Does the Bible Condone Slavery? Abraham Booth, the Slave Trade, and the Wrong Side of History

By Justin Dillehay

Does the Bible condone slavery? In the current heat of the sexual revolution, you will often hear people claim that it does.

The argument runs something like this: "The Bible is being used today to condemn certain sexual orientations just as it was once to used to condone slavery. And just as those who once used the Bible to condone slavery were on the wrong side of history, so also those who now use the Bible to condone homophobia are also on the wrong side of history."

With regard to the argument that 'Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery were on the wrong side of history,' all I can say is 'I agree.' But I agree because the Bible's eschatology (i.e. view of the future) clearly proclaims that in God's eternal kingdom there will be no slavery, since "enslavers" will be excluded from it (1 Tim. 1:10; see also Rev. 18:13). (Interestingly enough, the Bible's eschatology also proclaims that in God's eternal kingdom there will be no marriage (Luke 20:34-26), except for Christ's marriage to his bride (Rev. 19:6-8), which was of course the archetype on which human marriage was based from the beginning (Eph. 5:22-33).)

In short, I agree that Christians who argued for slavery by using the Bible were 'on the wrong side of history." But that's because I hold to the Bible's eschatology, not the sexual revolution's eschatology (which can seem to give no justification for why 'history' is heading toward some sexual utopia aside from the fact that that's where they want it to go).

But that still leaves the sad admission that many Christians in the past did use the Bible to justify slavery. And that still leaves the question, "Were those Christians right to interpret Scripture as they did?" This question is often ignored, or else buried under the postmodern assumption that all interpretations are created equal, or that disagreement about a text's meaning could only stem from obscurity on the part of the text itself (rather than from moral blindness on the part of its readers).

But notice also how I said that many Christians used the Bible to justify slavery, not all Christians. Also frequently overlooked in this discussion is the fact that many Christians opposed slavery, and were in the vanguard of the abolitionist movement. Kevin DeYoung's recent post (here) provides a helpful snapshot of some of the Christians who opposed slavery from very early on.

I'd like to introduce you to an example of a biblical case against the slave trade that DeYoung didn't mention. It comes from the pen of Abraham Booth.

Abraham Booth's Biblical Case Against the Slave Trade

Abraham Booth

Abraham Booth (1734-1806) was an English Baptist pastor. In 1792, he preached and published a sermon against slavery entitled "Commerce in the Human Species, and the Enslaving of Innocent Persons Inimical to the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ."

The title says it all.

Booth begins his case from Exodus 21:16 and 1 Tim. 1:9-10, which forbid "man stealing" upon penalty of death. He then proceeds to discuss the Golden Rule and other biblical principles.

Throughout the sermon, Booth responds to all the allegedly biblical justifications for chattel slavery made from both testaments, and concludes: 1) that laws such as Exodus 21:16 and 1 Tim. 1:10 are clearly moral in nature, and are simply a reflection of the natural law (i.e. "the law of nature") that God has written on the heart of all human beings 2) that some laws concerning slavery in the Old Testament belonged to Israel in particular as a civil state and as such expired with the Old Covenant, and therefore do not apply to modern states like Great Britain (see the 1689 Baptist Confession, 19:4) 3) that even if such OT laws did apply to Great Britain, they would still not justify the manner in which the Atlantic slave trade was being carried out 4) that the slave trade stands in clear violation of the Golden Rule and the 2nd great commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 5) that the slave trade is a terrible hindrance to the acceptance of the gospel among the nations.

The sermon runs about 35 pages, and can be read online at the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/stream/worksabrahamboo01bootgoog#page/n188/mode/2up. I hope you'll bookmark it and take time to read it in the future, especially if you find my thumbnail sketch of his points unconvincing.

In the meantime, having given you Booth's bullet points, let me give you some excerpts that I found helpful. I have taken the liberty of breaking up some of Booth's long sentences and dividing his paragraphs to make them more readable.

In this first excerpt, Booth argues both from the natural law and from the Golden Rule. Don't miss his powerful illustration of what the slave trade would look like if it were turned on the British themselves.

Is it lawful for the English...to buy and enslave the Africans? [And] whence did they, rather than those very Africans, acquire that dreadful right? I say dreadful right. For the idea of any individual, or any people, possessing the authority to treat the innocent as thought they were [wickedly] guilty, is hateful, and shocking to reason, to conscience, and to common sense...

Must the right under consideration [then] be inferred from what is called the law of nature? But that is the same in Africa as it is in Europe. Entirely the same all over the globe. According to this law, be the state of the innocent Negro ever so obscure, his poverty ever so great, his manners ever so rude, or his mental capacities ever so contracted, he has an equal claim of personal liberty with any an upon the earth. For the rights of humanity being common to the whole of our species, are the same in every part of the world.

It follows, therefore, that if the lawfulness of purchasing innocent persons...exists among men, it must be a common right, and equally possessed by all nations...It would consequently be quite as...humane for the Africans, laden with produce of their own country, annually to visit our English ports, as we do theirs, and for similar purposes. Yes, they might, with equal power, and with equal justice...fit out two hundred ships for the port of London, or Bristol, and of Liverpool, ships adapted to the stowage of men, and furnished with a frightful apparatus to render the confinement of Britons completely miserable, as well as perfectly secure. 

When...this man-trading fleet arrived, if cargoes of men, women, and children were not prepared, the officers belonging to each vessel might practice all their arts, to excite a spirit of covetousness and of cruelty in our governors and fellow-subjects; in order that by an armed force, the peaceable inhabitants of whole villages might be captured. That in our courts of justice, innocent persons, for the advantage of their judges, might be convicted. That private individuals might kidnap whomsoever they could, and thought salable. That by all these infamous means the ship might be freighted...with forty-thousand Britons. [And] finally, that all who survive their miserable confinement while on board might be taken to the best market for human species; exposed, in the most indecent manner to public sale; handled and examined like so many head of cattle by their purchasers; consigned over with their unborn posterity to the most abject and cruel slavery, from generation to generation.

And all for--what? Here let humanity blush, let mercy weep, and let justice be roused into indignation: but let not Britons forget that this is a picture, in miniature, of their own behavior toward the Africans.

(202-204)

Using the same kind of arguments that C.S. Lewis would later use in Book 1 of his classic Mere Christianity, Booth also argues that however much men may pretend that slavery is moral, they would instantly recognize its wickedness if they were on the receiving end of it:

In either of these cases...reason and conscience, the common sentiments and feelings of mankind will all unite, if not debauched by avarice or blunted by habit, in approving this law of Jehovah as just: "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." [Exodus 21:16] Nor is there a man on earth, not even those who are grown hoary [i.e. old and gray] in the trade of man stealing...that would not execrate the character of him to whose power or subtlety he had fallen a victim for similar purposes, and that would pronounce him worthy of death. (189)

Finally, Booth responds to the objection that the New Testament nowhere explicitly condemns slavery, or encourages slaves to revolt. He makes a couple of insightful parallels that I had never thought of before.

It may perhaps be objected, "Personal slavery...though much practiced in apostolic times, is nowhere expressly condemned in the New Testament. Nay, Christian slaves are exhorted to live in peaceable subjection to their own masters." To this it may be replied, "Nor was the sanguinary despotism of Nero expressly condemned; but the disciples of Christ were commanded to behave peaceably under his government. The sports of the gladiator, authorized by the Roman laws, were extremely bloody and wicked; yet they are nowhere expressly condemned by the apostles. Numerous are the species of dishonesty and theft, which are so common among us, and perhaps were so among people in those times. which nevertheless, are not expressly forbidden in the NT."

But as all these things are breaches of moral duty; and as they are all inconsistent with that regard which is due to our neighbor's happiness; it is quite sufficient that they are implicitly and strongly forbidden by general moral principles...Any man of common sense, whose mind is not biased by self-interest, may easily infer from the general principles, commands, and prohibitions of Christianity, that stealing an innocent man must be the worst species of rapine, that buying such a person is justifying the robbery, and that actually enslaving him gives a sanction to those infamous deeds by putting a finishing hand to the work of injustice. Besides, as an express prohibition of slavery might have might have excited a more violent opposition to the Christian cause than almost anything with which it had to conflict...(213-214)

Booth's language is dated, but his arguments are still relevant. His short treatise is just one among many like it. If you were inclined to answer our opening question with a yes, I hope this post has given you pause. And if you are 'almost persuaded' to agree with the argument of this post, then I hope you will go read all 35 pages of Booth's sermon. Better yet, read the Bible with an open heart, and be not almost, but altogether persuaded that those Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery were not only on the wrong side of history, but also on the wrong side of Scripture.

Sin: To Conceal or to Confess?

By Justin Dillehay

“The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” (Proverbs 28:1 ESV)

“Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”  (Prov. 28:13, NIV)

Rarely do I feel worse than when I'm trying to conceal some sin. Not prospering. That’s an accurate way to describe it. I would also describe it as a tiring, anxiety-inducing state of paranoia.

Which is why the Wisdom writer notes a few verses earlier, “The wicked flee when no one pursues.” (Prov. 28:1). Hiding sin requires you to think about your sin constantly, which makes you think that everyone else must be thinking about your sin as much as you are. Off-handed, unrelated comments make you think that you’ve been found out. “How did they know what I was trying to hide?!”  You take off running, leaving the poor ignorant person wondering “What’s with her? Did I say something wrong?”

The best remedy I have found is that described in the second half of verse 13: “but the one who confesses and renounces [these concealed sins] finds mercy.” Confessing my sins means dragging them out of the darkness and into the light—the one place they hate to be. My hidden sins are like vampires or Gremlins; when I bring them into the light they scream and melt. Needless to say, this requires humility, because in my pride I would rather no one know how bad a sinner I still am. But it also requires courage.

And in the gospel I find both. Knowing that my sins were so vile that Christ had to be tortured to wash them away makes me humble. Knowing that “if I confess my sins, he is faithful and just to forgive me my sins and cleans me from all unrighteousness” gives me courage (1 John 1:9). After all, one of the main reasons why we stay in the darkness and refuse to come to the light (aside from loving our sins and not wishing to give them up) is that we’re afraid that God will blast us to much-deserved smithereens as soon we step into the light with our sins exposed. The gospel is meant to destroy this fear.

Because of what Christ has done through his cross and resurrection, God can now forgive us our sins without compromising his justice (Rom. 3:25-26). Indeed, not only is God not unjust to forgive those who confess their sins, he is positively just to do so (1 John 1:9). This is why anyone who comes to God through Jesus can lay aside timidity and come with confidence (Heb. 4:16).

Little wonder verse 1 ends like it does. “The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1 ESV).

Why is the Sabbath no longer on Saturday?

by Justin Dillehay

My wife Tilly ministers to a group of ladies at a local jail. On occasion, she brings home questions from the ladies for me to write an answer to. This was one of those.

Dear friend,

You asked:

"Q: Why is the Sabbath day no longer on Saturday and we go to church on Sunday?"

A: This is not an easy question to answer, and it’s one that good Christian people disagree on. Indeed, it’s a question that I have changed my own views on through the years.

If you don’t mind, let me break this question down into two separate questions.

Q:1—Why do we go to church on Sundays? That is, why is Sunday “The Lord’s Day”?

Q:2—Is Sunday the New Testament version of the Old Testament Sabbath? Or are they totally unrelated?

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Q:1—Why do we go to church on Sundays? That is, why is Sunday “The Lord’s Day”? 

From the earliest recorded days of the church, Christians have gathered for worship on the first day of the week, known as Sunday.

This practice goes back to the New Testament itself. In Acts 20:5-7, we find the church in Troas gathering one the first day of the week to break bread. In 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, Paul is speaking about a collection of money is taking up for poor Christians, and how he plans to stop through Corinth on his way to Jerusalem to collect from them. So he tells them,

“Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.”

Why collect on the first day of the week? The most reasonable answer seems to be the same as what we read in Acts 20, “Because that’s when the church was gathered together.” And notice, it wasn’t just the Corinthians who met on the first day of the week—Paul had directed the churches of Galatia to do the same thing.

And finally, in Revelation 1:9-10, the Apostle John says this: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.” Does John explicitly tell us that the “Lord’s Day” was the first day of the week? No. But there are really no other live options for what he means by that phrase.

1. Since John didn't specify what day it was, he must have expected his readers to know which day he was talking about. Apparently the phrase “the Lord’s Day” was common by the time John wrote Revelation (c. 95 A.D). 
2. He must have been referring to a specific day. To say that John simply meant that ‘every day is the Lord’s Day’ would defeat the purpose, since his goal was to inform his readers of when he received the vision.
3. The only other option besides Sunday would be Saturday, the Old Testament Jewish Sabbath day. But this can’t be what John means, since he was writing to Gentiles, and the New Testament is clear that Gentile Christians were not obligated to keep the Jewish Sabbath. See Colossians 2:16-17. Plus, John is writing to churches in Asia Minor (Rev 1:4; 2-3) which just so happens to be where Galatia and Troas are located. Recall that Galatia is a place where Paul says the churches kept the first day of the week in 1 Cor. 16:1-2. And Troas is the same area that Paul was in Acts 20:5-7 where the church met on the first day of the week.

So I conclude that when John spoke of the “Lord’s Day,” he had to have been speaking of the first day of the week, Sunday.

But here’s the question: Why the first day of the week? Why not the third or fourth or fifth day? What event could be so significant that the apostles all of a sudden felt free to break with over a millennium of Old Testament practice and begin worshiping on the first day of the week instead of the seventh? (No small change for the apostles—who were all God-fearing Jews who held to the authority of the Old Testament.) What event could have been so significant? Does the New Testament offer us any clues?

The answer is clearly “Yes, it does.” Arguably the most significant event in history of the world was the resurrection of Jesus. And all four gospels record the fact that Christ rose from the dead “on the first day of the week.” Not many such small details get mentioned in all four Gospels. But this one does. Furthermore, when the gospel writers wrote that Jesus rose on the “first day of the week,” they used a very unusual wording in Greek. It’s an unusual wording that occurs in only two other places outside the four Gospels.

Care to take a guess at what those two places are? If you guessed Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2, the two passages already mentioned which describe Christians as meeting on the first day of the week, then you'd be right.

So the evidence is very strong that the reason the NT church began meeting on the first day of the week was because this was the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Here’s how a Christian named Justin Martyr put it in about 150 A.D., about 60 years after the New Testament was finished.

“But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”

Q:2—Is Sunday the New Testament version of the Old Testament Sabbath? Or are they totally unrelated?

With regard to Q:1, essentially the entire church throughout history would agree with my answer. When it comes to this next question, however, there is more disagreement. My own view is not as popular today as it once was.

But my answer to this second question would be “Yes, the Sunday Lord’s Day is the New Testament version of the Old Testament Sabbath.” Yes, they are different in some ways, but they are also similar in obvious ways. The differences can be accounted for by the fact that Jesus has come and transformed the day for his people.

Let me point out how the two are different, and then how they are similar.

How they’re different:

The most obvious difference is that they fall on different days of the week—the first instead of the seventh.

But there’s more. The OT Sabbath was stricter—you could be stoned to death for breaking it. Whereas there seems to be nothing like that for the NT Lord’s Day. Plus, the reason you could be stoned for breaking the OT Sabbath is because OT Israel was a political nation with civil laws. But the NT Church is a spiritual nation with no land of its own and no civil government enforcing its Sabbath laws. Christians live as pilgrims in every nation on earth, and we wait for Jesus to return and make the kingdoms of this world his own.

Also, the OT Sabbath was a shadow pointing forward to Jesus (Colossians 2:16-17). Whereas the NT Lord’s Day is a fulfillment that looks back at Christ’s finished work, and points forward to our eternal rest in the new heavens and new earth.

How they’re similar:

But we shouldn't overlook how much these two days have in common.

1) They’re both one day in seven.

2) They’re both “the Lord’s Day” in a special sense. The fact that every day belongs to the Lord in one sense doesn't mean that he can’t sanctify one day in a special sense. Think of these parallel cases: the fact that we sometimes glorify God by fasting doesn't denigrate food—we also glorify God by eating with thankful hearts. The fact that we frequently dedicate time in secret to shut the closet door and pray doesn't denigrate sporadic prayer throughout the day—we are also to pray without ceasing. The fact that we glorify God by resting one day a week doesn't denigrate work—we also glorify God by laboring for the other six days. The fact that we call one special meal “The Lord’s Supper” doesn't denigrate all other meals—whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).

And the fact that God calls Sunday “the Lord’s Day” doesn't denigrate all other days—we worship God every day of the week. But God knows our frame; he’s a practical God. And he doesn't lay on his church the burden of gathering together every day. To do this would severely disrupt creation ordinances like raising your family and working for a living. So he graciously gives us one day to gather on and worship him corporately and to mark the dawning of the new creation in the resurrection of Christ.

3) They both commemorate creation. The OT Sabbath commemorates the old creation, which we read about in Genesis 1, and the NT Lord’s Day commemorates the new creation, which began with the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week. But what does Jesus’ resurrection have to do with the new creation, you might ask? Here’s what I mean: God’s raising of Jesus is simply the beginning of God’s raising and restoring of all things, including God’s people and God’s world (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-28; Romans 8:18-25).

4) They both commemorate redemption. According the Deuteronomy 5:15, the OT Sabbath, besides pointing back to creation, also pointed to Israel’s redemption from slavery in Egypt. The NT Lord’s Day points to our redemption from sin, when Christ was “raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

The fact that we still have one day in seven as “the Lord’s Day” for rest and worship in the NT points to the ‘already/not yet’ character of our redemption during the time between the first and second comings of Jesus. As Christians, in one sense we have already “entered into rest.” Jesus is our rest; he says “Come to me, all that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11). And yet, in another sense, we have not yet entered fully into our rest, because Jesus has not yet returned. There still remains an eternal Sabbath rest for God’s people (Hebrews 3-4). And one day, when he appears, even the Lord’s Day will pass away.

In short, the transformation of the OT Sabbath into the NT Lord’s Day is all about Jesus—last Adam, Lord of the Sabbath, and firstborn from the dead. So as you worship and rest this Sunday, lift up your eyes to the risen Christ, from whom your rest comes.

Abortion is easier to get in TN than a tatoo

By Tilly Dillehay

If you walk into a dentist office in Tennessee to have a cavity filled, the dentist is required by law to acquire informed consent from you. This means that by law, she has to go over some basic information.

She’ll have to tell you the nature of the procedure, explain reasonable alternatives to the proposed intervention, and the relevant risks, benefits, and uncertainties related to each alternative. She’ll have to assess your understanding, and get a verbal or written acceptance of the intervention from you.

This is just Basic Medical Care 101. In the medical world, patients are supposed to know what happens to them in a doctor’s office. They’re supposed to be educated before they consent to let a doctor operate on them.

This is why it comes as such a surprise to me that when a woman walks into an abortion facility in Tennessee to terminate a pregnancy, she may not get any of that. In fact, legally, she doesn’t have to be told anything about anything before they lay her down and get to work.

Here’s something even more shocking: She has no way of knowing anything about the basic health and safety standards of a facility she walks into. We live in a state where a tattoo artist or veterinarian has to undergo more rigorous certification and facility inspection than an abortion provider.

That’s right. Only half of the abortion clinics in this state are overseen, licensed, or inspected by ANY THIRD PARTY. The Department of Health, though perfectly willing to regulate these facilities as it does almost every other medically-related field, is legally unable to do so.

None of the facilitates are required to undergo inspection; some voluntarily submit to it. Many of those, once inspected, have routinely failed health codes (a recent inspection of a Knoxville facility rendered 57 pages of deficiencies, including uncertified medical personnel and dirty medical equipment).

Think about that.

Let’s just go back and think, for one second, about what is happening in the process of an abortion. A woman’s body is invaded, either by drug or by serious surgical procedure. And I do mean serious: in one version of the abortion procedures legally conducted in Tennessee, the abortionist reaches in with a foreign object, crushes the skull of the fetus, suctions body parts out of a living, breathing woman, and then re-assembles them to make sure nothing was left inside. This is done under local or general anesthesia. In other cases, he may simply use a suction technique, a saline injection, or an abortive pill, which results in a forced miscarriage, which may or may not be followed by a D&C.

I’m attempting—excuse me—to lay aside for a moment the moral outrage that I feel when I consider that Planned Parenthood (which is legally classified as a non-profit organization) reported a profit (revenue over expenditure) of $58.2 million for 2012-2013, and that PP performed 3,643,988 abortions between 2000 and 2012, according to their own published reports.

Laying aside the stomach-turning fact that this organization literally profits off of the bodies of women and their children, and is supported (to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year) by both federal and state government… just putting that aside for a moment, let us examine this little troubling thing about Tennessee and the total lack of medical accountability that our abortionists are currently held to.

PP is responsible for something else, as well. They’re responsible for making Tennessee into an abortion destination. They’re responsible for the fact that abortionists in our state are free to do business without oversight and without structure, peddling death with the ease and convenience of a vending machine.

I’m biased, obviously. Clearly I’m biased, because I consider abortion itself to be morally reprehensible, a machine that has run away with the sane hearts and minds of the American people.

But even if I agree to set aside argument about the ethics of abortion, we should all be able to agree on one thing: it’s not good for women to be treated this way. This is an entire branch of the “medical” industry in our state we're talking about. Women have the right to know exactly what’s happening to them and their unborn child, and to know that the person making it happen is being overseen by some regulating entity.

They also have the right to know that ten years ago, Nashville’s #1 abortion provider (PP, located downtown) went to court to prove that they no longer had to be inspected and licensed by the TN Department of Health. (They won, and this is why the Dept. of Health currently has its hands tied.)

There is now no routine inspection or licensure process in abortion facilities in Tennessee. There is no informed consent, no waiting period, no required ultrasounds. Nothing, in fact, that might give a girl reasonable hope that her abortion experience will be as safe and well informed as her trip to the tattoo parlor.

The number of abortions in Tennessee has risen dramatically in the last fourteen years, and one in four of the women who get abortions here each year are coming from out of state, because Tennessee offers unregulated abortion on demand, unlike any other state in the Southeast region of the U.S.

That's right. Tennessee: the land of good country music, good craft beer, and in-n-out abortion day
trips.

How did this happen? Tennessee hasn’t always been this way. The people of Tennessee, through the voices of their elected representatives, have spent years placing commonsense protections into the structure of our society for women considering abortion.

Here’s how it happened. In 2000, all of those protections were overturned, in one day, by just a handful of people.

Because of one TN Supreme Court ruling in 2000, in a case titled “Planned Parenthood of Middle Tennessee V. Sundquist,” all of the laws on the books regarding abortion—and any future ones attempted—were rendered unenforceable.

We just had an election yesterday. In November of this year, there will be another election. On the ballot, you’ll see something called Amendment 1. Amendment 1 does only one thing: it nullifies that ruling of fourteen years ago, and allows our common sense protections to do what they were designed to do.

It doesn’t make abortion illegal (although some of us may wish it did). It doesn’t actually write any abortion-specific laws at all; only our elected officials can do that. It simply states, explicitly, that people of Tennessee have the right to place safeguards around women considering abortion.

This is why I, and others you may talk to, will ask you to do the following: vote Yes on Amendment 1 in November. For more information, visit www.yesonone.org.

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