Natural Rights and the Image of God.

We have the righ to life, liberty and property, according to the theory of natural rights. But why? Locke offers two theory about the origin of these rights. The first is his "workmanship" theory that says we are the creation of God and therefore God's property. As God's property, we have no right to be harmed (actually this would seem to be a right of God, rather than that of us who are property-but that's for another time). The other theory is that we have ownership in ourselves. In my last blog, I discussed whether these two different claims for natural rights origins are incompatible. Here I want to ask a different question.



What about being made in the image of God? In a religious perspective that reaches back to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament for some of you), it would certainly make sense to say that we have rights because we are made in God's image. Genesis, at least in chapter 1 (there is a different account in chapter 2) says that "



And God said, "Let us make Adam (man? humankind?) in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth. And God crated man is His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, "Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of hte sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on." Gen. 1:26-28.



There are some notoriously interesting interpretive issues here for students of bilitical interpretation about the plural and singular switching and about what the image of God means. All sorts of interesting interpretations have beeen given in the religious traditions. God was talking to the angels. God was speaking in the royal we. Be that as it may, Genesis 1 sees Adam (Humankind) as being like God. And indeed the story of Genesis can be read as humans attempting to become even more like God by eating from the Tree of Life and becoming immortal. And it is reasonable to interpret the prohibition on murder in the hebrew bible as associated with the idea that humans are made in God's image. From a biblical perspective then it might make sense to base rights on the likeness of humans to God.



In any case, it is interesting that John Locke bases his argument of natural rights on the "workmanship" theory that we are God's property. Why does Locke not appeal to the idea humans are made in the image of God? I don't have the complete answer to this question today. But it does seem interesting that he doesn't appeal to that concept in his Second Treatise. In part, perhaps, his theory about the origin of natural rights in his Second Treatise is principally based on "reason" and he differentiates between insights from reason versus revelation, as he indicated in various places in his writing. His focus on Scripture's meaning is given in his First Treatise where he takes on Filmer's theory of absolute power of monarchy. There Locke engages in much more detail with Scripture and even may have written the attack on Filmer to really provide an engagement with Scripture, as Michael Zuckert has suggested in Launching Liberalism, 137.



A detailed analysis of Locke's Scriptural exegesis there is beyond the scope of the current reflection. But it is surely of interest that Locke, one of the foremost champions of natural rights, did not argue from the fact that we are made in the image of God. This is particularly interesting given the fact that he does place such a strong stress on reason as a differentiator between humans and lower creatures and as a sign of maturity when a child becomes responsible to join the social compact and no longer subject to the parent's authority. It would seem that Locke could have made an argument from reason that humans have natural rights because they are like God in having reason. But he did not. Instead he implies that the equality and independence of humans derives from their being the workmanship of God.



There are some other puzzles in Locke's workmanship argument. If we are the property of God, why does this give us any rights in things at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to say that God has rights in us as property than to say that we have rights not to be hurt or killed by others. There is something curious here about talking about two types of property causing damage to each other. If a branch falls off a tree and lands on my flower pot and breaks it, it seems unusual to claim that the tree is responsible for violating the rights of my vase. Rights tend to inhere in the property owners not in the property itself. Except the difference of course is that living creatures are property with consciousness and free will. Thus on Locke's theory it might make sense to say that humans are property with wills. And because we have wills and understanding, we have obligations not to damage God's other property (ie other people). In this sense, humans are a special kind of property of God, like slaves can be human property.



There is another puzzle in Locke's workmanship theory. He implies that the idea that we are all workmanship of God makes humans all equal. But he noowhere argues for that in the Second Treatise. He simply states it. And this seems to be an interesting gap in his theory given the importance that the equality and independence of individuals in the state of nature has to his argument.



What this means for a theory of natural rights in general is of course relevant to a much broader discussion. But what this suggests is that there are some interesting gaps in Locke's foundation of natural right theory. And if proponents of natural rights want to base it on Locke they have to at least grapple with these interesting questions in Locke's theory.