Thursday, November 22, 2007

The Christian basis for human social progress – Part 2

How did Judaism and Christianity lead to the philosophic framework that enables Western democracy and social and economic freedom?

This is part two of a series in which I describe how Christian philosophy led Western society to the basic fundamentals of modern liberal thinking on human dignity and rights; including the idea that government or the "ruling classes" have a duty serve the people, rather than the other way around. I will also show that the idea of social, economic and technological progress is also based upon Christian ideals. It is important for so-called progressive thinkers to recognize where these values came from, for if they hope to sustain these cultural values they would do well not to attack the free practice or discussion of the Christian ideals upon which they rest.

To support this assertion of the role of Christian ideas, I must show is that there is something unique about Judaic and Christian beliefs or experience that set them apart from other human cultures; and that those unique elements are directly related to the values and ideas that have won the allegiance of self-proclaimed enlightened liberal humanists.

I listed in Part 1 four values that seem to underpin modern, progressive philosophy:

  1. Individual human dignity and equality under the law based upon that dignity
  2. Basic rights of the individual to self-determination in their life and property
  3. The belief that social, economic and technological improvement (progress) is possible and good
  4. That humans have a moral value — or even an imperative — to work for progress, not just in our own life, but in the lives of others

Individual human dignity and equality under the law
Today, in modern Western civilization it is largely agreed (although not always practiced) that each human being is worthy of some basic standard set of rights. Implicit in this is the acknowledgement that all people share a certain dignity. In fact, recent history has been a journey to expand the depth and scope of those human rights, and to codify them into law. These laws represent the power of the state, mobilized to protect the rights of individuals. This is fundamentally different from the concept in other ancient and modern civilizations which have held that individuals are to be mobilized to protect the power of the state (acknowledging that in most cases “the state” means the ruling class).

Throughout ancient history, and continuing in non-Western societies today, “The State” is usually represented by a small group who wields power, frequently in support of a monarch or dictator. Everyone else is relegated to a subclass that is at the disposal of the ruling class. Even in ancient Greece, a society that we think of as the birthplace of democracy, the most important duties were those owed by the individual citizen to the polis (city-state). Plato clearly espouses this view in The Republic. And the civil law was designed to protect the government and society as a whole. The idea of the state taking steps to protect individual freedom and civil rights had not occurred to anyone we know of in any society — except among the ancient Hebrews and their cultural successors.

The Hebrews received a law that applied to all equally. It did not afford special rights to the ruling class that trumped the rights of the least in the society. Quite the contrary. Unique in the history of civilization, the Hebrew law placed a duty upon the society for the welfare of the weakest of the individual members (e.g. widows and orphans) and even extended that duty to welcome and respect non-members (the stranger or sojourners). Rulers were seen as stewards responsible to God for the care of His people. This can be seen in the Biblical history of the rulers of Israel, frequently confronted by prophets speaking in God’s name, being taken to task for ignoring their responsibility as stewards.

This was remarkable at a time when rulers exercised absolute power over both civic and religious life, and the institutions of both were used by the elite ruling class at the expense of everyone else. It was in the new and unique cultural system described in the Old Testament that we see everyone afforded equal standing under the law. Incidentally the same principles established a “Separation of Church and State” for the first time. Just as the rulers in Israel were given authority by God to serve all the people, those same rulers served only a civic role. Their role was separate from — and did not overlap — the role of the religious class of priests and Levites. This separation of duties between the civic leaders and the religious leaders, all of whom served the people, was ingrained in the Hebrew culture and was seen as strange by outsiders. Evidence of this separation is seen in the rabbinic traditions surrounding the Ten Commandments and the two tablets upon which they were written. The commandments were said to be divided into two groups — the duties to God (religious duties) were expressed in the first 3, written on one tablet. The duties to all other people (civic) were written on the second tablet.

There is certainly no historical or biological reason for such ideas to emerge. Especially to an “enlightened” Darwinian, it makes no sense to espouse equal rights to all people based upon some philosophical notion of equal dignity. To them, “rights” only follow strength, power and success. "Might makes right" and power is the only source of dignity. But it was the notion of an equal dignity of everyone “born of woman” (created by God) that stands as the lynchpin of this whole system of societal protection of individual human rights. To paraphrase the book of Job, everyone comes into this world equally naked and all will depart without a stitch; so everything that anyone has is a gift of God. With this view, it is impossible to accept a system of stratified rights based upon power.

So why do the modern progressives denigrate — and even attack — the philosophic pillars holding up this view of human dignity? We’ll answer that later on in Part 3.

