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> Personally, I believe the Christian belief of Jesus being "theanthropos" (fully God and man) helped lead to the modern European ideals of human rights and eve

> Personally, I believe the Christian belief of Jesus being "theanthropos" (fully God and man) helped lead to the modern European ideals of human rights and eventual elimination of slavery. How do you reconcile the millennium between that schism and the development of the modern European ideals of human rights or the eventual elimination of slavery? Jesus was theologically theanthropos for the entirety of the colonization era and the triangular trade period.

mistrial9 3y ago
the institution of slavery through the ancient Middle East was more powerful, more entrenched, and those that practiced it had serious weapons and jails. It is a triumph that was long won to end the brutal practices of human slavery. You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous. >You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster. No, I don't think Christianity is to thank for the abolition movement, I think other aspects of politics and culture led to it.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    please include Muslims in your thought process, in that case.
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      Ok, why didn't those Christians abolish slavery in the ~three hundred years between that schism and the birth of Muhammad? I always feel like this argument is almost closeted Islamaphobia, kinda reinforcing my viewpoint there.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
  - elcritch 3y ago
    > You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous. It’s not about being “nice”. Neither is it not ridiculous if you consider the actual realities and complexities at the time. Almost every culture in the world has allowed slavery to some extent. The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery. Here’s a great quote from a Reddit post on the topic: > This is not a simple question, nor one that can be easily described across the entire empire. Christianity was a very diverse religious tradition even from the beginning of the religion's predominance in the Mediterranean. Early Church figures such as St. Gregory of Nazianzus, from the Roman east, launched attacks on slavery as an amoral affront to reason and rationality (Harper notes that this is the first extant attack on slavery in the Latin West, but I am not sure if that is true or not). Within the western parts of the Empire too there was pressure on the practice from Christian authorities. St. Augustine of Hippo, arguably the foremost figure of the 5th century for the Latin West, too pressured changes to the Roman attitude and approach towards slavery, he too condemned the practice as Gregory did and pushed for new attitudes towards enslaved people that emphasized the unnatural state of slavery on rational creatures. Slavery, in particular sexual slavery was the target of early Christian thinkers. They argued that it was a particular violation given the dimensions that were added on with the layer of ownership and slavery to the sexual exploitation of slaves. Harper argues that the Christian response to this was an extreme restructuring of Roman attitudes towards sex, in which the widespread availability of enslaved people was harshly curtailed, as attitudes towards the sexual exploitation of slaves were brought into the realm of official and cultural condemnation. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zxoj9/what_effect_did_christianity_have_on_slavery_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zxoj9/what...
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      >The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery "Centuries of Christian thought" happened before the two events I mentioned, things you ignored to quote someone saying a couple Roman Christians were against slavery.

mistrial9 3y ago

the institution of slavery through the ancient Middle East was more powerful, more entrenched, and those that practiced it had serious weapons and jails. It is a triumph that was long won to end the brutal practices of human slavery. You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster.

boomboomsubban 3y ago
You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous. >You turn this around like it is the fault of the nice people that it didn't happen faster. No, I don't think Christianity is to thank for the abolition movement, I think other aspects of politics and culture led to it.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  please include Muslims in your thought process, in that case.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    Ok, why didn't those Christians abolish slavery in the ~three hundred years between that schism and the birth of Muhammad? I always feel like this argument is almost closeted Islamaphobia, kinda reinforcing my viewpoint there.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
- elcritch 3y ago
  > You think the nice Christians wanted to get rid of it earlier, it just took them fifteen hundred years of active participation in it because it was difficult? Ridiculous. It’s not about being “nice”. Neither is it not ridiculous if you consider the actual realities and complexities at the time. Almost every culture in the world has allowed slavery to some extent. The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery. Here’s a great quote from a Reddit post on the topic: > This is not a simple question, nor one that can be easily described across the entire empire. Christianity was a very diverse religious tradition even from the beginning of the religion's predominance in the Mediterranean. Early Church figures such as St. Gregory of Nazianzus, from the Roman east, launched attacks on slavery as an amoral affront to reason and rationality (Harper notes that this is the first extant attack on slavery in the Latin West, but I am not sure if that is true or not). Within the western parts of the Empire too there was pressure on the practice from Christian authorities. St. Augustine of Hippo, arguably the foremost figure of the 5th century for the Latin West, too pressured changes to the Roman attitude and approach towards slavery, he too condemned the practice as Gregory did and pushed for new attitudes towards enslaved people that emphasized the unnatural state of slavery on rational creatures. Slavery, in particular sexual slavery was the target of early Christian thinkers. They argued that it was a particular violation given the dimensions that were added on with the layer of ownership and slavery to the sexual exploitation of slaves. Harper argues that the Christian response to this was an extreme restructuring of Roman attitudes towards sex, in which the widespread availability of enslaved people was harshly curtailed, as attitudes towards the sexual exploitation of slaves were brought into the realm of official and cultural condemnation. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zxoj9/what_effect_did_christianity_have_on_slavery_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zxoj9/what...
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    >The Roman Empire was built on slavery, and it took centuries for Christian thought to limit and then to begin to dismantle the institutions of slavery "Centuries of Christian thought" happened before the two events I mentioned, things you ignored to quote someone saying a couple Roman Christians were against slavery.