Inspiring Philosophy Defended THIS on Timcast IRL! | Pastor Reacts

Mike Jones on Timcast and the Christian Case Against Slavery

Christians are making some moves in new media. First, it was Westhoff on Rogan. Now, we've got Mike Jones of Inspiring Philosophy on Timcast. And this one's a banger. Mike actually gets into.

A difficult subject. Take a look at this. And you can see it in the scriptures. Like, go to like Ephesians 6, where Paul says, everyone quotes that. Slave masters, or you know, slaves obey your masters.

But no one quotes right after that in Ephesians 6, where Paul says, and masters do.

Likewise to your slaves. Slavery has always been a point of contention for lots of people, both in and out of the church. But what did Mike say? Did he defend the faith well? And how should you be thinking about this challenge when it happens to you?

We're about to get right into it. So here we go. Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate Sala. And this is the number one Christian ministry hosted by a half Samoan. Here at Wise Disciple, I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

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It's a blessing. All right, let's do it. There was a hierarchy and Christians come on the scene, they go, no, everyone here is the image of God. And they should have specific rights. That's something that also develops out of the Christian tradition.

And they slowly start to change the culture. It took a while for sure. I mean, you still had infanticide in the Middle Ages, because even though the church was condemning it, it took a while to saturate the culture that Tom Holland.

Talks about. So Mike is having a conversation with Phil, I think his name is Phil Labonte on Timcast IRL. And they're talking about the treatment of children. How horrible it was, I mean, particularly like in the Roman Empire, and leading up to the Middle Ages.

But Christianity changed a lot of that by making a few key moves, one of which was to decry the abuse of children. The children who were used as slaves for adults who sought to abuse them, if you catch my drift, you know.

There was a euphemism that was used to describe this practice, but Christians invented a new term for this, and rightly so, they called it child corruptor. And Christians pushed forward some novel ideas that children need to be protected, that their status needed to be elevated in society to the point where they were not treated so poorly.

So this is what Mike is talking about, and he's walking through all of these pieces incredibly well. But the conversation.

Is starting to shift towards slavery. Watch this. The reason why we think these kinds of things, that slavery is wrong, that human rights exist, that humanity has intrinsic value, and that children should be cared for, this comes out of the Christian tradition.

In the ancient world, they were they were beat routinely, they were turned into sex slaves as children, boys and girls. It's, again, horrifying to read, and again, slavery was just the norm. No one ever questioned the idea that slavery should be abolished until the Christians came on the scene.

The first one to say slavery should be abolished was Gregory of Nyssa, working on what he was learning in the scriptures and reading Paul in Genesis, and that slowly began to change. What was that?

Gregory of Nyssa and the Christian Critique of Slavery

Yeah, a lot of this can be found in Gregory of Nyssa's homilies on Ecclesiastes. Actually, let's pull that up. Take a look at this. So this is Ecclesiastes chapter 2, and we find the author at this point talking about the vanity of self-indulgence, and in it he talks about owning slaves.

Look at this. I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house, but then watch what happens. Then I considered all that my hands had done, and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Gregory of Nyssa had something to say about it. Look at this. This is Gregory of Nyssa's commentary on Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verse 7. Look at what he says. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept.

You have forgotten the limit of your authority, which consists in jurisdiction over brutish animals. By the way, real quick, I have this quote with my subscription to Logos Bible Software, and you can too.

Logos is a game changer for the serious student of scripture. It also has cool insights, like this quote from Gregory of Nyssa, okay? So for more on all of this, go to logos .com forward slash wise disciple, and you can grab my special discount.

So that's Gregory's view on the matter, you know? This is what he's saying. He's saying, look, slavery is not God's original design for human beings. It's not the original divine precept. So for those who seek to gain slaves for themselves, you've forgotten what the limit of your authority was.

Mankind was only supposed to have dominion over the animals of the earth, not other people. And that's why someone like the author of Ecclesiastes can realize all of this is just vanity. It's a complete waste of time, and it's an abuse of humanity.

I mean, this is what? Middle to late fourth century, you know, that Gregory's writing here? Before the fall of Rome? Before the slave trade that we have all learned about in history? And as Mike is pointing out now, this was a novel view, what Gregory of Nyssa said.

Before that, slavery was just taken for granted. It was a way of life, like Planned Parenthood is today for so many. Which, you know, I mean, so this is a related issue, but this is why the atheist retorts, saying, you know, well, why didn't God say something about slavery?

It's because of this. These skeptics and atheists.

Have no appreciation for the utter depravity of mankind. When was that? I believe in the 300s as Gregory of Nyssa was around. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And the wider culture did ignore him for a while, but you start to see throughout the Christian tradition, them slowly moving to end slavery, that by the time you get to like St. Anselm, like it's sort of getting abolished from Europe in a lot of places.

And so then the Europeans later on going, well, we're not allowed to enslave Christians. We know that's wrong. Let's go elsewhere to enslave people. And that's how you get the transatlantic slave trade.

And then the funny thing is, is if you, you know, you read about the transatlantic slave trade, a lot of the plantation owners were trying to keep their slaves away from missionaries because of the missionaries come in, they're going to evangelize these slaves and turn them in to Christians.

And then we'll have to free them. And so they were always like, you know, the, a lot of the Quakers were like being oppressed in the sugar islands because they were trying to evangelize. I'm like, no, you can't do that because we need slaves.

It's human nature has always been butting up against the Christian tradition and Christian tradition has been trying to move humanity slowly, but surely in a much better direction. You can read about that in Catherine Gerbner's book, Christian slavery.

It's a very interesting history of the sugar island stuff. I love the point Mike is making here.

