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.

Straightening Crooked Judgments

By the early 6th century B.C., the people of Athens were embarking on a course free of monarchy. Without a king, a maelstrom of ambition ensued. Plutarch tells us of a struggle between the people of the hills who clamored for democracy, and those of the urban valleys who sought the protection of an oligarchy. The universally admired aristocrat Solon, full of poetic sparkle, seized this deadlock to make promises of "straightening crooked judgments" and equal justice for all. Shouts of acclamation from rich and poor alike made him dictator for a year. Solon quickly took control over the city's olive oil producers and banned the selling of cereal crops abroad so that they could instead feed Athenians. It didn't matter to Solon whether or not this meant bankrupting the cereal farmers. Solon's most radical reform was the abolition of the commoners' debts. Not only usurers, but all creditors, saw their money forcibly disappear as it was redistributed to the poor. Abuse was rife. The annals tell us of several of Solon's friends who anticipated this policy by taking out loans to buy swathes of land in the very hours before debts were to be eradicated.

Several centuries later we can see Rome's reformers treading the same proverbial road to hell paved with good intentions. As the Republican armies haphazardly acquired lands abroad, and as the Equestrians and Populares sought more influence in government, the Senate became divided. A starry-eyed reformer named Tiberius Gracchus arose from among the governing class. Tiberius had traveled throughout the colonies and had come to identify the financial plight of farmers as Rome's greatest problem. Encouraged by two Greek scholars, Tiberius presented a proposal to seize the lands of Rome's noble families and spread them to the lower classes. The tribune Octavius became the voice of the aristocrats' furor at this blatantly unjust scheme. But democracy, then as now, knew no law. Tiberius simply held an unconstitutional election where the Roman mobs deposed Octavius. After even this, the measure was not to pass. Tiberius was killed by rioting senators; his brother Gaius followed him when he attempted to carry out the very same plan. Robbing the rich to give to the poor was something that Romans were not yet anesthetized to.

So much for the celebrated ancient reformers. To find an example of reform that was fair to all, regardless of the money they had or didn't have, it's necessary to look beyond the West. We now turn to the story of the exiles' return to Israel. Although the Israelites astonished their neighbors by reconstructing Jerusalem's walls, problems still abounded. The fields that had lain un-tilled for so long could not immediately bear a harvest. This plunged farmers into debt as they enslaved their children in order to get grain. The governor, Nehemiah, recognized the property of all men as sacrosanct. Instead of using his power to force the redistribution of weath, he relied on the Israelites' fear of the Lord to prompt their voluntarism. Nehemiah exhorted the noblemen to restore the fields, vineyards, sons and daughters that had been taken from the poor, lest they all become an object of scorn amongst their neighbors. As one, the nobility disavowed usury and restored what they had taken. Unlike Solon's bankrupting of Athens' creditors, or Tiberius Gracchus' socialistic seizure of private property, this manner of reform didn't entail taking at sword point from those who had in order to give to those who had not. It required a people who feared the Lord, and an understanding that only by encouraging man's free will, his voluntary effort, can good ever be done. Socialism knows no higher law than the here and now, and so it compels what is right. The fact that it creates poverty by grinding down the rich reminds one of Proverbs 12:10: "Even the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."

The Power to Destroy

Most people who didn't sleep through their high school history classes are familiar with the Supreme Court case McCulloch vs. Maryland. Those who were the brighter stars in their constellations may even remember the essence of the dispute: In the midst of an ongoing firestorm over the relationship of the state and federal governments, the Second Bank of the United States mischievously established a branch in Maryland. The state legislature fired back by passing a bill that placed such a tax burden on the bank that it couldn't hope to make a profit. Chief Justice John Marshall rejected this bill and with it the ability of a state to impede a Federal project. He declared that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy." As you can see, it was an interesting era; one where "Federal government" and "larceny" weren't yet synonyms.

This blush of youthful innocence wouldn't last terribly long, however, thanks to a Federal government that overcame the troublesome check of the states by learning to wage unjust wars by unjust means. In 1861 the first (and, at that time, unconstitutional) income tax was passed as part of the Revenue Act of 1861, confiscating 3% of the annual income of Americans to aid the war effort. Prior to this, the Federal government's revenues had come mainly through indirect taxes like excise fees, and for good reason. Indirect taxes targeted events rather than specific people or property. The Founding Fathers' revolt against governmental power run amok had been partly because of the ease with which direct taxation could be abused. They enshrined this experience in the Constitution's Article Nine, expressly forbidding an income tax. Any remembrance of this was all but drowned out by the furor of the Civil War years. In 1862, a second act was passed that expanded on the Revenue Act. A bedrock precedent was laid for the progressivism of the early 1900s when the 16th Amendment was passed, making the income tax constitutional. At first rates were well below 10%, but with newfound legal authority came newfound abuse, and they began to climb steeply. At first, there were seemingly good reasons, like World War II. But it is the nature of injustice once justified to numb its victims. The 1940s' jump in rates by more than 400% was quickly followed by less extenuating, and more suspicious, reasons to which there was little resistance. With a seemingly unlimited pool of wealth to draw from, America was soon the proud owner of several bizarre accomplishments characteristic of a government with more money than it needs: Korea, Vietnam, and the Great Society.

