St. Augustine s Reasoning For The Toleration Of Slavery

Nothing about slavery was considered â€Å"normal† in classical Greece. Later, even deeply religious people like St. Augustine and Aristotle accepted this practice. Norms have changed dramatically since then. The very idea is reprehensible to almost everyone. St. Augustine believes the condition of slavery is the result of sin, and slavery is a name introduced by sin and not by nature (Ebenstein 114). Today, when a person sins, it is something that he or she has to cope with, if they are religious and their transgressions in fact affect them. The people who have sinned are bothered more by sinning if they are extremely religious or they face criticism from their respective religious authorities. St. Augustine’s reasoning for the toleration of slavery would be irrelevant to most people today. For one, when blacks were enslaved in America, it was not their sins that caused them to be slaves. It was the fact that slave owners and the American authority’s were uneduc ated and believed blacks were equivalent to only three-fifths of a white person. It was not because blacks sinned any more or less than whites that caused them to work on plantations. Augustine also says â€Å"There are many wicked masters who have religious men as their slaves, and who are yet themselves in bondage† (Ebenstein 114). This can be applied to when slave masters enslaved the blacks because in those times African American people were very dependent upon religion because of their standings in life, so