1 Often in times of turmoil, something good emerges from the ashes.

Great leaders who have changed the fabric of global ethics such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. rose from times of social and political chaos. In the wake of natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina or earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, we saw awe-inspiring feats of courage and compassion, nations coming together to help those in need. Similarly, in the earlier years of the Roman Empire, there was the upheaval of war and infighting (the Pax Romana indeed), compounded with social, political, and spiritual turmoil. The Roman Empire extended far and wide, and brought together myriad cultures and traditions, which fostered cultural clashing but also necessitated original thought to deal with problems heretofore never seen. From this mess rose a hopeful vision in the earliest versions of Christianity. Through the conciliation of the Hellenistic and Judaic traditions of inclusion a more modern view of political equality was furthered. There was a distinct need for a new world view during time of the Roman Empire, especially in areas such as Galillee, where the Greeks and Israelites intermingled and seemed to perpetually disagree. The Romans did not inspire loyalty and the empire they created did not have a cultural soul,1 nor did any of the ancient cultures offer an acceptable ideology to deal with the changing times. Their ruling structures were no longer functional, their sources of law incomplete, and their societal outlooks lacking. The stark realism of the Greek Cynics and Stoics was wholly incomparable with the traditional values on community and family held by the Jewish peoples, and yet these people were existing within one societal structure. The Roman Empire offered no solution, focused on efficiency and order, not the spiritual and social needs of its people.
1 Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 26.

2 And so Jesus comes in, and by bringing the two cultural traditions together and making contact between them, the pitch for a change in personal lifestyle and the vague but potentially powerful symbol of an alternative society, started a movement.2 The important part of this movement for the topic we are examining today is that is was open to everyone. Political equality is defined as the extent to which citizens have an equal voice over governmental decisions,3 and, as we will see through the course of this paper, the idea in early Christianity that all are included and can reach the Kingdom of God has led to the idea that everyone is worthy and therefore have a say in government decisions. Robert A. Dahl prescribes that there are two premises on which the idea that political equality is good rests: the moral judgment that all human beings are of equal intrinsic worth, and that among adults no persons are so definitely better qualified than others to govern that they should be entrusted with complete and final authority over the government of the state.4 Both Greek philosophy and Judaic tradition has elements of these ideals, but neither were definitive. It was only through the melding of the two beliefs into early Christianity that the modern idea that political equality is valuable came to be. First we must look to the traditions that came together, to fully understand the roots of this monumental idea. I will focus on the beliefs on inclusion, which have implications on political equality. The two great figures of Greek thought are Plato and Aristotle, and thought their views differed significantly, they both were rather exclusive.

2 Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, 40. 3 Sidney Verba, Thoughts about Political Equality, [Page #], accessed December 22, 2012, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/inequality/Summer/Summer01/papers/Verba.pdf. 4 Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality (n.p.: Yale University Press, 2006), 4.

3 The goal of Platos system as prescribed in The Republic is to understand the Form of Good, but only the philosopher-kings can attain this understanding. And philosopherkings are few and far between and must be primed from a young age. Only such people are fit to to rule: until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, ... then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.5 Plato cares little for and pay little attention to the common man. Philosophy is of the utmost importance, and life without this sort of examination is not worth living;6 therefore, those who are not philosophers are not really living and do not matter. Aristotle prescripts a more open and tolerable system, but it is still wholly closed to the common man. His ultimate goal is the achievement of the Golden Mean, a cumulative goodness that is achieved by on the whole, choosing the middle of two extremes in any one virtue. While seemingly attainable to the masses, several of important virtues require being adequately furnished with external goods.7 Aristotle said that needing to work to make money would be counterproductive to achieving virtue and happiness, and spent much talking about what one should do in the leisure time attained from not needing employment, stating happiness is thought to depend on leisure.8 Furthermore, women and slaves are completely excluded from happiness, because they do not have choice. So the pinnacle of Aristotles philosophy, happiness,

5 Plato, The Republic, trans. Richard M. Sterling and William C. Scott (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1985), 473-C. 6 Plato, The Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 38. 7 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), I.1101a10. 8 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, X.1177b4.

4 can only be attained by the privileged male elite who are born into wealth and do not have to work. Aristotle too was unconcerned with the common man: he was writing for the men of the advantaged social class of which he was a part. We now look to the other major tradition that fed early Christianity: Judaism. Unlike Aristotle, the Old Testament emphasizes helping those who do not have: the orphan, the widow, the foreigner. However, there is still one group of people that is of sole importance: namely, the Israelites. All other nations do not matter, they will eventually be destroyed by Yahwehs wrath because they do not worship Yahweh. The covenants establish an interesting duality between conditional and unconditional salvation. The Abrahamic Covenant promises that all of the descendents of Abraham, the Israelites, will be blessed, yet the Mosaic Covenant requires that the Israelites maintain the commandments in order to be blessed. So in some ways, the ultimate design can be reached by anyone who is a good person and follows the commandments, regardless of their wealth or position in life. However, only those of a certain race, the descendents of Abraham, are the chosen people of Yahweh, and only they will be his treasured possessions. Thus, an elitist ideal is shadowed by the seeming possibility of attainment by all. Now we return to the tumultuous age of the Roman Empire, and the early Christian movements. These movements cultivated the invitation to personal virtue and thought of the Kingdom of God as an otherworldy dimension of spiritual existence where true human being had its origin and end.9 The Jewish idea of following the commandments was combined with the Greek prescriptions for virtue and compounded
9 Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, 41.