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire contains a very striking account of what eventually happens when a nation allows its government to prey directly upon the fruits of its labor: "In the sixth year of his reign Constantine visited the city of Autun, and generously remitted the arrears of tribute, reducing...the proportion of their assessment...to eighteen thousand heads, subject to the real and personal capitation [i.e., income tax]. Yet even this indulgence affords the most unquestionable proof of the public misery. This tax was so extremely oppressive...that, whilst the revenue was increased by extortion, it was diminished by despair: a considerable part of the territory of Autun was left uncultivated; and great numbers of [citizens] rather chose to live as exiles and outlaws than to support the weight of civil society."

The Early Church and Abortion

Several years ago, I distinctly remember when I first learned that abortion was practiced in the ancient world. This came as no small surprise to me, having always associated the murder of the unborn with either advanced surgery or coat-hangers, neither of which was known a couple of millenia ago. The historian's classic conflict between vilifying or romanticizing the past had me in its grasp; I had forgotten that, in the words of King Solomon, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It takes a peculiar -and usually unintentional- form of arrogance to presume to have problems today that our ancestors didn't share.

As it turns out, abortion stretches back to the beginning of human history. Not only were there primitive attempts at surgical abortion, but people as varied as the civilized Greeks, the Romans, and the itinerant shepherds of Illyria, had access to the Iron Age equivelant of the birth control pill: herbal abortifacients, such as pennyroyal, saffron and rue. The pagan world was divided over the issue. Some men, like Hippocrates, defended the unborn and refused to administer abortive mixtures. Other men, like Aristotle, found themselves defending abortion. This philosophical position was based on the belief in “ensoulment,” the notion found in Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals that human beings don't have souls until between 40 and 90 days after they're conceived.

When the Gospel surged across the vast openness of the Pax Romana, Christians encountered a world whose peace and order were deceptive. Although the watchmen along the sweeping frontiers were idle, this lull had been bought by decades of incessant warfare and violence. Inside the Empire, Christians encountered daily bloodshed not only in the arena, but in the streets. Abortion and infanticide were widespread from one end of the Roman world to the other. It was such a problem, in fact, that the Didache (an early Christian catechism) saw fit to include a line specifically condemning abortion and infanticide as murder. Faced with a world where life was held so cheaply, Christians immediately began to defend the Bible's definition of life. God had said to the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart...." This belief in the eternal nature of the soul was in direct opposition to the philosophy of the day. Almost every one of the early Church Fathers -Tertullian, Clement, Jerome, Basil, Felix, Hippolytus- unanimously declared abortion's absolute moral wrong. Athenagoras only echoed the rest of Christendom when he petitioned Emperor Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177: “We say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God.... The fetus in the womb is a living being and therefore the object of God's care.”

For hundreds of years, the Church's position on abortion was consistent and uncompromising. In the 13th century, however, a challenge came from a surprising source. Thomas Aquinas, leader of the Scholastic movement, reintroduced the mixed legacy of Aristotelian thought to Europe. Renewed reading of Aristotle's theories of the political world were unfortunately accompanied by the reemergence of his metaphysical musings. Among these was the old doctrine of ensoulment, which some spiritual and secular scholars of the day embraced, including Aquinas. The consequence was a temporary weakening of the Church's stance against abortion by a group of churchmen who proclaimed that fetuses that had not yet received a soul (as the theory went) could be aborted. This temptation to defer to philosophy and science in place of faith has been with Christians since the days of the apostles and will be until the end. Hundreds of years later, in the 20th century, a similar acceptance of the “prevailing wisdom” of the day over and above of biblical revelation would lead to some Protestant denominations condoning abortion.

But for the time, the influence of this idea was short lived. By the 15th century, Pope Sixtus V had renewed the classification of abortion as murder and prescribed severe punishments for its practice. Although in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIV briefly returned the Church to Aquinas' position, it was soon once again widely accepted throughout all of Christendom that abortion at any stage was immoral. Despite the many differences between the burgeoning denominations of the Church in that era, any Christian of the 17th century would have agreed with John Calvin when he made this simple argument: “The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”

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.