Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:38 pm
Although you can and did "invent
post-hoc rationalizations for" Christianity supporting equality, the reverse is true.
Let's be clear: My claim was that you and I think the idea that all people have equal moral worth under the law is true because we grew up in societies influenced by Christianity.
Since this is a philosophical concept, it would be good for us to first look at what philosophers themselves have to say on this point. The
Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy article on
egalitarianism provides the mainstream view:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wrote:
Egalitarian doctrines tend to rest on a background idea that all human persons are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. So far as the Western European and Anglo-American philosophical tradition is concerned, one significant source of this thought is the Christian notion that God loves all human souls equally.
In other words, Christianity had a major influence in shaping this idea, as I said.
But you have doubts because:
Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:38 pm
Both
Old and
New Testaments are strewn with anti democratic, anti equality examples, from slavery to inequality of women.
This objection misunderstands the claim being made. Nobody is suggesting that modern conceptions of democracy or belief in the equality of women spring fully-formed from the first pages of Genesis.
Rather, what historians have long recognized is that the belief that all people are created in the image of God (
Genesis 1:27) and the belief that all are one in Christ (
Galatians 3:28) had a powerful impact on Christian thought. Later Christian authors, including Augustine and Aquinas, developed these nascent ideas in the Bible into important and influential legal concepts that have influenced our idea that all people have equal moral worth under the law.
Christianity is more than just the Bible.
Diogenes wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:38 pm
Our concept and belief in equality comes from Greece.
Greek philosophy certainly played an important part in the development of our notions of democracy and equality. But the specific idea that all people have equal moral worth under the law has more to do with the influence of Christianity.
In
Equality and Non-Discrimination Under International Law (2017), Jarlath Clifford, an international lawyer, explains this succinctly:
Clifford wrote:
This basic human rights principle is absent from Greek thinking, which envisaged equality between citizens of the state, but not between citizens and non-citizens. Indeed, the idea of equality was applied differently to different people, depending on their political status.
The idea of universal citizenship, a concept with which international human rights law and contemporary constitutions struggle today, was absent form classical Greek philosophy.
Universalism was critical to Christian thinking on equality. St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized an approach to equality that united everyone under God's direction in a common bond of happiness. Aquinas' concept of divine law commanded that all unite in mutual love of God.
Thus, in contrast to Greek philosophers who limited the application of the principle of equality to members of set democratic orders, Aquinas presupposed that by divine design and law the principle of equality applied to everyone.
Indeed, the book review you cited above to support the contention that our "belief in equality comes from Greece" notes that the Greeks also held problematic views on the very issues you raised above for the Bible:
Riesbeck wrote:
Of course, Aristotle infamously limits the scope of the happiness and virtue at which his ideal constitutions aim, endorsing slavery, excluding or marginalizing manual laborers and merchants, neglecting resident aliens, and denying citizenship to women.
According to your argument, the presence of these ideas would exclude Greek philosophy from being the source of our belief in equality as well.
But, in fact, we should discard this misguided objection altogether, and recognize that ideas take time to develop. Nevertheless, the ultimate source of our ideas are not hard to see, as the popular historian Tom Holland (himself an atheist) points out in
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019):
Holland wrote:
That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth. A Roman would have laughed at it.
To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth.
The origins of this principle -- as Neitzsche had so contemptuously pointed out -- lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.