Foreword
Crowned with Glory and Honor

Christopher Marshall has written a wonderful book. It will be enormously helpful to Christians who love “the least of these” (Matt 25:45), those millions of people created in the image of God and loved by God but who are being victimized by forces of injustice or evil, the powers and authorities, or merely those satisfied with their current privileges. Focus on human rights draws our attention to any whose human dignity, created in God’s image, is being violated.

Marshall is a New Testament scholar with rare ethical perceptiveness, not only in this book but in his others. He provides a drama-and-narrative approach to biblical theology and ethics as grounding for human rights. His use of Richard Hays’ paradigmatic approach to biblical ethics is especially helpful for avoiding both legalism and vague abstraction. His biblical paradigms of creation, stewardship, covenant, incarnation, church, and eschatological consummation provide a richer understanding of human rights than other approaches. His biblical perspective corrects an Enlightenment approach to human rights that overemphasizes individualistic liberty.

Marshall insists that rights to life, equality, and participation are as important as rights to freedom. This emphasis is especially needed for readers in the United States. One could add what is surely biblical: rights of membership in community, and rights of communities themselves to be sustained.¹

In support of Marshall, let me tell a story I learned from my former teacher, Heinz Eduard Tödt of the University of Heidelberg.² When the concept of human rights first developed during the 1645 movement for religious liberty among free church Puritans in England, German culture was influenced by France. Thus German churches learned about human rights not from Christians in England but mistakenly thought such rights originated in the later anti-church and even atheistic French Enlightenment. So they opposed human rights.

This fit conservative tendencies that wed church and state, “Throne and Altar,” wanting the church (Altar) to support the German Emperor (Throne). Hence when Germany finally experimented with democracy during the Weimar Republic (1919-1932), churches mostly yearned for a return to monarchy and opposed democracy. This contributed to the defeat of Weimar democracy and the victory of the authoritarian Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler as der Führer.

Then as Hitler implemented his massacre of six million Jews, Poles, homosexuals, and Marxists in the Holocaust, the Germans lacked the commitments to human rights that might have enabled them to oppose such evil. Most stood by or even supported what Hitler was doing.³ The erroneous understanding of the origin of human rights, and the Germans’ authoritarian opposition to human rights, led the churches into shocking error. As a result millions of innocent victims died and the witness of the churches was greatly weakened. Germany is now extensively secular. After World War II and German repentance for the evils of Naziism, Germans realized the error of their dismissal of human rights. Ernst Troeltsch and Georg Jellinek pointed out that human rights had originated among free church Puritans in England, not a half-century later in the Enlightenment. German Christians now understand they need a plumbline of justice to guard against injustice perpetrated by the powerful.

In reaction to the evils of the Nazi period, and in response to the need of colonies for independence from colonial masters, a worldwide movement for human rights has arisen. Shortly after World War II, The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was written, then signed by the majority of nations. Most major church groups support human rights, as do most Christian ethicists. As Marshall writes, “Human rights have become an almost universal currency of moral debate.” If Christians are to debate over justice for those being violated, we have to learn the language. But we also have to bring a biblical corrective of Enlightenment individualism.

The German authoritarian error is a cautionary tale for all of us. We still hear echoes of that old authoritarian resistance to human rights, and claims that such rights are Enlightenment property. During the U.S. civil rights struggle, segregationists argued Christians should not advocate human rights but be willing to give up their rights. During the struggle for freedom in Eastern Europe against Communist dictatorship, dictatorial governments made it illegal to speak of human rights. During the struggle of women for basic equality, some said women should submit to authority. They failed to say what the apostle Paul did—that servanthood should be mutual and both husband and wife should affirm each other’s rights (Eph 5:21 and 1 Cor 7:3-5). Opposition to rights has functioned historically, if unintentionally, to maintain privileges of the privileged and undercut the struggle for justice of the violated. Support for human rights has spread democracy.

Christians rightly say we should outdo each other in showing love and honor to others rather than focusing only on what is right for ourselves (Rom. 12:9-10). From the perspective of the privileged, human rights often look like the self-assertion of those whose rights they resist. From the perspective of the deprived, human rights usually look like the essential requirements of justice. From the perspective of Christians who know God cares especially for the weak and the violated, human rights focus attention on those most likely to be deprived of their rights: widows and orphans who lack a man in a patriarchal society, the poor who lack money in a materialistic society, the outsiders and outcasts who lack belonging in an in-group society. As Marshall writes, the majority affirm human rights because of their usefulness in the struggle against oppression and injustice. A right is a duty of others to defend those whose legitimate rights are denied.

I want to add support to Marshall’s mention of the three historical origins of human rights (p. 32), and to Tödt’s historical narrative. In 1645 Richard Overton originated the concept of human rights. Overton had been a member of the first Baptist church in history, the congregation of John Smyth that emigrated to Holland in search of religious liberty and joined with the Waterlander Mennonite Congregation. Eventually Overton returned to England and a Baptist church there. His concept of human rights began with booklets he published arguing against religious persecution and for religious liberty.

Thrown in jail for his writings, he argued for the right of freedom of the press. In jail, he got to know the poor who had been jailed for their debts. They were not even fed. Conditions were horrible. Sensitized to their basic needs, he argued for the rights of housing and care for poor orphans and widows, the aged and the handicapped, and the right to education and land. The result was a remarkably comprehensive doctrine of human rights, including freedoms of religious and civil liberty and equal treatment before the law; basic needs and economic rights; and rights of participation in choosing the government and in urging just policies by the government.

Like a human baby, human rights was born with all its dimensions already present in 1645, from the pen of an Anabaptist/Baptist, a half-century before the Enlightenment. Overton argued based on paradigms analogous to those Marshall develops: the Lordship of Christ over ecclesiastical hierarchy and over human consciences; “the peace of our Sovereign Lord and King” over against wars of religion; the great commission (Matt. 28:19 ff.) to teach discipleship, not force it; biblical justice for the poor “who have not bread to still the cry of their children”; creation of all in the image of God; separation of church and state and biblical teachings on the limits of governmental authority; Christ’s teaching that we are not to lord it over one another as the Gentiles do; and the Golden Rule.

The result is a rich triad of rights much like those Marshall develops, not only an assertion of individual liberties. Human rights did not first emerge later in the Enlightenment, and rights in recent times have come not from the Enlightenment but from the struggle of underdogs against authoritarians. Let us not repeat the error of Weimar Germany’s rights opponents⁴ but learn from Marshall’s biblical and ethical insights.

—Glen Stassen, Lewis Smedes Professor of Ethics,
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California

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