Rescuing Human Rights from Human Beings

"La Scapagliata," by Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1500

The whole civilized world takes the notion of "human rights" for granted. Ask an American if he or she has rights and a doctor's hammer below the knee couldn't provoke such an instant and reflexive response. “Of course I have rights!” (Why would you even ask?) Probe a little bit deeper and ask one of those obnoxious "why" questions and you may possibly get "It's in the Constitution." Pursue it further and ask if it would be okay if a Constitutional amendment took away a right like the freedom of speech. You'll either get stony silence or, if this pedestrian is unusually clever (or unusually good at parroting his professors), an appeal to "humanity." People have human rights because they're human beings. It's circular, of course, but, then, didn't Plato believe that the circle was the most perfect of shapes?

Fantastic as it sounds, we're supposed to believe that this rights-by-virtue-of-humanity argument is sufficient.The only problem with it is that an individual who is the sole owner of his rights (as opposed to being “endowed” with his rights) can forever give them away if he or she so chooses – and if history is any guide, he or she often so chooses. Rights that can be given away at whim are, in reality, no rights at all. The government may as well have absolute jurisdiction if it only refuses to infringe on its citizens’ rights when it’s convenient. An even more fundamental problem with basing rights in humanity itself is our era’s postmodernism. You’re telling me there’s no such thing as absolute right and wrong, but an African tribesman still has an absolute right to food, water and condoms? The absurdity is self-evident and goes a long way in explaining why nothing akin to individual rights was ever recognized until the coming of Christianity, and has receded whenever and wherever the tides of the Gospel have ebbed.

One would think this would be obvious to anyone who bothered to take the most cursory glance at the historical record. Even ancient Greece and Rome, where conceptions of humanistic individualism reached their zenith, had no such concept as individual rights. Plato spoke of the importance of the polis as the source of a kind of communitarian right. Romans emphasized the freedom granted by a just legal system. One searches ancient laws in vain for anything resembling our modern versions of individual rights. Slavery was never prohibited anywhere in the ancient world; in fact, it served as the fundamental basis of those societies. Plato and Aristotle both believed that certain people were meant to be slaves by their very nature. The rest of the world was even worse. Most non-Western languages don't even have a word for freedom.

Only with the coming of Christianity did people begin to recognize that all of mankind is made in the imago dei – the image of God—and therefore deserving of certain rights. In the words of the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3, “there is no Gentile or Jew…barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” Christians in early Rome shocked their pagan rulers by adopting the children Romans left out in the elements to die. Over the centuries, Christianity persistently eroded the philosophical underpinnings that had allowed slavery to survive. Significantly, the first widespread movement against the slave trade began, not under the auspices of Platonists, but under a Christian queen of France, Bathilda. Charlemagne was opposed to slavery; Pope Callistus himself had been a slave. Abogard, Anselm and Wulfstan and other luminaries of the medieval church all campaigned against the existence of the institution. As Rodney Stark has written, “The theological conclusion that slavery is sinful has been unique to Christianity.”

The Protestant Reformation’s rediscovery of the believer’s direct relationship to God launched a whole new inquiry into individual rights, particularly vis a vis government. If an individual is justified by his or her faith and not by physically going through a sacrament, the logic went, then no person can force salvation on another. This led to the formal enumeration of the right of conscience, and by logical extension, the rights of speech and the press, where conscience was expressed, challenged and forged. Religious thinkers like the Protestant theologian Hugo Grotius applied the principles of Christianity when theorizing about international law. Regardless of culture, government or race, people everywhere possessed certain rights because they possessed a common Creator. In the 17th century, John Locke’s theory of government went so far as to assert that political bodies are instituted for the express purpose of protecting the God-given rights of individuals. From here it was a short step to the Declaration of Independence. The distinctly Christian idea of human rights now also became a part of civic religion, with all the mixed blessings that entailed.

All our modern ideas on this subject can therefore be traced back to Christian theology, which alone has birthed, and can alone sustain, so sweeping an idea as the dignity of the entire human race. It’s all too easy to view this Christian accomplishment in a vacuum, as many American do today. Most people have never considered that humanitarianism, foreign aid, abolition and systematic resistance to tyranny have only ever existed in countries touched by Christianity. As Christianity fizzles out in this country, we should expect to see our ideas of human rights—already so twisted, mutable and vacuous that we call abortion a fundamental right—die out, too.

Becoming the Beast

"Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime," Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808

No one can fail to have heard about the assassination of Anwar al-Alwaki last week. What you may not have heard was how unprecedented this killing was. Never before (as far as I'm aware) has our government been legally allowed to kill anyone, much less a citizen, without having to prove his guilt in trial. His guilt was beyond doubt? It doesn't matter. I’ve written about this previously, but there’s a reason that our symbol of Justice, the Roman goddess Justitia, is portrayed with a blind-fold and a scale. These aren’t just artistic flourishes; they communicate a deep truth. God’s justice is perfect. He is "no respecter of persons" - he is blind. He always convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent because he can see into their hearts and minds and can separate truth from lies - he is balanced. Our human judges thankfully don’t have this same omniscience, and “there’s the rub” in this case. Whatever blood may have been on his head, Alwaki was killed unjustly because he never got a chance to defend himself to the nation. Without the accused having that chance, the verdicts of governments, judges and juries can be easily mistaken. They can be swayed by their own prejudices, false testimony and their own lack of knowledge. Verdicts are, at best, educated guesses. Then how can we protect the innocent from being hauled into court and jailed or executed on false premises? How do we keep justice blind and balanced like a scale? These were just the questions Englishmen faced in the 17th century and Americans in the 18th century: kings and courts abusing their powers to bend people to their tyrannical wills.

