Transferring to
humanity the prerogatives which Christians acknowledge to be God’s, positivism,
by that very fact, reverses in the social field the attitude of Christianity,
whose heir it means to be.
Without rights
vis a vis God, since he receives his whole being from God, the individual
thought he had rights vis a vis society: however organically incorporated in
it., however subject to its authority in all things temporal, however sincerely
devoted to its welfare, he was aware of transcending it by his first beginnings
and his latter end.
He knew that,
by what lay deepest in himself, he formed part of a greater and vaster society
and that, in the last analysis, everything rested with an authority that was
not human…
But, if temporal society is an adequate
manifestation of the only true deity, from whom the individual receives all
that he is, how can he have any right as against society? That notion of right
is essentially ‘theological-metaphysical’… the positive faith, everywhere
substituting the relative for the absolute, substitutes ‘laws for causes and
duties for rights.’
Henri de
Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism
Reflection
– Well, it’s been a while since we had a
‘difficult’ text on this blog, and it’s good for us (that is to say, me) to flex some intellectual muscle
once in a while. All my fancy book-larnin’ has not been for nothing, after all.
De Lubac’s book is, I believe, still one
of the most important books of the 20th century. It has held up
extraordinarily well in its analysis of the tragic dynamic of atheism, its
false promise of liberation and human fulfillment, and its subsequent collapse
into tyranny and human destruction. It’s a slender little book, and for the
most part quite readable; I recommend it highly.
This quote is taking that discussion to
the field of human rights and society. If you find it a bit convoluted, let me
un-convulate it for you. Essentially, de Lubac is saying that human rights
either come from God by virtue of His creation of man and the inherent
structure, nature, and dignity of the human person, or human rights come from
society and the social contract—a shared consensus of values among those living
in the community.
But since ‘society’ is an abstraction and
human rights are concrete, what this latter concept of right really means is
that our rights are granted us by the state. And this is no true right, but a
concession, a privilege, which can then be revoked by government fiat.
In other words, either our rights are
from God and dwell within us ineradicably, or we exercise whatever freedom we
have at the good pleasure of our social masters. It is either God or the
president/prime minister/congress/parliament/courts.
There is a great irony here. De Lubac is
quite right that, if our whole being is from God, then we have no rights vis a
vis God—this would imply some higher power to which we could appeal against the
One who is All in All. So humans would seem to be in a state of radical
subjectivity and bondage towards God, which is the position of Sartre and
Nietzsche.
But God is changeless, eternal, not
subject to flux. Once we grasp that God’s creative will towards us is for our
freedom and dignity, our capacity to genuinely act and move freely, then the
whole notion of human rights becomes very secure.
If we reject God and His dominion, we are
indeed left with the highest power being the government. The changeable, fluid,
political, malleable, intensely corruptible, say-whatever-will-get-us-elected
next time government—and this is the guardian of human rights, freedom, and
dignity?
What Caesar can give, Caesar can take
away. If the state is the source, or even (since in our post-modernity
frivolity and folly we are allergic to metaphysical statements and avoid them
whenever possible) simply the final arbiter of human rights, our freedoms are
very perilous indeed. We have to think about these things: atheism tends
towards tyranny and arbitrary exercises of state power; religion tends towards
rule of law, at least (the historical record at least bears this out), which
itself is an absolutely necessary pre-condition for democracy.
The only way to secure human freedom is to assert timeless and unchanging truths about man and his nature, and the only way to coherently assert those truths is to acknowledge the changeless and eternal nature of God and His laws. And without delving into a lot of controversial subjects that I have no time or energy to treat of right now, this is all rather relevant in our days, don’t you think?
