Visionaries,
With one eye on the slavery issue, Andy asked if something is permitted by the Bible, but is not mandated, should a Christian society mandate that thing. For example, marriage is not required of Christians — the unmarried state is permitted. Should a Christian society take this information and use it to forbid marriage (because being unmarried is permitted)?
I would answer that it is not necessary to make mandatory that which the Bible merely permits. Slavery is not mandatory, and in the long run, the power of the gospel is at odds with the institution of slavery. The real question in my mind is what was the best way to eliminate slavery was — the way of massive bloodshed the way fire-eating abolitionists insisted, or peacefully, the way every other slave-holding nation in the West did it. If Robert E. Lee was the moral equivalent of Hitler, then war it had to be. But if not, and the rhetoric of the abolitionists was overdone, then a moderate and non-revolutionary anti-slavery position was possible.
My belief is that American Christians of the nineteenth century had a moral obligation to subvert the institution of slavery — without revolution — the way the apostle Paul did in the book of Ephesians. I am sorry to disappoint those who would like to debate a Doug Wilson more to their liking. But he doesn’t exist.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.