The diligent among my readers (at least I hope there’s more than one!) might have sensed some foreboding with the final sentence of my last post: “human nature standing alone is too thin a gruel on which to nourish a culture of human rights.” What does it mean for human nature to stand alone? In other words, is having a human nature that images God enough, even though one’s actual status is so severely malformed or so profoundly malfunctioning that one cannot exercise dominion? As Wolterstorff puts it, “suppose one combines the idea of human nature with the idea of resemblance to God in the way in which those ideas are combined in the nature-resemblance construal of image of God. To possess the image of God is to possess a nature such that properly formed possessors of that nature resemble God with respect to their capacities for exercising dominion.” (351)
A very good question to which I would have replied with an insouciant “yes” before reading Wolterstorff further. Wolterstorff’s answer is bluntly contrary: “I do not see that it does.” Here I part company with my guide to justice. (I’ve probably parted company with him on previous occasions without knowing it; maybe an astute reader can point out my lapses.) But before giving my own view let me rehearse Wolterstorff’s critique of the adequacy of the “nature-resemblance construal of image of God” for human rights as well as his proffered alternative.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment