Excellent analysis, well-presented. Based on your observations and analysis (I have not watched the lecture), I would surmise that the theological position mirrors that of CFW Walther during the Civil War in which Walther would not join with the abolitionists on theological grounds, drawing considerable moral outrage from those who viewed the abolition of slavery as “gospel.” Unfortunately, social media is not conducive to theological nuance, nor are those who have made a career out of being social media influencers in the Luthersphere.
Theological nuance" doesn't really capture it, William M. Cwirla, does it? The straw man you propose is "those who viewed abolition of slavery as "gospel." This was then Walther's crucible, not the political state of affairs in Missouri alongside the immigrant group's glacial transition to American citizenship? To say nothing of the accompanying baggage of the Bugenhagen attendees' attention to those who find the Confederate flag a banner of belonging? Are there no suitcases of baggage laying over the bare bones of the Gospel itself? Come on.
The abolition of slavery was not the Gospel from God's Realm of Grace. The Gospel was and is the instrument of individual and corporate empowerment driving baptized believers blessed by the Eucharist to be propelled out into the civic sphere for the sake of distributing, coaxing and engaging the struggle for both mercy and justice, for both compassion and equity with both Gospel words and deeds.
The Bugenhagen Group could have heard Pro/Con presentations on the topic presented. They didn't. That's the shortfall which brought Dr. Cooper onto the scene. It's more than a strategic Bugenhagen blunder - it's purposeful. My advice, unsought and I would think unwanted, is for way, way more dialog among those in the various LCMS corners, organized specifically by those in power and those in the various corners.
Ad Crucem's editor is not afraid of that dialog and has promoted it. More power to him.
It’s only a straw man if the actual man doesn’t exist. If you reread Walther on the topic (I assume that you have read him already), you will not that the reason Walther did not join with the abolitionist movement was precisely because it framed the issue in terms of “you are no Christian unless you join us.” This is typical of theo-political stances in general.
Speaking of scarecrows, I did not see any Confederate flags flying the in chancel of the Bugenhagen Conference. That’s a rather facile leap from engaging the underlying theology in the abolitionist movement to going full-on southern sympathizer with a longing for the “glories” of the anti-bellum South. I think Cooper sets up that scarecrow with his allusions to Christian nationalism and white supremicism.
I do agree that a pro/con format, or more to my liking, a “perspectives on” approach with engagement would have been much more enlightening than edifying.
Not so facile a leap from presenter Karl Hess, a written supporter of the continued use of the Confederate flag in line with Gottesblogger Beane et al, to allusions of white Christian nationalism, no matter who's making those allusions. This begs a question - What use do Walther's opinions on slavery serve in contemporary Missouri Synod conversation? Are there good Missouri Synod slaveholders out there these days seeking support? Are we saying to those current slaveholders behind the curtain "You are indeed a Christian - join us!"?
No disagreements there. Walther’s position, as you note, is time-bound to a first-generation immigrant who is somewhat defensive of his theological position vis-a-vis American Lutheranism and American Christianity in general. The contemporary conversation in the LCMS is quite different. I would say that Walther’s approach would stand against our cozy relationship with the MAGA Right as much as it would judge the co-opting of the fruits of the Gospel by the progressive Left. Again, the smell test is with the notion, “You’re not a true Christian unless you join in our parade.”
I think it also speaks to a certain “tone-deafness” that is characteristic of Missouri’s history to the present. Walther may have been theologically correct, but he seems not to recognize the implications of his ambivalent stance on slavery. It’s much like Lutherans having to apologize for Luther’s harsh statements regarding the Jews, though in historic context, they may have sounded quite different.
Your comment is right on point, William Cwirla. I have recently made that specific connection between Walther and Luther in much the same way. The harsh edges in this particular Kulturkampf era drive most Lutheran folks to the center, but they tend to get there in silent mode.
The interaction between Pr. Cwirla and Pr. Benke, in this thread, is how we should see our teachers of the church engaging. Thank you, pastors. I appreciate the lessons for younger pastors, showing that we can address complex and hard topics without devolving into hatred and shunning. There is no harm in open and persistent dialogue; not every dispute is a doctrinal knife fight in a dark alley. We can disagree and agree, and be pleasant about it all. Seems kinda Christian.
