# Dabney and an hierarchical view of society



## rmwilliamsjr (Oct 15, 2008)

In reading the current active thread on Dabney, Christianity and slavery, i am reminded on the biggest problem i've had with Dabney.

Dabney equates abolitionism with French revolutionary/enlightenment thought, especially the ideal of egalitarianism. He opposes it with what looks like a hierarchical view of society built with slavery at the bottom. There are several places in Defense of Virginia that he strongly contends that the war will destroy the authentic Southern Christian civilization with this notion of natural God-ordained hierarchy and replace it with the French Jacobinism. 

my problem in teasing the elements of the discussion apart is not just the issues of racial vs OT slavery or even cultural blindness on Dabney's part but rather this much bigger issue of an hierarchical society vs an egalitarian one.

notes:
defense of Virginia is available at
A Defence of Virginia: (and Through ... - Google Book Search


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## turmeric (Oct 15, 2008)

My biggest issue with Dabney is race-slavery. If he wants us to think slavery is allright, I have less of an issue with it if it doesn't involve race. After all, all of us are in God's image.

Slavery (not based on race) could be possibly penal servitude or a way to cope with economic difficulty or with a person's constitutional inability to provide for himself - but it seems unscriptural and unscientific to base it on race.


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## MOSES (Oct 15, 2008)

Richard

What exactly would be your problem with a hierarchical view of society? Why do you (as it seems to me) think an egalitarian view is perhaps better then this hierarchical view?


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## MW (Oct 15, 2008)

Of course you could remove the hierarchical relations in society and the end result is what we have today -- the anarchy of the French Revolution spilled over to democratised nations, or what sociologists call status anxiety, where nobody knows what their place in society is, but do what they can to make a "better life" (left undefined) for themselves.


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## rmwilliamsjr (Oct 16, 2008)

When i consider Dabney's ideas of hierarchy in human society, the image/analogy i have in mind is the great chain of being. One of the important elements of this complex set of ideas is that each person is born into his proper place in society, people are by nature slaves. This is one of the big problems with racially based slavery, you simply can not rise above or escape your birth. The issue is that hard work, brains, endurance and the like are not rewarded in such a system. a meritocracy, otoh, strives to solve some of these problems, trying for a aristocracy of merit, ability, accomplishment.

i can see some of these issues, but i can not escape from Dabney's strong cries that egalitarianism was at heart anti-Christian, and that the destruction of southern slavery was the death of not just a particular historically-conditioned hierarchical society but the death of Christian society itself. 

when i read the Westminster catechism, with it's language of inferior and superior, i realize that Dabney is far closer to the mindset and societal structures of 17thC England than i am. and i wonder, what am i missing? what was lost with the destruction of southern culture based on a rigid slavery? was Dabney fundamentally right, is Christianity opposed at some very deep and important level to egalitarianism or democracy or individual freedom?? or was he so involved in this strict hierarchical society that he could not see any other form of Christianity than that he experienced in the antebellum South?


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## MOSES (Oct 16, 2008)

rmwilliamsjr said:


> When i consider Dabney's ideas of hierarchy in human society, the image/analogy i have in mind is the great chain of being. One of the important elements of this complex set of ideas is that each person is born into his proper place in society,



This statement made me think of this verse:

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, *having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God*
Acts 17


God sets up (possibly) a hiearchial system for his own good purposes...that each, in his own status, stage, dwelling, etc.. may seek after God.

Just


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## Thomas2007 (Oct 16, 2008)

rmwilliamsjr said:


> In reading the current active thread on Dabney, Christianity and slavery, i am reminded on the biggest problem i've had with Dabney.
> 
> Dabney equates abolitionism with French revolutionary/enlightenment thought.



Yeah, he's right. Abolitionism was nasty race hatred - it was anti-slavery precisely because it was anti-negro.


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## MW (Oct 16, 2008)

rmwilliamsjr said:


> was Dabney fundamentally right, is Christianity opposed at some very deep and important level to egalitarianism or democracy or individual freedom??



The Master said the poor you will always have with you. I don't think Christianity denies a man the opportunity to improve his position in life in a lawful manner; but it is clear that Christ came to minister to the poor, not to abolish poverty. The Bible ministers counsel to servants but does not abolish servanthood.


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