Navigating Old Waters through the Fog of the New Atheism

The Bible has long been considered by Christians to be the inspired revelation of God's loving plan of redemptive history. It is also thought by many to be a source of moral wisdom for disciples of Jesus to live faithfully. Nevertheless, there have been and probably always will be critics of the Christian faith who ridicule the Bible in general and its ethics in particular. Some of these suggest that the desire for Christians to apply the teaching of the Bible in our day is something that ought to be shunned and abandoned altogether. One such group, often dubbed the "New Atheists," has given renewed attention, passion, disdain, and warning to what they consider the moral ineptness of the Bible. Some consider this form of atheism "new" because the tenor has changed with respect to the kind of critiques given to religious beliefs in general. Once it was considered irrational to believe in God. The "New Atheists" have moved beyond concerns of irrationality to suggest that religious belief in general is morally dangerous and ought not to be tolerated in civilized society.

More specifically, some have highlighted passages in the Bible that certainly appear to be at odds with our present-day sense of morality. These thinkers argue that the Bible supports practices and viewpoints that are clearly immoral and downright reprehensible. Among many other issues often appealed to, the subject of slavery is one that comes to the fore. For example, well-known speaker and popular author Sam Harris has claimed:

In assessing the moral wisdom of the Bible, it is useful to consider moral questions that have been solved to everyone's satisfaction. Consider the question of slavery. The entire civilized world now agrees that slavery is an abomination. What moral instruction do we get of Abraham on this subject? Consult the Bible, and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves. (1)

He then cites several verses of Scripture from both testaments, such as Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:7-11, Ephesians 6:5, and 1 Timothy 6:1-4, to make his point about the Bible's explicit support and promotion of slavery. In light of the biblical teaching on this subject, Harris highlights what he takes to be irresolvable tensions in the orthodox Christian understanding of the goodness of God, the inspiration of the Bible, and the immorality of slavery as understood in our modern day. The problem that Harris raises can be made more overt when we attempt to formalize his argument in the following way:

1.The Bible is inspired by God.
2.God is an all-loving, morally perfect being.
3.Therefore, the Bible is inspired by an all-loving, morally perfect being.

So far so good, it would seem. But then…

4.Slavery is morally reprehensible.
5.The Bible promotes and supports slavery.
6.Therefore, the Bible promotes and supports what is morally reprehensible.

This preliminary conclusion, of course, should be troubling to many Christians. Moreover, if statements 3 and 6 are correct, then we have a further negative implication.

7.Therefore, an all-loving, morally perfect being promotes and supports what is morally reprehensible.

If this line of reasoning is correct, then it does not take much to see that statement 7 is problematic. Given that Harris thinks the Bible does promote and support slavery, Christians would be hard pressed to acknowledge that God can be all-good, the Bible is inspired by him, and that moral outrage can be expressed at slavery at the same time. To be explicitly clear:

8.If the Bible promotes and supports slavery, then either God is not an all-loving, morally perfect being or God did not inspire the Bible or slavery is not morally reprehensible.

It would seem that something would have to give; therefore pick your poison, so to speak. He takes this conundrum for Christians to reinforce the idea that not only is appeal to the Bible unnecessary, it is detrimental for contemporary morality.

Harris thinks these ethical difficulties are insurmountable as indicated by his statement that "nothing in Christian theology remedies the appalling deficiencies of the Bible on what is perhaps the greatest–and easiest–moral question our society has ever had to face." (2)

Navigating through the Fog

Is it really the case that "nothing in Christian theology remedies [these] appalling deficiencies"? I think this is a bit overstated. It is not as if these passages have not had any theological and ethical reflection given to them in the history of Christian thought. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to gloss over these texts and give soft interpretations that do not take into account the harsh realities of the social-cultural context in which the biblical texts on slavery speak. To do so would be disingenuous.

So what can be said in response to Harris's claims as expressed in the argument given above? Given space limitations, perhaps the best way to approach the matter at hand is to highlight some broad features concerning the biblical teaching on slavery that can mitigate the force of the above argument with respect to premises 4 and 5. Before fleshing out the details here, let me first say with respect to premise 4 that slavery shows up in different forms often with different connotations. As odd as it may seem initially, while not ideal, it is not immediately clear that we should acknowledge the fact that biblical slavery is "morally reprehensible." To determine this we need to know the details of how the specific form of slavery was understood and practiced. With respect to premise 5, it should be noted that a proper understanding of the biblical texts shows that the authors of Scripture actually sowed the seeds that would ultimately, though subtly, uproot the institution of slavery in the broader cultural context. The primary consideration is to understand how the biblical teaching differs in morally significant ways from American slavery in the antebellum South and the forms of slavery as practiced in the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context.

To begin, we should note that the Hebrew term often translated as "slave" in the Old Testament has a wide semantic field that also can be translated as "servant," "maidservant," or "worker," without overall loss of meaning when one understands the concept to which it refers. The biblical concept here should not be confused with American slavery. As prominent biblical scholar Douglas K. Stuart writes, "When the law was properly followed, persons who were servants/slaves/workers/employees held their positions by reason of a formal contract that related primarily to the job that they had 'signed up' to perform, for a period of time, much as one enlists in the military today." (3) This scenario is much different from those practices that "involved the stealing of people of a different race from their homelands, transporting them in chains to a new land, selling them to an owner who possessed them for life without obligation to any restrictions and who could resell them to someone else," (4) as was the case with American slavery. Although there were practices of this nature in the ancient world, the biblical teaching did not permit this behavior among God's people.

