Equality Without God

Under the guise of providing an intellectual foundation for the American achievement, Meir Soloveichik, writing for Bari Weiss’s Free Press, argues that there can be no rational foundation for that achievement. Political equality, the Rabbi assures us, is a matter of faith.

[S]horn of biblical faith, no cogent explanation can be given for the doctrine of equality that lies at the heart of the American creed. Indeed, the other sources of antiquity to which the Founders turned for inspiration—the philosophers of Greece and the statesmen of Rome—denied human equality and held a worldview that there were those destined to rule and others born to serve.

What greater victory could you hand to the postliberals, national conservatives, neo-monarchists, and sundry racists swarming like flies around the remnants of the American experiment than to declare that human equality depends on blind belief, and that the rational, scientific conclusion is that some are born to rule others?

Yet Soloveichik’s claim is historically and philosophically bankrupt.

Point 1: Biblical thinkers were not the first to champion human equality

It’s true that most Greek and Roman thinkers denied human equality. Aristotle famously defended the notion that some were natural slaves. But it’s nowhere near true that the Greeks and Romans had nothing to offer those thinking about political equality.

The Greeks pioneered the first democracies, which regarded Greek citizens of the polis as self-rulers rather than subjects. It was obviously not a universal notion of equality, denying equal standing to women, slaves, non-Greeks, and even metics. But the notion that human beings could govern themselves rather than be subjected to an unaccountable ruler was a profound achievement that opened the possibility that all human beings are properly regarded as free and equal self-rulers.

But that’s not all. The Stoics—who in most respects pioneered the most irrational, poisonous philosophy of antiquity—nevertheless grasped that all human beings were capable of living by reason and articulated a more universal conception of morality. Cicero captured the Stoic position best, insisting:

For there is nothing so similar one-to-one, so equal, as all persons are among ourselves. But if the perverting of habits and the vanity of opinions did not twist weak minds and bend them in whatever direction they had begun, no one would be so similar to himself as all persons would be to all persons. And so whatever the definition of human being is, one definition applies to all persons. That is enough of an argument that there is no dissimilarity within the species; if there were, no one definition would encompass all. And of course reason, by which alone we excel the beasts, through which we are effective in [drawing] inferences, through which we prove, disprove, discuss, demonstrate something, make conclusions—it certainly is in common, differing in education, while decidedly equal in the capacity to learn. For the same things are grasped by the senses of all persons; and the things that move the senses move them in the same way in all persons; and the things that are imprinted upon minds, about which I spoke before, the rudimentary conceptions, are imprinted similarly upon all persons; and speech, the interpreter of the mind, differs in words but is congruent in thoughts. There is no one of any nation who cannot arrive at virtue when he has found a leader.

Morally and politically, the Stoics held, human beings are equal in that we all share the capacity of reason. We are therefore properly bound by the same moral and political law, which they called ius naturale or natural law. This was hardly a full theory of political equality and individual rights, but it in no way amounted to what Soloveichik calls “a worldview that there were those destined to rule and others born to serve.”

Point 2: Biblical thinkers opposed political equality for two-thousand years

If the Greeks pioneered democratic self-rule and the Stoics came to see rationality as the foundation for human equality, what did the Bible offer?

As political scientist (and self-described “believing and practicing Catholic”) Robert Kraynak catalogs in his book Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, for most of history, Christianity was illiberal and undemocratic.

The Old Testament, Kraynak points out, offers no model of a liberal democratic regime rooted in political equality. There are patriarchal regimes, theocratic regimes, and kingships, but nothing approaching even the primitive democracies of Greece. The “divine law revealed to Moses,” he quips, is “the Ten Commandments,” not “the Ten Bill of Rights.” The Jewish God, far from bestowing freedom on his followers, insists on the death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, violating the Sabbath, blasphemy, idolatry, and even cursing your parents. (Robert P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, pp. 47-49)

The New Testament, by contrast, is essentially apolitical because it is essentially other-worldly. Jesus is concerned with outlining our duties to God, not the state’s obligations to us. Indeed, it is we who are obliged to obey the state.

In the Epistles and Book of Acts, Christ’s distinction between duties to God and duties to Caesar provides support for most earthly governments, regardless of their structure. According to Paul and Peter, the Roman emperor is a human authority instituted by God to restrain man’s sinful nature, requiring conscientious obedience, though the Book of Acts adds the qualification than when the human authority conflicts with God’s law “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). A further refinement of the Christian attitude to political authority is Paul’s notion of Christian freedom. Yet, as Paul indicates, Christian freedom and political obedience to Caesar are compatible with each other because true freedom is inner freedom—the mastery of one’s sinful desires by having the spirit triumph over the flesh and the emancipation of Christians from the obligations of the Mosaic law in favor of Christ’s free gift of grace. Christian freedom in these senses is a moral and spiritual concept, and it is compatible with obedience to external political authority, even with political oppression. (Robert P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, p. 53)

What about the Bible’s insistence that we are created in the image of God, which has often been invoked as the basis for political equality? It is of course possible, once the concept of political equality has been discovered, to read it back into the Bible—what viewpoint hasn’t been read into it? But that is not how the Bible was read prior to the Enlightenment.

That we were made in the image of God meant, for the earliest interpreters, that human beings possess a special relationship with God and as a result, a spiritual dignity. But, Kraynak observes, this “permits and even requires different degrees of dignity in the created and fallen world. . . . [O]bedience to emperors and masters, who are a part of the fallen world, . . . does not violate the dignity of the Christian believer because true dignity lies in the possession of an immortal soul and interior freedom.” (Robert P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, p. 61)

The Bible didn’t mandate that its followers embrace political equality—and for most of history, societies rooted in the Bible have emphatically rejected political equality.

