“I certainly agree with you about religious fanaticism, but I come from a religious background that avoided fanaticism,”

I was thinking principally of the fanaticism of the founders of Christianity–Jesus, Paul, and so forth. If I’m reading Cicero I don’t need to sift the piles of apocalypticism from the grains of ethical insight. As far as overall worldview, his is pretty close to mine, and his whole message will be fairly germane to me; I don’t need to ask, if I cut away all the religious fluff and the convictions they had that I don’t accept, is there still some nugget of wisdom I can take from this?

What I mean to say is that the whole of the new testament is predicated on assumptions I don’t share. Even something like Jesus’s passivism is often explained as a direct result of his apocalypticism–turn the other cheek (because God is about to kick that SOBs @S$ once and for all, so you don’t need to worry about it; just keep your nose down and wait for your vindication).

“Thomas Aquinas is famous for baptizing the ethics of Aristotle”

I have a lot of regard for Aquinas–I’ve learned a lot from him and think there is a ton of value in his ethical thought. But a lot of that value is in Aquinas qua philosopher and commentator on Aristotle, rather than Aquinas qua Master of the Sacred page. Have you read his commentaries on Scripture? They are generally pretty bad–even if impressive in their own way. While he does make use of Scripture in his more piercing ethical writings, I tend to think his ethical insights stand on their own; even when he gets something important from scripture it is usually an insight he might well have gotten elsewhere. And there are places where his ethics falters because he feels compelled to defend the ethics of the Christian tradition–e.g., his treatment of sexual ethics or his treatment of suicide.

“I will be curious to see your impressions of Bart’s upcoming book in evaluating what Christianity has contributed to ethical discourse in the Greco-Roman tradition”

I think it is an extremely complicated and interesting question that I’m not qualified to answer, but that never stopped me, so here we go. 

First, I think Bart overstates the case. On his telling, Greco-Roman ethicists come off as ultimately tribalistic, egoistic, and bigoted. That just doesn’t resonate with my (too limited) knowledge of them. A couple of illustrative examples:

BDE writes,

I am not saying that ancient people did not feel affection for others or act in ways that displayed their feelings.  Most spouses, parents, and friends were just as affectionate then as now, and normally acted accordingly.  But I am saying that this kind of natural affection was not part of the ethical discourse designed to promote right behavior.

Surely he can’t mean this: Aristotle develops the notion of friendship at remarkable length in the Nicomachean Ethics, and he includes a discussion of the sort of friendship that is possible between parent and child or between spouses. He says true friendship is wishing good for another for his own sake (and not insofar as that friend is useful to you), and he says friendship consists more in loving rather than being loved. Now, I’m not say that alone amounts to the full Christian teaching on charity, but it does seem to contradict the specific claim that the natural love (between friends and family) and its implications on our actions wasn’t part of the ethical discourse; it was in fact a conspicuous and major part of Greco-Roman ethical discourse. 

Or again, BDE,  

The Christian idea that someone should treat others in a way to promote their well-being is simply not part of the ancient Greek and Roman discourse. . . .

Or elsewhere,

. . . none of them [i.e., the virtues advocated by ethical writers of the Roman period] was directed to the well-being of other people per se.  There was no ethical imperative to “love” another or promote their well-being, especially through an act of self-sacrifice.

Yet, Aristotle recognizes the virtue of liberality; Aristotle notes that, “it is the nature of a liberal man not to look to himself,” with the result that there the is hazard that, in being liberal, one will give to the point of leaving too little for oneself. By the way, Aristotle’s discussion of liberality reminds me of the widow’s mite, “liberality resides not in the multitude of the gifts but in the state of character of the giver, and this is relative to the giver’s substance. There is therefore nothing to prevent the man who gives less from being the more liberal man, if he has less to give,” and even hints of Jesus’ teaching that it is easier to pass through the eye of a needle, “It is not easy for the liberal man to be rich, since he is not apt either at taking or at keeping, but at giving away, and does not value wealth for its own sake but as a means to giving. Hence comes the charge that is brought against fortune, that those who deserve riches most get it least.”

