“So, IMO, it is not possible to say that slavery is a sin per the Bible.”
That’s really all that I was arguing. The modern conceit is that slavery is an obvious evil and a sin.
But that view is a modern conceit, nothing more than moral posturing that ignores the moral world of the past. The moral world of the Founders had a greater familiarity with the Bible than most people possess today.
Deuteronomy was the work most cited by the American founders according to Bernard Bailyn in his ‘The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution’. They certainly knew what the Bible had to say, or failed to say, on the issue of slavery. Moderns assume that it contains a clear denunciation of the practice until they are challenged to produce one.
The Founders would also have been familiar with Aristotle’s defense of slavery, which while it wouldn’t carry the moral weight of the Bible would have carried some intellectual regard.
“But then if we take all parts of the Bible literally we can’t wear clothes of blended fibers or eat lobster, and we must not suffer a witch to live.”
I think that you’ll find mentioned in the New Testament that the dietary laws in particular were no longer in effect. But that’s a whole other discussion.
Well, IMO the issue is not that the Bible was right and we are wrong today.
That is perhaps the most difficult issue for me to reconcile with the Bible being the word of God.
Slavery was such an integral part of almost every human society that not one, to my knowledge, ever came up with the theory that slavery was always a moral wrong. Only western civ.
I try look at slavery from the standpoint of the slaveholders. These were people who had become addicted to slavery. Often, their families had for generations been supported by the labor they stole from their slaves. They became trapped in a culture of dependency and that's why we hear the explanation that they "knew no other way of life." From the nursery, they were raised and cared for by slaves.
Slavery was a parasitic relationship. The slaveholders became totally dependent upon their slaves for economic and personal support. Many of the slaveholders talked about the need to end slavery, but most of them could not conceive of how they might make their own way in the world without the support of their slaves. So, naturally, they got lazy and did nothing. Then, when they felt that their parasitic lifestyle was being threatened by talk of abolition, they very desperately tried to declare a "secession" so that they could continue to use the machinery of their State governments to protect their indolent lifestyles. The slaveholders felt trapped. One need only read the first paragraphs of Mississippi's Declaration of Secession to sense the level of slaveholder desperation. They felt that they had no other choice, no option but "secession."
Most Southerners now are strongly opposed to slavery. Most now are very grateful that Lincoln and the United States freed the slaves and many now are also very grateful that Lincoln and the United States freed the slaveholders from their parasitic addiction to slavery. Granted, some of the slaveholders couldn't make it on their own and their lives could not be reconstructed. However, most regained their self-respect and moved on. In fact, the South today is providing an example of how this country might best go forward economically.
Is it possible that the Civil War was really just a case of very tough love - harsh, but necessary, for our country's development?
Pelham: "Moderns assume that it contains a clear denunciation of the practice until they are challenged to produce one."
You really should read the posts here, and their links.
For example, in post #127 above, Sherman Logan provided a link to a long list of Biblical quotes on slavery, some of which are quite critical of it.
In posts 116, 128 & 132 I discussed the Bible's views on slavery.
Here are two highly revealing verses:
So clearly, God has a big problem with slavery for his chosen people.
He doesn't want it.
The new testament takes the word "slave" and turns it into a metaphor:
The New Testament also makes all followers of Christ in effect God's chosen people.
So there can be no doubt that both Old and New Testaments oppose involuntary slavery to anyone, and voluntary "slavery" to anyone other than God's laws, Christ's love and our own brothers and sisters in Christ.