Dave: I bet if you listened to the speech, you could figure out why I think Walther's opinions of slavery continue to matter in the Missouri Synod. I make it pretty clear. Drawing a line from supporting the use of the confederate flag to "white Christian nationalism", whatever it is you mean by that, is "when did you stop beating your wife" talk. I also don't recall writing in support of "continued use of the Confederate flag," but it's true that I don't have a problem with it. I also think statues of Columbus, Jefferson, and other slave owners should not be torn down by mobs because they owned slaves. Do you think they should be?
I have always wanted an honest discussion about the institution of slavery. Man selling was always condemned, but servitude was an opportunity to pay off debts and in some cases, the slaves wanted to remain under servitude because of the masters benevolence. You can’t read Ephesians 6 without recognizing the efficacy of the institution of slavery, in fact there were admonitions for both slave and masters
I said "God permitted chattel slavery" because chattel slavery was present in both Old and New Testaments; Gentile slaves in Israel and all slaves in Rome were the property of their masters and their children were born into slavery after them.
OK, I think you must be using the term in a different way than I am used to. I am used to people using that term to distinguish it from the type of slavery that was present in the old and new Testament. And so for example, if you took someone in war That would not be the kind of slavery that we had when you went to Africa and bought people in fact people would deliberately take Greek slaves because they were well educated and use them to teach their children whereas US slavery tended to treat slaves almost as subhuman that is the way I am used to people using that term. What do you mean when you use the word chattel in front of slavery slavery?
I meant that slaves in Rome and Gentile slaves in Israel were not indentured servants whose term of bondage was limited. They were the property of their owners forever, until the owner freed them. And at least in Rome, the owner could sell them, their children were born slaves, and they had few or no rights under the law. Nevertheless, Paul taught Roman slaves who were Christians that God required them to honor and obey their masters. So when the Church today gives the impression that slavery itself is wrong and sinful, that a Christian who owned slaves was sinning against God, not because he treated the slaves badly, but by the very fact of owning them, the Church is breaking the second and third commandments. Since slavery is not per se forbidden by God, when we agree or appear to agree with the culture that slavery is sinful by its very nature, we appear to be agreeing with blasphemers that the Bible is a fundamentally immoral book.
Yes I think it’s very important for us to realise that there are and were various different kinds of slavery over the years. For example I would call what we do with our prisons nowadays a worse form of slavery than you would’ve had for similar offences back in Israel. For example.
I would quibble with the word that you used just because in many cases it is used to be generations long and I think as you pointed out Israel had a very mixed system. So when someone wants an Israelite, they were not slaves in perpetuity and down to their generations.And usually when someone was enslaved to the Israelites, it was often because of warfare. They certainly didn’t have sailing ships travelling to other continents to buy slaves.
The Israelites did indeed have slaves that they kept over generations. They also were permitted to buy slaves from merchants. If the argument is "chattel slavery is permissible, but American slavery was unacceptable because African rulers were going to war specifically to get more slaves to trade", that's a historical argument, but that's not the stance of most people. Most people in America and probably in the Church think "American slavery was inherently evil or sinful because all slavery is evil and sinful."
A third option, better than the other two, is to recognize slavery as a fundamentally unjust institution and one tending to all sorts of evil, but which in a fallen world is sometimes 1) better than the alternative and/or 2) a necessary fact of life. The OT never expressly condemns polygamy either, and although St. Paul dealt with the situation as it existed, and taught slaves and masters how to live righteously within the situations they found themselves in, the actual cultural ascendancy of Christianity led naturally to the decline of slavery as an institution. For reasons that are not hard to see, even in the passages where St. Paul tells Christians how to be good slaves.
Yes, and let's not forget that Jesus himself addresses these facts of life intrusions on fallen creation in Matthew 19:8: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hardness of heart; but it was not this way from the beginning."
Yes, and in saying this, Jesus was affirming that even though the civil Law of Moses permitted divorce, those who divorced were violating the moral law of God.
