(1) they have their liberties taken (including the potential use of force to keep them locked up),
(2) they can be forced to work on projects at someone else’s direction
(3) they are provided for
(4) they have come to this state of affairs because of some sin or infringement on their part (not always in Biblical slavery, but very commonly)

The main differences would be, in Biblical slavery, owners are individuals, whereas today, the ‘owners’ are the state. Also, slaves were tradeable then but not now, and finally, in Biblical slavery there were more ways to become a slave.

But overall, I think the similarities are greater than the differences. I think it’s close enough that you could rightly say (oversimplifying) that they had ‘capitalist slavery’, while we have ‘communist slavery’

here
http://richaelmussell.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-has-alvin-plantinga-aided-our.html

and here
http://richaelmussell.blogspot.com/2011/12/weve-been-too-skeptical-for-nearly-400.html

May God help you find good employment after your pHD!

The Horn of Africa Famine Crisis Appeal from Sydney Anglicans…

http://anglicanaid.org.au/news/the_horn_of_africa_famine_crisis_appeal

cheers Di (Howard)

So I read the article, and was astonished to discover that the scholar, Samuelsson in now way cast any doubt over the historicity of the death of Jesus by execution at Calvary, and in fact, accepted it was by crucifixion, just pointing out that there was some linguistic doubt over exactly the nature of the suspension and torture device used for the execution by the stauros word group from its wider use in ancient texts.

There was certainly no support for the late and not-otherwise evidenced claim of the Qu’ran that Jesus only seemed to die on a cross, but in fact, did not die by such execution.

My replies are here and here.

Abdullah finally agreed that Samuelsson did not support his case.

Nevertheless, follow the links and you can see the way the discussion went, although it is interleaved with other people’s contributions and so on.

SG

PS about the claim that “Jesus didn’t die by crucifixion”, you might be very interested in the website of Gunnar Samuelsson, whom I heard recently giving a presentation. I’ve written a post about this for the Briefing; it should be up in the next month or so.

I’m intrigued of course by who’s doing what in your second and third examples. But that’s just gossipy curiosity.

I think there is a time when it’s fair to say the debate is over, and it is really only the lazy or stubbornly biased person, or the ostrich, who does not want to see it. For example, what about the historical claim that Jesus did not die by crucifixion. Recently, I discussed this topic on a website encouraging Christian-Muslim dialogue. I showed that there is good evidence reporting this event in a number of early sources in the New Testament, in respected non-Christian historians close to the time (Tacitus and Josephus), and that across the enormous breadth and presuppositions of NT scholarship, it is almost universally accepted as fact (citing examples from atheists like Gerd Ludemann, Jewish scholars like Geza Vermes, sceptical scholars like Bart Erhman, as well as more orthodox Christian scholars.

On the other hand, it certainly can be a strategy to avoid looking at new evidence, or reconsidering old evidence when a properly thought through new challenge is thrown up to old interpretations.

Among our friends, I think sometimes complementarians have been lazy on the authentein issue simply relying on what other well known complementarian authors have said in this debate, without checking the evidence for themselves. At best we’ve read Baldwin’s article on the word in the Schreiner/Kostenberger book on 1 Timothy 2 and we say that settles it. But often the un-nuanced way the cite the article shows they did not read it carefully let along check all the occurrences of authentein in the original Greek themselves, let alone sometimes even check the standard Greek lexicon BDAG for the meaning.

(For the record, I still think 1 Tim 2:12 means a woman should not preach in a mixed congregation or be a congregational elder. I am just not so dogmatically negative about NIV 2011′s translation of the verse!)

Well said!

The person who thinks ‘the debate is over’ seems to have forgotten that the next generation (1) weren’t around when the debate happened previously and (2) haven’t read the books / articles and probably haven’t thought about the issue. If they aren’t prepared to discuss the issues again it seems to me that they either don’t care what the next generation thinks / believes or they don’t have much in the way of an argument to give them.

Of course, if they are making the statement to their contemporaries they may be saying ‘I don’t want to continue the debate and am proceeding on the basis that I have won’.

W.r.t. Google+, thanks for the tip; done.

(BTW is it possible to install Google +one button for those of us who have crossed from Facebook to Google?)

(Blog layout isn’t Doug Wilson’s strong suite.)

The reason I’ve suggested it is that I think Doug Wilson understands both what’s good and bad about Wright’s view in a way that I haven’t got exactly from Piper.

I was trying to say that, for example on the question of what Paul means by justification, all debate in papers, lectures and blogs uses the discourse of academia. When was the last time you read a blog post where anybody said, “I’m more inclined to go with X on this one because alongside questions of doctrinal accuracy I also consider his godliness…” ?

So, I’m not at all suggesting that we remove doctrinal accuracy as a criteria, simply pointing out that (even in Titus 1) it is just one out of many.

As far as Oz is concerned I’m making a distinction between how people are taught at theological college and what goes on at a popular level. Lecturers might wish that their students were wrestling with the aorist passive but in reality they are probably more influenced by podcasts and blogs. My point is that this is both a good and a bad thing. Negatively I think it reflects our celebrity culture and our somewhat flabby thinking, positively it recognises that truth is communicated by people and hence it is wrong to divorce academic rigour from spiritual maturity and character.

For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:7-9).