The Father of the Faith, Abraham, was a slave owner! All the Patriarchs of the Bible were slave owners! If you condemn slavery, you condemn Abraham. 

You make the point of "chattel" slavery. Chattel means, "movable property"; it applies to furniture, automobiles, and to animals. So you are making a false distinction. Abraham had chattel slaves. 

Israelite law distinguished between two types of slavery both legal and moral, chattel slavery as in Lev. 25 and indentured servitude. Foreigners were held in chattel slavery. No Hebrew could be held in chattel slavery but they could be held in indentured servitude for only seven years, or until the Year of Jubilee when all indentured servants were released. 

The Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of Christian morality. Slaves are mentioned in the last of the Ten commandments. If slavery is wrong, then the Ten Commandments are wrong in their protection of the institution. The mention of slavery in the Ten Commandments is Chattel Slavery. 

Actually American Chattel Slavery was quite good because it produced leisure and created an elite, the natural aristocracy and it provided wealth that made this country strong. Slavery afforded George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leisure to conduct the American Revolution. If Washington and Jefferson and others had to personnally work the fields, they would have been too tired to revolt. The wealth provided by slavery meant arms and munitions could be bought. The war of 1812 fought in New Orleans to a winning conclusion for Americans, was, one can surmise, possible because of the wealth and leisure created by slavery.  Also because America was practically new to agriculture, land had to be cleared and planted. That was only possible thru the introduction of slavery. Slavery provided the new country with wealth to break away from Britain and leisure for the elite to write and read. 

And the slavery mentioned by the Church canon above is chattel slavery. Rome always had chattel slavery and Jesus Christ and the Apostles are silent about it. 

Slavery has its abuses like every other thing humans are involved in. Abuses don't logically go into the intrinsic nature of a thing. The Intrinsic nature of slavery is a good. There are abuses in the Family but abuses don't make the Family "absolutely wicked", like Karl Marx wanted. Slavery is a familial institution. Most of the slave owners in the South were one or two for a small farmer. It was at the large plantations, the minority of slave owners that there was much more abuse. It is the abuses that are wicked, not the institution. 


 

Natural Law reasoning, on which Catholic morality is based, holds that forced labour in principle licit as a form of punishment. Criminals and more often prisoners taken in war were made slaves on this basis. Only to this extent can slavery by considered legitimate on Catholic grounds (and even there most would argue that there are strong prudential reasons why it would be immoral in practice).

(I do not endorse this)

Clinias wrote:

Actually American Chattel Slavery was quite good because it produced leisure and created an elite, the natural aristocracy and it provided wealth that made this country strong. Slavery afforded George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leisure to conduct the American Revolution. If Washington and Jefferson and others had to personnally work the fields, they would have been too tired to revolt. The wealth provided by slavery meant arms and munitions could be bought. The war of 1812 fought in New Orleans to a winning conclusion for Americans, was, one can surmise, possible because of the wealth and leisure created by slavery.  Also because America was practically new to agriculture, land had to be cleared and planted. That was only possible thru the introduction of slavery. Slavery provided the new country with wealth to break away from Britain and leisure for the elite to write and read. 

If you are arguing on consequentialist grounds shouldn't you accept that it was bad given that America was the result of insolent tax-evading Free-masons betraying their lawful king?
 

Last edited by DanielCC (3/12/2018 1:34 pm)

Isaiah 55:8-9 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.

This verse is foundational and fundamental to all theology and scriptural interpretations. This verse speaks to many posts concerning biblical topics including the ones on nations. 

God is very different from you and me. It seems like some people are creating God in their image. God conforms to them. That God thinks like them. ...But that is not what that verse says. 