St. Paul not only tells Christians how to be good slaves, but how to be good masters. Imagine Paul telling Christians how to be good pimps, usurers, or hitmen! What the speech was about was not slavery, nor the parsing out of the sinfulness of American slavery relative to other forms of it, but our tendency to speak according to values that are alien to the Scripture and native to a foreign religion. The question is not whether slavery is good or pleasant or whether it would have been present before the fall, but whether a Christian slaveowner is committing unrepentant sin simply by virtue of owning a slave.
I think you can condemn the institution without condemning everyone who found themselves operating within it. There were good masters and bad masters, who had no control over their society’s rules, and deserve individual praise and blame not for the existence of slavery, but for what kind of use they made of it. However, speaking at the level of civilization: to bring the institution back, after it had naturally disappeared from Christendom, and to do so on the backs of captives who had never made war on European nations, was a great sin.
The fact of the matter is that it was a poorly thought-out paper. You are dancing very closely to Christians in the South, justifying slavery with scripture. They were blinded by an evil institution and twisted scripture to support it. You could have made your argument much stronger by avoiding any talk of slavery or differences in races altogether. People will remember this talk and dismiss much of what you have to say on any further topic, whether well-reasoned or not. I have listened and then read the transcript. The equivalence of Roman slavery, OT slavery, and bond-servant to American "Chattel Slavery" is not accurate. Have a good listen to Dan Carlin's "Addicted to Bondage" for some good references to this fact. The rejection of the Enlightenment ideas of equality to then hold up scripture permitting slavery is just plain ignorant and a bad-faith argument. All the "bros" included Ad Crucem giving you cover on this is honestly disturbing. Yes, there is slavery in the Bible, and it is hard to take and explain, but we see that it is descriptive, not prescriptive, and God set limits upon it.
I think one of my favorite quotes from Dan Carlin as he is quoting someone else, "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." There is no going back to pre-enlightenment ideals, nor would we want to do so. The love affair of "magistrates" upholding both sides of the table of the Law is what brought about the 30 Years' War. The end of the wars of religion in Europe is what drove our founding fathers to put in our Constitution, the First Amendment, and "no religious test." Sure, we can make the argument that they were all Christian of a sort, but it was precisely those Christian men who wanted no state church. All the constitutions of states brought into the Union following never had a "state church." How would we feel if the local magistrate were a Baptist and decided that no church could use alcohol for communion? We would be demanding our rights and freedoms. We are much better off with the Enlightenment Ideals than we ever were under the tyranny of Kings, Lords, nobles, and their appointed magistrates. We would do well to remember Calvin's Geneva and be glad for the 1st Amendment.
My advice is just simply to let this whole mess go because there is no going back and no justification for your defense of slavery being "permitted". People do not draw those distictions today nor should they. People read permitted and immediately go with allowed. Bad paper. Do a rewrite and leave out all the stuff on slavery and racial differences. It just silences anything you were trying to say about the Enlightenment.
Dr. Cooper's posts on X do not appear to be designed to stimulate pro/con debate on the topic. His ad hominen's directed at the presenter and his audience seek to discredit and to silence them. If he had any counter-points to make, they are not in those posts. In fact, his efforts to generate outrage lend strength to the thesis that we are in fact in an American Interim.
A few quotes from CFW Walther on his thoughts regarding slavery/abolition. I present them without editorial comment, other than the editorializing that comes from selectively quoting. I encourage you to read the entire essay which is available in English at - http://www.lutherquest.org/walther/articles/cfw00002.htm
C.F.W. Walther
"The question about slavery has been foremost in the hearts and minds of many. In following issues, we intend to deal with this question. Of course, not as it relates to political issues, for we have nothing to do with that, but as it relates to Christian-religious morals.
Before we discuss the agitating question of slavery, we wish to reiterate that we are not concerned with emancipation, which for political reasons is being considered by government, for this is not a theological issue. For us Christians here too the word of God applies: "Be subject to those who are in authority over you." What we are dealing with here is the question whether slavery itself, that is, the relationship between slave and master, is a sin; or does sin adhere to this relationship merely in concreto, as all relationships between sinful men, for instance between poor and rich, seller and buyer. Is therefore slavery a sin which must be unconditionally opposed, or should Christians concentrate on doing away with the connected sinfulness, so that the relationship between slave and master is according to God’s will and order, according to the laws of justice, fairness, and love"...
