Levitical Laws, Slavery, and Sexual Prohibitions

Yesterday, I began a conversation based on a question from an atheist concerning a passage in Leviticus that seems to condone slavery. You can read the first post here, but basically he asked why Christians believe that slavery is immoral if:

1. It has biblical support, such a Leviticus 25:44-46
2. It is used as a model by the New Testament writers as a way to express allegiance to Christ.

In yesterday's post, I discussed how the NT writers were referring to a different type of slavery than what one might immediately come to mind, such as that practiced in the Antebellum South. I also noted that Levitical laws performed three different functions (distinguishing Israel from pagan nations, demonstrating allegiance to Yahweh, and laws governing social interactions). However, since these laws are all intertwined, a fair question would be "isn't the distinction arbitrary?" How does one know whether a law still holds for Christians, such as the prohibition against homosexuality in Leviticus 18:22 versus the longer slavery passage just a few chapters later?

How Leviticus Applies to Christians

The short answer to the question above is simple. Christian theology teaches that none of the Levitical laws are binding on Christians today. Paul is very clear that a Christian is no longer governed by the Old Testament laws (Gal. 3:15-29, Rom. 6:12). In fact, Paul makes a big deal in Galatians that the law was something of a schoolmaster, used to teach people about their sinfulness: "Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor (Gal 3:24-25)."

Given that we are not to abide by the Levitical laws, does that mean that they are worthless to us? Here would be the longer answer. As a teacher, the Levitical laws can help illuminate certain actions that God considers sinful. For example, Leviticus 18 uses the strongest possible language when forbidding adultery (v. 20), child sacrifice (v. 21), homosexual relations (v. 21) and bestiality (v.22). Interestingly, intercourse with a menstruating woman is the only prohibition not specifically carrying its own term of condemnation.

Leviticus 18 is primarily a guide of differentiation. Verses 24 through 26 state "Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. 25 For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the alien who sojourns among you." The Canaanites were using all of these practices and many times in ritual worship.1 However, designating such practices as "abomination," "defilement," and "perversion" distinguish these acts as wrong intrinsically.

When we look at Leviticus 25, though, the focus is not one of differentiation, but of dealing with laws of land ownership and how to treat the poor. Slaves fall into the second category as slavery served as a type of indentured servitude that allows the poor to survive. Since laws like reverting the land to its original owners during the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25:10) and providing a kinsman redeemer (Lev. 25:25) don't apply in any way to modern Christians, neither do the slave statues that immediately follow. However, the point must be made that because the slavery passage is found within the context of national dealings with the poor in a nation where all land rights have already been assigned, it shouldn't be assumed that modern concepts of slavery are in view at all.

References

1. Neill, James. The Origins and Role of Same-sex Relations in Human Societies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. Print. 96.
Photo provided by Jun and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Why do Christians Condemn Slavery?

I saw an interesting question posed by David, a self-identified atheist in a Facebook group the other day. I believe the question is earnest and his tone appropriate. I think it deserved a thoughtful response. He asks:

I am an atheist. However, this is a serious question that will appear to be trolling. Trust me, it isn't.

Why do Christians condemn slavery?

The Bible seems to condone a few different forms, explicitly in the OT (Leviticus 25:44-46) and at least complicity in the NT. Doesn't Jesus (Luke 12:47-48), Paul (Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2) and others use this relationship as a allegory of people's relationship with Jesus, being "slaves to Christ"? Isn't this supposed to be a picture of this relationship, similar as a husband and wife relationship is a picture of Christ and the Church? We wouldn't want to abolish the institution of marriage, correct? If we abolish slavery forever, how will people one hundred years from now REALLY understand this slave/master relationship? Perhaps abolishing slavery will ultimately hurt our chances of understanding God, no? So, why do Christians condemn slavery?

Slaves to Christ

There's a lot here, so I want to go through it appropriately. I also think there's a related question that wasn't expressed but that may be in the back of the questioner's mind, which deals with the Christian objection against same-sex marriage. Let me tease this out a bit.

