Easter and the Bill of Rights / Separation of Powers
Prof. Fustel de Coulanges (Sorbonne) on The Ancient City (La Cite Antique)
What hath Easter to do with the Bill of Rights and Separation of Powers ?1
An 1864 book by Sorbonne professor of ancient history Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges called The Ancient City2 helps us see what was normal in the ancient world of Greece and Rome.
The state was omnipotent over people.
It was Christianity and its Jewish ancestry that changed that with the doctrine of the omnipotence of God, and God’s creation of every individual person in the image of God. God didn’t create “society” first, then individuals. The Bible says that God created an individual first, and that person, and the second, were made in the very image of God—bearers of responsibility, dignity, duties, and rights. This image is passed on to the children according to the biblical text. Where does the Bible say that ?
After the fall, Adam and Eve have sons in Genesis 4 and the biblical text implies they have responsibilities and duties to each other, which implies each are bearers of rights. Cain violates the rights of Abel when he murders him.
The language of the image being passed down from father to child doesn’t occur in Genesis 4, but it’s implied. It’s explicit in Genesis 5. It’s more explicity in Genesis 9, after the flood punished the violation of rights (we call this sin).
Genesis 9 verse 6 authorizes not the government, not the state, but “people” to perform the death penalty for murder because the victim is made in the image of God and has a right not to be murdered. This implies a right to self-defense, and a responsibility, a duty not to murder.
The universality of duties and rights inherent in every human person is a radical truth that Jews and Christians proclaimed in the ancient world. It shaped the eventual recognition by the Founders of the United States that individual liberty is something that bumps up against the state, against “society.”
Here’s a snippet from Fustel de Coulanges’ wonderful account of the ancient world, The Ancient City, originally published in the 1800s in French, La Cite Antique, 1864. Enjoy the connection between the Bible and Politics here on this Maundy Thursday, Easter 2024.
Happy Easter.
The point of the Separation of Powers was, and still is, to protect Individual Liberty.
My copy is falling apart but was published in 1956 by Doubleday translated in 1873 by Willard Small.
I wish they taught history in the schools.