In order not to commit any blunders, it is necessary that we agree with our opponents on the definition "slavery." However, we do not know a better definition than the one rendered by the magister germaniae, Melanchthon. It is found in the appendix to his examination of those who are to be publicly ordained and given the office of evangelism (1556). There he says: "Civil slavery, which is approved by God (as Joseph and Onesimus were slaves), is the lawful removal of the ability of ownership, the freedom to chose one’s vocation or employment, and to move from one place to another." (Corpus reformatorum, Vol. XXI, p. 1096) There is no doubt that Holy Scripture , Old and New Testament, deal with slavery in this sense...
"What then," comes the cry, "does the Gospel not demand compassion for the often terrible conditions of slavery? Does the Gospel demand that one remain unsympathetic to the tears and sighs forced from these slaves by inhumane masters? Does the Gospel not demand that at least one works on removing these horrible atrocities so often connected with slavery? Or does the Gospel cover all these obscenities, this total spiritual neglect, injustice, destruction of marriages, cruelty, etc., with a halo?" We answer: "Far from it!" We have already pointed to Gen. 18:19, 17:12; Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14; Ex. 12:44, 21:26-27; Job 31:13; Eph. 6:8-9; Col. 4:1, where it is shown how slaves are to be treated by their masters. We also remind of scripture which deals with abduction or selling of men into slavery and the punishment thereof (1 Tim. 1:10; Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7). To see to it that these godly rules are observed, especially by authority, this we consider to be the true task of each Christian who lives in a land where slavery is lawful...
Cooper attempts to fullfill his primary goal of gatekeeping and narrowing the discussion window to those topics allowed by the Interim. Its classic conservative pearl clutching designed to isolate and deplatform the target. It may work with the boomer and the men in soft garments but its not going to work on the younger Lutheran men.
Excellent analysis, well-presented. Based on your observations and analysis (I have not watched the lecture), I would surmise that the theological position mirrors that of CFW Walther during the Civil War in which Walther would not join with the abolitionists on theological grounds, drawing considerable moral outrage from those who viewed the abolition of slavery as “gospel.” Unfortunately, social media is not conducive to theological nuance, nor are those who have made a career out of being social media influencers in the Luthersphere.
Theological nuance" doesn't really capture it, William M. Cwirla, does it? The straw man you propose is "those who viewed abolition of slavery as "gospel." This was then Walther's crucible, not the political state of affairs in Missouri alongside the immigrant group's glacial transition to American citizenship? To say nothing of the accompanying baggage of the Bugenhagen attendees' attention to those who find the Confederate flag a banner of belonging? Are there no suitcases of baggage laying over the bare bones of the Gospel itself? Come on.
The abolition of slavery was not the Gospel from God's Realm of Grace. The Gospel was and is the instrument of individual and corporate empowerment driving baptized believers blessed by the Eucharist to be propelled out into the civic sphere for the sake of distributing, coaxing and engaging the struggle for both mercy and justice, for both compassion and equity with both Gospel words and deeds.
The Bugenhagen Group could have heard Pro/Con presentations on the topic presented. They didn't. That's the shortfall which brought Dr. Cooper onto the scene. It's more than a strategic Bugenhagen blunder - it's purposeful. My advice, unsought and I would think unwanted, is for way, way more dialog among those in the various LCMS corners, organized specifically by those in power and those in the various corners.
Ad Crucem's editor is not afraid of that dialog and has promoted it. More power to him.
Dave Benke
It’s only a straw man if the actual man doesn’t exist. If you reread Walther on the topic (I assume that you have read him already), you will not that the reason Walther did not join with the abolitionist movement was precisely because it framed the issue in terms of “you are no Christian unless you join us.” This is typical of theo-political stances in general.
Speaking of scarecrows, I did not see any Confederate flags flying the in chancel of the Bugenhagen Conference. That’s a rather facile leap from engaging the underlying theology in the abolitionist movement to going full-on southern sympathizer with a longing for the “glories” of the anti-bellum South. I think Cooper sets up that scarecrow with his allusions to Christian nationalism and white supremicism.
