Gregory of Nyssa on Abolishing Slavery

I was having one of those annoying twitter encounters where someone was saying that the Nicene Creed represents imperial Christianity and it has a lack of concern for liberation theology. I hastened to point out that the majority of fourth-century bishops who wrote and defended the creed would strike us as socialist, pacifists in terms of their attitudes to wealth and violence. Gregory of Nyssa is case in point. An earnest pro-Nicene theologian who called for the abolishment of slavery.

Speaking of Gregory, I just found a terrific essay by Kimberly Flint-Hamilton on “Gregory of Nyssa and Cultural Oppression".

Gregory vigorously attacked slavery as an institution. In his homily, he lays out a complex philosophical argument based on the premise that masters and slaves are equal in the eyes of God. This premise was already generally accepted by Christians. Both slaves and masters were understood by Christian intellectuals to have the same human nature. Gregory, however, follows the argument farther than most of his contemporary intellectuals did. If slaves and masters are both equally human, then the practice of one human enslaving another is immoral in the eyes of God.

“You condemn a person to slavery whose nature is free and independent, and you make laws opposed to God and contrary to His natural law. For you have subjected one who was made precisely to be lord of the earth, and whom the Creator intended to be a ruler, to the yoke of slavery, in resistance to and rejection of His divine precept. … How is it that you disregard the animals which have been subjected to you as slaves under your hand, and that you should act against a free nature, bringing down one who is of the same nature of yourself, to the level of four-footed beasts or inferior creatures … ?”

Well worth the read if you have the time!