Again, BDE,

In pagan literature and broadly throughout Greek and Roman culture, love as an altruistic practice – that is, activity meant to promote the well-being of others – was virtually always directed toward those connected to a person related by blood, status, or socio-economic class.  Those outside these connections – that is, the vast majority of “others” – were not only beyond the reach of loving action, they were explicitly to be outside of it

Yet, Seneca clearly had an understanding of the common bond of humanity and thought that this should engender kindness and friendship even across such divides. See his Letter 47,

I am glad to learn . . . that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. This befits a sensible and well-educated man like yourself. “They are slaves,” people declare. Nay, rather they are men. “Slaves!” No, comrades. “Slaves!” No, they are unpretentious friends. “Slaves!” No, they are our fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike. . . . Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.”

As an aside, I think there was a good reason for the late antique and medieval belief that Seneca was either a closet convert or at least an admirer of Christians. Not only were his ethics generally consonant with Christian thinking, he could wax philosophical about “divinity” in a way that I would have sworn was Christian if I didn’t know who I was reading. See for example, his letter 41,

We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol’s ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God.

Anyway, back to ethics: Even Aristotle realized that the common humanity shared by master and slave made authentic friendship between them possible, “Qua slave then, one cannot be friends with him [i.e., a slave]. But qua man one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be friendship with him in so far as he is a man.”

Insofar as you relate to a slave as a slave, as a mere piece of property subject to your whims, to be used for your purposes, you cannot be his friend. But insofar as you relate to him as a fellow man, an equal, you certainly can. 

So I think it is important to put our finger on what precisely we are claiming is novel in Christianity. I think the really substantive novelty we find in Christian ethics is in the teaching that we have to love our enemies, and by “enemies” I mean, not just the people who happen to inhabit the city that is at war with the city we happen to inhabit, but the individuals who are actively and deliberately harming us: “Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;  and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well;”  

Seneca would not have gone so far; he says “I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties.” Not unlike MLK, Seneca proposes we value people, treat them as friends, based on their character, not the accidents of their birth and fortune.

Likewise, for Aristotle, it is ridiculous to suggest the virtuous should befriend the vicious; not only ridiculous but it would be itself down right vicious. A person who is truly evil is not objectively worth being loved as a friend: To love an evil person is to make yourself evil. Imagine that some acquaintance brags to you about defrauding an old widow, or about seducing and sleeping with a young naive girl on false pretenses. Will a good person continue to love such friends? What you love defines your character. Conversely, he argues people deserve in proportion to their deeds:

if we sympathize with and pity those who suffer undeservedly, we ought to be indignant with those who prosper undeservedly; for that which happens beyond a man’s deserts is unjust, wherefore we attribute this feeling [i.e., indignation] even to gods . . . he who is pained at the sight of those who are undeservedly unfortunate will rejoice or will at least not be pained at the sight of those who are deservedly so; for instance, no good man would be pained at seeing parricides or assassins punished; we should rather rejoice at their lot, and at that of men who are deservedly fortunate; for both these are just and cause the worthy man to rejoice.

Now what gets interesting is how Christians take this teaching of radical love and forgiveness. 
As a Christian, teaching moral theology, I would point out that “turn the other cheek” can’t mean quite what it says; maybe, I’d suggest it was typical rabbinic overstatement. I’d note, to buy myself some leeway, that, when Jesus is actually smacked on the cheek, he doesn’t fight back, but he also doesn’t offer his other cheek (Jn 18:22-23). A professor once quipped that being a doormat is not a Christian virtue, and Aquinas agreed: all that material I cited from Aristotle (and considerably more to comparable effect) got taken straight up by Aquinas; for Aquinas anger (which seeks reasonable retribution from those who deliberately harm us) names a virtue. Just punishment, in being just, is good. In fact, even in Plato we get the idea that to punish a man justly is, by that fact, to do something good for the man punished; an idea which is pretty close to the interpretation that many Christians give to “love your enemies” i.e., act so as to bring about their reform (which often means punishing them), because reforming is what is really good for them. 

