This piece is written as a reflection upon the last Come Friday Forum of the Humanities Institute, which was titled “Why is the number of agnostics and agnostics increasing?” and was hosted by Professor Gugliucci of the Physics Department and Sam Marcotte of the Class of 2027. I want to commend them first for leading an excellent forum, which was quite interesting and intellectually stimulating. During the course of the discussion, a question was asked to the extent of “would you change your beliefs and practices if someone definitively proved God is false?” While some answered no, others, including myself, answered yes. Why is this? The answer is simple: outside of Christianity, certain things that seem “good” do not make sense. In other words, Christianity has a uniqueness to its moral dictums that by all accounts cut against the grain of human nature and history.

This is best illustrated by Christianity’s emphasis on forgiveness. In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ tells an inquiring Peter that he shall not forgive seven times, but “till seventy times seven times.” This is completely at odds with our human nature, which, in its weak and fallen state, struggles to forgive even once. The 169th stipulation in the ancient Hammurabi’s Code states that “If he [a child] be guilty of a grave fault, which should rightfully deprive him of the filial relationship, the father shall forgive him the first time; but if he be guilty of a grave fault a second time the father may deprive his son of all filial relation.” How different this is from Christ’s command to forgive without keeping count. The early Roman laws duodecim tabularum (Twelve Tables) also favored retribution over forgiveness. Speaking of monetary debts, the law explains that if a debtor does not pay the debt he owes within a thirty day period, the creditor “shall bind him either with a thong or with fetters of not less than fifteen pounds in weight, or if he wishes he shall bind him with fetters of more than this weight.” The law finishes by explaining how a debtor may be subject to capital punishment or enslavement if they fail to pay the adjudged debt. How different this law is from the forgiving debtor Christ calls us to be in his parable (Matthew 18:21-35). While certain groups of ancient Pagans, such as the Roman Stoics (Seneca not least among them) supported forgiveness or some variation of it over retribution, this is by all accounts the minority view. Even the stoic idea of forgiveness is not as radical as the continual forgiveness our Lord calls us to in the gospels. 

Another major idea of Christianity that is in contradiction with the world is the entirety of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). Take for instance the second Beatitude: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.” In what world is that the case except in Christianity? Alexander the Great was arguably one of the greatest rulers in world history. He was many things, but meekness does not come to mind when thinking of his traits. Even the clement Caesar who offered forgiveness to his sworn archnemesis Cato the Younger did not hesitate to lord it over the Gauls in the years preceding his ascension to Roman dictator. This beatitude of our Lord is at complete loggerheads with the old Roman proverb “fortune favors the bold.” According to Christ, fortune favors the meek. That is not to say that boldness has no place in Christianity. After all, one of the four cardinal virtues is fortitude or courage, which is the Aristotelian mean of zealousness and timidity. Yet, this idea of Christian meekness is a radical idea when put up against the natural human desire to be assertive. This idea of meekness reaches its peak in one particular event, however, which is the apex of the Christian faith: the Crucifixion.

The Crucifixion of Christ is paradoxical to the world in many ways. First, to cap off the idea of meekness, Christ, in his agony in Gethsemane, says to the Father “if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42).  Christ’s obsequious love of the Father and His will is something to marvel at. The thought of a God not doing whatever he pleases, but deferring to another (of course, Christ and the Father are two persons of the same God) is unheard of. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the petty and selfish gods of the Iliad or the angry and tempestuous of the Aeneid. Christ is the model of meekness, and this is what we are called to follow, a revolutionary idea though it be. Second, the idea that weakness is a sign of strength is almost laughable from  a worldly perspective. In Christ’s weakness on the Cross, he was at his strongest point, destroying Satan’s hold on humanity forever and opening up the gates of Heaven to all who desired to follow the Truth. Saint Paul puts it most clearly in his first letter to the Corinthians, when he writes “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23-34). Saint Paul, in referring to the Jews and Greeks can be extrapolated to mean the Jews (the original chosen people) and the Gentiles (all others beside the Jews, including Christians in the modern day). Even Saint Paul admits how foolish the Cross looks without Christian glasses on. The Cross was in its day the epitome of weakness, the last earthly refuge of the most heinous criminals. It was even so bad that citizens born in the city of Rome could not be crucified to reflect their status of birth. That something as weak and miserable as the Cross should become the Christian sign of faith, hope, and charity, the ensign of victory is unthinkable outside of the Christian tradition. 

The Christian faith makes very specific demands of its followers that are in complete rejection of our natural inclination as humans. For after all, the Scriptures tell us that “the imagination and thought of man’s heart are prone to evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). Without the Christian faith, humility would not make sense. Patience would be a nice afterthought. Chastity would be something altogether nonsensical. Temperance would be a silly and prudish idea. While it is easy to say that we would certainly be humble or patient or even temperate without the traditions of Christianity, we say that having been born into a society that has been saturated in 2,000 years of the Christian faith, deteriorating though it may be. The venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen once said in a Christmas message, “Christ did not come to make us nice people. He came to make us new men.” Without the Christian faith, I can confidently say that I would not try to be a nice person or a better man. But, alas, this question is mere hogwash. I take great hope that the Christian God is real and that one day I may be able to hear those humbling words “Well done, good and faithful servant.”