Article

Creed

Death & life

Middle East

7 November 2023

5 min read

How much is a human life worth?

Concerned by the conditional responses to deaths in the Israel-Hamas war, Ryan Gilfeather considers why we should value all human lives.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A line of people, some old, some young, wait to cross a road.

Palestinian life near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, Israel, 2021.

Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

The horrors of recent weeks have bought a disturbing reality to the surface: human dignity, the unearned and basic worth of all people, is up for negotiation. As I write these words, a dire conflict rumbles on in Israel and Gaza; the latest horrifying flashpoint in an intractable and brutal conflict. A cacophony of voices in the West are espousing histories, interpretations and solutions. Many of them reveal an implicit sense that only certain lives have an inherent dignity.

Some praised Hamas’ brutal attack as a just act of decolonisation. The lives lost were not to be mourned, because, in their words, these Israelis were fair game for violence because they are colonisers. They asked for it. They have given up their right to the preservation of life. Implicitly, these voices suggest that human dignity is conditional; their actions have taken away their inherent value.

Just as troubling is the apathy as thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza are slain in their homes. Many of our leaders are silent about this unimaginable loss of life, as if it does not represent a tragedy, and as if they are just the collateral damage of war. The implicit message is that human dignity has preconditions, that only certain kinds of people get to have it in the first place, and that these particular Palestinians do not.

Why should our rational autonomy or other capacities mean that we have an unearned worth?

It is, in some ways, unsurprising that human dignity is up for negotiation in this way. Secular discussions of human dignity often ground it in the human person.

In the philosophical tradition, following Kant, many consider our inherent dignity to be grounded in our capacity to make choices, be autonomous, and exercise reason. In other words, the capabilities which separate us from animals give us all an unearned worth or status.

Others will point to our sentience, our capacity for creativity, empathy and caring relationships, or our membership of the human species. Hence, our inherent dignity is grounded in something that we do or possess, over and above the rest of creation. The problem with this grounding is that it can, at times, seem arbitrary. Why should our rational autonomy or other capacities mean that we have an unearned worth? It is little surprise that dignity is so often overlooked in practice.

To respect this dignity, we must allow each person to live out this gift. Each person must be allowed to be free to think and act, without having their life violated or cut short.

In contrast, Christians root the dignity of every human person in something altogether outside of them: the unbreakable love of God. It is a cornerstone of Christian belief that God loves every person who has ever lived and will ever live, regardless of what we have done or will do. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God”, as St Paul put it. God’s love for us is so profound that he became human and died for our sins so that we might be reconciled to Him.

Central also, is the belief that God is omniscient, he knows everything that can ever be known, and he does not make errors of judgement. For Him to love us without any conditions of who we are or what we do, is to affirm that we are all inherently worthy of love.

Our inherent dignity, is, therefore, grounded in something far more fundamental than something we do. It is rooted in the love of the creator of the whole universe. If we believe in the Christian God, therefore, we also accept the supreme value of every person.

God’s gift to all of us expands on this picture. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells us that God made all humans in His image. In this, God gives us the gift of reflecting his goodness and love here on this earth. He has granted us the capacity to use our minds to think about God and abstract things, to live lives marked by His love, joy, peace, justice, and courage. He calls us to use these capacities to nurture and care for creation just as He does. Since God is infinitely valuable; those made in His image are too. Hence, this gift gives us an inherent dignity. To respect this dignity, we must allow each person to live out this gift. Each person must be allowed to be free to think and act, without having their life violated or cut short. Crucially, this gift is unconditional. No matter what we do, we can always turn back to God and accept his gift of reflecting His goodness. There are no preconditions for who God gives it to. He freely offers this gift to all.

Returning to Western responses to Israel-Gaza, we see that the Christian vision of human dignity does not countenance celebration of or apathy toward this loss of life. Some people saw Israeli deaths as unworthy of grief because they believe their actions forfeit their right to life. They implicitly see human dignity as conditional. In contrast, Christians believe our inherent value is unconditional, God will never cease to love us and will never take away our ability to reflect His goodness. Indeed, the death of Palestinians has been met with apathy and silence by many in the West, much as human tragedies in the Middle East often are. Implicit to this response is the sense that human dignity has preconditions, it is only extended to certain groups, those who live similar lives to us. The Christian vision objects here. God’s gift has no preconditions, it is freely offered to all. All possess an inherent dignity. This is not to pre-judge the complex questions of how to deal with the heart of the Israel / Palestine conflict, but it is to say that as we do so, the value and dignity of every human life must be paramount in the decisions taken In the midst of this darkness the Christian message offers hope: every death is a tragic loss beyond all imagination and measure because all are infinitely valuable in God’s sight.

Column

Belief

Christmas culture

Creed

25 December 2024

7 min read

Why the incarnation adds up for me

There’s much more to it than maths and linguistics.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

An abstract image of red and gold fluid shapes akin to stained glass, seem to depict a face and an upstretched hand.

Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

I’m rubbish at maths.

This hasn’t actually held me back all that much in life because I’m a theologian and biblical scholar by profession; I basically train vicars for a living. Being bad at maths means I fit in well in the Church because – I don’t know if you’ve noticed – Christianity is rubbish at maths too.

We go to school and we’re taught things like one plus one plus one equals three. We then go to Church and we’re told one Father plus one Son plus one Holy Spirit now somehow equals one God.

And the rubbish maths doesn’t stop there.

The Church also says that Jesus is God incarnate: that He is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human. Even I know that this isn’t how percentages work.

