How do we know that humans have rights and intrinsic value? Let me first define, at a bare minimum, what human rights are. Simply put, human rights are exclusive rights afforded to a class of living beings deemed ‘human.’ Biblical Christianity gives an answer as to why humans have rights.
From the Beginning
In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that God made man in His image and gave him the privilege of wielding dominion over all earth-dwelling creatures (Genesis 1:26-28). When speaking to Noah, God reasserts man’s dominion, adding the privilege of consuming animals in addition to plants (Genesis 9:2-3). The motif of man’s dominion over the rest of earth’s creatures appears again in one of David’s Psalms (8:4-8); Jesus reaffirms intrinsic human value and superiority in the Sermon on the Mount (Mathew 6:26, Mathew 10:31).
The Bible then accounts for the intrinsic value and rights of human beings. Unlike other created beings, man is made in God’s image and given dominion over plants and animals. Next, we must ask, “Is Biblical Christianity the only way to account for human rights or perhaps it is just one of many viable explanations?”
A Question of Worldview
Consider Atomistic-Darwinian Atheism, a worldview that elevates the atom to metaphysical grounds such that all that ultimately exists is atoms; no human soul or any supernatural deity. Man—no different than any other species—is merely a conglomeration of atoms, which, by chance, evolved from an undesigned bacterial cell that also came to exist by pure chance.
As one prokaryote descendent, why would man be any more valuable than bacterial descendants that evolved into something else? Is it because man has sentience and cognitive abilities, can express himself in language, and even philosophize about the deep things of life? While these are noteworthy traits that all other evolutionary descendants of the primal bacteria lack, who is to say these properties render special rights being superior in value to the characteristics unique to other species, which, after all, are man’s distant cousins?
A Question of Taxonomy
How can we even make taxonomic distinctions between species? Taxonomy would be purely conventional and rather arbitrary. We can see noteworthy physical differences between different human ethnicities, even differences between individuals within an ethnicity, yet no physical differences between the squirrels in the town where one resides. We might well consider red-headed humans a different species altogether. The logical implications of this worldview exclude any room for human rights, which, after all, are not made of atoms.
“All is God”
As another alternative, what if all is one substance, energy, essence; or as the Pantheist proclaims, “all is God”? If all is God, there is no distinction between Creator and creature such as the Creator-creature distinction in Biblical Christianity, nor an imago dei. How then can we say that one part of the universe is set apart and has value and dominion over other parts? All is God, after all. The elephant is no less God than man, one might argue such an animal is even more divine since it takes up a greater portion of the universe than man. The cow humans harvest beef from is no less God than the man who eats the meat. How then is it right for man to kill the cow for food but wrong to kill and eat another man when both cow and man are equally divine?
Mammals and man, plants and Plato, bacteria, and Bach, are all God. Since man would be no more God than anything else in the universe. Man could not be any more valuable than any other part of the universe, thus, humans could not have special rights if this worldview were true. Such an outlook is just as incompatible with the existence of human rights as Atomistic-Darwinian Atheism.
The Necessity of Scripture
Jean-Paul Sartre, the French atheistic-existential philosopher, attested to this saying, “Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist… if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to…”
Suppose one wanted to appeal to a kind of non-Scriptural theism. How then would one demonstrate that humans possess special rights apart from Scripture? You won’t see the words “human rights” when opening up a human cadaver. How would one have an objective demonstration or explanation apart from public word revelation that there is such a class of creatures that have been made in God’s image, unlike other creatures, or that the properties humans possess are more valuable and thus render special rights and privileges?
Positing some ambiguous ‘god’ to account for human rights solves nothing without philosophically consistent, public, word revelation that gives an explicit explanation for the intrinsic value and rights of human beings such as we have in Biblical Christianity.
Even Bertrand Russell, the eminent atheistic philosopher, conceded this point when he wrote that “the rights of man… have their origins in Puritanism”. Since the foundation of the Puritan movement was Scripture, wherein it is recorded that God made man in his image, Russell essentially confesses that the modern world derived its notion of human rights from the Bible.
Thus, if human rights do exist, then Biblical Christianity is necessarily true. Since human rights do exist, Biblical Christianity is therefore true. There are a few implications of this worth considering. Human rights are often invoked amid discussions over the political controversies of the day, especially those relating to sexual ethics and abortion for instance. In such situations these questions ought to be pressed: “Why do humans have rights? Where do they come from? And how do we demonstrate this?”
More than Just Rights
Since only by special revelation can we objectively demonstrate man’s intrinsic value and rights that other creatures do not possess, we then ought to follow this same source when it defines what these rights are, lists obligations for the protection of these rights, and what are just consequences for those who violate or deprive another’s rights (e.g. Genesis 9:6).
The Christian is thus justified when he turns to Scripture to answer these questions or rejects positions that contradict Scripture on such topics. Additionally, doing so can often turn political conversations into opportunities for evangelism and apologetics. I believe we don’t often see this done because modern society has successfully made Christians embarrassed and hesitant to invoke God or use religious language, and doing so may be contrary to the business model of political influencers, podcasters, and think tanks who Christians often imitate for better or worse.
Getting off the Slippery Slope
Arguing in a religiously neutral fashion in the arena of politics and ethics can be less offensive since it challenges someone’s peripheral beliefs, leaving their core convictions intact; attacking the fruits but not the roots. However, this path of least resistance spares the cancerous foundational principles which has led modern society down the slippery slope in the first place, doing little to nothing to get off the slope altogether which seems to require a revival or at least a large-scale return to cultural Christianity, either which resulting in the Christian religion being the norm and standard of ethical and political adjudication.
Since the Gospel deals primarily with salvation of the soul and thus eternal matters, and politics deals primarily with the earthly life (which is important but nevertheless fleeting), Christians should be most eager to share that the doctrine of the imago dei is the only account for human rights. This means explicitly detailing that God, in the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ, took on a human nature (John 1:1&14; Hebrews 2:14-17), lived in perfect obedience to God’s ethical prescriptions (Hebrews 4:15), and died the death given to those who don’t merely break God’s law but commit severe human rights violations (Exodus 21:12, 15&16; Deuteronomy 21:22-23).
In this way, Jesus exchanges his perfect righteousness to sinful man, redeeming him from the just penalty of his sins, dying for no other kind of creature, so that any man who repents of his sins and believes in the Son shall not perish, suffering the punishment for the crimes against God for all eternity (Mathew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:9), but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