I do agree that a pro/con format, or more to my liking, a “perspectives on” approach with engagement would have been much more enlightening than edifying.
Not so facile a leap from presenter Karl Hess, a written supporter of the continued use of the Confederate flag in line with Gottesblogger Beane et al, to allusions of white Christian nationalism, no matter who's making those allusions. This begs a question - What use do Walther's opinions on slavery serve in contemporary Missouri Synod conversation? Are there good Missouri Synod slaveholders out there these days seeking support? Are we saying to those current slaveholders behind the curtain "You are indeed a Christian - join us!"?
No disagreements there. Walther’s position, as you note, is time-bound to a first-generation immigrant who is somewhat defensive of his theological position vis-a-vis American Lutheranism and American Christianity in general. The contemporary conversation in the LCMS is quite different. I would say that Walther’s approach would stand against our cozy relationship with the MAGA Right as much as it would judge the co-opting of the fruits of the Gospel by the progressive Left. Again, the smell test is with the notion, “You’re not a true Christian unless you join in our parade.”
I think it also speaks to a certain “tone-deafness” that is characteristic of Missouri’s history to the present. Walther may have been theologically correct, but he seems not to recognize the implications of his ambivalent stance on slavery. It’s much like Lutherans having to apologize for Luther’s harsh statements regarding the Jews, though in historic context, they may have sounded quite different.
Your comment is right on point, William Cwirla. I have recently made that specific connection between Walther and Luther in much the same way. The harsh edges in this particular Kulturkampf era drive most Lutheran folks to the center, but they tend to get there in silent mode.
The interaction between Pr. Cwirla and Pr. Benke, in this thread, is how we should see our teachers of the church engaging. Thank you, pastors. I appreciate the lessons for younger pastors, showing that we can address complex and hard topics without devolving into hatred and shunning. There is no harm in open and persistent dialogue; not every dispute is a doctrinal knife fight in a dark alley. We can disagree and agree, and be pleasant about it all. Seems kinda Christian.
Dave: I bet if you listened to the speech, you could figure out why I think Walther's opinions of slavery continue to matter in the Missouri Synod. I make it pretty clear. Drawing a line from supporting the use of the confederate flag to "white Christian nationalism", whatever it is you mean by that, is "when did you stop beating your wife" talk. I also don't recall writing in support of "continued use of the Confederate flag," but it's true that I don't have a problem with it. I also think statues of Columbus, Jefferson, and other slave owners should not be torn down by mobs because they owned slaves. Do you think they should be?
I have always wanted an honest discussion about the institution of slavery. Man selling was always condemned, but servitude was an opportunity to pay off debts and in some cases, the slaves wanted to remain under servitude because of the masters benevolence. You can’t read Ephesians 6 without recognizing the efficacy of the institution of slavery, in fact there were admonitions for both slave and masters
I watched and found it edifying
I wonder, did he actually speak of chattel slavery instead of the kind of slavery present in Biblical or Roman times?
I said "God permitted chattel slavery" because chattel slavery was present in both Old and New Testaments; Gentile slaves in Israel and all slaves in Rome were the property of their masters and their children were born into slavery after them.
OK, I think you must be using the term in a different way than I am used to. I am used to people using that term to distinguish it from the type of slavery that was present in the old and new Testament. And so for example, if you took someone in war That would not be the kind of slavery that we had when you went to Africa and bought people in fact people would deliberately take Greek slaves because they were well educated and use them to teach their children whereas US slavery tended to treat slaves almost as subhuman that is the way I am used to people using that term. What do you mean when you use the word chattel in front of slavery slavery?
I meant that slaves in Rome and Gentile slaves in Israel were not indentured servants whose term of bondage was limited. They were the property of their owners forever, until the owner freed them. And at least in Rome, the owner could sell them, their children were born slaves, and they had few or no rights under the law. Nevertheless, Paul taught Roman slaves who were Christians that God required them to honor and obey their masters. So when the Church today gives the impression that slavery itself is wrong and sinful, that a Christian who owned slaves was sinning against God, not because he treated the slaves badly, but by the very fact of owning them, the Church is breaking the second and third commandments. Since slavery is not per se forbidden by God, when we agree or appear to agree with the culture that slavery is sinful by its very nature, we appear to be agreeing with blasphemers that the Bible is a fundamentally immoral book.
