What is government?
Government is the restraint that a person exercises either on himself or on others.
What is civil government?
The word civil refers to a community. It comes from the Latin word civilis which originally referred to a citizen or a member of a given community. Over time, it came to be used as an adjective referring to those matters that pertain to citizens or to life as a citizen. Thus civil rights are the rights people enjoy in a community; a civil war is a war between the members of the same community. A civil government is the restraint exercised on a community of people.
What gives a person the right to govern himself?
Because he is born as a human person.
Why are only human persons entitled to self-government?
Because only humans are capable of such. Only humans are capable of morality.
What do you mean here by moral?
The word moral is used to refer to our choices. Humans always act for a purpose or an end. Once they have determined on this purpose, they then act in such a way as they think will best enable them to reach that goal. This purpose is what we call a motive, and this motive is what makes human behavior moral.
Are humans unique in this respect? Can animals not be moral?
Only humans are moral because only human actions are free. Every choice an animal makes is determined by their instincts; they do not freely choose their purpose for acting; and therefore they cannot make free decisions. Furthermore, God has also given every human person the ability to step out of himself and to look back at himself. Humans have the ability to think reflexively or to assess their own behavior.
Did God create people with this ability?
Yes, this is what the Bible calls the image of God.
But why does this give every human the right to govern themselves?
Because God has taught us in the eighth command that stealing is sin. The first thing a person owns is him/herself. This means that every person has the right to act in accordance with his own freely chosen purpose. No one should be compelled to act in a way that they did not freely choose. This is what it means to be free. If a person chooses to restrain himself in a given area of his life, he has the right to do that, but another person has no right to restrain someone else. When someone does restrain someone else, they are stealing that person’s right to act freely.
Does one person have the right to constrain another?
Normally, he does not. There are two exceptions to this:
First, God can give a person this right directly as when He told Samuel who was to govern His people. (1 Samuel 16:13)
Second, the people who are seeking a leader can give their consent to be governed by a certain person. An example of this is in our own nation when every election year, the people come together to cast their vote for who will be president.
What is the purpose of civil government?
The purpose of government is to enforce the eighth command which protects a person’s right to their property.
Why do you single out the eighth command here?
Because all the functions of government are included in this command. Furthermore, when the government tries to do more than the eighth command, it often ends up violating this command.
Give an example of this.
Governments will often try to alleviate poverty by redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. Consider Kuyper’s comment in support of this practice:
Consequently, the eighth commandment says nothing about the nature of the distribution of earthly goods and leaves room for different forms of the distribution of wealth. One would only come into conflict with this commandment if one were to try to organize a society where no one would have anything that he could call his own, and where all property without exception would be communal. When it is said of the first New Testament church in Jerusalem, for example, that they shared everything they had [see Acts 4:32], we should not understand by this that they also gave up their clothes, household goods, tools, and the like. Rather, it applies only to their money, land, or rental houses. On Business & Economics 41–42
But Kuyper does not tell us how it is consistent with the eighth command to take from one person, no matter how rich he might be, and to give it to another person, no matter poor he might be. What would we say if an individual took money from one person and gave it to a poorer person? Surely, this would be considered theft. Such a person would be expected to take from his own pocket, not someone else’s. Why does the morality of the act change when a group of elected officials take from one person and give to another?
You have spoken of rights. What does this word mean?
A right is something over which you have power. In this case, every person has the power to choose his own ends or goals. It is something other people are bound to respect. Wherever there are rights, there are duties; these two always go together. Where a person has a set of rights, other people have the duty and obligation to respect those rights. Blackstone distinguishes (p87):
Rights are however liable to another subdivision; being either, first, those which concern, and are annexed to the persons of men, and are then called jura personarum or the rights of persons; or they are, secondly, such as a man may acquire over external objects, or things unconnected with his person, which are styled jura rerum or the rights of things.
Coppens puts forth (p69) four things to consider when thinking about rights:
- The person possessing the right;
- The people bound to respect that right;
- The reason or ground of this right;
- The matter of the right.
