Can You Have Human Dignity without Christianity?

From Nathaniel Peters on The Public Discourse.com (Jan. 20):

When Christianity enters a society, it provides an understanding of inherent and equal human dignity that lifts up those whom that society has considered unworthy. But what happens when Christianity recedes? Christian human dignity is not founded on maximizing fairness or autonomy, but on the fact that all human beings are made free and in the image of God. If it becomes detached from that principle, then human dignity no longer makes sense.

Friedreich Nietzsche shows us that the real, intellectually consistent alternative to the Christian view of ethics and anthropology is not warm and comfortable secular liberalism, but something much more terrible and dangerous. In his essay “The Greek State,” Nietzsche writes: “Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labor, are the needy products of slavedom hiding from itself. . . . ‘Man in himself,’ the absolute man possesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties.” Last summer, a few days before my son was born, The Philosophers Magazine tweeted a similar if less dramatically phrased quotation from the Australian philosopher Peter Singer: “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.” This is correct—albeit a poor use of the adjective medieval to mean archaic, backward, and obviously wrong to enlightened people. But Singer could have been more historically precise had he said, “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is patristic.”

This is effectively Nietzsche’s point as well: the concept of human dignity is a relic of Christianity, a fragment of that revolt of slave morality that toppled pagan religion and dramatically changed our view of humanity. Nietzsche and Singer are right: Christianity introduced for the first time the idea of human dignity, which I define as the idea that all human beings are in some way special or worthy of respect simply because they are human beings and irrespective of their particular merits or abilities. Human dignity comes out of the teachings of Jesus and the encounter between Christians and the pagan world.

Of course, the concept of human dignity develops extensively in Kant and Enlightenment philosophy, and human dignity as we most fully understand the concept today was not present in the patristic era. But it behooves us to examine some of the important early Christian texts about human dignity, especially as interpreted by the classicist Kyle Harper and the New Testament scholar C. Kavin Rowe, before considering lessons for living in a time that many describe as being newly pagan or post-Christian. If human dignity is a Christian concept, what happens to it after Christianity?

Christianity and the Classical World

That question gains an edge when we remember that, as Harper has noted, “none of the classical political regimes, nor any of the classical philosophical schools, regarded human beings as universally free and incomparably worthy creatures. Classical civilization, in short, lacked the concept of human dignity.” Aristotle famously believed that some human beings were destined to slavery by nature and lacked the moral reason necessary for flourishing as free agents. Some have pointed to Cicero’s De officiis, where he writes that “if we consider what dignitas and excellence there is in nature, we will realize that it is disgraceful to revel in luxury and to live a soft and dissolute life.” But, Harper argues, this is more a statement of moral egalitarianism that all human beings have reason and therefore moral personhood than an imputation of dignitas or worthiness to every human being. It is an exhortation to live a moral life, not a statement that all human lives have equal inherent worth.

Christianity’s teaching about human nature emerged in the classical world without precedent. As Rowe puts it, it was one of the “surprises” that this new movement brought into the world. This teaching grew out of the Jewish understanding that the Jewish people reflected the God of Israel and the life he desired for and with human beings. The New Testament revealed that it is the person of Jesus of Nazareth himself who is the Imago Dei, in two senses. Jesus is called “Lord,” just as God is, and the Son of God, the refulgence of the Father’s glory visible to us. He is also the New Adam, the one who in his person shows us what it truly means to be human.

The early Christians and the New Testament took the logic one step further: If Christ reveals what it means to be human being, then when you encounter another human being, no matter his status or background or creed, you are encountering Christ. We see this in Jesus’s words about the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25, which we tend to hear as an exhortation to love Christ through the corporal works of mercy: “Whenever you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” Rowe notes, however, that the parable turns on a contradiction. The Son of Man comes to judge the world as a king, and we know that kings are majestic, not lowly. The image of a king in majesty is one that is seen throughout the kingdom, on its coinage and in public proclamations and monuments. In an important sense, you treat the image as you would the king, with reverence and respect. Yet this king, Jesus, says that the poor and destitute are representations of him. When you see them, you see the king and should treat them as one would treat him. In other words, all people have dignity because they are made in the image of God, which is the image of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. The Christian roots of human dignity are therefore both broad and Christological. In Rowe’s words, “because Jesus Christ is the human, every human is Jesus Christ.”

As this understanding of human dignity encountered the pagan world, it called for radical reforms of familiar social institutions and the creation of new and unprecedented ones. Harper argues that three of the most important points of encounter were slavery, sexual coercion, and care for the poor and the sick. [read more]