Two millennia ago, Harvey Weinstein would have been celebrated as a great man of Rome. His conduct would have been expected, applauded as the act of a great man exercising his power. And it was legally protected.

I could write a sentence saying that he “violated” people and those people were his “victims,” but that’s not language that would have had any meaning in ancient Rome. The victims he violated would not have been seen as victims, and if they complained, protested, or accused such a great man of wrongdoing, they would have been punished.

For 4,000 years before the first century, the arc of the universe did not bend toward justice. Humanity made no moral progress. In every culture, save one, the law protected the powerful. If you weren’t powerful or part of the elite class, you were property.

In Rome in particular, if an actress, servant, or lower-class woman tried to publicly accuse a powerful senator or patron, she would be the one destroyed by the legal system.

She would be branded with infamia (loss of legal standing and public repute), while the powerful man would use his influence, legal advocates, and political network to crush her.

The concept of consent did not exist. Adultery was a crime, but more as an affront to the honor and status of the male spouse. Although the woman might be disgraced and considered “damaged goods,” that was viewed as more of a loss to the man in society’s eyes than it was to her.

So what happened 2,000 years ago that changed the moral arc of the universe from a negative to a positive?

Jesus Christ.

In Christ’s time, as in the four millennia before his birth, the concepts we now take for granted—such as human dignity, human moral worth, and equality—did not exist.

Utility was valued over dignity.

Unwanted infants were exposed on hillsides to die; slavery was not merely an economic reality, but an unquestioned necessary default; and public violence—whether human sacrifice in the some Ancient Near East cultures or gladiatorial slaughter in Rome—was treated as necessary to appease the gods, legitimate entertainment or good for maintaining civic order.

Might made right. The strong dominating the weak was seen as the natural law of the cosmos. As Aristotle famously argued, some people were “slaves by nature.” Mercy was not considered a virtue; in classical Roman culture, misericordia (pity/compassion) was often viewed as a character flaw—an irrational emotion that compromised justice and strength. (This might sound familiar to those who have heard the contemporary trope, “empathy is a sin.”)

Moral obligation was almost exclusively bounded by tribe, bloodline, or city-state.

After Jesus, humanity did not stop being cruel, but we changed how we measure and define cruelty.

Individuals gained a sanctity they lacked before as creatures made in God’s image. Power was inverted by the Cross and the Jesus ethic of servitude toward all. Love became less tribal because Jesus taught us to love those different from us, to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us. He said not to resist an evil person, but to take the slap with grace, go the extra mile, and surrender your cloak when your enemy asks.

Without Jesus, progressive Hollywood would have lacked the language to call out and condemn the Harvey Weinsteins in their midst. There would not have been a #MeToo movement. The concept that a young, nameless, hopeful actress could name Weinstein’s crime would have been unthinkable. That foundational conviction that a powerful, wealthy titan can be brought low because he harmed the vulnerable is entirely downstream of the Christian moral revolution.

But if Jesus were just another great moral teacher, it’s unlikely we would be talking about Him today. He was a laborer from a backwater province in a region valued less for what it could produce than its place along the trade routes passing through it.

At the time, the largest city Jesus could walk to, Jerusalem, was not significant on the global Roman Empire scale.

Jesus wasn’t credentialed and held no formal degree. Neither did His disciples.

If He were just another itinerant rabbi, it’s unlikely anyone would have written down His words, chronicled His life, or taken the time to retell what He taught.

We still talk about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius not just because they had something valuable to say, but because what they said largely conformed to the expectations of their age.

Not so with Jesus. He subverted expectations, so he became despised by the powerful—the very gatekeepers of any man’s legacy.

Except for one thing, He would be just another footnote in history as an aspiring but failed Messiah.

That one thing—the one thing that explains not only his impact, but the fact that his teaching was preserved and spread throughout the known world at the time (even at the risk of death for those who proclaimed his name as a name above all names)—is his resurrection.

Without the Resurrection as a real historical fact, there’s nothing else to explain his impact or the rapid spread of his teaching.

Which brings us, as this discussion often does, to what C.S. Lewis said: You can call Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or Lord, but the one thing you can’t call him is just a great moral teacher. He was much more than that.