Wolterstorff on Rights Grounded in Respect of Worth 3.2.4

Why isn’t belief in human nature rooted in imaging God enough to account for human rights? For the same reason belief in human nature rooted in the capacity for rational agency isn’t enough: it doesn’t matter a hill of beans if someone else has the set of capacities tied by the Hebrew writers to the image of God; if I don’t have them I’m not due the respect that such capacities deserve. To be sure, the dominion-related capacities finding shelter under the umbrella of the image of God are more variegated than the slender pole of rational agency but even so they are no less absent among the triumvirate of the profoundly mentally handicapped, those in a persistent vegetative state, and those suffering late-term dementia. Dominion-related human nature resembles God but that doesn’t mean every human being does.

But what about the apparent assumption of the ancient Hebrew writers that all human beings partook of the image of God and that all were entitled to the respect that accounts for rights? Doesn’t this imply that even those with profoundly diminished capacities sufficiently resemble God to enjoy respect as his images? Nope, per Wolterstorff: “the biblical writers were not offering generalizations concerning each and every human being; they were describing The Human Being. They had their eye on properly formed and properly functioning human beings.” (352, emphasis added)

If I understand him correctly, Wolterstorff is arguing that possessing the image of God (which is the case with all human beings under the nature-resemblance approach) does not account for the high level respect necessary to support universal human rights. Great respect is due to the high-end car (The Car) if it matches its advertised description; less is due to the same car that misses its described mark; and none at all for the clunker – even a high-end clunker – no matter how beautiful its description. Sure, we’re all made in God’s image but so what? The clunkers among us are still clunkers.