Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 05:1 (Spring 2023)
Article: Returning To God’s Design: A Response To Stanley E. Porter, “Gender Equality And The Analogy Of Slavery”
Author: Buist Fanning

Eikon 5.1 (Spring 2023) p. 52

Returning To God’s Design: A Response To Stanley E. Porter, “Gender Equality And The Analogy Of Slavery”

Buist Fanning

Buist Fanning is Senior Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.

It is good to see the essay by Stanley Porter on “Gender Equality and the Analogy of Slavery” in the new edition of Discovering Biblical Equality (DBE). As its editors say, the new edition attempts to articulate its egalitarian stance “based on the tenets of biblical teaching” (7), and this essay provides a treatment of the topic that is more solidly grounded in New Testament (NT) exegesis itself as compared to the contribution on slavery by William Webb in the two previous editions of DBE (2004, 2005).1 Arguments for gender equality in the wider culture — and by some in the church — that are based on the analogy of slavery are often a distracting debater’s trick with no basis in biblical teaching itself (i.e., “the Bible endorses slavery as well as oppression of women, but now we know better”). Porter mentions this approach at the outset of his essay and moves on from it without direct critique (an oblique rejection of it appears on pp. 327–28). The approach he

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espouses is that “there is an imperfect analogy between slavery and gender equality in the Bible.” He argues that the NT, especially Paul, advanced “a countercultural view of slavery that called for liberating treatment of slaves,” even while accommodating itself generally to the wider first-century culture. And “the analogy with gender equality is similar, in that the New Testament promotes gender equality that . . . is grounded in fundamental scriptural passages” (328). Porter does not discuss the Bible’s teaching on gender equality at length (leaving that to other essays in the book) but instead concentrates his attention on what the NT says specifically about slavery. The point of his essay, however, is to argue that “the analogy of slavery is in fact an appropriate one for gender equality,” and that “the Bible, and especially the New Testament, has analogous liberating views of both slavery and gender equality” (333).

As a frame of reference for this response to Porter’s essay, I would express the NT teaching on slavery in three broad points. First, the NT did not condone or command slavery but gave instructions to regulate the conduct of Christian masters and slaves within the established institution of the Roman world of its day. It never commands slavery and never commends it as a good thing. Second, its

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instructions...