Yes I think it’s very important for us to realise that there are and were various different kinds of slavery over the years. For example I would call what we do with our prisons nowadays a worse form of slavery than you would’ve had for similar offences back in Israel. For example.
I would quibble with the word that you used just because in many cases it is used to be generations long and I think as you pointed out Israel had a very mixed system. So when someone wants an Israelite, they were not slaves in perpetuity and down to their generations.And usually when someone was enslaved to the Israelites, it was often because of warfare. They certainly didn’t have sailing ships travelling to other continents to buy slaves.
The Israelites did indeed have slaves that they kept over generations. They also were permitted to buy slaves from merchants. If the argument is "chattel slavery is permissible, but American slavery was unacceptable because African rulers were going to war specifically to get more slaves to trade", that's a historical argument, but that's not the stance of most people. Most people in America and probably in the Church think "American slavery was inherently evil or sinful because all slavery is evil and sinful."
Yes, I would say that American slavery was unacceptable because the method used to obtain the slaves I would count as man stealing.
A third option, better than the other two, is to recognize slavery as a fundamentally unjust institution and one tending to all sorts of evil, but which in a fallen world is sometimes 1) better than the alternative and/or 2) a necessary fact of life. The OT never expressly condemns polygamy either, and although St. Paul dealt with the situation as it existed, and taught slaves and masters how to live righteously within the situations they found themselves in, the actual cultural ascendancy of Christianity led naturally to the decline of slavery as an institution. For reasons that are not hard to see, even in the passages where St. Paul tells Christians how to be good slaves.
Yes, and let's not forget that Jesus himself addresses these facts of life intrusions on fallen creation in Matthew 19:8: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hardness of heart; but it was not this way from the beginning."
Yes, and in saying this, Jesus was affirming that even though the civil Law of Moses permitted divorce, those who divorced were violating the moral law of God.
St. Paul not only tells Christians how to be good slaves, but how to be good masters. Imagine Paul telling Christians how to be good pimps, usurers, or hitmen! What the speech was about was not slavery, nor the parsing out of the sinfulness of American slavery relative to other forms of it, but our tendency to speak according to values that are alien to the Scripture and native to a foreign religion. The question is not whether slavery is good or pleasant or whether it would have been present before the fall, but whether a Christian slaveowner is committing unrepentant sin simply by virtue of owning a slave.
I think you can condemn the institution without condemning everyone who found themselves operating within it. There were good masters and bad masters, who had no control over their society’s rules, and deserve individual praise and blame not for the existence of slavery, but for what kind of use they made of it. However, speaking at the level of civilization: to bring the institution back, after it had naturally disappeared from Christendom, and to do so on the backs of captives who had never made war on European nations, was a great sin.
The fact of the matter is that it was a poorly thought-out paper. You are dancing very closely to Christians in the South, justifying slavery with scripture. They were blinded by an evil institution and twisted scripture to support it. You could have made your argument much stronger by avoiding any talk of slavery or differences in races altogether. People will remember this talk and dismiss much of what you have to say on any further topic, whether well-reasoned or not. I have listened and then read the transcript. The equivalence of Roman slavery, OT slavery, and bond-servant to American "Chattel Slavery" is not accurate. Have a good listen to Dan Carlin's "Addicted to Bondage" for some good references to this fact. The rejection of the Enlightenment ideas of equality to then hold up scripture permitting slavery is just plain ignorant and a bad-faith argument. All the "bros" included Ad Crucem giving you cover on this is honestly disturbing. Yes, there is slavery in the Bible, and it is hard to take and explain, but we see that it is descriptive, not prescriptive, and God set limits upon it.
