Slavery in the Bible: A Roman Catholic Approach - Suan Sonna
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ต.ค. 2024
- Patreon: / intellectualcatholicism
Podcast: podcasts.apple...
Facebook: / intellectualcatholicism
Suan Sonna is a Baptist convert to Catholicism who is dedicated to curating the best Catholic intellectual content on philosophy, politics, and theology. He is also passionate about engaging people outside of the Catholic tradition on issues relevant to the Church.
01:17:33 - I would have emphasized more clearly that the Church is divinely privileged or guided to access the divine intent of a scriptural passage. It's not that the Church is making the Bible say something it doesn't but that the Church has access to the divine intent which is another layer of scripture that is not detected by human reason or the historical method alone.
I think it would be safe the say the same Divine Spirit which inspired the writers is the same Spirit which guides the Church, and specifically its Bishops with the Pope in a particular way, to understand the intended meaning of the inspired writers: the same Spirit who inspired the writers teaches the Church the meanings behind the writings of the writers gradually.
Leading them to all truth, as was promised by Jesus in sending the Spirit.
This contradicts providentissimus deus
@@syedhasanahmed3514 Please direct me to the relevant paragraph. This is a claim that needs to be defended.
@@intellectualcatholicism Read the part about the use of sound hermeneutics and also the reception of the document by ecclesiastical authors in its time. Also read Scheeben's first volume of his dogmatics manual so that you better understand the manner by which the Church has access to divine intent. It is precisely by a divinely protection of the actual reasoning of the authors that we are guided to truths about divine intent - not the presence of supernaturally infused science. This is quite problematic.
So is the general thesis of discontinuity put forward in this video.
Excellent stream and loved the addition to the conversation. There is alot to think about here and I think it will interesting to see how it eventually hashes out.
Henry Louis Gates's interesting book "The Black Church" includes a discussion of early Catholic interaction with sub-Saharan Africa and then in colonial America, including the future US, is very much worth a look.
I agree with Syed Hasan from the comments as well as Fr. Crean. Slavery is not intrinsically evil, which is the true position of the Magisterium. The definition given by Fr. Crean/Fimister in their book is better as it gets to the essential character of all the different types of arrangements that fall under the same umbrella of the term. Under that umbrella contains just slavery arrangements and unjust arrangements alike.
You said the person paying back their meal at a restaurant by doing dishes should not be considered slavery. You're loading the concept as "sinister". When you load it as sinister then obviously we can't justify it. But that's a very uninteresting definition, not much more than a tautology. It amounts to you saying that entering a relationship where someone is granted the use of another's labor, and it's a sinister relationship, well that's to be considered sinister. Well of course, if it's sinister then it's sinful (i.e. sinister). I think it becomes a no-true-Scotsman.
This issue is fraught because there's a lot of baggage that gets brought to the discussion. The term itself at this point in time conjures up images of whippings and lynching. This isn't essential to the concept even if many people today assume it is.
I think Fr Crean and co's approaches are more persuasive.
Has Fr. Thomas written somewhere about this subject in particular? I know that he wrote a short book on scripture.
@@intellectualcatholicism In the book he coauthered with Dr Fimister was a chapter on slavery.
@@syedhasanahmed3514 what is his argument, if you could summarize?
@@x-popone6817 i dont like to facilitate lack of reading
@@syedhasanahmed3514 This comes off as very snobbish.
This is a much better way to handle it than, frankly, what Trent and Gavin did. We don't need to become liberals to handle this topic, but we don't need to twist ourselves into knots trying to explain why things aren't as bad as they seem.
Suan, your intellectual integrity, moral clarity, and effort to make sense of OT slavery in light of the RCC's official teaching that slavery is an intrinsic evil is admirable. Sadly, sometimes a contradiction is just a contradiction. The same problem holds for OT genocide and the use of trial by ordeal via abortifacient to test a wife suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11-31). These evil laws and their tension with the NT ethic are what led to Marcionism and Gnosticism and today are some of the reasons many become or remain atheists. Obviously you're going to avoid these options as you're a devout Catholic but threading the needle of moral integrity and philosophical-theological consistency in light of unambiguously evil laws is an intellectually and spiritually trying enterprise. The effort to dissolve the cognitive dissonance can be as toxic as maintaining it. Thank you for your intellectual and moral integrity and sharing your continuing journey. It's refreshing.
You would do better to stick to the topic than presume that the a horrific and bloody war was fought specifically to end slavery and that it was the only or most prudent way to end slavery in America. Very debatable.
Given how similar the OT law is to surrounding Mesopotamian codes, I don't think you can say God is the author of the laws so much as a modifier of pre-existing law.
I really hope this covers Dum Diversas
Not sure why we are assuming Paul did not have abolition of coercive brutal chattel slavery as an ideal in mind at all in Gal and esp Philemon. Sure, the text doesn't explicitly go there and we know the cultural and social norms of his time and place, but none of that tells us what Paul really had in mind but did not put down in writing.
Suan, I can't say that there's one solution to these difficult passages on the topic of slavery (as well as other difficult passages in the Bible). There are still issues with your approach that frankly contradict the doctrine of inerrancy and a host of other issues as well.
1. Some of your objections to how the text approaches slavery are problematic. You're basically saying that the Bible has evil passages. How does this square off with the doctrine of inerrancy? All you're doing is basically giving Protestants (especially Calvinists) more ammunition to argue against the Catholic Church that they have a low view of scripture or hate scripture or something similar. I don't understand why you would take what the atheists say carte blanche. It's not like Kipp and Bowen think that slavery is the only problematic passage. What will you do when Bowen and Davis think that St. Paul's telling women to be silent is sexist
2. Why even think that Philemon does better than the OT? Bowen has gone through that passage and he's not convinced (citing other NT scholars to back his arguments). Will you follow him there? Why didn't Jesus even condemn the whole concept In the NT? Nothing stopped him from saying that slavery is evil. I see an argument can be made that if Jesus commented on slavery, then maybe slavery would have been ended much earlier rather than taking centuries to abolish it.
Your first point about Protestants explains well the general American ethos of early America
Shouldn't a starting point be what Scripture says about slavery and most relevant passages, then from this definition move forward rather than a definition from the outside??
No.
That's assuming a Protestant perspective on the scriptures.
I don't think there is a definition of slave in the Bible that is distinct from the definition used historically.
A critic may argue that this is just modernism kicking in since the condemnations are so late. Also, this is a very ecclesial positivist approach. Also, this solution wouldn't be available for centuries which is a bit awkward. Another problem might be whether this teleological reading could be applied to other moral cases by the modernists such as Gay Marriage, even if not just arguing about whether Gay marriage is a sin, but whether it could be potentially be something that is legally tolerable in the future by some meta narrative. I think your case needs to show a clearer development, it looks more like static changes. Finally, I don't think your solution ultimately is convincing as opposed to the the other solutions. Good luck, hard topic, stay 💪
Regarding Pope Gregory XVI's use of the phrase "free those who merit it," I wonder if you are not taking into consideration how slavery can engender vices in slaves (sloth, malice/resentment, etc.) that lead to crime/violence and the tricky prudential individual judgements involved at that time in letting loose into society slaves hardened in vice by slavery.