John MacArthur on Slavery
Back in 2012, Mega-Pastor John Macarthur said, with a straight face, “It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery because historically there have been abuses. There have been abuses, there have been abuses in marriage, we don’t have an aversion to marriage particularly.” He then goes to say that for some slaves “working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds.”
Watch the two-minute clip for yourself!
Look, if Macarthur is simply wanting to say that we shouldn’t have an aversion to the biblical metaphor of slavery because believers are slaves of Christ and he’s a great master, I can get what he’s saying. I’ve read Dale Martin’s Slavery as Salvation and Murray Harris, Slave of Christ. I get that.
But here’s the problem, Macarthur doesn’t have a sense of moral disgust at the very idea of human slavery as an inherently oppressive and dehumanizing institution. Macarthur believes that slavery is divinely sanctioned and can even be intrinsically good. What Macarthur shockingly does is rehearse the 19th-century pro-slavery arguments made in the antebellum south.
I don’t understand people who think that they need guns to stop them from being slaves of the Queen of England, but slavery is okay if the right people are doing it. It does make one think that the complaint about American evangelicals being white Christian nationalists does have some validity.
No doubt someone will point out to me: But the Bible does mention slavery, it talks about how to take slaves after a battle, how to treat slaves in Israel, and more! And that is true. So we are presented with the question: Is the Bible a pro-slavery book? In Macarthur’s mind, I think, “Yes.”
But I’d retort that while slavery was permissible, it was never ideal, it was perhaps the least worst option in a world characterized by genocidal inter-tribal warfare, without notions of human rights, and without the operation of governments as we have them today. Slavery was not the original condition nor intended as a final condition. In biblical eschatology there is no scenario where one human being owns and controls another human being in the best of all possible worlds.
Yet now we come to the tricky question I give to my students! Is it possible to have an ethical system better than the Bible? Consider this argument:
An ethical system that mandates the explicit abolishment of slavery is better than an ethical system that doesn’t mandate the explicit abolishment of slavery.
The Bible nowhere calls for the explicit abolishment of slavery.
Therefore, it is possible to have a system of ethics better than the Bible.
Now this argument makes some Bible-loving people very uncomfortable, but I think it holds. When it comes to slavery, we need an ethic that is better than the Bible!
Note, I did not say anti-Bible or one that repudiates the Bible. We need to go beyond the Biblical … biblically! That is an important distinction.
One approach for us to consider, at least as a conversation starter, is William Webb’s redemptive-movement hermeneutic. Webb attempts to set up a hermeneutical method by which we can discern which biblical commands remain in force and which biblical commands do not. He does that by observing how biblical texts compare with their broader culture and how they sound within the development of the canon and then applying the developmental pattern to how Christians can now apply biblical commands in their own culture. In which case, Webb plots a way to go beyond the Bible while still following what he sees as biblically defined trajectories.
In the case of slavery, Webb maintains that Scripture does not present a finalized ethic in the area of slavery, but establishes a reformist approach to the institution even when it is treated as normal. Moreover, the NT remarks about slavery logically entail a trajectory for a better ethic that calls for the abolition of slavery. The application we should make is to follow the biblical trajectory and work to abolish modern slavery and slave-like conditions throughout the world.
Know this, the Apostle Paul was not an anti-slave activist, he did not arrive in Rome and set up a non-profit called “Slave Lives Matter.” But if you read Paul’s letters, from Galatians 3:28 to Philemon, he is saying things that I think, when finally digested and entered into the socio-religious bloodstream of a society, will eventually kill slavery. No wonder people like Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century soon noticed how a Christian ethic should naturally mean the abolishment of slavery. Thus, as I’ve argued before, the Apostle Paul was no William Wilberforce, but it is precisely because of Paul and because of the “Christian revolution” as Tom Holland calls it, that we got William Wilberforce.
See further William J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001). On the idea of having an ethic that is “better” than the Bible, Webb has courted much criticism. See Thomas R. Schreiner. “William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: A Review Article,” SBJT 6 (2002) 46–65; Wayne Grudem. “Review Article: Should We Move Beyond the New Testament to a Better Ethic? An Analysis of William J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis,” JETS 47 (2004) 299–346; Benjamin Reaoch, Women, Slaves, and the Gender Debate (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2012).
Great post, Michael. Two things come to mind: firstly the recent comments from Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum - "You will own nothing - but you will be happy". Meaning that if we have a global socialist style world economy where the wealth is shared out more, we will all have all our needs met and will be perfectly happy, while owning nothing ourselves. This, in essence is what Macarthur was describing with the slave owner. The slave would be 'perfectly happy' because "everything was taken care of". Of course, that slave would be no happier than we would be if he had no control over his own day to day life.
The next thing is closer to home. My mother told me how her parents had an aboriginal servant girl in their western Sydney home early last century, who was one of the stolen generation. (Mum was telling this story to me to justify the benefits of taking these aboriginal children from their homes by force and raising them in white Christian families. She was a child at the time but her older relatives had drummed it into her how lucky this girl was.) When this girl reached a marriageable age, she found a young aboriginal man she wanted to marry, and apparently her 'white family' bought her a house to settle in with her husband. I am guessing it was a humble cottage in a poorer part of town, but to my mother's dying day she told me how blessed this girl was to have been taken from her poor family and raised in a modern way (as little more than a slave, mind you) and been given a good start in life. That all the family loved this girl, she was like family. (Who would not love someone who washed and darned and cooked and cleaned all day long for them all for next to no pay?) Apparently after she left service when she had children herself, she always greeted and thanked Mum's family, her 'benefactors' (this made me feel sick - the brainwashing of this poor aboriginal girl). This was the view of that generation - that those of other skin colours should be jolly happy to be 'so well cared for, with not a worry in the world' - what more could a person want? Macarthur is simply reflecting this view, which now, with our thankfully more open eyes, we see as abhorrent.
Being a slave of Christ really isn't the same, though Macarthur appears to equate it as such. Christ is perfect and considerate, and generally tends to leave us some amount of day to day autonomy. It does not feel stifling to serve Christ.
A thoughtful, engaging critique with which I concur. I heartily agree with Webb's discussion of the subject of slavery, and with Michael's assertion, "Thus, as I’ve argued before, the Apostle Paul was no William Wilberforce, but it is precisely because of Paul and because of the “Christian revolution” as Tom Holland calls it, that we got William Wilberforce."