Eighteen Centuries of Dignity: The Christian Roots of Human Rights
A guest post by Senne Van Boven
Michelangelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Human rights are generally associated with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the constitutional law of sovereign nation-states. Many attribute their origins and subsequent consolidation to so-called “enlightened” juridical philosophers such as Hugo Grotius, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, supposedly marking a decisive break between the religious – and therefore allegedly irrational – Middle Ages and the more secularised, natural-science-oriented modern era. However, it should be acknowledged that rights founded upon the inviolable concept of human dignity did not simply emerge in the eighteenth century. Rather, they are deeply rooted in Christian norms and values and were defended by theologians from the earliest centuries of Christendom. This article seeks to give due credit to those Christian intellectuals who helped pave the way for humanity’s fundamental rights.
"Let us make man in our image"
A natural starting point is the foundation of all Christian moral teaching: the Holy Scriptures. Already in the first five books of the Bible, traditionally attributed to Moses by both Jewish and Christian tradition, God explicitly declares that human beings are created in His “image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26). It is therefore strictly forbidden to “shed the blood of a human being” (Gen. 9:6). This prohibition is reaffirmed when the Lord gives the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:13; Deut. 5:17). In the New Testament, the Apostle James likewise refers to the special dignity of human beings, distinguishing them from the rest of creation, since we are made “in the likeness of God” (Jas. 3:9).
Although the earliest Christian writers – such as the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists – did not develop a fully articulated theory of inalienable rights innate to all humanity, they did identify moral rights and prohibitions which they considered binding upon every human being. These correspond strikingly with modern human rights as later consolidated in instruments such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One example is the absolute prohibition of taking another person’s life, enshrined in Article 3 of the Declaration and already defended by the first-century Didachè (2.2) and by the theologian Tertullian (Apologia, 9).
Medieval morality
Several centuries later, in the seventh century, we find an early attempt to define natural law in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. Isidore maintained that natural law is common to all nations and exists everywhere and always by instinct of human nature. Among the rights he listed were the union of man and woman, the inheritance and education of children, the common possession of all things, freedom shared equally by all, the right to acquire what is taken from the sky, the earth, and the sea, the return of entrusted property or deposited money, and the right to repel violence with force (Etymologiae V, 4).
Further theological efforts to provide a rational foundation for laws perceived as inherent to human nature emerged during the twelfth century – a period marked by the rise of the first Western European universities and the rediscovery of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, as well as Roman law. A key pioneer was the monk Gratian. In his Concordia Discordantium Canonum (commonly known as Gratian’s Decree), he described natural law as divine law inherent in creation itself. Gratian held that Christ’s Golden Rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and refrain from what you would not wish done to yourself” (cf. Matt. 7:12) is innate to human nature and therefore inalienable to every human being (D.1 d.a.c.1).
In the thirteenth century, the renowned theologian Thomas Aquinas further refined the concept of natural law in his Summa Theologiae. Drawing upon Justinian’s Pandectae or Digestae, Aquinas defined natural law as the law “which nature has taught to all animals” (Pandectae I, 1, 3) and which becomes known to human beings as they grow into the full use of reason (Summa Theologiae Ia IIae, q. 94, a. 1). He argued that natural law inclines all people towards moral virtue (ibid., a. 3), is unchangeable (ibid., a. 5), and can never be eradicated from human nature (ibid., a. 6). In the same century, Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254), a distinguished jurist in both civil and canon law, affirmed the right of every human being to possess property and govern territory, grounded in humanity’s creation in God’s image and likeness.
Although medieval theologians did not yet employ the language of “human rights,” their doctrine of natural law articulated universal moral norms which, when applied to concrete legal questions, gradually crystallised into enforceable claims that individuals could assert against others and political authority.
Upholding dignity
A particularly significant development occurred during the Catholic Church’s missionary expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Jesuit theologians such as Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Francisco Suárez laid the foundations of what later became known as the School of Salamanca. These thinkers vigorously defended the rights of indigenous peoples in missionary regions including South America, Africa, and Australia. They argued that since God created all human beings – regardless of time or place – in His image and likeness, He granted all humanity the same inalienable natural rights. These included the rights to freedom, private property, marriage, procreation, and the education of one’s children. Such rights were formally affirmed by Pope Paul III (1534–1549) in his bull Sublimis Deus. By this point, the abstract concept of natural law grounded in Christ’s Golden Rule had developed into a clearly articulated set of concrete rights, innate to every human being and incapable of legitimate alteration.
This article has sought to demonstrate that the universal human rights secured by contemporary international and national legal instruments are the result of an intellectual tradition spanning nearly eighteen centuries, shaped in decisive ways by Christian theologians, both clerical and lay. Recognizing these roots does not diminish the contributions of the Enlightenment, but it challenges the assumption that human rights emerged independently of religious thought. Rather, they arose through the gradual juridical transformation of Christian conceptions of human dignity, moral responsibility, and natural law – an inheritance that continues to shape both the authority and the vulnerability of human rights in the modern world.
Senne Van Boven holds a Master of Laws degree and is currently pursuing a Research Master of Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion at KU Leuven (Louvain, Belgium). His research focuses on the history of the Church and theology, with particular attention to the writings of Augustine.
Read more about Thomas Aquinas in issue #73 Thomas Aquinas: The mind that saved the medieval church.