Dr. Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, has a blog on
which he has published a section of a book he is writing on New Testament ethics. I have extracted below a portion of what he published, all of which I found very interesting. Witherington shows how Paul's treatment of slavery exhibits increasing specificity as the closeness of his contact with those receiving his letters advances. In short, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon demonstrate an ethical trajectory which proves quite illuminating.
Witherington labels this section "LEVELS OF MORAL DISCOURSE"
Unfortunately, besides the neglect or disparagement of NT ethics, one of the other negative things that has happened to NT ethical material is the de-contexualizing of the material and the failure to see its usual ad hoc nature. All too often it has been treated rather flatly or uniformly. These things ought not to be. NT ethics is just as much a word on target for certain Christian audiences as the theologizing we find in these same documents. And in fact, when we have material that is repeated in more than one document, for example like the household codes, we begin to discover that there are trajectories of change in some of this material, just as there are levels of discourse. Let me explain what I mean by these two concepts (levels of discourse and trajectories of change) as they are in fact intertwined.
If a person has any sensibility about wanting to make an effective communication with a particular audience and persuade them of something, especially if the issue here is exhortation and application, then that person must:
1) understand the nature of the relationship between the author and the audience; 2) be able to gauge the level and character of his communication so it will be not merely understood but received as persuasive, and 3) speak to the place that the conversation has been able to develop thus far. For example, if we were to compare what Paul says in Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon about slavery a reasonably clear trajectory of change can be mapped out which not incidentally or accidentally parallels the level of discourse Paul is offering in the given document.
Colossians, not unlike Romans, is what can be called first order discourse, and that effects the ethical remarks in these letters just as much as their theologizing. First order discourse is what one is able and willing to say to an audience the first time one addresses them and begins the dialogue. An effective rhetorician will start with the audience where they are, and in the course of a dialogue and discussion try and move the audience to where the speaker thinks they ought to be. Not everything can be and should be attempted or discussed in one’s opening salvo, and this is particularly the case when one wants an audience to change their long accepted and deeply ingrained behavior patterns.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written to a congregation that Paul did not convert, and apparently had not yet even visited. It appears to have been one of Paul’s co-workers who planted the church in Colossae.
Paul addresses his audience knowing that there already exists in Colossae, and amongst the church members there, a patriarchal cultural structure and also a domination system called slavery. His interest is in household management within Christian homes, particularly as it affects Christian congregations, not in general. In his opening salvo, Paul starts with the household structure in which women, slaves and minors are in a decidedly inferior and subordinate position in the household compared to the male head of the household, and he begins to bring to bear Christian ethical concerns to these pre-existing relationships, thus ameliorating already at the outset some of the harsher dimensions of those fallen relationships. Paul is bold, but he is not stupid. He doesn’t try to push the conversation further than the traffic will bear in an opening conversation.
Thus in Col. 3-4 Paul talks about household relationships being lived out in ways that are more pleasing to the Lord or fitting in the Lord. When Paul turns to exhorting the head of the household, which is unusual in ancient discussions of household management, Paul restricts the power and way of relating to the subordinate members of the family—the husband must love the wife and not be harsh with them, he must not embitter his children so that they get discouraged, and most of all he must treat his slaves as persons, giving them what is right and fair (even though in Roman law slaves were ‘living property’, by which I mean they really had no rights). Herein we see only the beginning of the process of putting the leaven of the Gospel into these fallen situations.
The next level of discourse, second order moral discourse, can be seen in Ephesians, a circular homily that went to the church in Ephesus, and probably to the Colossians and other nearby Pauline churches. Here Paul is able to push the envelope a bit further than we find in Colossians. For example, at the introduction to the household code in Ephesians, at Ephes. 5.21 Paul exhorts all Christians to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.
Suddenly, it is not just the normally subordinate persons in that society who are doing the submitting—wives, children, and slaves. Now even the men are submitting as well to their fellow Christians and serving them. This self-sacrificial and serving ethic is of course something Jesus himself enunciated—he did not come to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for the many (Mk. 10.44-45). Paul takes up this theme in Phil. 2.5-11 by showing how the very coming of the Son into the world was an example of stripping himself of prerogatives and taking on the very form and approach of a slave—serving others. Instead of domineering and causing others to submit, Jesus stepped down and served others, setting his followers an example of freely chosen submission and service of others.
But it is not just in the introduction to the household code in Ephes. 5-6 that we find that the trajectory of change has moved on further from Colossians. It is also in other remarks. The husband is not merely to love the wife, he is to love her in the same self-sacrificial way Christ loved the church and gave up his very life for her. In regard to the husband’s relationship with his children he is charged with the task of bringing them up in the Christian faith and ethical practices. This task is not left for the wife to do in Ephesians. Most remarkable Paul in Ephes. 6.9 says to the slave owner “treat your slaves in the same manner”. In the same manner as what? In the same manner as the slaves are to serve their masters, wholeheartedly, serving as though they were serving the Lord himself. In other words, the master must serve and treat with respect his servants and do it whole-heartedly! And then we also have the warning not to threaten or abuse the slaves backed with the sanction that the masters themselves have a Master in heaven who is all seeing and all knowing. Most remarkably, Paul spends more time exhorting the head of the household than the rest of the household combined, attenuating his power, Christianizing his thinking, restricting his privileges, calling him to love and self-sacrificially serve. This goes well beyond Greco-Roman household management advice.
Finally if we turn to Philemon, here we have what can be called third order moral discourse—the sort of discourse one could and would have with an intimate. Here one no longer needs to hold anything in reserve—one can speak frankly, and Paul does. He calls for Philemon to: 1) manumit his wayward runaway slave rather than punishing him; 2) he insists that he treat Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother in Christ”; and 3) he urges he must treat and receive him as he would treat the apostle himself!
And just in case Philemon had not figured out that Paul was as serious as a heart attack about what he was urging, he reminds Philemon that he owes him his very spiritual life, and that he hopes to come to him soon (to make sure he follows through on what Paul is now persuading him to do). Here indeed we see how far the ethical discussion of slavery could and would go in an early Christian Pauline context. Paul is not afraid of implying that treating someone as a brother is incompatible with having someone as a slave. This comports with what Paul says in 1 Cor. 7 where he suggests that if a slave is offered his freedom he should take it. As the levels of moral discourse progress from initial discussion to talking with an intimate you can see the trajectory of change enunciated over time when the same person is treating the same subject with some portion of the same audience (Philemon was part of the church in Colossae it appears). It is unfortunate we do not have more examples of all three levels of discourse offered on the same or a similar subject to the same audience at various points in their relationship.
But what this example tells us is something important—especially with ethical remarks we need to ask not merely about the position taken but also about the direction of the remarks. Where are these remarks heading? Do they stand out from the usual advice of that social world, and if so, in what way? In what way can they be seen as examples, if they can, of attempts to bring about change in the status quo? The same sort of question can be asked when one compares the teaching of Jesus to other early Jewish teachers in a variety of subjects. When you do so, you discover that while Jesus is conventional in some regards, clearly enough in various of his ethical teachings he is moving well beyond and challenging the existing status quo. But one will only see and know this if one does his homework and studies Jesus in his proper social context. These are the sorts of questions we need to ask of the ethical texts found in the NT.