Did Christianity Cause Western Values? Part 3: Contingency

HISTORICAL CONTINGENCY

Both Jesus and Paul thought the world would soon end. Neither of them were committed to political change or institutional reform. Paul talked about throwing off the shackles of slavery, but as a metaphor for what Christianity achieves for the soul after death. Paul told his followers to accept slavery in this life. Jesus and Paul didn’t preach about creating a liberal order in this world, so it’s tough to give them, or Christianity, credit for creating it. They preached a message of how to enter God’s kingdom that is not of this world, not how to run kingdoms here on Earth.

I contend that a shift did happen where the Christian implications for morals were applied to societies and states in this world, but it wasn’t a straightforward directive from Paul or Christ. Creating modern liberal values and having them applied by societies and governments did not happen automatically. The implications of needing to care about, and identify with, all humans did not stop Christian societies from the oppression of kings and nobles over peasants, the subjection of women, intolerance, mass murder, war, worldwide slavery, or the continuation of authoritarian systems. It didn’t lead Eastern, Egyptian, or Ethiopian Christianity into developing liberal norms, nor the did it lead to the West applying them in great force until very recently.

The ideas of Jesus and Paul were a great seed, but the growing of that seed into modern values was contingent on the…