The idea of “human dignity” has become a bedrock principle in contemporary jurisprudence (see esp. Kennedy’s Obergefell opinion). Yet what happens when we do not ground our ideas about human dignity in God via the imago dei? Three things... (1/16)
First, we will define “human” and “dignity” on our own secular terms.
Second, we will feel morally constrained to impose those secular views…at almost any cost. After all, we image-bearers have been designed by God to desire justice, and those secular views of dignity now seem just. (IOW: our view of justice roots in our view of human dignity.)
Which means, third, we will call for a heavy and thick (instead of thin) set of moral impositions redolent of totalitarianism (as in, imposed on the totality of life).
And we will dress all this up as a virtuous, urgent, and noble campaign for justice and the good of humanity. We’ll “believe our own press-clippings,” as they say.
In short, any secular concept of human dignity will soon prove fickle, quixotic, temporary, and finally unjust, preserved from its worst excesses only by God’s common grace.
Meanwhile, rooting human dignity in the image of God offers a humbler and more humane basis for human government and justice—contrary to all secular expectations. First, this path gives human dignity a permanent (all times) and universal (all people) basis.
Second, this path refuses human authority the ability to absolutize itself, because it acknowledges that all governing authority is relative to and accountable to God and the limits God places upon that authority.
It insists that human authority is something that must be given; it’s not something intrinsically possessed by anyone. No doubt, grounding human dignity and justice in the imago dei will also lead us to recommend moral impositions—every law, after all, makes a moral imposition.
Yet those impositions (if consistent with their theological basis) will prove limited and light compared to the impositions of secular definitions: you shall not steal, you shall not murder, you shall not give false-testimony, and so forth.
The irony in all this, to be sure, is thick. Modern and postmodern thinking removes God from our views of dignity and justice to prevent tyranny and all the moral impositions of organized religion.
Yet this only “works” when the citizens of a society individually feel constrained by God in some form or fashion, even if their precise views of him differ.
Yet in a society that has little regard for God and his constraints, nothing is left to check the absolutizing growth of human authority. Man becomes God and then imposes his own idolatrous religion. See Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar.
Once parties or movements receive a majority of votes, they lose themselves in a rose-colored vision of a moral quest to transform the world, but really it's a quest to transform the world into their own image.
Bottom line: remove God and the imago dei from your view of human dignity and justice and you remove all checks upon human authority; you pervert justice. You may in your heart hope for justice, but you will not find it. “It is from the Lord that one gets justice” (Prov. 29:26).
This verse doesn't mean we disengage politically and adopt the posture of quietism. It means (i) any view of justice we devise apart from God's own view will never yield justice; and (ii) our final hope should never rest in a party, movement, or government, but always in God.
