ABSTRACT
The Graeco-Roman world had of course already developed in Stoicism a doctrine that served the same universalistic purpose as Christianity wished to serve and that also included a belief in equality. But the weakness of Stoicism as a rival to Christianity is nowhere more apparent than in their different ideas of equality. Insofar as the Christian revelation announces a doctrine of equality, the term is said to refer only to the inner soul and not to the external envelopes, which, in the eyes of the world, distinguish one soul from another. By stressing the dignity of man, the immortality of the soul, and the promise of redemption held out to the low as well as the high, Christianity is said to have implanted the ethical seeds that ultimately blossomed in the various social conceptions of equality. The Christian idea of equality should be understood as having anticipated a more explicitly stated ideal of social reform.