I think one of my favorite quotes from Dan Carlin as he is quoting someone else, "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." There is no going back to pre-enlightenment ideals, nor would we want to do so. The love affair of "magistrates" upholding both sides of the table of the Law is what brought about the 30 Years' War. The end of the wars of religion in Europe is what drove our founding fathers to put in our Constitution, the First Amendment, and "no religious test." Sure, we can make the argument that they were all Christian of a sort, but it was precisely those Christian men who wanted no state church. All the constitutions of states brought into the Union following never had a "state church." How would we feel if the local magistrate were a Baptist and decided that no church could use alcohol for communion? We would be demanding our rights and freedoms. We are much better off with the Enlightenment Ideals than we ever were under the tyranny of Kings, Lords, nobles, and their appointed magistrates. We would do well to remember Calvin's Geneva and be glad for the 1st Amendment.
My advice is just simply to let this whole mess go because there is no going back and no justification for your defense of slavery being "permitted". People do not draw those distictions today nor should they. People read permitted and immediately go with allowed. Bad paper. Do a rewrite and leave out all the stuff on slavery and racial differences. It just silences anything you were trying to say about the Enlightenment.
Dr. Cooper's posts on X do not appear to be designed to stimulate pro/con debate on the topic. His ad hominen's directed at the presenter and his audience seek to discredit and to silence them. If he had any counter-points to make, they are not in those posts. In fact, his efforts to generate outrage lend strength to the thesis that we are in fact in an American Interim.
A few quotes from CFW Walther on his thoughts regarding slavery/abolition. I present them without editorial comment, other than the editorializing that comes from selectively quoting. I encourage you to read the entire essay which is available in English at - http://www.lutherquest.org/walther/articles/cfw00002.htm
C.F.W. Walther
"The question about slavery has been foremost in the hearts and minds of many. In following issues, we intend to deal with this question. Of course, not as it relates to political issues, for we have nothing to do with that, but as it relates to Christian-religious morals.
Before we discuss the agitating question of slavery, we wish to reiterate that we are not concerned with emancipation, which for political reasons is being considered by government, for this is not a theological issue. For us Christians here too the word of God applies: "Be subject to those who are in authority over you." What we are dealing with here is the question whether slavery itself, that is, the relationship between slave and master, is a sin; or does sin adhere to this relationship merely in concreto, as all relationships between sinful men, for instance between poor and rich, seller and buyer. Is therefore slavery a sin which must be unconditionally opposed, or should Christians concentrate on doing away with the connected sinfulness, so that the relationship between slave and master is according to God’s will and order, according to the laws of justice, fairness, and love"...
In order not to commit any blunders, it is necessary that we agree with our opponents on the definition "slavery." However, we do not know a better definition than the one rendered by the magister germaniae, Melanchthon. It is found in the appendix to his examination of those who are to be publicly ordained and given the office of evangelism (1556). There he says: "Civil slavery, which is approved by God (as Joseph and Onesimus were slaves), is the lawful removal of the ability of ownership, the freedom to chose one’s vocation or employment, and to move from one place to another." (Corpus reformatorum, Vol. XXI, p. 1096) There is no doubt that Holy Scripture , Old and New Testament, deal with slavery in this sense...
"What then," comes the cry, "does the Gospel not demand compassion for the often terrible conditions of slavery? Does the Gospel demand that one remain unsympathetic to the tears and sighs forced from these slaves by inhumane masters? Does the Gospel not demand that at least one works on removing these horrible atrocities so often connected with slavery? Or does the Gospel cover all these obscenities, this total spiritual neglect, injustice, destruction of marriages, cruelty, etc., with a halo?" We answer: "Far from it!" We have already pointed to Gen. 18:19, 17:12; Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14; Ex. 12:44, 21:26-27; Job 31:13; Eph. 6:8-9; Col. 4:1, where it is shown how slaves are to be treated by their masters. We also remind of scripture which deals with abduction or selling of men into slavery and the punishment thereof (1 Tim. 1:10; Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7). To see to it that these godly rules are observed, especially by authority, this we consider to be the true task of each Christian who lives in a land where slavery is lawful...
Cooper attempts to fullfill his primary goal of gatekeeping and narrowing the discussion window to those topics allowed by the Interim. Its classic conservative pearl clutching designed to isolate and deplatform the target. It may work with the boomer and the men in soft garments but its not going to work on the younger Lutheran men.
This is an exemplary analysis, careful and fair.
Thank you. High praise from you, and much appreciated.
I greatly appreciate the hard work you are doing here. It is of critical importance.