What is Scripture?  Scripture is God's ways and thoughts. It is God who doesn't condemn slavery. Would not God have His Wisdom?  Surely God knows better, right? Reading some of the posts here, it seems that God changes His spots and God conforms to them. And another thing they don't understand is  the real, original Natural Law. Aristotle speaks on one of the laws. Nature does things incrementally. Does not God follow His own Law?  The unfolding of God just did not begin in the New Testament and ends there. The New Testament is the capstone, not the whole ball of wax. 

Greg writes that slavery conflicts "with the ethics of the New Testament". Well, the New Testament is NOT the whole enchilada!  Jesus said, "Man lives by EVERY word that proceeds out of the mouth of God".  Not just the New Testament! The Old Testament matters just as much!  Jesus Christ is the walkin', talkin' Old Testament. Almost everything Jesus said is in the Old Testament! Why would Jesus countermand Himself?  He doesn't. The Old Testament is God's way, God's thoughts---Not yours. Again, this is the Heresy of Sola Gospel. St. Paul even said ALL scripture is there for teaching, reproof and correction! It is NOT sola new testamento.

Then DanielCC writes Catholic morality is based on Natural Law reasoning!  WTF?! NOOOOOOOO. Catholic morality is FIRST based IN Scripture! There are Protestants on this forum and they must be giggling amongst themselves in sheer delight because right there is a good raison d' etre for Protestants on leaving the Catholic Church---the RC's total disregard for scripture!  I mean really... and you think you are going to have ecumenism when Catholic morality is NOT even connected to Scripture!  The Prots are rolling their eyes in disbelief!  I join them. The Prots are laughing themselves silly over that one. Your rationalizations in your so-called Natural Moral Law theory does NOT countermand Scripture. No matter how Abraham got his slaves---Abraham is still a righteous man, the Father of the Faith. 

And I am glad that someone brought this up. Miguel said that slavery was "denounced by the Church in numerous bulls at the time."  Yeh, and that brings up Michael Hoffman's newest research The Occult Renaissance, Church of Rome. https://truthfulhistory.blogspot.com/2017/05/new-book-occult-renaissance-church-of.html
From what I gather from the many posts here and my own personal research into the Renaissance, I have come to an understanding of what is going on. It seems many here are really Humanists with the veneer of Christianity, Christianity in name only. Humanism started in the Renaissance. Etzulnik points the way when he singled out Pico Giovanni della Mirondola in another thread on this forum. Humanism is the religion of the Roman Catholic Church. Every thing in the RC Church is suspect. The denouncing of Scripture, especially the OT, is a sign of Humanism. That "Slavery is a moral evil" is surely a Humanistic statement. 

God's Ways are different from ours. Are we dictating to God, or are we supposed to be listening to God thru the Scriptures?

The whole contention of the reparations act at the Catholic University of Georgetown is non-existent. Slavery, no matter what, Chattel, American, or otherwise is NOT morally wrong. What is Morally wrong, what is unethical, is to lie about what is morally wrong---to say that "Slavery is Morally Wrong" is morally wrong. God's Ways are NOT our ways. 

Clinias wrote:

Greg writes that slavery conflicts "with the ethics of the New Testament". Well, the New Testament is NOT the whole enchilada!

You're overthinking things. The problem is that you are not loving your neighbor when you are whipping him, when you are selling his children to another slaver, when you extract as much labor from him as you can without killing him, or when you make it a crime to teach him how to read.

Clinias wrote:

The whole contention of the reparations act at the Catholic University of Georgetown is non-existent. Slavery, no matter what, Chattel, American, or otherwise is NOT morally wrong. What is Morally wrong, what is unethical, is to lie about what is morally wrong---to say that "Slavery is Morally Wrong" is morally wrong. God's Ways are NOT our ways. 

Good thread topics: What makes slavery wrong when it is wrong? Are reparations today an appropriate response to America's history of slavery?
Bad thread topics: "Slavery, no matter what, Chattel, American, or otherwise is NOT morally wrong."

This is a philosophy forum. We very rarely lock threads. But we are not going to be a forum which hosts discussions of this sort of depravity.