One way that some Christians have argued for the sanctity of man-woman marriage is because God created it to reflect the relationship between Christ and His church (Eph. 5:22-33).Same-sex marriage mars that model by eliminating the husband/wife distinction. Two men or two women don't fit the designations of Ephesians 5.

Another model of the relationship between Christ and the believer is the slave model. Almost all the New Testament writers used the phrase of themselves (Rom. 1:1, 2 Cor. 4:5, Gal. 1:10, Phil. 1:1, Jas. 1:1, 2 Pet. 1:1. Jud. 1:1, Rev, 1:1) and also other Christians (Col.1:7, Col. 4:7, 2 Tim.2:24, Rev, 1:1). Slavery, therefore, is a way believers can identify in their relationship with Christ. Thus, if same-sex marriage corrupts the picture of Christ and his church as laid out in Ephesians 5, then doesn't the abolition of slavery also corrupt the picture of a devoted believer to his Lord as cited in the passages above? Aren't Christians being inconsistent in standing against same-sex marriage while they support the abolition of slavery? Since Leviticus is the primary text against homosexuality (Lev. 18:22) and it condones slavery in Lev.25:44-46, then shouldn't Christians be consistent in their obedience to the Levitcal laws?

Not All Levitical Laws are Alike

I appreciate David's thoughtful approach to this issue. However, I think he misunderstands the role Leviticus plays in the life of the Christian. The Levitical laws are primarily written to the inhabitants of Israel and they were intended to give the new nation a way of separating themselves from their pagan neighbors, showing their allegiance to their God, and various social laws on how to run a nation. Today, the first two items would be seen by most Westerners as separate from the third, but that wasn't true for people of that era, just as it isn't true for many in the East. Paul Copan notes the distinction when he writes:

So when a neighbor, say, moves boundary stones to enlarge his own territory, this has a social impact, affecting his neighbor's livelihood. This act of theft from a neighbor isn't just a societal violation; it's a violation against God as well. Or consider how adultery throws a family into upheaval, not to mention creating a tear in Israel's social fabric. It was an offense against God as well. So when the one God makes a covenant with his people (at Sinai) just before providing a land for them, he is attempting to reshape his people into a nation very much unlike their neighbors.1

Some of these laws, such as dietary restrictions or not wearing garments of mixed fabric are clearly made to distinguish Israel as discriminating and unique. The New Testament tells us that the sacrifice of Christ abolished those distinctions in passages like Acts 10, where Peter first sees a vision of the unclean animals, is told to kill and eat them, and then receives gentile visitors. He concludes, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him" (Acts10:34, ESV).

Laws Must Reflect Their Culture

Secondly, the laws of a nation will naturally reflect the times in which one lives. For example, horse theft used to be a capital crime in many states when a horse was crucial to a man's livelihood and it usually was the most expensive piece of property he owned. Those statues are no longer applicable; not because the crime has changed, but because the culture has changed around it, making losing one's horse an act that has different consequences. Jesus noted this, too, when he chastised the Pharisees asking about Moses' law of divorce in Deuteronomy 24.

I say this because it is crucial to understanding the concept of slavery in the ancient world, especially in the way the New Testament writers use the term. As I've said before, slavery in the Ancient Near-East was not the same as the chattel-slavery of the pre-Civil War South. It was more like serfs and Lords in Israel. Remember, no one was guaranteed a meal in those days. If you were hurt, if you were poor, or if you were a conquered people, you had very few options to avoid starvation. People would even sell themselves into slavery to pay off debts. Once under the protection and care of a wealthy master with the resources to guarantee your basic welfare, some people would actually be better off as slaves. There were even those who decided to pledge their allegiance to their master and became a permanent "employee" of the master's house, sometimes written as a bond-slave or bond-servant. This is the idea that Paul and the other writers above make when they compare themselves to slaves. They are committing themselves freely and permanently to Christ.