There are some Christians  (I think a fairly modest minority) who do take this teaching pretty literally. I remember seeing a popular, Christian marriage enrichment course say that Christian love and forgiveness is truly unconditional; it doesn’t require anything from the offender, e.g., it doesn’t wait for actual change or any acknowledgement he has done anything wrong. I thought at the time that was not only a perverse understanding of forgiveness and love, but, particularly in that context, a perfect recipe for perpetuating domestic violence.

Of course, the NT is conflicted on this, (never mind the OT, where Christians have to make sense of the imprecatory psalms): Jesus elsewhere counsels us to confront those who harm us (Mt. 18:15) and if the malefactor persists recalcitrantly, he is to be cut off, and Jesus adds the condition that the offender must repent before we are bound to forgive (Lk 17:3-4). When Jesus prays that those who are executing him be forgiven, he offers the justification that they do not know what they are doing, which totally changes the nature of the forgiveness; it shows a remarkable character either way, but its not the same to acknowledge the fact that a person is harming you in good faith (e.g., believes he is carrying out a just sentence) and forgiving someone who is at that very moment maliciously doing you grave injustice.

So where does this leave us? I think what is really novel, what is really unprecedented, in Christianity is the teaching on radical, unconditional love. That teaching is not straightforward; even in the NT itself the message is conflicting. But I think that message, in its strongest and most novel sense, is downright bad, and frankly I’ve always thought that, but I find myself in good company there. Most Christian ethicists watered it down and held something much closer to (and often derived directly from) pagan ethics.

But maybe the big contribution was precisely in pushing the limit, forcing the question, and goading Christian ethicists to confront directly and seriously the limits of love and forgiveness. 

Your first quote left out what may have been a crucial point he was driving at: “… There was no “ought” in acts of heart-felt tenderness.”

I acknowledge the point. But to press the debate, I’d note that Aristotle, and in fact much of Greco-Roman ethics, didn’t frequently use the notion of ‘ought’–at least not in any clear way; it just wasn’t their preferred ethical idiom.

There is a sort of received wisdom among those who study the history of ethics that says the notion of moral ‘ought’ is actually a recent (roughly medieval) invention, predicated on the idea of a (Christian) Divine Lawgiver; ‘ought’ is now a notion which survives despite the obsolescence of the conceptual framework that originally gave it meaning. This arguement was a big part of Anscombe’s founding the modern virtue ethics movement.

I (and a few others considerably more learned than I) think that is total nonsense–the ancient ethicists perfectly well did have a notion of “ought”. But it is true that they didn’t usually speak about ethics in terms of ‘ought’s.

Now, Christ didn’t speak in terms of oughts either, but he did give direct commands in the imperative (which presupposes a certain authority on his part to lay down or at least interpret law), but that isn’t really how the pagan philosophers did ethics. If you think about the manner in which he gives his moral teachings, that just isn’t the way that Greco-Roman ethicists did moral philosophy.

At this point you might object I’m confusing the conversation with a dispute about words not things, but really, you might say, the proof is in the pudding, and you might point to Julian as the proof that there really was something special happening in Christianity.

I don’t know what to say about that. I’m also inclined to agree that there may have been something special happening in Christianity–though I would still be reluctant to overstate just how special it was.

One possibility is that pagan philosophy was the domain of the wealthy and educated elite–and not all of them elected to study it or to follow it in their lives. So even if pagan philosophers were teaching that it was good to do good to all men that teaching may not have had a very big impact on the larger culture (and you can see this hinted at in the passage above from Seneca, “This befits a sensible and well-educated man like yourself”).

Another, perhaps related, possibility is that Christianity could enforce its moral norms with the threat of perdition, whereas pagan philosophers–for whom the afterlife is generally seen as veiled in mystery, a topic where all we can do is guess and hope–didn’t have any such means to give urgency to their moral teaching. The threat of eternal suffering, and the promise of eternal and unimaginable bliss, has a way of motivating those who otherwise might not be motivated.

It is also possible that the Christian community early on cultivated a culture of giving–based on the expectation of an imminent parousia–and that that culture, once established, survived over centuries.

I can’t say for that that is the whole answer, but those would be things we might consider that would account for why Christians were seen as remarkable for their charity, without having to attribute that to some breakthrough in their basic ethical teaching.