The issue of whether reparations ought to be made for British involvement within the transatlantic slave trade has come to the fore again because of this of the recent report from the oversight group arrange by the Church Commissioners (the body that manages the historic assets of the Church of England).
The report advises on the objectives and structure for a £100 million fund to supply seed capital for communities damaged by the legacy of the slave trade. The oversight group’s report suggests that the sum of £100 million originally proposed is an insufficient figure and that there should as a substitute be “a goal of £1bn for a broader healing, repair and justice initiative with the fund at its centre”.
The moral query raised by this report, as by other recommendations that reparations ought to be made for the transatlantic slave trade, is whether or not those living today have an obligation to make recompense for the involvement in it of people who find themselves long since dead.
In the precise case of the Church Commissioners, the query is whether or not recompense must be offered for the investment within the slave trade by a fund called the Queen Anne’s Bounty which was established in 1704 to supply support for poor Church of England clergy.
The managers of the Queen Annes’s Bounty, whose funds eventually became a part of the funds of the Church Commissioners, invested within the slave trade between 1715 and 1739 and the suggestion is that this historic investment creates an obligation to pay out money in the current and the long run.
If we turn to the Bible for guidance on this matter, there isn’t a doubt that it teaches the principle of creating restitution for acts of wrongdoing. In the Old Testament this principle forms a part of the Mosaic law.
Thus, Exodus 22:5-6 states: ‘When a person causes a field or vineyard to be grazed over, or lets his beast loose and it feeds in one other man’s field, he shall make restitution from the most effective in his own field and in his own vineyard. When fire breaks out and catches in thorns in order that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the sphere is consumed, he that kindled the hearth shall make full restitution.’
In similar fashion Leviticus 6:2-5 declares: ‘If anybody sins and commits a breach of religion against the Lord by deceiving his neighbour in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbour or has found what was lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all of the things which men do and sin therein, when one has sinned and turn into guilty, he shall restore what he took by robbery, or what he got by oppression, or the deposit which was committed to him, or the lost thing which he found, or anything about which he has sworn falsely; he shall restore it in full, and shall add a fifth to it, and provides it to him to whom it belongs, on the day of his guilt offering.’
Likewise, in Numbers 5:5-7 we read: ‘And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Say to the people of Israel, When a person or woman commits any of the sins that men commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person is guilty, he shall confess his sin which he has committed; and he shall make full restitution for his unsuitable, adding a fifth to it, and giving it to him to whom he did the unsuitable.’
Moving on to the New Testament we also find the principle of creating restitution within the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10:
‘[Jesus ] entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a person named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector, and wealthy. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but couldn’t, on account of the gang, because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up right into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus got here to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, make haste and are available down; for I have to stay at your own home today.’ So he made haste and got here down, and received him joyfully. And after they saw it all of them murmured, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a person who’s a sinner.’ And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I actually have defrauded any one in all anything, I restore it fourfold.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he is also a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man got here to hunt and to save lots of the lost.”
In this account the truth of Zacchaeus’ having received salvation is shown by his willingness to obey the Mosaic law by making abundant restitution to anyone he had defrauded.
As the biblical commentator Matthew Henry puts it, what the precise mention of his fourfold act of restoration teaches is that: ‘Those who’re convinced of getting done unsuitable cannot evidence the sincerity of their repentance but by making restitution. Observe, he doesn’t think that his giving half his estate to the poor will atone for the unsuitable he has done. God hates robbery for burnt-offerings, and we must first do justly after which love mercy. It is not any charity, but hypocrisy, to present that which is none of our own; and we will not be to reckon that our own which we have now not come truthfully by, nor that our own which is just not so when all our debts are paid, and restitution made for unsuitable done.’
The seventeenth century Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson makes an identical point in his sermon on these verses, declaring: ‘One particular and eminent fruit of true repentance, is the making of restitution and satisfaction to those whom we have now injured. As for God, we are able to make no satisfaction and compensation to him, for the injuries we have now done him by our sins; all that we are able to do in respect of God, is to admit our sins to him, to make acknowledgment of our misdoings, to be heartily troubled for what we have now done, and never to do the like for the long run. But for injuries done to men, we may in lots of cases make reparation and satisfaction. And this, because it is among the finest signs and evidences of a real repentance; so it’s one of the crucial proper and real effects of it: for that is as much as in us lies, to undo what we have now done, and to un-sin our sins.’
What can be vital to notice, nonetheless, each within the case of the Old Testament laws and within the case of Zacchaeus, is the principle that it’s the one who has committed wrongdoing who must make reparation and that the person to whom the reparation is to be made is the one who has been harmed.
As Thomas Aquinas declares, restitution is an act of ‘commutative justice’, that’s, an act of justice between individuals, which goals to equalize the loss that somebody has endured and because of this ‘restitution should be made to the person from whom a thing has been taken.’
What we don’t find within the Bible is any concept that the descendants of those that have committed acts of wrongdoing against others have an inherited obligation to make restitution for the wrongs that their forebears have committed. Zacchaeus must make reparation to those whom he has defrauded. The descendants of Zacchaeus don’t, nonetheless, have to make reparation to the descendants of those whom he has defrauded.
As Kevin De Young puts it: ‘The principle of restitution present in the story of Zacchaeus and within the Christian tradition is crucial to Christian repentance and obedience, however the principle loses its biblical force (not to say its simplicity) when it is not any longer directed to the one who was defrauded, cheated, or stolen from.’
In the case of the transatlantic slave trade, the undeniable fact that, so far as Britain was concerned, the slave trade and the practice of slavery were abolished within the nineteenth century signifies that slave traders, slave owners and slaves themselves are all alike dead. There is subsequently nobody who directly owes anyone else restitution for having stolen their freedom or their labour via slavery.
In the sunshine of this fact the argument that is commonly recommend is that the descendants of those that were enslaved are still suffering because of this of the enslavement of their ancestors, while the descendants of those involved directly or not directly within the slave trade are still benefitting from the economic advantages it produced. Consequently justice demands that the latter should make compensation to the previous.
However, as theologian and Oxford professor Nigel Biggar observes: ‘The riotous jungle of history overgrows and obscures the causal pathways. In the case of British slavery, the victims themselves are, in fact, all long dead and in need of God, an afterlife and a final judgement – lie endlessly beyond the reach of compensation. As for his or her twenty-first century descendants, their present condition, while owing something to the enslavement of their ancestors, also owes much to events and selections in the virtually 200 years since emancipation.
‘Can we ensure that they’d have been higher off had their ancestors remained in West Africa – some as slaves and sacrificial funeral fodder? Are there not some descendants of slaves who now prosper fairly greater than some descendants of slave owners? Have not a number of the latter used their tainted inheritance for charitable purposes, even perhaps anti-slavery endeavours? And what, exactly, would proportionate compensation for historic sufferings of slavery appear to be?’
Since that is the case, philosopher Jeremy Waldron is correct to declare that ‘it’s the impulse to justice now that ought to cleared the path….not the reparation of something whose wrongness is known primarily in relation to conditions that not obtain.’
What this implies is that fairly than arguing that a fund ought to be established to assist people of African descent due to what happened previously, a greater argument can be that there are individuals who would profit from the assistance that such a fund could offer and the overarching biblical command that we must always love our neighbour (Leviticus 19:18) signifies that Christians should offer them such help if it is feasible to accomplish that.
