Benedict the Sixteenth on July the Fourth

This summer I’ve been making my way through God and the World, a book-length interview that the German journalist Peter Seewald conducted in 2000 with Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. The book is completely readable–the Q&A format means you can take it in a little at a time, setting it down and picking it back up whenever you like, without losing your place. It is also utterly astonishing. Ratzinger ranges with ease from ancient history to contemporary philsophy, from the most obscure Church fathers to today’s Biblical scholars.

Here’s a passage I happened upon last night–neatly enough, just after watching fireworks with the kids. (Seewald’s question is in italics.)

When, in the midst of thunder and lightning, Moses received the tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai, this was the hour of birth of the free individual. That, at any rate, is the theory of the popular writer Hannes Stein. From then on, each person was directly answerable to God for himself and for his deeds, whether he be master or slave, man or woman. The Covenant on Sinai is more or less where the autonomous legal person originates. Would it be too bold an assertion to say that the foundation stone of free democratic society was laid, not be ancient Greece, but by the Judaeo-Christian tradition?
I have also read Hannes Stein’s book, and I would say that there is certainly some substance in the way he sees things. The original seed of human rights is indeed to be found in the value given to each individual who stands alone for himself before God, who is addressed by God, and who is personally affected by the words of the Covenant–that is to say, the equal value given to each individual–and this has laid the real foundation for modern democracy.
Israel itself was not supposed at first to have any kings, but only judges, who were to apply the law of God and exercise supervision to ensure that it remained in force. What was intended was therefore basically a fully egalitarian society, a kind of anarchy in the positive sense: no one rules except God alone. And he rules through the medium of his law, through his Word and through the Commandments.
This early social order had to give way in the end to pragmatic considerations, in the way we have already discussed. On that account, I would not now wish to minimize the significance of Greek democracy; here too there was significant growth, and a working social model was developed that could later be used as a starting point by others. We should in any case be quite clear that in Greek democracy only the free men had the vote. Women did not take part in politics and thus did not have the vote, any more than slaves did. Because freedom is thus limited, Greece offers the model of a limited democracy. The Word of the Bible, on the other hand, ascribes in fact to everyone who is human, and who as a human being is made in the image of God, the fullness of this individual character. So it does thereby offer a more far-reaching basis for democratic constitutions.