intermediate · 16 min
Last reviewed April 26, 2026

Human Dignity: Borrowed Capital?

Where does our shared intuition about the inviolable worth of every human being come from?

PhilosophicalHistorical

Why it matters

Modern human rights discourse — the Universal Declaration, anti-torture norms, equal rights — presupposes something weighty about human persons. Naturalism strains to underwrite this; the biblical doctrine of the imago Dei (Gen 1:26-27) delivers it directly. Tom Holland's Dominion and Luc Ferry's work argue that "secular" Western values are borrowed Christian capital.

The main case

The modern insistence on universal human dignity is historically novel. Most pre-Christian societies accepted hierarchical worth: slaves < free; women < men; barbarians < Greeks. The Christian doctrine that every human bears the image of God disrupted this ranking. Nietzsche saw this clearly — he despised Christianity precisely because it inverted pagan value hierarchies. Holland's Dominion (2019) traces how Christian assumptions structure even the secular humanism that claims independence from them. Without the imago Dei, naturalism must either reduce human dignity to evolutionary utility (which does not ground equality) or to convention (which loses its binding force).

Claim · Evidence · Objection · Response

1.Naturalism cannot easily ground universal equal worth.

Debated

Evidence

  • Evolutionary accounts make dignity track traits that vary across humans (cognition, capacity).
  • A strictly utilitarian framework can justify sacrificing the one for the many.
  • Historical societies without imago-Dei commitments routinely rejected universal equality.

Strongest objection

"Secular frameworks can ground equality through rational agency or capacity."

Response

But infants, severely impaired persons, and the unconscious lack exercised rational agency. A capacity-based ground produces inequality at the margins precisely where biblical dignity is strongest.

PhilosophicalHistorical
Sources

2.Modern human rights descend historically from Christian premises.

Majority view

Evidence

  • Tom Holland, Dominion (2019): the grammar of Western values is Christian.
  • Abolition, women's suffrage, and universal education all had deep Christian wellsprings.
  • Nietzsche correctly traced "equal worth" to Christian roots and rejected both together.

Strongest objection

"Christians also defended slavery, patriarchy, and colonialism."

Response

True. But the internal reform movements that ended these were also biblically grounded (abolitionists, Wilberforce). Christianity supplied both the problematic readings and their definitive critique.

Historical
Sources
  • The Reason for God — Timothy Keller (2008)popularFind on Amazon
  • Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity — Jeremiah J. Johnston (2017)popularFind on Amazon

What scholars debate

Tom Holland (not a Christian) and Luc Ferry have argued the historical case. Steven Pinker pushes back via Enlightenment-humanism roots. The debate is about whether the Enlightenment can stand without its Christian scaffolding.

Reflection

  • 1.Where do you think human dignity comes from?
  • 2.Could universal equal worth survive a fully de-Christianized culture?
  • 3.Who are the people most at risk if dignity is grounded in capacity rather than image?

Key sources

Sources
  • Reasonable Faith — William Lane Craig (2008 (3rd ed.))scholarlyFind on Amazon
  • Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis (1952)popularFind on Amazon
  • The Reason for God — Timothy Keller (2008)popularFind on Amazon
  • Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity — Jeremiah J. Johnston (2017)popularFind on Amazon

Featured thinkers

C.S. Lewis
Oxford scholar, literary critic, lay theologian

Twentieth-century Oxford and Cambridge scholar whose works on moral reasoning, joy, and the reasonableness of Christianity shaped modern apologetics.

Notable: Mere Christianity; The Problem of Pain
Jeremiah J. Johnston
New Testament scholar, apologist, author

New Testament scholar focused on the cultural context of early Christianity, hostile-witness evidence, and the historical Jesus in his Second Temple setting.

Notable: Unimaginable; Unleashing Peace
Frank Turek
Apologist, founder of CrossExamined

Popular apologetics speaker focused on moral and cosmological arguments and worldview critique.

Notable: I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist; Stealing from God
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