U.S. Senator Tim Kaine’s comments last week about the relationship between human rights and the Creator sparked a worldview controversy. But doesn’t the gospel mean that human beings have no inherent or natural rights? Is it heresy to make such a statement, or to deny it? Did Christians who turned to the Declaration of Independence miss the gospel opportunity Senator Kaine presented?
Belief in human rights as inherent, natural, or even self-evident is grounded in a profound misunderstanding of two things. The first is what it means for God to be eternal, infinite, self-existing, and His being independent of what He created. The second, related to the first, is what the doctrine of creation ex nihilo means.
Theologian Herman Bavinck joined the two together by writing that “because God is the Creator; man the creature; . . . an infinite distance between the two is a given.” H. Bavinck, God and Creation, 569 (emphasis supplied). Given this proposition, and the absence of special revelation, how can we say it is self-evident that mankind has God-given rights of any kind?
Expanding on the foregoing, Bavinck continued:
If God remains elevated above humanity in his sovereign exaltedness and majesty, [then] the relation between the two is exhaustively described in terms of “master” and “servant.” . . . [H]uman beings have nothing and are nothing apart from God.” Accordingly, “if there is to be fellowship between God and man, . . . then religion must be the character of a covenant.”
In sum, for us to any “rights” in relation to God and, correspondingly, for any rights to come from God respecting our human relations, they must be the result of a covenant relationship God graciously bestowed on the first Adam as a representative of humanity.
However, covenant theology has been suppressed or ignored in most of our pulpits for more than a century. Bavinck suggests there is something “[h]idden behind the opposition to the word” covenant in relation to humanity. The following is what I think it is when it comes to human rights.
I submit that what is hidden is a belief that God is in some way “indebted to us,” that we are “owed” something. “[B]ut we are always indebted to him,” even “for the good work we do.” (Belgic Confession, art. 24. On his part there is always the gift; on our part there is always and alone the gratitude, God and Creation, p. 571,, emphasis supplied)
I believe Bavinck would say this, with the concurrence of the Apostle Paul:
Thinking that rights are inherent or purely natural to the human condition is a good description of those who, “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful.” Romans 1:21, KJV (emphasis supplied). Those who find anything for which they are not rightly and dutifully bound as creatures to give thanks to God are those who Paul said “became vain in their imaginations” and whose foolish heart was darkened.” Rom 1:21, KJV.
In other words, “the relation between the Creator and a creature radically and once-and-for-all eliminates any notion of merit.” God and Creation, p. 570. Therefore, rights as inherent or essential to the human condition as merited or owed to us are excluded.
If the Creator is not the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God of the Bible, Kaine is correct: rights are a human construct. Thy are a matter of convention or social contract. The rights language of the Declaration of Independence becomes irrelevant to Kaine’s point for two reasons.
First, the supreme law of the nation is the Constitution, according to Article VI, not the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is not law.
Second, science ushered in a “new history,” so-called by influential atheist historian Carl Becker. Science showed that we live “in a world ruled by an indifferent force,” not “a beneficent mind.” (The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, p. 74.) For the post-moderns with whom we must deal, it is their belief that humanity has progressed out of that older experience of the cosmos, which they believe was subjectively oriented. Interestingly, this subjective, experiential orientation coincides nicely with much of today’s evangelical theology.
Senator Kaine put the doctrine of creation in relation to rights in question, so why not take advantage of it. I offer one such example; it is based on the the belief that the legislator’s privilege is to declare the truth; it is the Holy Spirit’s work is to make it plain to those who, like Kaine, are covenant breakers.
WOW: A sitting U.S. Senator just rejected the foundational premise of the Declaration of Independence
— John Strand (@JohnStrandUSA) September 4, 2025
“So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”@timkaine should be thrown out of officepic.twitter.com/OSyG9ZiBNy
Senator Kaine, I can agree with you that human rights do not come from God and that such a thought, as you put it, is “very, very troubling” on one condition, namely, that they do not come to us in the form of a covenant graciously bestowed on human beings by the tri-personal creator God of the Bible.
If that is not true, the infinite difference between the Creator God and us as creatures makes any kind of rights as inherent or natural to our condition as creatures preposterous. On the other hand, it should be very, very troubling to all of us that our rights would come from and be dependent on the kind of lying, cheating, murdering, and covetous people we have demonstrated ourselves to be over thousands of years.
I can also see why you might think rights “endowed by our creator” is “what the Iranian government believes.” But that confuses the tri-personal and covenant-keeping God of the Bible with the non-personal god in which that nation’s government believes, and who created us as slaves.
Moreover, because I believe the one ontological God of the Bible is tri-personal in His immanent and external relations, love can rightly be ascribed to His very nature. Therefore, creation is an expressive overflow of that love and a living icon pointing back to it. That can’t be said of any other god.
Sadly, Senator, we have exalted ourselves over and against this God. Humanity’s covenantal relationship was broken, and we have justly forfeited the one right He gave us--to expect from Him this covenantal love and enjoyment of its expression among those He made in His image. Despite the forfeiture on our part, there is good news.
This same God provided, and in time revealed, the means by which He has been reconciling us to Himself since our first apostasy. And He has done so that His love might be in us, and we can reciprocate that love to Him in the way we love others made in His image. And that “love does no harm to a neighbor,” which is why it is called “the fulfillment of the law.” (Rom 13:10 NKJV).
On the cross we also saw what it looks like for a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, to love God and his neighbor with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength. “Against such [love], there is no law.” (Galatians 5:23). Yet, we also saw in that crucifixion what our lack of love for God looks like. Therefore, in my view, it is folly, to think that the laws we enact could improve upon that primal law of love rooted in the nature of the tri-personal God.
But, Senator, we may agree on one thing. When thoughts and beliefs about God and our duty of love break out into actions that cause injuries that judges do not remedy, the “love of Christ compels” us, as legislators, to act. (2 Corinthians 5:14) And that is what makes our work together important.
