Mutual Subjection

In his Meditations and Prayers on the Way of the Cross (CTS, 2005, p.4) Pope Benedict XVI writes that the fathers of the Church 'considered heartlessness to be the primary vice of the pagans': the prophecy of Ezekiel in which the Lord says 'I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh' (Ez.11.19) was understood by the Fathers to have been fulfilled in the person and teaching of Christ so that the laws engraved by Jaweh on the tablets of stone at Sinai had been re-enacted by Jesus in the hearts of those who imitated his life and put into effect his teachings.

In the eastern empires by which Israel found herself surrounded this heartlessness was evident in the very structure of society. The King was at the apex; everyone below him was a slave; and everybody below them was the slave of slaves. The King on his throne spoke in the peremptory language of absolute power, while his subjects, and his subjects' subjects, uttered the formulae of prostration and suffered their backs (or their necks) to be used as his footstool. The fact that the Jews placed such emphasis on the Law, and the fact that the Law was conferred, guaranteed, and visibly enforced by God was itself an oddity which distinguished Israel from the despotisms around it, where Law was subject to the whims of Kings.

In the West, where societies of a looser kind emerged, inequalities of birth and wealth made for uneasy alliances. In the sixth century Greece isonomia (the principle of equality before the law) emerged as a rallying call among a mercantile class which were beginning to challenge the social power formerly wielded by the landed gentry. But even in the fifth century, Themistocles is recorded as saying that he hoped he would never enjoy a position of authority if he did not use it to help his friends, and to put his enemies down (Plutarch, Aristides, 24).

When Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan, his hearers, whether Jews or Gentiles, would not have been surprised to hear how a Priest and a Levite had looked the other way when passing by one of their countryman who had fallen among thieves (Luke 10.30). There was, after all, a widespread belief that if bad things happenned to you, it was because you, or your family, had offended God (see Luke13.1-5 Jesus refers to the doctrine with evident irony). But the intervention of the Samaritan would have come as a shock, for the relations between Jews and Samaritans were less than friendly: in the Gospel of John the term 'Samaritan' is used to insult Jesus himself('Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan, and that you are possessed by a devil?' (John 9.48).

The revolutionary model of kingship and community that Jesus brought is exemplified in the the words which he spoke after washing of the feet of his disciples: 'You call me Lord and Master; and you are right to do so; for so I am. And if I, your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet as well. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you... The servant is not greater than his lord; neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him (John 13.13-16).

It is this doctrine of mutual submission for which was unique in the ancient world: it is interestingly distinguishable from the humanist world-view of individaul rights which is currently in the ascendant.