HDS - Events Online - 2007-08 Dudleian Lecture - Paul Rorem

"Negative Theologies and the Cross"

Edward Feser, The Newspeak of the moderns

T. David Curp, A Necessary Bondage? When the Church Endorsed Slavery (via Mark Shea)

A good companion for this post over at Per Caritatem: Augustine and Scotus on Slavery

Ms. Nielsen writes:

I often hear the claim made that convictions such as (1) human beings should not be considered the “property” of another human being and (2) slavery per se is morally reprehensible are simply modern/postmodern sensibilities created and propagated by political liberalism (which is not a jab at political liberalism). I have to admit that I am deeply suspicious of this claim and find it rather unconvincing. After all, there were at least two premoderns (Augustine and Scotus and imagine many others of which I am unaware) who claimed that slavery was un-natural (contra Aristotle) and that it violated natural law. (Augustine does, however, seem to offer more of a justification for the institution that might not be in the end very helpful for seeking to abolish slavery. Scotus’s position, in contrast, might provide a stronger argument for the injustice and moral wrongness of all forms of slavery wherein one human “owns” another as property).

Do the ancients and medievals speak of slaves being "property"? Is the concept of property equivalent to that of dominion?