But what does it mean to say that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per cent human? More importantly: why should you care? What difference does this make to you?

What is the incarnation?

If you’ve ever had chilli con carne, you might know this literally means ‘chilli with meat’; ‘carne’ means ‘meat’. And the ‘carne’ in ‘incarnation’ is exactly the same: it means ‘meat’ or ‘flesh’.

So, we can think of ‘incarnation’ as ‘enfleshment’, or ‘taking on flesh’, or ‘becoming flesh and blood’. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘incarnation’: that someone or something has become flesh and blood.

In the Bible we read that, while Jesus “existed in the form of God … He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, assuming human likeness.”

And this is where the maths of the whole enterprise starts to get tricky.

The Bible does not claim that Jesus stops being God when He is human, or that He is somehow ‘less God’ in some way. Nor does it say that Jesus is anything less than completely human.

The word translated as ‘form’ in English – the ‘form’ of God, and the ‘form of a human servant’ – is morphē in Greek (the language the New Testament was written in). It’s where we get English words like ‘morph’. The animated character Morph is a little clay man who changes his form – his shape – at will. The Mighty, Morphing Power Rangers are people who change their form to become superheroes.

Something like this happens to Jesus in the Gospels, too, when Jesus’ face begins to shine like the sun and his clothes become unnaturally white. Most English translations say that Jesus is ‘transfigured’.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not a word I often use; things are very rarely ‘transfigured’ in my life.

The Greek word underlying this is metamorpheō, where we get English words like ‘metamorphosis’ from. Hopefully you can see that morph (the word for ‘form’) in the middle of the word metamorpheō. And whenever a Greek word has meta- at the start of it – like in metamorpheō. It’s to do with change.

Here, then, Jesus is literally trans-form-ed. Jesus, while in human form, is now revealed in His divine form.

It’s not that Jesus becomes God in this moment, or that he stops being human. Rather, Jesus is revealed in the transfiguration – in his metamorphosis – to be, and to have always been, fully God and fully human.

And so, when the Church celebrates the incarnation at Christmas, it celebrates God’s perfect eternal Son becoming embodied – taking on human flesh and a human body – in the person of Jesus.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people

Okay, at this point, you might be thinking: “That’s lovely, but who cares?”

Well, the Church’s claim that Jesus is 100 per cent God and 100 per vent human is deeply important for every one of us. Without it, we’re scuppered. In particular, the incarnation matters for at least four reasons.

First, the incarnation means we really do see God when we see Jesus. Jesus is fully God. In Jesus, “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” to use the Bible’s language. In other words, then, there is no God hidden behind Jesus.

Jesus makes it genuinely possible to know God; if Jesus was anything less than fully God, then we would only know a diluted, watered down version of God through Him.

Second, without the incarnation there can be no rescuing of humanity, or of the world around us.

You don’t have to look very far to see the worst of humanity. All too often it feels as though those in power are exactly the last people we would want to wield it. Whether you’d call yourself a Christian or not, I think we can all agree that things need fixing.

The Church claims Jesus came to fix things.

Being fully God and fully human, Jesus acts as our representative to God, and God’s representative to us. He overcomes any difference between God and the world, and restores it to the glorious state in which God intended it to be.

But this act of fixing – of setting things right, of restoration, of transformation – is only possible for someone fully God and fully human. Only the incarnation makes it possible for us and the world around us to be put right.

Third, because Jesus is fully human, His life shows us what it means to live well.

Jesus is the most ‘human’ human who has ever human-ed. He is a human cranked up to eleven. Jesus’ life is what it looks like to live the perfect human life. He does not imitate our humanity; we imitate His. We are not the norm for what humanity looks like; He is.

But Jesus’ life does not look like my idea of perfect. Jesus’ perfect human life involved complete and utter dependency on other people.

As a baby, Jesus’ mum and dad cleaned up his poo and His sick; Mary probably breastfed Him. As a child, Jesus relied on other people to be educated. As a man, Jesus had no home: His dad probably now dead and His mum convinced he’d gone mad, He relied on other people for shelter, for clothes, and for food.

This is not the life of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency I am so often encouraged to cultivate by the world around me. It’s a life of needing other people.

The incarnation then, shows us what it does – and does not – mean to live well.

Fourth, and finally, the incarnation means that none of the awful things that we do to each other and are done to us by others define our value, our worth, or our humanity.

Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse.

Some people are very resistant to this idea. I wonder if there are misguided notions of shame at play here: as though this would somehow make Jesus less human, or less God, or less saviour.

Again, Jesus has other ideas.

All four of the Gospels tell us that Jesus was stripped naked as part of His torture and death at the hands of the Romans. And we know from historical records that this is what the Romans did to those they crucified: they stripped them and they tortured them nakedly and in public, as an act of very deliberate humiliation and degradation.

The radical claim of Jesus’ life – of the incarnation – is that this does not make Him less-than-human in any way.

No, remember: Jesus is more human than anyone who’s ever lived. He is the norm for what it means to be human, not us. Nor does it make Him less God, or less of a saviour. Jesus’ perfect life tells victims of abuse that their lives are not tarnished, or diminished, or downgraded through the actions of others.

The incarnation, then, is God’s decisive act to show the world, once and for all, that He is for us – that He is for you, and for me. So much so, that God has chosen to become entirely like us, that we might become more like Him.

In the incarnation, God decisively declares the goodness of humanity by freely choosing to become fully human. To be human, then, is not to be someone or something that God flees from. Rather, God loves humanity so much – He loves you so much – that He has decided He cannot be without you, and He cannot be Himself without becoming like you.