5 with the Judaic concept of salvation. A new religious ideology emerged to respond to the spiritual and political needs of the people in that time. And the process of merging the two movements mirrors the path of growth of political equality, as prescribed by Dahl. The first phase of growing political equality is privilege justified by doctrine. The most highly privileged members of a societythe political, social, and economic elites, if you willtypically espouse and, when they can, even enforce doctrines that justify their superiority.10 Dahl himself cites Plato and Aristotle as textbook examples philosophy promoting elite rule. By weaving a philosophy of elitism into other informative and explanatory philosophies, by maintaining it with other logical philosophical arguments, the concept of upper-class rule was so indoctrinated into Greek thought and government, and eventually into Roman as well. That the Romans borrowed much from the Hellenes is no secret, and elite rule was no different. The Jewish tradition also at its core contained extreme elitism: only the descendents of Abraham were worthy, only they could achieve salvation. The Israelites saw themselves as better than the masses, and logically so, if they were the only ones who would attain a good life in the next world. Thus, there was a prevalence of elitism throughout the Roman Empire. The next step towards the extension of political equality is skeptisim about elite dominance among the lower strata.11 It is human nature to not agree with ideology that do not benefit oneself, and so this was only a natural reaction amongst the citizens of the Roman Empire. Those who did not benefit from elitist rule would try to find ways to better their lives by questioning the legitimacy of the those in power so as to perhaps

10 11

Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 25. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 26.

6 bring themselves some ability to change their poor conditions. In the Roman Empire especially, where the government was not particularly concerned with propagating any particular religion or doctrine but more with maintaining efficiency, the masses were given an opportunity to question the system in which they lived in poverty and misery. This is part of the next step of the process, which is a change in conditions that gives the subordinate groups new opportunities to express their grievances.12 The lack of a particularly indoctrinating regime as well as the diaspora of different cultures into a society where no one belief was prevalent allowed the people of the Roman Empire to find original ways to deal with their problems. People were able to come together to complain about their maltreatment by the empire and the clashing culture and discover a solution in Christianity. Dahls final three stages were also followed by Christianity. First, there were growing pressures for change,13 then support within the dominant strata,14 and finally the subordinate strata made gains.15 Once, due to the unique circumstances and the coming together of the two doctrines, Christianity in some form had been established, its supporters began to promote and spread it. This was the pressure for change: the converts to Christianity offered their religion to others as an opportunity for salvation and a change from their current lives. And some of those who took up the offer and converted themselves were members of the elite, who, according to Dahl, change for a variety of reasons: moral convictions, compassion, opportunism, fear of the consequences of

12 13 14 15

Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 27. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 27. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 28. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 28.

7 disorder, dangers to property and the legitimacy of the regime, and even the real or imagined possibility of revolution.16 These all could have been reasons for upper class converts to Christianity. And then, the religion began to spread. This would be the gains of the subordinate strata, as their vision for a more equal society, religiously as well as politically, began to take hold. Of course, there were many setbacks after this expansion of political equality, centuries of setbacks. The hierarchy established into the Christian Church and more exclusive ideas imbibed into the New Testament worked against many of the gains made during the early days of the Christian movement. 17 However, the original reconciliation was an important first step and introduced many important notions to political equality. The first is that this was a religion that did not derive anything from government, rather, it was a way to bridge the gap between the order offered by the Roman Empire and the unknown of the vast cosmos. It also emphasized individual responsibility to take up mantle of Christianity, to follow the word of God. And most importantly to us, it was open to all. Everyone had worth, regardless of race or status, and everyone could reach salvation if they simply followed the tenants of the religion. The movement not only followed the patterns of a heightening political equality, it added essentials ideas to the collective human body of knowledge that would contribute to the expansion of political equality from that time forward. A religion created and forwarded not by the government, but by the people, initiated the idea that there are certain things beyond government that have the most importance on equality. This idea

16 Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality, 28. 17 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979)

8 eventually became the concept of basic human rights and the basic rights of any sort of constitutional government, one of which is political equality. Furthermore, the emphasis on individual responsibility in early Christianity is a starting point for individual responsibility in governance. That the individual has a responsibility to himself and to his fellow man is one of the building blocks for many modern governmental structures, and to political equality. We must be politically equal if we are to fulfill our responsibilities, or else how could we act to our fullest capabilities? If there is political inequality than some people will have very little power and then be unable to fulfill the responsibilities given such an emphasis in early Christianity. And of course, the completely open nature of the religion was an important step towards all equality. We are all equal under the eyes of God and all have the capacity to attain salvation, so it would be illogical to then take away that equality and limit peoples capabilities on Earth. Thus, the early Christian movement did much to further political equality. At the time and for the people involved, the spread of the religion mirrored the theoretical spread of political equality and it did offer a much greater degree of equality to those people. Furthermore, the doctrines contained within early Christianity derived from the melding of the Greek and Jewish traditions proved ideologically important for the future of political equality. Although the forces of Christianity have often worked against equality, the tenants of the faith have proven extraordinarily important for the advancement of political equality.

9 Bibliography Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. . The Politics. Edited by Stephen Everson. Revised Student ed. Cambride Texts in the History of Political Thought. N.p.: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Dahl, Robert A. On Political Equality. N.p.: Yale University Press, 2006. Mack, Burton L. Who Wrote the New Testament? New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979. Plato. The Apology. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. . The Republic. Translated by Richard M. Sterling and William C. Scott. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1985. Verba, Sidney. Thoughts about Political Equality. Accessed December 22, 2012. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/inequality/Summer/Summer01/papers/Verba.pdf.