Reply to Larry Arnhart

Larry Arnhart: The Bible endorses slavery. As Mark Noll and Eugene Genovese have indicated in their recent books on the subject, the proslavery folks were able to cite the Bible as supporting their position. But we know this can't be right, because we know that slavery is wrong, and therefore we know that we need to correct the Bible. Doesn't this illustrate how we have to appeal to a natural morality to correct the Bible and other sources of revelation? Similarly, we know that when Abraham was commanded by God to kill Isaac, this was wrong. Otherwise, we would have to agree with Kiekegaard that Revelation teaches "the suspension of the ethical."

VR: I had overlooked this comment from Larry Arnhart. I appreciate someone of his influence commenting here. However, he seems to assume that the only way that Scripture can influence morality is by specific statements or proof texts. The case against slavery, for me at least, doesn't stem from "natural morality" but rather from the extension and development of biblical concepts. If we believe that every human being was created by God for eternal fellowship with God yet while on earth they are the property of others in virtue of the color of their skin, is this coherent? Without endorsing Newman's use of it as an apologetic for Catholic doctrines like the Immaculate conception, I do think the idea of doctrinal development is a useful and valuable idea for understanding theological (and other) concepts. You might want to complain that this is a poor way for God to reveal things--why not save the world a lot of trouble by adding a slavery ban to the Ten Commandments? But, as a Christian I believe that God has, for whatever reason, chosen to do it this way. There are other ethical systems that might provide a basis for the rights and dignity of human beings, (Aristotelian natural purpose, Plato's forms) but these seem to be just as unacceptable from the point of view of philosophical naturalism.

Of course, if it could be proven that traditional theism provides an inadequate support for traditional ethics doesn't mean that that support has to come from some other source. Maybe that support just doesn't exist.