Slavery and Manumission in the Pre-Constantine Church

This paper looks at the church’s handling of the issue of slavery in the period before Constantine and the official recognition of Christianity. The time period is important because Christians had no political authority to end slavery, assuming they wanted to do so. Thus, the aim of the paper is discover how the Church as an institution alleviated the conditions of the slaves and how slaves were treated in the church and examine the relationship of slave to master in the church. This will be accomplished by examining certain doctrines of the faith church leaders applied to these problems as well as ancient understandings of what Paul had written and how it fit into their world and social context, which was the social context of the Bible itself. More specifically, by examining Paul’s letter to Philemon, Ignatius’ Epistle to Polycarp, and the Didache, the paper argues that the early church, using a Scriptural model, worked within its circumstances to ameliorate slaves’ material conditions, to bring all classes of people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to ensure that, within the church, all people were treated as equals

On Earth as it is in Heaven: The Social Gospel as a Theology of Liberation

Gustavo Gutiérrez is considered the father of Latin American liberation theology. Walter Rauschenbusch is considered the father of the Social Gospel in the United States. Although their circumstances differed greatly, both theologians made similar contributions to social Christianity, even though Gutiérrez does not seem to recognize it fully. Gutiérrez asserts that a theology of liberation must interpret the gospel in light of both the current reality and the values of the oppressed and then must use this theology to attack the social structures of oppression. This thesis asserts that Rauschenbusch did just that with his social gospel. Thus, the social gospel is a theology of liberation. The comparison between the two theologies is made by analyzing how each thinker centers his theology on the concept of the Kingdom of God. Once the centrality of the Kingdom is posited for both men, their understandings of three doctrines - soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology - are examined. Each theologian relates these three doctrines to the Kingdom in similar ways. After each system is discussed individually, explicit comparisons are made. The study demonstrates the methodological and doctrinal similarities between Rauschenbusch and Gutiérrez, but also notes the practical shortcomings of both theologies and how these failures are essentially linked to doctrinal formulations