God’s Slow Work of Redemption in the Old Testament

And again, I mean, this is just completely missed, right? It goes right over the head of a lot of atheists and skeptics today. The question that is not asked, and, you know, with skeptics, I'm sure we can guess why this question is not asked, but the question is, what was God's purpose for allowing slavery in the Old Testament?

That is only a question that a genuine seeker of truth can ask. Someone who can concede the existence of God, like really concede it, and then ponder why the God of the Bible would allow it. But once you really do that, you start paying close attention to this type of God that we find in the scripture, you realize that this is a being who is incredibly patient with his creation.

This is a being who, for example, sent his people, the nation of Israel, into the desert for 40 years. So there's a great related question, you know, why would God allow Israel to be freed and then send his people into the desert for 40 years for a trip that should have realistically taken, what, a week, right?

Or something like that, like a minute fraction of that time. And the answer is because God was shifting the mindset of his people. He brought them out of Egypt, but now he was bringing the Egypt out of them.

Look at this. This is Moses speaking. Deuteronomy chapter 7 verse 8, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Notice, the Lord didn't just bring them out of Egypt. He redeemed them. It's that last quality. That's what took so long. That's what takes generation after generation to accomplish, and that's what atheists and skeptics have no patience for.

They have no capacity to understand this redemption. Redemption of the heart and soul. That is what not only creates laws against things like slavery in time, but that is actually what removes it from a person's heart and desire in the first place.

Moses goes on to say this, and you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

See, it's one thing to just tell people, hey, I've got a new command for you. I am the Lord, so just go ahead and obey it, right? I mean, if you think about it, you might even get away with enforcing this command, maybe by threatening punishment or something, but it's another thing entirely to get people to want to obey that command, to actually desire to live up to it, particularly when it runs right up against something that people have known for centuries.

It's just in the water, and that's the kind of God that we find in Deuteronomy. You know, look at verse 2. God is interested in their hearts, to see what was actually in their hearts, not just that they would obey him, but that their hearts will change.

That's a much slower process. To get the Egypt out of them, to get them where they would be fully committed to this, look at verse 3. And God humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Every word. Moses goes on to say, watch out! It's very easy to forget all of this, you know, to go back to your old ways and your heart of hearts, right? This is the backdrop behind what Mike is telling Phil and the Timcast folks now.

There is a much longer play that God is after with regard to slavery. Did the Jews take slaves in the early days? They did. And then.

Ephesians 6 and the Christian Undercutting of Slavery

Early, sometime in the first millennium, a lot of the popes started to outlaw Jews owning Christians as slaves. And then they started outlawing Muslims or Christians being sold to Muslims. And then you saw slow reforms happening, like slowly they're like, okay, no more slavery here, but we'll allow it here still.

So yeah, you saw, I think one of the popes in one of the six or seven hundreds said no more Jews owning slaves and no more owning. And then one pope came along and he attacked the Venetian slave trade.

He said, no more selling slaves. By the way, he bought all the slaves and then freed them. And then, you know, even Isabella of Spain did some horrible things, but she also outlawed enslaving Native Americans unless they were hostile or cannibals.

So again, we saw slow reforms moving us that by the time the abolitionist movement comes along, yeah, it was deep in this Christian tradition that there's something wrong here. And you can see it in the scriptures, like go to like Ephesians six, where Paul says, everyone quotes that slave masters or slaves obey your masters.

But no one quotes right after that in Ephesians six, where Paul says, and masters do likewise to your slaves. So he doesn't outright say slavery should be wrong, but he undercuts any sort of like reason for slavery to exist.

If masters they need to, you know, do exactly to their slaves as slaves doing, there's no, there's no institution of slavery at that point. So the Christian values slowly start to undercut it. And this is why Tom Holland says Christianity was like a death charge.

It took a while for these, these explosions to go.

Off and spread. Love it. Love it. Great point. You know, love Mike on Tim cast, love seeing him up there. You should definitely watch the whole thing. I've got the link for it for you in the notes. And he's making a really great point here.

You know, let's pull up Ephesians. Take a look at Ephesians chapter six, verse five, bond servants or slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.

That's key. Rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does this, he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bond servant or is free. Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and your master is in heaven and that there is no partiality with him.

Did you catch that? Masters do the same to them. Wait, wait, what's the same, right? If the bond servants or slaves are to obey the masters and they're to do it in a certain way, how can masters do the same to them?

The answer is, everyone is supposed to submit to the will of God and to seek the ultimate good of the other. The bond servant is meant to do this for his master, but the master is meant to do this right back to the bond servant, and that's precisely, so when you really wrestle with the implications here, that's precisely the grounds for the end of slavery.

Also, did you pick this up right here at the very end? Masters do the same to them, stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours in heaven, there is no partiality with him.

Think about that. That means that in heaven, there is no slavery. This is the grounds for the end of slavery, the slave trade. Not through some rote command that everyone needs to follow, but doesn't really want to obey deep down in their hearts, right?

But through wrestling with the principles of obeying God and seeking the good of their fellow man. As Jesus said, to love your neighbor as yourself, that's the end of slavery through a radical shift of the heart.

I love it. I love it. Paul does actually the same thing in Colossians 3, you know, he gives the same principled argument, and this is actually, it's a wonderful study to consider doing, like a deep dive into, and let me just go ahead and say this, this is not going to be compelling to a skeptic or an atheist, but I would argue it's not because there is no precedent for what I just said.

It's right there in the scripture for those who have the eyes to see it. It's because these folks are committed to their presuppositions, and it gives them tunnel vision to completely miss what God is doing slowly over time.

All right? All right, that's all the time for me today. What about you? What did you think of Mike Jones on Timcast? Isn't that cool? I thought he did a fantastic job. Let me know in the comments below, hey, if you made it this far and you're not a part of my Patreon community, what is going on?

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Hey, I'm going to return soon with more videos, but in the meantime, I'll say bye for now.