How Jewish values led to liberal democracy
An attack on the Jewish people is an assault on all civilised people.
Liberal democracy, as we know it, could not exist without the values introduced to our culture by Judaism.
American Founding Father John Adams claimed that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In that light, it is important to affirm that Jewish tradition gave us the concepts of humanity and God that made our liberal democracy possible.
Not only did Israel introduce the world to one God, but unlike the capricious pagan gods who ruled with pure will and without regard for goodness and reasonableness, Israel revealed a God of truth, goodness and freedom. Israel’s ethical monotheism led to its radical understanding of the human person. To give one example, the Babylonian myth, Enuma Elish, saw humans created as “savages” –slaves of the gods and slaves of each other. They were neither free, nor responsible.
In contrast, Israel’s revelation in Genesis speaks of human beings as people created in the very “image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26). Their relationship with God led the people of Israel to introduce to our world the view that human beings have an inalienable dignity and value, and that they have personal responsibility.
In other words, people who were subject to pagan values could not enjoy a liberal democracy because of the way they saw themselves – as neither free, nor inherently valuable. Israel, however, saw the people of God as made for freedom, truth and goodness.
Jewish tradition also gave us another foundation of liberal democracy in the equality of human persons. Pagan concepts of humanity judged people in relation to each other, in which there exist manifest inequalities of wealth, gender, race, and other attributes. Israel, on the other hand, valued people in relationship to God, in which relationship all people are equal.
The Jewish people also introduced us to the worldview so important to our free and prosperous society. In What is the West? Philippe Nemo argues that, prior to the message of Israel and its prophets, ancient near eastern religions accepted evil and suffering as a necessary part of human life. Such a fatalistic worldview deprived people of hope and also absolved them of responsibility toward suffering. But the Hebrew Scriptures introduced the ethics of compassion. This worldview rejects suffering and the inevitability of evil. The revolutionary worldview of the Bible introduced the world to the hopeful belief that, with God’s help, we could work against evil, and to eliminate suffering in the world to come.
The Jewish view of the human person also stands against the totalitarian view that rights and freedoms are granted by the state. Instead, Jewish anthropology introduced the view of humanity that underpins the claim of the Declaration of Independence, “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That declaration was a high point of Western political thought – the product of centuries of development, through Christian faith, Greek philosophy, Roman and English law. But none of these could have created liberal democracy without the foundation of the dignity and value of the human person – a foundational belief introduced by the Jewish faith.
Our liberal democracy rests on the conviction that human rights and equality, our moral responsibility, and our dignity are neither granted by the state, nor bestowed by other people. Instead, liberal democracy rests on the genius of Judaism, that our rights and dignity are based on a transcendent reference point – that we have a good, loving, responsible and rational Creator.
In other words, the Jewish tradition introduced our culture to the concept of the human person that underpins liberal democracy. We are not slaves, but free. We are not ignorant, but we can know truth and goodness for ourselves. We are not made to follow orders blindly, but we can know and decide to do the right thing for ourselves.
In contrast to the ancient pagans, and those who are seduced by similar philosophies today, Jewish faith and culture gifted us with a vision of the human person that made possible our human freedom and liberal democracy.
This truth is important today because it is no coincidence that attacks on the Jewish community are also attacks on our civilisation. We see too often that those who attack Israel and the Jewish people seem to favour totalitarian regimes rather than democracies. Antisemitism attacks the people who gave us the faith and culture upon which liberal democracy is based. So, an attack on the Jewish people is an assault on all civilised people. That’s a very important message for a world today in which democracy is fragile and under threat.
Matthew Ogilvie is chairperson of Friends of Israel Western Australia, a professor in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, a vice-president of the Liberal Party of WA and a Krav Maga instructor.
comments