Slave in the New Testament is also often used as a descriptor of one's entrapment to sin, such as Romans 6 where Paul tells the church in Rome that they were previously slaves to sin, but now have become slaves to Christ. So, Christians can consistently oppose slavery and still hold the idea of being a bond-servant to Christ. Slavery in that culture meant something other than modern versions of slavery, and the kind of slavery the New Testament writers use concerning Christians is a voluntary slavery.

Tomorrow, I will discuss a little more how the Levitical laws are relevant to Christians and the general culture.

References

1. Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. Print. 70.

Message Systems Come from Minds

Egypt holds fascination for many people. The practice of mummification, the pyramids, and all those hieroglyphics shrouded the ancient Egyptians in mystery and wonder for hundreds of years. It was widely known that Egyptian hieroglyphics were used as the primary way of written communication in their day, but no one could read them until the French discovered the Rosetta Stone, unlocking the secrets of the pictorial message system and allowing scholars to read and understand the thoughts of those who lived 3500 years ago. Before the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphics, studying ancient Egypt was a lot of guesswork. After finding the Rosetta Stone and deciphering hieroglyphics, archaeologists could suddenly understand so much more about who the Egyptians were, what they believed, how they lived, and why they built the pyramids and created mummies.

In recent years, modern scientists have discovered another Rosetta Stone of sorts. The DNA molecule that exists in every cell of our bodies was first successfully modeled by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. Crick, after further investigation, also provided a model for how the genetic code in DNA is transferred within the cell.1 Soon it was understood that our DNA functions like a set of blueprints; it holds all the instructions to build your body so you look like you. But such a find is more than amazing when you think about it. You see, message systems are very special things that have certain attributes — attributes which can come only from minds.

What Makes a Message?

In 1976, NASAs Viking I spacecraft had reached Mars and was taking close-up photographs of the planet for the first time ever. One photo immediately caught the attention of everyone in the project. It seemed that there was a face carved into the Martian surface that measured over two miles across! NASA released the picture with the caption "huge rock formation ... which resembles a human head ... formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth."2

 Now, scientists have discovered rocks that look like humans or animals before. Whiteshell Provincial Park in Manitoba, Canada has many different tone shapes like the one you see in photograph #2. These stones are in an arrangement where they look to resemble a man. So, why did the NASA scientists immediately assume that the face on Mars is a natural formation while archaeologists looking at the stones in Whiteshell Provincial Park assume that these were placed by prehistoric people? What's the difference?

In a nutshell, the difference is the rocks in Canada have three traits of an information-bearing system, all of which are necessary for us to assume that something is trying to be communicated:

1. They are orderly. The rocks at Whiteshell park are placed in a very specific arrangement. Most rocks one sees on the ground are randomly located. This squares with the idea that all things will tend towards randomness unless otherwise constrained. The "face" on Mars doesn't rely only on order, but also on shadow. If you look again at the picture, you can see that over a third of what would make up the face is obscured. The shadows themselves become part of the feature-making surface, so we cannot tell if the surface below holds the same order as the well-lit area. The Whiteshell rocks are unmistakable ordered and one can see where there is a start and a stop for each glyph.
2. They are complex. While order is more rare than randomness in nature, it does happen do to certain chemical or physical constraints within a system. Ice crystals, for example, are very orderly in their form. Water can push on rocks and line them up in a sequence. However, the Whiteshell rocks are not merely orderly, they are complex in their order. The rocks are found at 90 degree angles and places on a sequence that would be nearly impossible to explain through natural processes. For example, the rocks are all close to the same size, they are all equally spaces, yet those in photograph #2 are set a different angles and then they stop until another formation is found with the same ordered complex arrangement.
3. They are specific. The final piece in identifying an information-bearing system is that the rocks are placed very specifically in patterns that are recognizable to another mind. The angles of the Whiteshell rocks in the photo are in perfect proportion of a human being. If one were to invert the angle at the bottom of the image, the image of a stick figure is marred and the concept is lost on the viewer. The rocks must be specifically placed so the idea that the creator has will be properly received. This is true for any message system. Replace one letter in "I Love Mary" and you get wither confusion ("I live Mary") or a radically different message ("I love Hary")!

And no matter if were looking at ancient stones or looking for messages from outer space, these are the traits we look for to determine whether what we find is an accident of nature or generating from a mind: order, complexity, and specificity. Since DNA shows those same three traits, it should be reasonable to conclude that there was a mind behind the creation of DNA.

References

1. For an extensive history of how Watson and Crick uncovered the shape of the DNA molecule and its further understanding, see Stephen C. Meyers comprehensive treatment in Signature in the Cell. (New York:Harper Collins, 2009).

2. NASA Science. "Unmasking the Face on Mars." 24 May 2001. 24 August 2010 . Web. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may_1/

Moral Laws Necessitate a Moral Lawgiver

As I showed yesterday, all people are obligated to obey a moral law. People will fight about what this law allows and what it doesn't, but that doesn't mean morality isn't objective. Certainly, we take into account certain circumstances, but the principles that ground morality remain consistent. For example, it is always immoral to inflict pain on an unwilling participant for the sole purpose of pleasuring oneself. That is true whether or not anyone else believes it to be true. It is also true all all times and for every culture. Thus, if morality exists at all, then it is universal in its scope: it applies to all humanity throughout history.

Moral laws are therefore not like physical laws, such as the law of gravity. Gravity tells us simply what is. It doesn't tell us whether falling at 9.8 m/s2 is good, bad, or neutral. Moral laws, though, do give us a standard by which we must adhere. Since moral laws are prescriptive (they tell not what one is doing but what one ought to do) and universal, they must transcend humanity. Moral laws cannot be based in physical reality but must come from a moral lawgiver.

A moral lawgiver must transcend man

Let me give you an example of why moral laws cannot be based in the properties of the psychical world. Some people argue that morality is a result of some evolutionary processes. They will usually say something like, "People began to construct a moral code because it helped them survive. As a matter of evolution, a species will survive if they don't kill each other but look out for one another, so morality really evolved." I'll hear that idea often, that there's some kind of random evolutionary process that crafted our morality. But evolution is offered as a result of natural functions in the world. If you think about nature and how it acts, things happen all the time that are both constructive and destructive, yet it makes no sense to describe natural acts as moral or immoral.

Imagine if you will a brilliant comet that orbits our solar system about once every five hundred years. For most of its orbit, it is obscured from the scientists' view, so astronomers have been in anxious anticipation to study it. Even more so, writings from the medieval period suggest that the comet is exceedingly beautiful to view even with the naked eye. As the world gathers and waits for the comet to come into view, the unthinkable happens: a random meteor happens to smash into the comet shattering it into pieces. The question I ask is, “Was the meteor wrong to destroy the comet?” Such a question seems absurd on its face. The meteor wasn't acting rightly or wrongly; it was simply a fluke of luck that the comet was destroyed. It was the outcome of random events governed by the physical laws of the universe.

If evolution is true, then the fact that humanity exists at all is just a series of random mutations that are enacted upon by natural laws of the universe. Therefore, if physical laws are all we are working within, then to claim destroying a person, many people, or even the whole world really is no different than the meteor destroying the comet. It isn't wrong; it just is what happened. But again, such an idea strikes us as wrong on its face. We know that exterminating a human life is fundamentally different than annihilating a natural body. That's because human persons have intrinsic moral value. It's why we hold the idea that slavery is wrong, even when it was legal or most people thought it was OK.

No one person is better than another. Now sure there are people better in sports, and there are people who are more powerful, more beautiful, and so on. There's a multitude of ways people are not equal, yet we believe that murdering any one of them makes you guilty of a moral wrong. It's not our judgments about them that give them their worth; it is simply the fact that they are human. We recognize that this law exists outside of ourselves, and we punish those who don't obey it.

The lawgiver must have authority over man

More than just originating outside of humanity, a moral law must be given by a lawgiver who can exercise authority over people. If a law is passed that has no penalty, then the law is deemed ineffective and quickly discarded. We have many such laws on the books today, some of which are almost comical. For example, Michigan made it illegal to serve margarine instead of butter in state institutions.1 No one in America is obligated to obey France's speeding laws if they're driving in the United States. Even if I may deem that the speed limit for the street in front of my home is too fast to drive safely and have all the facts to back me up, I can't go out and post my own sign on the roadway. I need the proper authorities to post the law, since they have the power to enforce the law. Similarly, if moral laws come from outside of man, then they must come from a source that has authority to enforce those laws.

Moral laws are evidence of God's existence

Since we all recognize there is a moral law to which all people are beholden, and that moral law must have its basis in a mind outside of mankind and with authority over mankind, we then reasonably conclude that there is a God. We recognize good and evil as real states. Some may argue that there's too much evil in the world for there to be a God, but that's a different point and one I've looked at before. The fact that this person recognizes that there is evil in the world actually bolsters the argument for God's existence, since he is agreeing that there is a moral framework out there and that it has its basis outside of mankind. He's granting the premises of this argument!

You see, if we can call certain things good and call certain things evil, that means that there's moral law. There's a measuring stick to put something against. Killing a baby for fun is evil. Katrina? That's evil. Charity work? Oh, no, that's good. But in each of these cases there's some standard we are comparing them against. There's a moral law. But if there's a moral law, that requires a moral lawgiver. So that means there must be a God establishing the moral law.

If evil exists, it proves that God exists simply due to the fact that morality has to come from God. It can't come from anywhere else.

References

1. 2011-12 Wisconsin Statutes & Annotations. Sec. 97.18.5. Wisconsin State Legislature2011. Web. 06 Oct. 2014. http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/97/18
Image courtesy Matt H. Wade and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Why Morality Must be Objective

My son is a big Disney fan. He loves the movies, the theme parks, and just about everything Disney.  Walt Disney really knew how to not only tell a good story, but reflect the way many people feel. Pinocchio is a great example of this. In Disney's version, one of Pinocchio's temptations is to go to Pleasure Island, where there are no rules. You can break things, get in fights, smoke, drink, or do anything your heart desires and never get in trouble. It seems a morality-free setting.

In reality, we know that it would be impossible to live out life morally free. If such a place existed, you could never be sure that someone else wouldn't strike out and kill you just for his own enjoyment. We rely on laws as well as the generally accepted ways of behavior so we can have order in our society. But these laws are not merely practical from a survival standpoint. They are essential.

Defining Morality: Commands for how we should live

When I talk about moral principles, I make the claim that they are objective and prescriptive. By objective, I mean that human beings don't invent morality out of nothing. Moral laws aren't merely ways we choose to live. They are as real as physical laws, such as gravity. That's what I mean when I say they are objective; moral laws are true whether or not anyone believes them or practices them. They exist apart from man and have their basis outside of mankind.

Some people believe morality is like traffic laws, that is they are merely a whole bunch of people getting together and agreeing that driving at some speed, say 80 miles per hour, is too fast and therefore pass laws to make it illegal to do so. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with driving 80 miles per hour. For example, the Autobahn in Germany or certain areas of Montana don't have a maximum speed limit. But for this group of people in this place, they feel we'd all be better off if speeds were limited. However, morality is different from traffic laws. By saying morality is objective, it means that certain actions are wrong simply because they are wrong. It doesn't matter if a lot of people recognize that they are wrong.

By prescriptive, I mean that moral laws apply to all men at all times. Morality is what we should do; no one is exempt from it, no matter what their situation or status. Nutrition is a good analogy here. Human bodies have need for certain vitamins, minerals, and other elements  to continue operating. If you have a deficiency of Vitamin C in your diet, you can develop scurvy, and a deficiency of calcium will cause weakened bones and teeth susceptible to decay. These facts are true whether you know them and choose to eat wrongly or, like ancient sailors, don't know about them; you will still suffer the same effects regardless. Just as the human body requires nutrition to live, human persons require a moral framework to survive.

Morality is recognized by all men

Because moral laws are objective, they are also universal. All people have a moral sense inside of them. If God exists, it would make sense that He would create us with the ability to discover and understand moral laws. We find this is true through many different types of evidence. First, all societies do develop a moral foundation for their community. There are right and wrong ways to act across all cultures. Second, we find that the genesis of most of these laws has a common basis in development. Some cultures say that a man may marry only one wife, while other cultures permit multiple wives for one man. However, no culture deems it acceptable that a man may steal his brother's wife and marry her. The roots of marriage and spousal fidelity are universal.

Philosopher Paul Copan argues that human beings' ability to recognize certain actions as right and wrong is properly basic, just in the same way that recognizing colors is properly basic.1 If someone is color-blind, we see that as a defect in their visual processing. Similarly, we should question a person when they fail to recognize that moral values are real. Recently, an interesting study was published by Paul Bloom, a Yale professor of psychology who found that moral traits can be seen in infants even before they learned to speak and therefore were not influenced to believe in acting certain ways just to get cultural approval. He concluded that human beings are simply hard-wired for morality from birth.2 We all are born with a moral conscience that tells us right from wrong. That conscience shows that moral values exist and can be recognized by all men.

Everyone believes something is wrong

Some people will fight you on this point, but it's easy to show that people simply think in terms of right and wrong for certain actions and they can't escape doing so. If someone seeks to challenge the claim by saying they don't believe that objective moral values really exist, then just ask them if they have any money in their wallet right now. Tell them that you're planning to knock them over the head and take all their money. You will certainly get a quick reply that you cannot do such a thing. But if there's no morality, then there's nothing wrong with me taking all your money. You see, when people use the words “can't” and “shouldn't” in this context, they are really saying that there is a way to behave and what I just proposed isn't it. But who set that rule? Says who? What do you mean? Now you're invoking a moral law? I ought not to do that? You're saying I ought not to punch you in the nose? What this “ought to” stuff? Who's making these laws up? Now, some people believe that morality is relative, made up by people to get to an end. I've looked at the problems with moral relativism before, you can read those here, here, and here as a start. All that to say, we know that it's impossible for morality to be both objective and relative.

Killing babies for fun is always wrong — no matter what anyone thinks!

Another way to counter the claim "I don't think there's any such thing as moral law that exists" is to ask "So do you think killing babies for fun is okay? I really want to get this clear. Is that what you're telling me? That killing babies for fun is okay?" Any sane person wouldn't answer such questions affirmatively because, whether you believe it or not, it's never right to kill a baby just for the fun of it. Now, were there people who killed babies for fun? Absolutely. Even the Bible talks about the Assyrians and others who would ride into town and dash the children on the rocks and horrors like that. But when we read that we shudder. Such actions are hideous and never OK. I don't care if you believe it's right or not. People who believe killing babies for fun has any justification are regarded as sociopaths — people whose moral sense is defective. We lock such people away. Would the person claiming there is no moral law tell me that Jeffrey Dahmer was just exercising his morality? It was just right for him? Well, open up all the jails. Let everybody go. That's what asserting “there's no such thing as morality” means.

See, nobody lives an amoral life. What you find is people will be amoral about all the things that they don't care about. And that's intuitive. Everybody believes something is wrong. When you say that morality is merely a motive, it's like, "I don't like that." It's not an ought. Then it becomes a problem. When wronged, they will claim, "You shouldn't do that!” Even those with whom we have moral objections hold to some moral values.

Click here to continue to Part Two.

References

1. Copan, Paul. "A Moral Argument." Beckwith, Francis J., William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Editors. To Everyone An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 2004. 110.

2. Bloom, Paul. "The Moral Life of Babies." New York Times Sunday Magazine. 9 May 2010: MM44.
Image courtesy amdigitalcitizenship and licensed via the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.