Jeune Street

A new book called Justice: Rights and Wrongs (by Nicholas Wolterstorff)  has been receiving a lot of attention for its analysis of the religious roots of the human rights discourse. In a review at The Immanent Frame, John Schmalzbauer discusses how the book challenges conventional thinking about the modern origins of human rights:

Wolterstorff critiques the notion that rights talk is an offshoot of modern individualism.... [and he] also takes on those philosophers who would ground their accounts of justice in the classical Greek and Roman descriptions of the well-lived life. In his judgment, such approaches fail to take into account the inherent worth of human beings.

Rather than treating rights as a modern invention, Wolterstorff traces them back to the early church fathers and the Bible itself. Noting the prominence of the "quartet of the vulnerable" throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, he sees the protection of "widows, orphans, resident aliens, and the poor" as central to the biblical text. Criticizing those who would "de-justicize" the New Testament, he contends it "is all about justice." Citing the focus of the Gospels on "lifting up those at the bottom," Wolterstorff celebrates Jesus of Nazareth's "expanded vision of the downtrodden."