secrets the revelation of which could free humanity from its earthly pain and
limitations. It was that vision, driven by doubt, that provided the tremendous
collective and individual motivational power necessary for the development
of science, with its extreme demands on individual thinkers for concentration
and delay of gratification.
This is not to say that Christianity, even in its incompletely realized form,
was a failure. Quite the contrary: Christianity achieved the well-nigh
impossible. The Christian doctrine elevated the individual soul, placing slave
and master and commoner and nobleman alike on the same metaphysical
footing, rendering them equal before God and the law. Christianity insisted
that even the king was only one among many. For something so contrary to
all apparent evidence to find its footing, the idea that that worldly power and
prominence were indicators of God’s particular favor had to be radically de-
emphasized. This was partly accomplished through the strange Christian
insistence that salvation could not be obtained through effort or worth—
through “works.”^141 Whatever its limitations, the development of such
doctrine prevented king, aristocrat and wealthy merchant alike from lording it
morally over the commoner. In consequence, the metaphysical conception of
the implicit transcendent worth of each and every soul established itself
against impossible odds as the fundamental presupposition of Western law
and society. That was not the case in the world of the past, and is not the case
yet in most places in the world of the present. It is in fact nothing short of a
miracle (and we should keep this fact firmly before our eyes) that the
hierarchical slave-based societies of our ancestors reorganized themselves,
under the sway of an ethical/religious revelation, such that the ownership and
absolute domination of another person came to be viewed as wrong.
It would do us well to remember, as well, that the immediate utility of
slavery is obvious, and that the argument that the strong should dominate the
weak is compelling, convenient and eminently practical (at least for the
strong). This means that a revolutionary critique of everything slave-owning
societies valued was necessary before the practice could be even questioned,
let alone halted (including the idea that wielding power and authority made
the slave-owner noble; including the even more fundamental idea that the
power wielded by the slave-owner was valid and even virtuous). Christianity
made explicit the surprising claim that even the lowliest person had rights,