I must confess I have a lot of sympathy for Jeremy Bentham’s regard for natural rights:
Right… is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts.
Siding with Bentham is likely to make one unpopular given that the concept of natural, even inalienable rights, is essential to the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The adjective inalienable refers to that which cannot be alienated, that is, cannot be taken away or transferred to another. In the American Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson stated:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Although Jefferson speaks of all people being endowed with “inherent and inalienable rights” by their Creator, Jefferson’s deistic concept of human rights is grounded in a conception of natural law: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Further, Jefferson gives particular content to such inalienable rights, insisting that it is a matter of self-evident truth that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Communicating with William Johnson, Jefferson stated: “Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.” Jefferson also said, “A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.” He told James Monroe, “Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.”
Indeed, inalienable rights are often confusedly called “natural rights” in an attempt to distinguish them from rights which are contingent upon the laws, customs or beliefs of a particular society or political system. According to this way of thinking natural rights are necessarily universal and absolute, but socially conferred rights - legal/civil/statutory rights - are relative.
The problem with grounding human rights in some concept of natural law is that there is no possibility of reaching any kind of consensus as to what constitutes natural law or whether there is in fact any such thing as natural law.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights correctly begins by recognising that if rights are to have any credence they must be grounded in a sound understanding of human nature. Unfortunately, however, UDHR is able to do no better than merely assert an understanding of human nature grounded in a concept of natural law. Because the ontological foundations for human rights are lacking the consequences are inevitable: inability to provide any grounds for preventing the proliferation of rights. These days people can use UDHR to lay claim to supposed rights that are in fact a perversion of humanity as God created it to be. Further, people use UDHR to lay claim to individual rights that are at odds with societal wellbeing and which, therefore, make it plain that UDHR is incapable of providing a sufficient basis for weighing different ”rights.”
Quite apart from the impossibility of ever achieving a consensus on what, if anything, constitutes natural law there is a very particular reason why it is impossible for human reason to discover this with any confidence. In Romans 1 Paul correctly diagnoses the true condition of humanity when he describes all people post-Fall as those who “suppress the truth” - the “truth” being the reality and essential content of God’s self-revelation in creation. People do not fail to thank God and honour him simply because they are not capable of knowing him. Rather, as Paul teaches, deep down every human being is morally opposed to God and does not want to thank and honour him. Paul makes it plain that he is not thinking here of irreligious people, but indeed includes highly religious people. For the issue is one of thanking and honouring the true and living God as he really is and not a god of one’s own fabrication - ‘God’ as we would like him to be. This in turn means that every human faculty is tainted with this anti-God virus. Consequently, human reason, left to itself, is incapable of ever arriving at a true knowledge of God himself and what is essential to that true knowledge.
If an appeal to natural rights is fruitless and incapable of providing strong direction then are we forced to accept rights as defined by some particular society or institution such as UDHR?
There is a third basis for human rights which does not even figure in most debates on the issue, characterised as they are by dualistic thinking - natural vs. legal. This third basis might be termed revelational rights, which, I would argue, is the biblical basis for human rights.
In his Word God has revealed what it means to be human, something we are incapable of deducing for ourselves simply by observing human beings and using our own reason and other faculties. This revelation goes beyond some vague Deistic conception of all people being created or of all people being equal in dignity. In Genesis 1 God reveals that he has created all people in his image and likeness. Without knowing God himself it is necessarily impossible to know this about human beings. We can only know this on the basis of revelation, though it does help us understand why there is a very widespread sense among human beings all over the world that all people should be regarded as being equal in dignity and rights.
The understanding that all people are created in God’s image does in fact mean that all people have inalienable rights. To be created in God’s image has many implications. But it does mean that all people not only belong to God but are accountable to him for the way they live their lives, that is, whether they live in accord with the way God created them or not.
This revelation-based understanding of inalienable human rights calls in question what people often have in mind when they speak of various rights to freedom. Yes, those created in God’s image do have immense freedom, but, for example, freedom of speech must necessarily be a right to speak that which honours God and is consonant with the revelation of his will. There is no such thing as a blanket right to freedom of speech.
Similarly, we must call into question the idea that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, unless we redefine this in a very particular manner. The Westminster Shorter Catechism summarises biblical revelation when it declares “the chief end of man” to be that of glorifying God and enjoying him forever. There is an inalienable right to take delight in God, to pursue the happiness that comes from being in a right relationship with God. But the notion that people have an inalienable right to pursue happiness which does not involve honouring the only true and living God is a nonsense.
This being said, revelation itself requires Christians to rank themselves beneath governing authorities by way of acknowledging God’s overarching sovereignty (e.g Romans 13:1ff). This means that Christians will respect socially conferred and legal rights that are not deducible from the Imago Dei provided they do not prevent Christians from living in a Christlike manner.
Posted June 28, 2009
Upon clicking 'Buy now' you will be redirected to paypal.com where you can securely and quickly complete your purchase with a few clicks.
Immediately after payment at PayPal you will be redirected to a download page which
provides you instant access to your purchase.
