God’s magnum opus and creation’s dominant species—homo sapiens—was designed and created to live in community.[1] It is written, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen 2:18). That communal existence was to be characterized by each one’s considering the interest of the other of greater importance than one’s own (Phil. 2:3), a complete absence of any desire to bring ill will to another (Rom. 13:9–10), and an impetus to seek the flourishing of another as though for oneself (Matt. 7:12; Lev. 18:19; 22:39–40). No categories were to exist for injury to nakedly trusting relationships by defrauding one another (Gen. 2:25; Exod. 20:16; Mark 10:19; Eph. 4:25; Col. 3:9–10). Effectively, the species was to exist in a community of mutual and pan-universal love (Rom. 13:9–10; 1 John 4:8, 16; cf. Matt. 22:30)—Paradise.
1. Virtue (and “Happiness” as employed by the Founders of the United States in the Declaration of Independence, quoted below), as explained by Thomas Aquinas, suggests that to the degree that something fulfills the purpose for which it was intended, it is by definition virtuous. A humanity that is engaging its telos—its chief end—living in just, harmonious, Creator image-bearing community, then, is said to be virtuous. To the degree that humanity falters from that telos, it may be said to be vicious—in the lexical sense of the word—that is, waning in virtue but waxing in vice.
After humanity’s literally self-aggrandizing, rebellious rejection of this grace-filled existence, however, the perfect and shameless love that previously characterized the (two-member) species’ every interaction became radically corrupted, infected with death such that mutual civility would never again be normal under the sun—let that sink in for a minute. Civil rights, then, would have to be regulated by law rather than exercised intuitively through inherent grace (cf. Gal. 3:21–25). It must be noted, then, that while civil rights development features prominently in twentieth century American culture, civil rights are not an invention of the twentieth century West.[2] Rather, they are grounded in the dignity inherent in the species’ essence, or anthropology—that is, what it means to be human. The Declaration of Independence by the United States of America indeed declares as much:
2. Key examples of American civil rights instantiation are: the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863; the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, 1865, 1868, 1870, 1920, 1964 respectively; Civil Rights Act, 1964; Voting Rights Act, 1965; Fair Housing Act, 1968. Other national civil rights movements include the elimination of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s–90s, and the recent movement of the Dalit (or Scheduled) Caste in India.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 to 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.[3]
3. Many rightly acknowledge that hard-fought realization of this truth in American society would come in stages much later and that simply “declaring” something does not make it so. Still others acknowledge that, because humanity is fallen and yet imperfect, consummate realization of this truth—that all men are created equal—cannot and will not occur until the eschaton, the next and final age, when “justice [will] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).
The Founders grounded the authority of human governments in “the consent of the governed” and not directly in a divine transcendent authority because the principle itself is the transcendent (and revealed) truth that human beings living in a just society do so best when they do to others as they would have them to do also to themselves (Matt. 7:12; cf. Mic. 6:8). Ideally then, no one is above the law (or rightly, torah); the governed are all equal subjects of civil—that is, righteous—government (cf. Prov. 25:5).
Civil rights are not determined in relation to the individual self, particularly as propagated by influential twenty-first century western institutions.[4] With righteous law, civil rights are grounded in a precept transcendent to the self—impartial justice (notice this is not the term fraught with gangrenous baggage, social justice[5])—that is, the obligation to render to each one his due (Rom. 13:7–10), whether commutative or distributive justice, retributive justice, or restorative justice.[6] As I have written elsewhere, “Justice cannot be said to be justice, in any biblical sense, absent execution of others-centered [not self-centered] neighbor-love for the sake of God in Christ (Luke 6:27–36).” Because justice must be transcendently derived in order to be objectively applied, true civil rights can never begin with the subjective individual.
4. For a helpful treatment of how the West has arrived at the current distorted understanding of the significance of the self, see Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020).
5. In his The Mirage of Social Justice, economist and 1974 Nobel laureate Friedrich Augustus von Hayek inveighs, “social justice is an empty phrase with no determinable content,” and “I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term ‘social justice.’” Friedrich Augustus von Hayek, “The Mirage of Social Justice” in Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy (Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England: Routledge, 2012), 258.
6. For an engaging delineation of various facets of justice beyond the scope of this article, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, questions 57–63 .
Take the right to life, for example. Because life is an inherent civil right as articulated by torah (Gen. 9:5–6; Rom. 13:7–10), as well as the Declaration of Independence, this civil right is obliged to be ensconced in any national writ. Martin Luther King, Jr. attempting to advance impartial justice in regard to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all the citizens of the United States (and beyond), poignantly asserted in regard to legislation of this essential right,
Certainly, if the problem [that is, the dichotomy between morals of the heart and regulated behavior] is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me; and I think that’s pretty important also [APPLAUSE] (sic). So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.[7]
Liberty is a distinct civil right granted to each image bearer of God by virtue of each one’s dignity as a divine image bearer. By right, no fellow creature has the authority to bind or steal from another anything belonging to that other—whether property, conscience, or even one’s own person, for “the earth is the LORD’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1).
7. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Social Justice,” in the “Conscience of America” lecture symposium series at Western Michigan University, December 18, 1963.
The pursuit of happiness is the final categorical example of civil rights listed in the Declaration. Again, the term “happiness” is not likely intended to entail mere circumstantial contentment. A teleological understanding is in mind here. That is, creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of an omni-wise Creator were made with purpose. Each one, then, has been so granted the right to pursue fulfillment of and free exercise of that purpose without prohibition by another such creature.
These civil rights are not only universally but also impartially applicable. This kind of impartiality was fundamental to theocratic Israel’s law of love of neighbor. Deuteronomy 1:17 commands unintimidated impartiality in all Israel’s adjudications on the basis of the judgments’ accord with Yahweh’s torah. Moses commands, “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.” This unconditional precept is then reemphasized in Deuteronomy 16:18–20 where Moses prescribes “righteous judgment.” On this God-mandated civil right, he elaborates, “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” This revelation to God’s covenant people—as microcosmic of the entire species of his image bearers—evidences again that the Creator’s good pleasure and intent for humanity was for it to exist in a community of mutual and pan-universal love, which by definition does no wrong to one’s neighbor. In a society where this kind of love reigns, civil rights need no legislation. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
