The Covenant Maker

I love Stephen Hicks but I do not buy all that he sells. He denies that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are correct in pointing to Judeo-Christian roots of Western emphasis on reason, individualism, justice and progress. He is correct in highlighting where Christian--especially Roman--theocracy literally or symbolically crucified such brilliant scientists as Galileo. Still, the roots of our modern, wonderful Western point of view with its emphases on liberty, reason, free speech, capitalism and the sovereign individual owe as much to its Judeo-Christian roots as it does to its secular Greek origin. For example, the book of Genesis was written by Moses about 550 BC. In there, he pens how Yahweh offered a covenant with Noah and his children, after the flood that wiped out humanity and most living creatures. A covenant is a compact or binding agreement between two parties, in this case, one Divine and the other party, millions of human beings, or God's spiritual children. Now, such an agreement or treaty is legally binding on both parties, so the social and theological concept of law was deeply ingrained in Hebraic thinking and religion 500 years before the birth of Christ. It is not too much of a stretch to regard Yahweh, the Creator deity, the law maker, and establisher and giver of natural law to raw world to convert chaos into order and cosmos, as a logical and rational supernatural thinker. God's power or energy is the Logos or principle coursing through the veins of the universe, energizing and empowering natural laws that guide all life and natural patterns at work over the thousands of years. That Law-giver, that is Logos personified, or at least as a power-wielder, is a rational being, a super-super individualist that offered humankind this covenant. Humans cannot eat animals with blood in them, and humans are not to murder one another. Right there, God is offering humans a moral code and a system of justice to run their societies on. Over the millennia, it is not impossible to imagine that the Western ideals and actualities of the sovereign individual, reason as paramount in human investigation, pondering and decision-making, justice, progress, free speech, free agency, capitalism and progress do naturally and logically flow out of the Logos-guided gifts of covenant proffered by the great Law-Giver.