It must be acknowledged, though, that slaves were referred to as being property in the biblical text (cf. Exod. 21: 20-21). As deplorable as it sounds to our modern ears, however, we need to understand the language of people being "bought" and "sold" in light of the institution of slavery in the ANE. A helpful analogy may be found in our modern sports terminology where "players are not actually the property of the team that 'owns' them except as regards the exclusive right to their employment as players of that sport." (5) The fact remains that all persons in these categories were to be protected under God's covenant law.

Furthermore, slaves in Israel were afforded a number of legal and human rights that differed markedly from the perspectives of the Ancient Near East. First, the Mosaic Law forbade kidnapping people in order to sell them as slaves. This was considered a capital offense (Deut. 24:7). Additionally, slaves were not to be oppressed (Deut. 23:15-16; cf. Exod. 22:21). Also, slaves who were wounded by their masters in certain ways were released as compensation for their injuries (Exod. 21:26-27). Moreover, debt slavery was one common form of service in the Old Testament: individuals or families who had a debt and did not have the means to repay, or those who committed some type of criminal offense (Exod. 22:3), could be "self-sold," meaning that they offered their labor power as a means of fulfilling the obligation or making restitution. At the end of the seventh year, all debts of Hebrew slaves were to be cancelled (Deut. 15). Although non-Hebrew slaves were not automatically released during the sabbatical year, there was provision made for their being manumitted or formally emancipated. All of these modifications to a large extent were unparalleled in the ANE context. The New Testament teaching also condemns slave trading (1 Tim. 1:10). The apostle Paul emphasizes that persons' "lower social standing does not diminish [their] value in God's eyes either as human beings or as Christian believers" (6) (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). To be sure, slavery in the Bible is "assumed and tolerated, but it is also moderated." (7) And this provides important insight into understanding these texts.

As harsh as some of the biblical statements appear to be on the surface, we notice that there is still in the Bible an extraordinary countercultural perspective on slaves/servants that provides the seeds of change in the very institution itself when these passages are understood in their context. As John Stott observes concerning this issue:

To permit its continuance (like divorce) "because of the hardness of your hearts" is not the same as to condone it….The nineteenth-century campaigners opposed slavery not on the ground that the Bible's tolerant attitude was a temporary cultural lapse, but on the ground that slavery conflicted with biblical teaching on the dignity of human beings made in the image of God. For the same reason the [Old Testament] law carefully regulated it, making it more humane and providing manumission, while the [New Testament] went further, demanding "justice" for slaves (Colossians 4:1) and declaring that Christian slave and slave-owner are "brothers" (Philemon 16; 1 Timothy 6:2). Thus, principles were laid down in Scripture with which slavery was perceived with steadily increasing clarity to be incompatible. (8)

Though there were improvements in the Bible concerning the status of slaves and the institution of slavery, it is still short of God's ideal. This can be more clearly seen when we place the issue within the broad contours of the biblical plotline of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. (9) The trajectory of the biblical narrative is pointing to God's ideals for human society while taking into account the "limitations of particular human cultures." (10) The biblical teaching concerning this issue "reflects a meeting point between divine/creational ideals and the reality of human sin and evil social structures." (11) What we see in Scripture is a "divine accommodation of God to the realities of fallen human society." (12) As Paul Copan notes:

The New Atheism ignores what Christians most likely affirm–that Mosaic legislation isn't the Bible's moral pinnacle but rather a springboard anticipating further development or, perhaps more accurately, a pointer back to the loftier moral ideals of Genesis 1-2; 12:1-3. These ideals affirm the image of God in each person (regardless of gender, ethnicity or social class)….The moral implications from these foundational texts are monumental, though Israel's history reveals a profound departure from these ideals. (13)

While questions remain, I hope that one is able to see that the biblical teaching on slavery, though not an ideal state of affairs, should not be thought to be morally reprehensible (contra premise 4 above). It should be clear that it is on higher moral ground than American slavery and other forms of slavery as practiced in the surrounding cultural contexts. Furthermore, even though the Bible regulates the practice, it should not be thought that it actually promotes and supports slavery (contra premise 5 above). Instead, it provides the foundations for the dignity of human beings and supplies the principles to ultimately see that God has a much greater vision for human relationships.

Continuing the Voyage

It is in the lack of attention to these broader realities of the biblical context and the conditions surrounding American slavery where I think Harris goes wrong in his accusations. As Christians, we ought not to be intolerant of criticism by others. Perhaps we can be thankful to the attention that Harris and others have raised concerning these issues. When questions about the ethical implications of Scripture are raised, it gives us an opportunity to reflect more deeply on its teaching and the moral wisdom that can be gained from it. The Bible is authoritative for morality insofar as one has appropriately engaged in the task of biblical interpretation and then properly understands how these texts apply in our contemporary context. Admittedly, this is not always easy to do. But by God's grace, we strive to navigate the old waters of biblical ethics through a fog of misunderstanding to see clearly the moral wisdom of Scripture for contemporary Christian living.