As the Anglo-American world found out, the answer lay in keeping true to the old maxim “innocent until proven guilty.” This principle has been the cornerstone of our legal system ever since. After all, the men who codified our laws had lurid experiences with judges who convicted the innocent so as to increase royal power in the colonies. Even before that hard lesson, however, our Founding Fathers had defended the innocent even when it was incredibly inconvenient. Two examples will suffice. After the Boston Massacre, John Adams (a lawyer in Boston at that time) thought it was so important to give a fair trial to the British soldiers involved in the shooting that he went against his every inclination (he later hazarded angry mobs, his reputation and his livelihood) to defend them personally. Bostonians were caught up in the tragedy of the moment and wanted the soldiers dead. Wasn’t their guilt evident enough after three people lay bleeding in the streets? But human passions can cloud fair judgment. What they took to be certain guilt was actually not so certain at all, as Adams proved. Or take Thomas Jefferson, who, as a young lawyer, took slaves and free blacks as clients to defend in court, when having dark-skinned clients was enough to imperil even the most well established law practice.

Given how integral this idea of blind, even-handed justice is to Christianity, and how it launched the life of our nation and its heroes, it’s deeply unsettling that many Americans and Christians are ignoring our government's departure from these principles in the case of Alwaki's assassination. Alwaki was not shot on a battleground. In fact, as far as we know he only ever preached violence. While there can be little doubt judging from his sermons that Alwaki was an evil man, the simple fact is that, under our Constitution, even the most evil of men are entitled to a fair trial for their crimes. Nazis whose guilt was established beyond the residue of doubt were famously given trials at Nuremberg. Although Southerners were regarded as traitors after the Civil War, those who were captured outside the field of battle were at least afforded hearings in military courts. According to the Bible, conviction of murder (not the preaching of murder, but murder) requires the testimony of “two or three witnesses.” (Deut. 17:6) The verse goes on: “…no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.” And what about when the person himself isn't a murderer? Are the testimonies of fewer witnesses required to convict him than to convict an actual  murderer? Why, even Iran sees the need to keep up the semblance of a capital trial as it tries to convict Yousef Nadarkhani. The fact that our "Christian" government doesn’t feel compelled to put on a charade of justice should give us pause to consider whether, through fear of our enemy, we are becoming the beast we mean to destroy.

When, Where and Why Justice Became Blind

"The Fountain of Justice,"
Hans Gieng, A.D. 1543

The concept of "justice" hasn't always been pictured or portrayed in the way that we Westerners have grown so used to. As early as the 3rd millenium B.C., the ancient Egyptians chose a goddess, Maat, to be the symbol of truth and justice. Maat was usually painted wearing an ostrich feather in her hair, embodying immutable, eternal truth (when the wind was clement, at least). The Greeks later beautified this idea, dispensed with the feather in favor of scales, and gave this goddess the name Dike (In a typical insight into human nature, the Greeks told how Zeus had placed Dike on earth, to enforce justice among mortals. When she at last despaired of her lot being utterly impossible, he hastened her away to Mt. Olympus). The Romans didn't so much re-imagine this idea as they did deftly and elegantly rename it: Justitia. This goddess had many of Dike's attributes (the flowing, white robe, noble visage and scales) but, in keeping with the Roman character, it wasn't the idea of justice alone that was important, but how it could be enforced. To that end, Justitia was commonly depicted brandishing a double-edged sword, with which she could quickly attack either party in a suit. At this stage of development, Justice was now recognizable even to our modern eyes, but she was still lacking a vital detail.

It wasn't until the sculptor Hans Gieng graced Bern, Switzerland with his "Fountain of Justice" in A.D. 1543 that the ancient symbol found herself subtly, yet fundamentally, transformed by the addition of a blindfold. The time, place and reason for this was no coincidence. It reflected a new depth of understanding and passion for justice that was a direct result of Bern's religious, and therefore cultural, revival. Nineteen years earlier, the city had become one of the first four of the Swiss cantons to formally cease burning the works and followers of theologian Ulrich Zwingli. Central to Zwingli's message was the necessity of everyone's understanding of, and accountability to, the Word of God. One of his prayers began "...open and enlighten our hearts, that we may understand purely and clearly thy words: may they transform us according to this exact understanding, that we may never be displeasing to thy divine majesty, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." Since a large portion of the Bible is law, a revival in understanding of God (the author of law) by both Protestants and Counter-Reformation Catholics, infused Europe with a new appreciation for law. It was around this time that theologians Hugo Grotius, Alberico Gentili and Francisco de Vitoria wrote their seminal volumes on international law. Switzerland of Zwingli and Calvin's era was especially centered around the Bible and its reverence for a God who "is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34); who alone can grant impartial justice to all men, whether priests, kings, or laymen. Upon closer examination of Gieng's statue, one can see four smaller busts carved symbolically underneath the foot of Justice. These represent a pope, a sultan, an emperor and a schultheiss, all alike under the even judgment of justice, blind at last.