TmcMistress wrote:
ITim 6:1-5 - Really only verse 1 to 2 talks about slaves honouring masters. Slavery did not have the conotations it has now. A slave or servant was part of a household, often by choice. The following verses are a warning to false teachers.
I suspect there is a lot of politically motivated choice of words made in translation of the original New Testament Greek, in order to avoid challenging the practice of slavery. But the fact is St Paul was writing in the context of the Roman Empire whose economy was built on slavery and whose laws upheld that institution. It was illegal for a slave to run away from his/her master/mistress and the penalties for so doing were severe: including death. The fact that some versions of the Bible translate the word as "servant" does not make the law any less severe, nor the institution of slavery any more bearable for the slaves, though it does serve to disguise the shortcomings of Paul's attitude.
If you read Paul's epistle to Philemon you will see it is a plea to a slave-master to take back his run-away slave, Onesimus, and to treat him kindly. No doubt there have always been slave-masters who have sought to treat their slaves kindly though if Pilemon had been one why would his slave have run away?
Only legal prohibition of slavery could set most slaves free from institutionalised cruelty. Nowhere in Paul's writings does he suggest he was in favour of abolition.
Let's not kid ourselves that because he wrote very movingly about the Christian message of faith, hope and love, he was right about everything. He was a child of his time like everyone else.
As a Quaker I have no problem with the statement released by Quakers in 1822:
"The arguments of the Christian, like the religion from which they are derived, are plain and simple, but they are in themselves invincible. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a system of peace, of love, of mercy, and of good-will. The slave trade is a system of fraud and rapine, of violence and cruelty... That which is morally wrong cannot be politically right."
I do have a problem with St Paul's attitude, however.
Don't be afraid to challenge it, TMCMistress. Am I not right in thinking you are descended from people who were forcibly seized in Africa and deported to the New World in hellish conditions where they were sold into slavery? Some may have become house-slaves and treated much as servants by kindly masters, but they were still legally in bondage, and what about their brothers and sisters out in the fields of hard labour under the lash?