Expand on this.
Let’s use this example to help clarify. George’s father, Ralph, dies and stipulates in his will that George will be given sole ownership of his car. Consider these four parts:
- George has the right to Ralph’s car.
- The executor of the estate has the obligation and duty to honor that right. George’s neighbors, on the other hand, have no such obligation. They have no concern in this matter.
- The ground of George’s right to Ralph’s car is Ralph’s will which states that George is to receive the car upon his death.
- The right itself is the right to Ralph’s car.
In terms of #3 in the above list, on what basis can a person claim to have a given right?
Some rights belong to a person simply because he is human. Other rights, are given to us by other people.
What rights does a person have simply because he is human?
There are different ways of stating these. The simplest is that every person has a right to himself and the products of his labor. A more lengthy elaboration of these rights is given in the universal declaration of human rights. The US declaration of independence states them simply as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights…
Others have changed these slightly to life, liberty, and property. Blackstone calls them “absolute rights” (p89):
The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the faculty of free will.
The important thing to remember is that these rights are unalienable.
What do you mean by unalienable?
Unalienable means inseparable. The point here is that these rights belong to a person simply because s/he is human. No other person gave him these rights and no person or group of persons can remove (or steal) them. They are inseparable from the person himself. As long as he remains a person, he is entitled to these rights. In terms of #2 in the above list, these rights are such that everyone has the duty of respecting these in other people.
You stated above that the function of government is to enforce the eighth command. In what ways are people’s rights stolen?
Rights are stolen when the powerful take them from the weak. For all of human history, powerful people have stolen the liberty of other people and forced them to work. This is slavery. It should be noted here that one person’s exercise of his rights often conflicts with another person’s exercise of his rights. Consider Jim who claims to have a right to practice shooting his high-powered rifle even though he lives on a small lot in the middle of the city. Fred also lives in that neighborhood and has raised a complaint that his rights are being violated. Here we have an example of one person exercising his right to act, but in such a way that it compromises the exercise of someone else’s right. Now here is a conflict; who will be allowed to exercise his right and who will have to lay aside his right? How will this be resolved?
You are going to say that governments are established to adjudicate and resolve these conflicts.
Yes, correct. Governments are established both to apprehend and punish those who would take someone else’s rights by force and to resolve a clash of rights. Locke writes (p191):
But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license: though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order, and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Everyone, as he is bound to preserve himself and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
What principles are to guide us in resolving a conflict between rights?
In a word, justice or obedience to the eighth command. The principles of justice here refers to the principles of distributive justice. This starts with the idea that every person owns himself. From this, we go on to conclude that every person has a right to the products of his own labor. If you go out in the woods, chop down a tree, and build a chair from the wood, then that chair is yours. You own it, and you have a right to it. Locke writes (p209):
Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
You do not have a right to anything that you did not produce.
In light of what you say here, there really is no such thing as a conflict between rights. In these “conflicts,” there is always one claim that is just and one that is unjust.
This is correct. All the difficulty is in determining who has the just claim and who does not.
What are we to think of the UN’s definition of human rights?
The UN’s website has the following definition:
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.
First, regarding the words “…or any other status.” Those persons who forcibly violate the rights of others, by this action, forfeit their own rights and are subject to punishment and to make restitution. Second, the list of rights is correct with the exception of work and education. If this is understood to mean that everyone has a right to seek work, start their own business, and to work wherever they please, then it is certainly correct. Same is true with regards to education. No one, however, has a right to a job or to attend a school. They have a right to purchase such things and to pursue them any way they are able.
How do governments protect the rights of people?
By writing laws and punishing those who disobey them.
What is the purpose of these laws?
They articulate in words the principles of natural law.
What is natural law?
Natural law are all those moral principles which we can discover without reading the Bible. Or to state it another way, all those moral principles which come to us via general revelation and not special revelation; see here.
Why should governments enforce the principles of natural law and not the law of God contained in the Bible?
Because God teaches us that the principles of His written law in Scripture are not to be forced on anyone; see here.