Waldron on the Image of God and Human Rights

Jeremy Waldron has been pitching it right in the MoJ wheelhouse recently.  He just posted a new paper, The Image of God: Rights, Reason, and Order.  The abstract:

The idea that humans are created in the image of God is often cited as a foundation for human rights theory. In this paper, this use of imago dei is surveyed, and while the paper is basically favorable to this foundation, it draws attention to some difficulties (both theological and practical) that using imago dei as a foundation for human rights may involve. Also it explores the suggestion that the image of God idea may be more apt as a foundation for some rights rather than others. Its use in relation to political rights is specifically explored. The moral of the discussion is that foundations do make a difference. We should not expect that, if we simply nail this idea onto the underside of a body of human rights theory as a foundation, everything in the theory will remain as it is.

And from the paper:

The foundational work that imago Dei does for dignity is, in my opinion,indispensable for generating the sort of strong moral constraint associated with rights – and for overriding the temptation to demonize or bestialize “the worst of the worst.” This temptation is so natural that it can only be answered by something that goes beyond our attitudes, even beyond “our” morality, something commanded from the depths of the pre-political and pre-social foundation of the being of those we are tempted to treat in this way Imago Dei presents the respect that humans as such are entitled to as something grounded, not in what we happen to care about or in what we happen to have committed ourselves to, but in facts about what humans are actually like, or, more accurately, what they have been made by the Creator to be like – like unto Himself and by virtue of that likeness sacred and inviolable. We are not just clever animals, and the evil-doers among us are not just good animals gone bad: our dignity is associated with a specifically high rank in creation accorded to us by our creator and refl ecting our likeness to the creator. Our status even as wrong-doers is to be understood in relation to this.

He also points out some difficulties with the Imago Dei as a basis for rights, both from theological and political vantage points.  Well worth reading.