(February 26, 2016 at 12:06 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(February 25, 2016 at 10:20 pm)Jenny A Wrote: In which case you are asserting that there is an objective standard, but that we don't know what that standard is? If so, how do we know there is an objective standard?
I think the more civilized we become, the more clearly we are able to understand certain things. Thousands of years ago, perhaps most of humanity didn't see slavery as being wrong. (or maybe deep inside they did, but chose to ignored it or tried to rationalize it). Whatever the case, now a days we know better, and have come to understand that human beings have the inherent right to their own lives.
But even in the New Testament, both Jesus and Paul endorsed slavery (Jesus tacitly, Paul overtly). Paul even went to far as to return an escaped slave to his owner.
If Jesus was God incarnate, and Paul the receiver of direct revelation, wouldn't they both have grasped that slavery is morally wrong? Since they clearly did not, we can bolster the case that scripture, rather being the word of an ultimate moral lawgiver, simply reflects the societal mores of its time: the Bible endorses slavery because the society in which the Bible was written endorsed slavery. If slavery was morally wrong in either a societal or religious sense, why isn't there a passage which reads something like, 'Take not ye a man into bondage, neither shall ye have a woman or her children as bond servants. Not for debt nor crime not for being taken in war shall ye put fetters on thy fellow man, for this is an abomination unto Me'?
Instead, we find scripture on who merits enslavement, what slaves should cost, and how to treat and beat them. This doesn't really sound like something passed onto us by a moral lawgiver.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax