slavery at all”, is ideal. Going back even a few hundred years, we see that indentured servitude was often the only tool left for many Europeans to escape their severely impoverished lives and come to America. Is it morally right to deny someone the freedom to bind themselves in indentured servitude in order to escape horrible conditions and impossible situations? I would say it’s morally wrong. Most that have been asked do too.
Defend Christ Without Risk
A few weeks ago, I read a book called Tactics by Greg Koukl. His main theme of using questions to tear apart and refute arguments is perfect for confronting these kind of attacks. Not only can they guide the conversation into favorable areas, it keeps the attacker building a case that he or she then must defend, oftentimes from their own words.
Most people have not thought most of these attacks through, they just simply parrot lines they have heard before, and that fact usually becomes obvious when the questions start flowing. This scores major points for Christ with spectators, especially when the opposition is successfully dismantled, even if the direct attacker isn’t convinced.
Perhaps the greatest part about this tactic is its risk deterrence. Because the questioning keeps the other person talking and they build the case, the questioner can end the conversation and simple thank them for explaining without the appearance of being refuted. It’s curiosity and open-mindedness that is projected around the conversation. By itself, the simple fact that a Christian is projecting such traits already contradicts the cultural beliefs that Christians are so closed-minded that they refuse to even entertain a competing view.
Ultimately, this method of attack on the Bible, is easily defendable with a little contextual knowledge and the right questioning. Refuting these attacks shows them for what they really are: superficial interpretations designed to give comfort to people who have already chosen to reject the Bible. Engage these attacks when you can. Not only can you strengthen the faith of the Christians listening, you may just bring some more followers to Christ.
