# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S186
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

186

A More Recent Lutheran Theologian on Slavery.

Having communicated a number of testimonies from older Lutheran teachers
concerning slavery — testimonies we could still multiply many times over,
but which in any case suffice to show to what principles insight into the
connection of the Christian doctrines on this relationship led them — let
us now also let a more recent theologian speak on the matter.
Thus Dr. G. C. A. von Harleß writes, namely, in his Ethics:
"Not less is it the Christian brotherly relationship, under whose
semblance those who serve have from of old harbored desires to transform
the God-ordained distinction between master and servant into a false
equality, or, under the name of Christian liberty and the Christian duty
to reprove, to give themselves over to disobedience and insubordination in
place of obedience (compare the counter-admonitions of the apostles Paul
and Peter to the slaves: 'Let those who have believing masters not
despise them [under the pretext] that they are brethren, but rather serve
them all the more, because they are believers and beloved.' 1 Tim. 6:2.
'Servants, be subject with all fear to your masters, not only to the good
and gentle but also to the perverse. For this is grace, if for conscience'
sake toward God one endures grief and suffers wrongfully.' 1 Pet. 2:18ff.)
But a distorted disposition among those who serve is apt to be met just as
often by a distorted disposition among masters — masters who either think
that, by surrendering their master's right, they must make the servant
feel the benefit of the Christian brotherly relationship, or who under
the mask of a Christian assertion of their right conceal a selfish and
loveless harshness. Against all self-deception or every hypocrisy of this
kind there reacts the one Spirit of Christ, by whose power one transfers
to the relationship of the family only what one has recognized as the
meaning of earthly calling and earthly station in general — that is, that
even in the family the ordering of boundaries is a divine ordinance, one
that is not to be torn down but fulfilled, fulfilled through the power of
the Spirit of Christ, who is equally a Spirit of righteousness and of
self-denying, merciful love. So, too, according to the Apostle, do the
slaves obey their masters 'as unto Christ' (Eph. 6:5), and the masters,
in their treatment of the slaves 'as brothers' (cf. Philem. 15), cause
the condition of slave to be forgotten. Thus nothing is changed in the
outward form (1 Cor. 7:21), but everything is made new through the
Spirit of the freedom of Christ, who first gives the right content to
every earthly form, and excludes every perversion of earthly forms
through selfish abuse (cf. 1 Cor. 7:22)." (Christian Ethics, 5th edition,
Stuttgart 1853, pp. 287–288.)
The same writer states on Eph. 6:1ff.: "The Apostle likewise touches on
the slave relationships also in Col. 3:22ff., compare Tit. 2:9ff., 1 Tim.
6:1ff., 1 Cor. 7:21 (where I hold the explanation of the Greek fathers of
the church — 'and if you could obtain your freedom, remain a slave
rather' — to be the correct one, for linguistic and