Slavery criticism in the ‘Homily IV on the Ecclesiastes’ of Gregory of Nyssa
Abstract
By taking as its leitmotiv the words of Eccl. 2, 7: Ektésamen doúlous kaì paidískas, Gregory of Nyssa points out the absurdity of slavery through three main arguments: 1) on the level of pure natural reason, man cannot be the master or the owner of his equal, of the one who is of the same species, who is homophylos to him; 2) on the theological level, Gn 1,26 tells us that God created man in his own image and constituted him lord of all the visible creation. Therefore, it’s only evil the one that could make another man claim that he can reduce those who are the image of God and who have dominion over the whole earth to servitude. 3) A third argument, which could be considered the most characteristic of Gregory, who sees in free will the main feature of man’s resemblance to God: only evil could claim to reduce to servitude a man whose freedom was so respected by God himself that man retained this freedom by God’s will even after man abused from it and offend Him. The argument seems very strong. However, it must be pointed out that these are two different things: on the one hand, the external civil or political freedom (eleuthería) of the one who is not the doûlos, the slave subject to servitude; on the other hand, freedom as a faculty of the will, that is to say, liberum arbitrium, which Gregory usually and in his most important works designates with the word autexousía and which in our text is referred to with the terms eléutheros and eleuthería, which everywhere else in this same homily refers to the case of external freedom. Notwithstanding this terminological quibble that facilitates the shift from one concept to another, we must pay attention to the fact that it is not the same situation in one case as in the other. Because if it is a question of freedom of the will, then the liberum arbitrium that God has respected for all mankind, even when it has fallen, the slave retains it as well as his master, although in fact he cannot always implement his free decisions.Downloads
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