March 20th, 2023
In an interesting article for Aeon Magazine, Biblical and early Christianity scholar Pieter van der Horst notes an interesting cultural contrast in the history of western civilization during the late Classical-Medieval eras between the respective worldviews and values of Judeo-Christian and pagan religious traditions. He explains how, while ideas like equality before God, justice for the oppressed, and protection-support for society’s weak-vulnerable, were essential to Christian and Islamic ethics (by way of the Jewish tradition that inspired them), this concern was largely absent from a host of pagan religious and secular ideologies existing along-side Christianity and Judaism at this same time. These divergent views, he adds, may account for the growth and success of Christianity and the church as a social institution (as opposed its many pagan religious and secular rivals) through much of Christianity’s early history. This divergence also highlights an important connection between the moral and social justice ideals and institutions that America (and the Abrahamic West generally) have adopted, and the Judeo-Christian religious sources from which they have been largely derived (from ancient Hebrew and Mesopotamian law, to Biblical prophets and Christ, to modern constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and international law). The difference between the Judeo-Christian tradition and its ancient pagan rivals in this regard was exemplified by their starkly opposing conceptions of social justice that coexisted during the initial centuries of Christianity’s development in classical antiquity. “Ancient Greek moralists didn’t admonish people to concern themselves about the fate of the poor.” Van der Horst writes,
“When Greeks did speak about the joy of giving to others, it has nothing to do with altruism, but only with the desired effects of giving: namely honor, prestige, fame, status. Honor is the driving motive behind Greek beneficence, and for that reason the Greek word philotimia (literally, ‘the love of honor’) would develop the meaning of ‘generosity, beneficence’, not directed towards the poor but to fellow humans from whom one could reasonably expect a gift in return….. While care for the poor, let alone organized charity, was a non-item in Greco-Roman antiquity, it is a central concern in the Jewish Bible. Caring for the poor is seen as a major duty and virtue not only in the Torah of Moses, but also in the Prophets and other biblical writings. Most significantly, God is seen as the protector of the poor and the rescuer of the needy. They are his favorites and the objects of his mercy, regarded as humble before God and therefore often as pious and righteous.”
Thus, “it remains an indisputable fact that organized charity in the sense of a communal obligation towards the needy, which was by and large unknown in Greco-Roman culture, was created by the Jews and adopted by the Christians. And one can hardly deny that these developments were inspired by the sincere conviction that humankind should imitate God’s special concern for the most vulnerable among humans – the poor”
World religions historian Huston Smith has also noted the importance of this Abrahamic religious influence on social justice as well as altruism in western civilization, illustrating how the value placed on social justice was a unique and revolutionary feature of Judaism, in contrast to the pagan religions in ancient Palestine.
“It is to a remarkable group of men we call the prophets more than to any others that Western civilization owes it convictions 1) that the future of any people depends in large measure on the justice of its social order, and 2) that individuals are responsible for the social structures of their society…In similar situations other peoples of the region assumed that outcomes rested on the relative strengths of the national gods involved…on a simple calculus of power in which moral questions were irrelevant…what other would have interpreted as a power squeeze, they saw as…the conviction that every human being, simply by virtue of his or her humanity, is a child of God and therefor in possession of rights that even kings must respect.”
Interestingly, on the other side of the globe in south Asia, the Sikh tradition in relation to Hinduism was similar in this regard to the Western Abrahamic legacy in contrast to the polytheistic one: Hindu civilization in the south Asian Medieval era, (like ancient Western pagan civilizations) stressed polytheism, moral relativism and social stratification via caste, while Sikh philosophy (like that of the Ancient Jews, Christians ,and Muslims) emphasized monotheism, moral foundationalism, and social-political egalitarianism as a counter-point to the dominant polytheistic ideologies from which it emerged. In deliberate contra-distinction, in many ways, to the hierarchical and caste-centered Hindu social-religious order that engendered it, Sikhism emphasized both religious and social egalitarianism: rejecting caste, advocating equality, and holding political regimes accountable to universal standards of justice. The Adi Granth Sahib, like the Old Testament, is replete with its Guru’s proscriptions against coveting wealth: “Neither the kings, nor the subjects, nor chiefs will remain, the fool thinks that the solid and beautiful mansions will remain his. But know ye that treasures full of wealth are emptied in a moment.” While also advocating for social equality: “There (in the Lord’s Court) the Adjudication is based upon Truth: and the Master and the Servant are deemed equal (before the Lord).”
In Western Abrahamic faiths, the concept of social and moral justice—secured by individual rights and universal equality under a transcendent and absolute standard of justice—has remained particularly visible and predominant. The influence of these principles originating in Biblical scripture and the example of the prophets, has led directly through history from Medieval jurisprudence and the Magna Carta to the founding Constitutions (and basic civil rights) of modern nations, to international law and the Declaration of Universal Rights, to theories of just war and the Geneva Protocols, to human rights movements from anti-slavery and anti-imperialism to civil rights, peace and social justice activism of our own times. It is no accident that, when celebrating the idea of universal equality in his most famous speech, Martin Luther King enlisted the inspired words of the Hebrew prophets : “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight, and the glory of Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
Indeed, in his bestselling The Evolution of God, psychologist (and secular atheist) Robert Wright explores how theistically inclined world religions have functioned as conflict-resolution and universal-peace-promoting economic, social, and political generators throughout world history: gradually fostering the concept of human rights and institutions of social justice through which national, international and global civilizations have emerged. Theism, notwithstanding its propensity for sometimes fostering monolithic identities, dogmatic loyalties, and intolerant ideologies, has also been a well-spring of social unity, interpersonal cohesion, and cooperative conflict resolution. By fostering values like universal morality, fraternity, and compassion, many theistic religions have provided the ideological ‘glue’ connecting individuals and groups formerly separated by personal, political, tribal, and ethnic disparity. Wright even suggests that this unifying trend may indicate something like a transcendent telos or ultimate purpose directing the course of the cosmos and human history. He writes,
“If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”
The United States has always remained, simultaneously, a culturally religious but politically secular nation—rigorously ensuring the separation of church and state while zealously protecting freedom of religious expression. In light of recent social-political conflicts involving religion and secularism however, many prominent voices in our contemporary intellectual culture have (perhaps understandably) grown increasingly, sometimes militantly, secular, and often hostile toward religion….especially toward evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam (the ‘New Atheist’ phenomenon being one manifestation of this). I remain rather dubious regarding evangelical conceptions of an anthropomorphic-puritanical-father-in-the-sky type theism myself (though I do remain very sympathetic to the idea of a transcendent all-encompassing cosmic Mind in some sense–and have no objection to there being a personalized aspect to this Mind, which might be called “God”). However, in our secular and often anti-religious era, it is prudent to keep in mind our theistic religious historical heritage—never forgetting how essential this heritage has been for our enduring and increasingly expansive concern for social justice and human rights throughout the ages.
