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A review by octophile
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark A. Noll
5.0
This book compiles and summarizes the theological debates between Northern and Southern Bible-believing Protestant theologians (all all those in between, including abroad) on the hottest political topic in there has probably ever been in the USA - slavery as an American institution.
A huge amount of brain power was poured into decades worth of theological debates, essays, sermons, and treatises about whether or not the United States, as a Bible-believing nation (that is, a nation culturally founded on individual readings and moral interpretations of the Bible as opposed to a church institution, clergy, or state) can morally justify slavery based on the "clear meaning" of Scripture. Their arguments, counter-arguments, and proof-texting are eerily reminiscent of certain contemporary debates within the Christian community today. I'm not naming which ones, but take a wild guess.
Southern theologians relied on passages from the Pentateuch, such as Leviticus 24:45-46 ("Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession; they shall be your bondsmen forever") and the New Testament epistle of Philemon (in which the apostle Paul instructs an escaped slave to return to his master) clearly revealed divine sanction of slavery. They claimed that no true Christian could be opposed to slavery, as that would be tantamount to rejecting the Bible's moral authority. In fact, many abolitionists did reject the Bible's moral authority for these very reasons. Meanwhile, Northern theologians countered by saying these Bible passages which condoned slavery were not taken in context of the culture in which they were written, and could not be considered divine instruction in light of the Bible's holistic message of God's love for all mankind and the injunction to love other men. They also turned to other passages in Levitical law that contradicted the particular form of slavery practiced in the American South, pointing out laws against kidnapping, against badly injuring slaves, against sexual immorality (rape of female slaves was well known and frequently invoked), about sanctuary cities and rights afforded to escaped slaves. Both Northerners and Southerners accused each other of cherry picking Bible verses, throwing out the Bible, and of having invested political and economic gains propelling their agendas.
(European theologians, on the other hand, by and large believed that slavery was clearly a moral evil without tying themselves into theological knots about it. I won't go there, but Mr. Noll does.)
There was only one essayist who reluctantly conceded that, based on a plain reading of Scripture, slavery was permitted, Biblically-speaking. This essayist then took it a step further by admitting that there was no evidence for why blacks only should be slaves; and so, based on a plain reading of Scripture, slavery of whites was also permitted, Biblically-speaking. Needless to say, this line of reasoning did not go far in a country which prided itself on freedom and standing up to state tyranny, but it did highlight the elephant in the room that rarely made an appearance in both Northern and Southern debates about the Bible - the racism, the fact that the American institution of slavery would not have existed if it weren't for the racism, and that the racism could not be abolished even if slavery were abolished.
I occasionally try to pair books the same way some people pair food and wine, and I paired this book with Frederick Douglass' Narrative of a Life. It immediately cut through the big-brained debates of all these smart and even compassionate men: the proof-texting, the scholarly investigations into what was Hebrew slavery, really? the foreign high church commentary, and the rigorous Bible study, and revealed what all that effort actually was - inane babble in the face of real humans suffering real cruelty and evil.
In the end the issue of slavery was settled, not by the theological argument, but by force of arms. Noll quotes Abraham Lincoln, writing in the midst of the Civil War: “The Almighty has His own purposes… If God wills that [the Civil War] continue, until all the wealth piled up by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” Amen to that.
A huge amount of brain power was poured into decades worth of theological debates, essays, sermons, and treatises about whether or not the United States, as a Bible-believing nation (that is, a nation culturally founded on individual readings and moral interpretations of the Bible as opposed to a church institution, clergy, or state) can morally justify slavery based on the "clear meaning" of Scripture. Their arguments, counter-arguments, and proof-texting are eerily reminiscent of certain contemporary debates within the Christian community today. I'm not naming which ones, but take a wild guess.
Southern theologians relied on passages from the Pentateuch, such as Leviticus 24:45-46 ("Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession; they shall be your bondsmen forever") and the New Testament epistle of Philemon (in which the apostle Paul instructs an escaped slave to return to his master) clearly revealed divine sanction of slavery. They claimed that no true Christian could be opposed to slavery, as that would be tantamount to rejecting the Bible's moral authority. In fact, many abolitionists did reject the Bible's moral authority for these very reasons. Meanwhile, Northern theologians countered by saying these Bible passages which condoned slavery were not taken in context of the culture in which they were written, and could not be considered divine instruction in light of the Bible's holistic message of God's love for all mankind and the injunction to love other men. They also turned to other passages in Levitical law that contradicted the particular form of slavery practiced in the American South, pointing out laws against kidnapping, against badly injuring slaves, against sexual immorality (rape of female slaves was well known and frequently invoked), about sanctuary cities and rights afforded to escaped slaves. Both Northerners and Southerners accused each other of cherry picking Bible verses, throwing out the Bible, and of having invested political and economic gains propelling their agendas.
(European theologians, on the other hand, by and large believed that slavery was clearly a moral evil without tying themselves into theological knots about it. I won't go there, but Mr. Noll does.)
There was only one essayist who reluctantly conceded that, based on a plain reading of Scripture, slavery was permitted, Biblically-speaking. This essayist then took it a step further by admitting that there was no evidence for why blacks only should be slaves; and so, based on a plain reading of Scripture, slavery of whites was also permitted, Biblically-speaking. Needless to say, this line of reasoning did not go far in a country which prided itself on freedom and standing up to state tyranny, but it did highlight the elephant in the room that rarely made an appearance in both Northern and Southern debates about the Bible - the racism, the fact that the American institution of slavery would not have existed if it weren't for the racism, and that the racism could not be abolished even if slavery were abolished.
I occasionally try to pair books the same way some people pair food and wine, and I paired this book with Frederick Douglass' Narrative of a Life. It immediately cut through the big-brained debates of all these smart and even compassionate men: the proof-texting, the scholarly investigations into what was Hebrew slavery, really? the foreign high church commentary, and the rigorous Bible study, and revealed what all that effort actually was - inane babble in the face of real humans suffering real cruelty and evil.
In the end the issue of slavery was settled, not by the theological argument, but by force of arms. Noll quotes Abraham Lincoln, writing in the midst of the Civil War: “The Almighty has His own purposes… If God wills that [the Civil War] continue, until all the wealth piled up by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” Amen to that.