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"If God said murder is okay, would you agree that it is okay? If no, then is murder wrong because God said it's wrong, or is murder simply wrong?"

This is one of the points addressed by Pope Benedict's talk (I should say his "widely-noted but not widely-enough-read talk") last month at Regensburg University

He asked whether, from an Islamic point of view, God is so transcendant as to transcend His own character; in other words, can God be arbitrary and capricious, can He be deceitful and irrational, can He command evil equally with good?

Or, in contrast, is the Christian tradition correct when it says that God is identified with reason (Logos) and that the truths of reason are ultimately reconcilable with faith? In which case, the character of God is expressed in both the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature; that is, both in his revealed laws and in the laws of His creation: they are actually embedded in the structure of reality.

Everybody knows that parts of the Muslim world reacted to the Pope's question by having a riot and violence spree; but far fewer people know that some Muslim scholars responded with a reasoned discussion --- a welcome development indeed.

"For another example, slavery was allowed under God's word (the Bible) and existed for a very long time in Christian societies. Today it is not acceptable in Christian societies. God's word -- and his morals regarding slavery -- remained the same, but the society evolved and decided that slavery was no longer moral despite God's word."

This is a common misunderstanding. Let's think further about the development of doctrine in Scripture --- the progressive nature of revelation.

The Bible (unlike the Koran) is understood to be a progressive revelation; in other words, God's will and purposes are only gradually revealed. When particular issues are obscure or contradictory, the classic approach is to "let Scripture interpret Scripture" --- in other words, to let later or clearer teachings illuminate earlier or more obscure readings.

God never ordered slavery, but did allow His revelation to be given to a society in which slavery was already an established institution. He later carried out His greatest and most splendid work in ancient history by taking the side of the slaves and freeing the Hebrews from their Egyptian taskmasters.

Later teaching of Hebrew Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that they are not to oppress the poor, or the sojourner, or the foreigner, "because you yourselves were once slaves in Egypt." In other words, they are not to force socially marginal or powerless people into slavery.

Centuries later, in St. Paul's letter to Philemon, we have the matured teaching that Philemon should welcome back his runaway manservant, Onesimus, not as a slave, but "as something better, a dear brother." This again shows the progressive nature of Biblical revelation.

Slavery (or better: dependent labor) came in many forms, some of which were brutal and inhuman, and others of which were benign and mutually advantageous.

Every family that works together as a unit on a family enterprise --- an extremely common and extremely creative arrangement in human culture ---- involves "dependent labor" of, presumably, the wife and kids (assuming the husband/father is the manager and head of household) and has been the key to the prospering of many a "dependent."

Any additional dependent laborers --- including apprentices, indentured servants, etc. --- may be (not "must" be, but may be) almost on the same status level as members of the household.

Think of the portrayal of the "cotters" who worked as serfs or tenants of the exemplary good manager Lavrans in "Kristin Lavransdatter." If you had a good master you were prosperous, productive, respected and respectable.

But then Lavrans was a devout Christian who recognized the essential spiritual equality between himeself and his cotters.

While dependent labor within a household is taken as a given, no form of chattel slavery can be justified by the precept or the example of the Christianity's divine Founder; moreover, Christians who bought and sold slaves, or who did not treat all in the household as brothers and sisters in the Lord, were condemned ---- even at the time --- by their fellow Christians, as having betrayed the cause of the Christ.

Fast-forward to the 5th century AD, and you see St. Patrick of Ireland, whose own experience in captivity left him with a hatred of the institution of slavery; he become the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against it (in his Letter to Coroticus) as being morally evil.

The pastoral insistence that dependent farm laborers had a right to marriage, legitimacy, family, home, and livelihood influenced the replacement of slavery by serfdom : by the time of Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century slavery was unknown in Chrstian Europe except at the fringes which interfaced with the Muslim slave trade. Consider too the early Papal outcries against slavery (Pope Eugene IV: Sicut Dudum, 1435; Paul III: Sublimis Deus, 1537)--- and this at the very beginning of the Age of Exploration.

Was it that "slavery was no longer moral despite God's word? By no means. All those Christians who spoke out against slavery explicitly did so on the basis of Scriptural principle. It is a development of doctrine, rooted in the insistence of St. Paul that Philemon's slave Onesimus was to be "accepted as a brother."

Is this the way a fundamentalist would handle the slavery question? No. By no means.

But then, Catholicism is not fundamentalist.

While dependent labor within a household is taken as a given, no form of chattel slavery can be justified by the precept or the example of the Christianity's divine Founder;

I still see no ban on slavery in the Bible. It regulated slavery, and admittedly tried to make the life of the slave easier.

he become the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against it (in his Letter to Coroticus) as being morally evil.

That is good. It is also long after the establishment of God's word.

As you imply, later Christians deeming slavery to be immoral is a re-interpretation of the Bible. But they did this according to the mores of the society of the time. Going back to find a supporting verse is simply justification for the decision.

Sometimes I think the Bible is poorly written because of the contradictions, etc. However, it would have been smart to put in all of the contradictions so that the interpretation of it could change with a growing society with an evolving set of mores, all with scriptural support. The better religious books tend to have all the bases covered.