Potential for Human Progress
What is perhaps the primary philosophical hallmark of what we call “Western Civilization” and modern liberal thinking is the belief in human progress. Many of today’s liberal thinkers characterize themselves as “progressives,” holding up the idea of progress as a keystone of their outlook on life. It would probably surprise many of them to find that the optimistic view of human potential is a direct legacy of Christianity. Judaism broke from the ancient concept of humanity trapped in endless cycles driven by capricious fates, demons and deities. The Hebrews were the first people to view themselves as a people on a journey. Instead of repeating endless cycles, they were making progress on a linear pilgrimage through history (see Thomas Cahill’s book Gifts of the Jews). But the journey was still largely a journey of the people as a whole. It was Jesus, the Christ or Messiah (anointed one), that built upon the Jewish concept of individual dignity (discussed above) to emphasize the individual’s responsibility to follow a path of righteousness to advance the coming of the kingdom on earth as a prelude to the kingdom of heaven.

St. Paul and the early Christian Fathers further developed this theology of human progress. Unlike Judaism (and later Islam) which dwelt upon their scriptures and history in terms of legal frameworks of the past to be consulted to navigate the present, Christianity was distinctly forward-looking, shaped primarily by a view of the present as a prelude to a future filled with hope, enlightened by faith. (see St. Paul, I Cor. 13:9; St. Augustine, City of God, Book 22, ch. 24)

The Christian view of a world enlightened by the spreading Gospel, with believers serving as stewards of God’s gifts, enabled them to escape the doldrums of a life as a pawn of fate in an endless cycle of destiny. Instead they embraced a hope-filled future of change and innovation. Just as Christianity assumed a distinctly developmental view of theology, it also encouraged a developmental spirit in daily life. In his book The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark traces the blossoming of innovations in farming, animal husbandry, transportation, commerce, trade and technology in Europe to the adoption of Christian ideals into the popular culture of the Western Roman Empire. Although Stark points out that Christian ideals and idealism were necessary for this to happen, alone they were not sufficient. He cites two other factors present in Europe that made the blossoming of Western civilization possible. Without the other two — small political units and diverse, well-matched interest groups — other Christian areas remained stuck in ancient cultural patterns of tyranny and class struggle.

From its beginning, Christian theology developed continuously. In the Middle Ages, led by Thomas Aquinas, theological exploration naturally led to similar exploration of the natural world. The founding of universities came from this growing culture of education and inquiry. It was the same culture of inquiry that would lead to the so-called “scientific revolution” of the 16th Century. It is well known that the great scientists of that age, from Copernicus and Galileo, to Newton, were men of faith driven to understand the world as a way to better appreciate its Creator. Even the modern secular observer Alfred North Whitehead acknowledged in his 1925 Lowell Lecture at Harvard that “science rose in Europe because of widespread faith in the possibility of science … derived from medieval theology.” He recognized that modern science could not emerge from the cultures of Greece, China or Islam.

We see that the modern list of progressive values and virtues only make sense within a context of the Judeo-Christian ethic of the individual’s dignity as a child of God. And the idea that social progress is possible and worth pursuing is not found as a universal human value. It has only emerged in a culture that accepts the uniquely Christian-based premises that what an individual does matters beyond the immediate results. But the moral assumptions of Christianity have been so deeply imbued into Western Culture during its centuries of development that they can easily be ignored by those who wish to ignore them. And yet, any intellectually honest assessment must recognize that the liberal values that Western Culture brings to the rest of the world are ultimately rooted in a set of moral imperatives that cannot be separated from their Judeo-Christian religious context — to work for progress, not just in our own life, but in the lives of others.

The greatest danger to human progress today is that modern thinkers have started to view “liberal values” as self sustaining and have jettisoned the foundation of religious heritage that supports them. The modern attacks on the beliefs and institutions that nurtured the progressive advance of human development over the past 1500 years, serve to weaken the hold of those values on the culture. And without them the culture is free to fall, once again, into the ethic of other civilizations in which “Might is Right,” and law is used to enslave a lower class in service to the “State” (i.e. the ruling class).

This scenario would be considered horrible to the average Westerner. Why would anyone who embraces the liberal ideas of equality, human rights and human progress take actions that would hasten such an outcome? This is the question we will attempt to answer in Part 3.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

News Item

I came across this AP article by Larry McShane in the local newspaper the other day. It got me thinking: Why are the big crime families of the Cosa Nostra (a.k.a. "the Mafia" and "the Mob") gradually going out of business?

My guess is that, when it comes to Organized Crime, it is becoming more and more difficult to compete with the Government.