Christianity, as exemplified in the Gospels, poses a new way of living for human beings. It represents a distinct break away from the heroes and gods of classical Greece and Rome. By creatively reformulating, and thus revitalizing, the customs of the ancient Hebrews, and claiming to fulfill their prophecies, Christianity sows the seeds of a new morality. The humble preacher of this new “way,” Jesus, completes the task of publicly revealing this new morality in the so-called “sermon on the mount” (Matthew Chapters 5-7) when he re-evaluates the values of classical antiquity, or at least the ancient values of the Israelites which are propounded in the commandments, or “words” or Moses in Exodus and Leviticus. Therefore, Jesus’s moral proclamations in the Sermon on the Mount may be seen as a direct response to the Ten Commandments of Moses.
What does it mean to re-evaluate prior values? By which standard is someone judging those values that once stood proudly for a millennia? To put one’s stake in the ground and brush away the values of the past requires a transvaluation that is supra-moral, or at least one that seeks to overcome what has hitherto been considered good and evil. In Jesus’s transvaluation of values, it can be tacitly said that morality as morality is recognized as fluid (i.e. if morality can change over time then it is not fixed). If God can reveal one series of “thou shalt” injunctions in the Hebrew Bible, and then another set of “blessed are the…” declarations in the New Testament, then even God acknowledges that there is no one true morality, and thus morals have evolved over time.
The “newness” of the New Testament is the fulfillment of a new morality, an inverted morality from classical antiquity, wherein humility replaces pride as the greatest virtue, and the same goes for meekness, poverty, and peacemaking. Good and evil are understood as reflections of something much deeper than mere actions as in the Torah. In the Hebrew Bible, obedience to laws was a way of engendering a priestly and holy city. Instead, with Christianity, we receive a much more inward-facing ontology, a existential glimpse at the decay of “the world” in order to re-imagine a “kingdom of heaven” (i.e. not a corporeal city on earth) wherein the least of all peoples are honored –the diseased, the poor, and the enslaved and so on. Christianity looks forward with hope to another world, beyond mere mortal life. Thus, Christianity poses a challenge to political philosophy, which is concerned with corporeal cities and regimes. What is to become of the earthly city according to the Christian ethos? Can a Christian person serve both Rome and the kingdom of heaven? Is there a tension between the virtue of humility and the virtue of pride with respect to politics? The problems of Christian political philosophy are best illuminated by the early voices who established the faith: St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas –all three of whom offer a defense of Christianity, by claiming that it is good not merely for its own sake, but for other reasons.
How are we to accept these teachers –Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas– in light of the newness of Christian teaching? Do they rebel against the wisdom of the ancients, or rather embrace their teaching as a natural extension of the same branch? The answer lies in the lens of theology. Theology claims to be a certain type of knowledge, namely revealed knowledge which comes through miraculous events –signs and wonders. In the New Testament Jesus claims to be the son of God (and sometimes “the son of Man”) as well as God incarnate. However, we cannot simply rely on his word as justification for his divinity. Therefore, how should we take Jesus at his word? In the Gospels, we are given many different accounts of his exorcisms and healings and raising of people from the dead as well as other supernatural acts. These supernatural signs add force to his claim to be the son of God according to the logos of theology. The Gospels also employ a unique rhetorical device wherein we are turned inward, toward the crowds surrounding Jesus. We hear of their shock and amazement at such supernatural events taking place. In doing so, the Gospels place us among the crowd, encouraging us to join in the huddle.
Following on the eschatological teaching of his predecessor, John the Baptist, Jesus preaches about a forthcoming “kingdom of heaven” as a message of hope to feudal peasants scattered throughout Palestine. It is a theology of hope for a long-enslaved Jewish people, yet also an apocalyptic vision of a divine day of judgment. However, Christianity speaks on an inner level to something universal, not merely to the blighted people of ancient Palestine. Christian morality reveals something much deeper and more true about the human condition than does the ancient Greek way of life. In fact, Christianity supersedes the Greeks in some ways. Unlike the Hebrew Bible, in which God is a particular god for his “chosen people,” Christianity presents a loving God that is universal (i.e. for all peoples across the earth). Christianity offers a universalist theology, expanding the minds of man beyond the limits of this or that particular city. Now, God is for everyone. Today, this absolutist conception of God, or the good things in life, has become uniquely manifested and secularized in various political and technological regimes of our world today in the 20th and 21st centuries –including political regimes like communism and fascism– as well as the birth of new totalizing ideas and abstractions. For, does not the pursuit of a loving God, as the singular greatest good, also allow for the existence of the greatest of evils on earth?
In addition to a universalist horizon, Christianity also deepens the soul of man from within. Christian morality forces us to look within. Not only do we care about the actions (“deeds”) of people when it comes to breaking moral laws, but also, and perhaps more importantly, we now care about intentions. For example, if someone kills another person, we are now called to ask: why did they kill a person? Was it justified in some way? Was it done in self-defense? In contrast, recall Moses’s commandment regarding killing. It does not say: “thou shalt not murder” but rather “thou shalt not kill.” The key distinction here is intentionality. Christianity asks us to forgive and consider the inevitable fallibility of human life. Christianity points us toward the conclusion of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, in which Orestes is haunted by the Furies for committing the crime of matricide, but Orestes is saved by a trial which is judged by Athena who washes him clean with innocence (though there are certain key distinctions between the Oresteia and modern Christianity). Orestes’s crime in the end was forgiven and justified. He managed to escape his tragic fate with the help of divine intervention. Likewise, forgiveness is a key element of Christianity; the ability to be reborn and free of guilt, and finally to overcome a previous self, to learn from mistakes, and to trust and build new friendships.
However, another key ingredient of Christianity is compassion (coming from the Latin “passio” meaning suffering; or “suffering together”). By not seeing “the other” at a distance, as the ancients once saw their enemies, we now experience the suffering of others together in communion with the sufferer. Life becomes heavier, more tragic (hence why there is little laughter and instead much sorrow in the New Testament). We also now see Greek tragedy from a new perspective. There is a mixing of joy and sorrow in this newfound desire for compassion, coupled with turning the other cheek to our abusers, and serving the least of our brothers and so on. We experience happiness in service to others, and perhaps even pride in the descent into meekness and impoverishment of spirit, as well as sorrow at the immense suffering in the world –for no amount of Christian compassion can possibly alleviate the suffering of the world.
With the teachings of Jesus, particularly his Sermon on the Mount which contains his transvaluation of all prior values, the new and modern morality takes hold in a unique and revolutionary moment, discarding the majestic world of antiquity, and embracing a new universalist horizon as God’s son commits himself to death in the form of a human sacrifice in order to free future human beings from guilt and thus cast wide the gates of the “kingdom of heaven” for all people to enter. It is a bold new morality which poses problems but also offers new creative opportunities as we learn more about the significance of a universalist global horizon and the uniquely human death of God which has only become more apparent in recent centuries. Much of our modern world now faces a new conflict between the decaying state of Christianity in practice, on the one hand, and the inheritance of a secularized global version of Christian morality on the other. As the former withers, it provides fertile ground for the latter.
These reflections have been influenced by the writings of Thomas Pangle, in particular the fourth essay in his book entitled The Key Texts of Political Philosophy: An Introduction.