Take the issue of slavery, the ultimate case of declaring that “there were those destined to rule and others born to serve.”

Prior to the Enlightenment, virtually no one questioned the morality of slavery. This seems utterly incomprehensible to us today, but that is precisely because we live in a post-Enlightenment civilization. “In a hierarchical world,” notes one scholar, “where various degrees of restraint on liberties seemed natural, slavery aroused no special opprobrium, no particular abhorrence.” (Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, vol. 4, p. 88)

Christianity certainly was no countervailing force. Prior to the Enlightenment, Christian clergy would sometimes encourage manumission of slaves, and they were sometimes successful. But most Christians accepted slavery and the Church itself owned slaves. Isidore of Seville attributed slavery to divine providence: it was, he insisted, punishment for original sin.

Though Christians upheld the spiritual equality of individuals, that did not translate into support for earthly equality. In this fallen world, man’s sinful nature could only be brought under control by a social hierarchy where each individual was answerable to the ranks above him. The slave answered to his master, his master answered to his ruler, and the ruler answered to God. If in some spiritual sense a slave was equal to his master, on Earth he was morally obliged to bow his head and obey. As the eminent British Protestant Morgan Godwyn explained in 1680:

It [Christianity] established the authority of masters over their servants and slaves . . . exacting the strictest fidelity . . . requiring service with singleness of heart, as unto the Lord. . . . And so far it is from encouraging resistance, that it allows them not the liberty of gainsaying, or making undutiful replies to their masters. And referring them to future recompense in Heaven, for their faithful service done to them upon Earth. (Quoted in David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, pp. 204-205.)

But didn’t slavery make a mockery of the Golden Rule? Not in the least. “[B]oth Catholics and Protestants,” historian David Brion Davis observes, “were able to reconcile slavery with the Golden Rule by piously affirming that masters should treat their bondsmen as they themselves would be treated, should they have the misfortune of becoming slaves.” (David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, pp. 308.)

It was only after the Enlightenment that political equality became a defining ideal, helping to unleash a burgeoning abolitionist movement. And it took another century of Christian defenses of slavery before America was able to end the institution.

Point 3: Political equality is an Enlightenment achievement

It is astonishing to find that in Soloveichik’s entire exploration of the ideas that fueled the American Revolution, he does not mention the Enlightenment once. And yet it was Enlightenment thinkers who were the first to articulate a full defense of political equality.

It was Locke, above all, who championed political equality as a foundational principle, and it is notable that he first did so in a polemic directed at a Christian opponent of equality: Sir Robert Filmer.

In Locke’s First Treatise, he makes an argument for political equality rooted in Scripture (appropriate given that Filmer’s defense of the divine right of kings is rooted in an appeal to Scripture). But what’s revealing is how Locke uses Scripture. As political scientist Thomas Pangle explains:

Locke is after the divine right of kings, but he is also after bigger game. Behind the more or less respectable screen of an assault on Filmer, Locke dissects the Bible—revealing what he regards as the absurdity and inhumanity of its authentic teaching, while showing the way to a new, “reasonable” reading (i.e., rhetorical exploitation), in the service of a new, reasonable conception of nature’s God. (Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, p. 135)

Locke’s method of biblical interpretation, in other words, is to say that we must read the Bible in the light of reason. If reason leads us to the conclusion that human beings are politically equal, then it cannot be the case that the Bible opposes political equality. Reason, then, is primary: it sets the terms for how we read the Bible—the Bible does not set the terms for what we conclude is true. “By proceeding in this way,” Pangle continues, “he is able to speak of the Bible always in terms of the highest respect while quietly but unmistakably demonstrating how grotesquely the Bible must be stretched in order to make it accord with the natural light of reason.” (Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, p. 136)

What’s crucial, then, is not that Locke offers religious reasons for embracing human equality, but that he offers rational, earthly reasons. In the state of nature, Locke maintains, all humans are equally free and independent because no one is born with natural authority over another; political subordination therefore cannot be presumed but must be justified. This equality follows from the fact that all humans share the same rational capacities and are subject to the same law of nature, which obliges everyone equally not to harm others in their life, liberty, or possessions.

Individuals may differ in intelligence and ability, on this view, but these differences in degree do not amount to a difference in kind. As a result, no one is born with an inherent right to rule over others, and no one is born with a duty to serve and obey. As Jefferson would put it, “Because Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.” Human beings are born equally free.

Revealingly, when the Founding Fathers gestured at the foundations of equality, they did not cite Scripture, but pointed to the same earthly facts as Locke. John Dickinson, for example, writes that:

Nature has made us all of the same species, all equal, all free and independent of each other; and was willing that those, on whom she has bestowed the same faculties, should have all the same rights. It is therefore beyond doubt that in this primitive state of nature, no man has of himself an original right of commanding others, or any title to sovereignty. (Quoted in Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding, p. 89.)

To say, then, that equality rests on faith is not merely false—it is a repudiation of the American achievement itself. The Founders did not stake the republic on revelation or submission, but on facts about human nature accessible to reason: that human beings are rational agents, capable of self-government, lacking any natural title to rule one another, and therefore entitled to live as equals under a law that binds all.

This was not an inheritance from the Bible, nor a gift of tradition, but a radical Enlightenment discovery that broke decisively with the ancient and Christian worlds alike. To deny this is to concede the intellectual field to those who would resurrect hierarchy, authority, and rule by the “worthy” few. Equality does not require God to command it; it requires only that human beings look honestly at one another and recognize what they are. That recognition—rational, secular, and revolutionary—is the true foundation of the American creed.