How Much Dignity Does a Maggot-sack Have?

The following paper was delivered by Dr. Joel Biermann at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on November 14, 2023.

There are few foundational axioms as pervasive and powerful as the declaration of human dignity and the corresponding affirmation of inherent human rights. The charter of the United Nations exemplifies this thinking as it declares in the second line of the preamble that just after the goal of “saving succeeding nations from the scourge of war,” it’s second driving objective is to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.”[1] Three years later, the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” doubled-down on the premise in its own Preamble declaring that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”[2] The list of inherent rights was extensive, numbering into the dozens, including life, liberty, education, work, leisure, nationality, property, religion, medical care, education, and marriage—all as inherent human rights. People might quibble about what exactly qualifies as an inherent right—there are some who consider fast food served according to their expectations a fundamental right—but no one questions the basic premise of human dignity and human rights, not even Christians. Dignity and rights are a given, right?

In fact, Christians can even do better than the framers of the “Universal Declaration on Human Rights.” Instead of a mere bald assertion of dignity and rights with no attempt at supporting the claim, Christians can actually name and honor a source for the dignity and rights they revere. Christians are confident that these great goods come from God who created all people in his own image and so endowed them with the inherent dignity and rights that have become the bedrock and guiding parameters of modern human society.

It is a powerful idea. It is uplifting and inspiring. It holds out a hopeful avenue for the resolution of conflict, the eradication of hatred, and the triumph of the universal brotherhood of man.

But it is not true.

As held in popular culture, the ideal is, in fact, nothing more than a sentimental assertion with no foundation in reality. To declare humanity’s inherent dignity and to create ever-expanding lists of universal human rights does not make it so. The glaring absence of any attempt to justify or ground the popular claim betrays the hard truth that the notion of human rights and dignity is just that: nothing but a notion. It is the hollow shell of a residual idea left over from the era of Christian influence, but without basis apart from Christian confession or some other religious assertion related to man’s origin and purpose. Beyond warm sentiment or wishful thinking and emotion, there is simply no reason any pure secularist can support a concept of inherent human dignity. In fact, as the world has witnessed firsthand, with examples numbering into the millions, the unflinching, hard realities of evolutionary theory and nihilistic philosophy actually demand exactly the opposite conclusion. It is ironic that such dehumanizing concepts that are rooted in and nurtured by the ideals of human worth, rights, and honor have ruthlessly undermined and subverted those very ideals themselves.

It had all started so well. Just a few years after the birth of Luther, the Italian, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, had exuberantly declared:

Man is the intermediary between creatures, the intimate of the gods, the king of the lower beings, by the acuteness of his sense, by the discernment of his reason, and by the light of his intelligence the interpreter of nature, the interval between fixed eternity and fleeting time, and (as the Persians say) the bond, nay, rather, the marriage song of the world, on David’s testimony but little lower than the angels.[3]

This Oration on Human Dignity became known as the “Manifesto of the Renaissance” declaring man’s lofty status, but it relied on Christian assumptions and understandings to ground the argument. Those were kicked away as the Renaissance morphed into the Enlightenment; and while the axiom of dignity continued, the foundation was gone.

Before Christians scramble to take up the mantle, step into the gap, and busy themselves with reestablishing the foundation and reminding the world that inherent human rights and dignity can’t actually get along without some divine source, perhaps we Christians should pause and reconsider the axiom itself. Is it actually true that humanity possesses inherent rights and dignity? Rightly understood, Lutheran doctrine, I am convinced, seriously undercuts, indeed fully repudiates, the idea. Rights and dignity, merely by virtue of being human, is a notion altogether foreign to Lutheran confession.

Of course, Luther’s typically graphic and brutally blunt assessment of human worth in terms of worms and maggots is infamously known. One striking example among Luther’s many references to necrotic vermin, is found in his well-known rejection of the term, Lutheran, where he writes, “What is Luther? After all the teaching is not mine….How then should I—poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name?”[4] Luther knew how to capture the attention and imagination of his listeners and readers—right down to the present day. It’s hard to shake the vivid memory of the roadside possum or the chicken guts in the garbage, and the searing image of fetid rotting flesh writhing and crawling with revolting larval life that looks more like death. Maggots don’t exude self-worth, and a sack of them is anything but dignified.

Remarkably enough, though, the Lutheran rejection of inherent human dignity along with the corresponding list of inalienable human rights is not grounded in or even bound to the gruesome and inevitable fate of all mortal human flesh. It is, no doubt, true that the undeniable and awkward materiality of our humanity is often assumed to be the weak spot in claiming human dignity. This helps account for the enduring popularity of Platonic and Gnostic convictions in their endlessly adaptable, but utterly predictable forms right down to the present. But, in spite of all such efforts to escape the flesh, the unyielding corporality of our humanity is inescapable. It defines us not only at the end of life, but from the very beginning. The old Latin phrase, often—but apparently wrongly— attributed to Augustine, is quite right: inter faeces et urinam nascimur; we are indeed, born between feces and urine. Having a fleshly body that does all the embarrassing and unpleasant things that all fleshly bodies do, and that will, in the end, be reduced to a feast for vermin is the lot of us all. But fleshly bodies are not the problem. The incarnation utterly and eternally rebukes any squeamish repudiation of human flesh. The Second Person of the Godhead, the eternal Logos, joined himself to real human skin, muscle, guts, and bones and was born as all men are—yes, between feces and urine. Having human flesh is not what negates dignity.

I will confess that I came to this realization a bit later than I should have. As soon as I heard the theme for this annual meeting, I knew I had to make the widespread, indeed, as I’ve noted, universal, axiom of inherent human dignity the target of my paper. And what better way to attack the idea of human dignity than to invoke Luther’s maggot sack? But as I’ve worked more deeply into the topic, it is clear that human flesh, even human flesh tainted by sin, and doomed to rot, is not the problem. But don’t misunderstand; I am not backing off of my thesis. I am more committed than ever to my campaign against inherent human dignity and universal human rights; and I do still love my title—it does what titles are supposed to do, after all. It’s just that now I’ve come to recognize that it must be made clear that being a maggot sack is not in itself the negation of dignity, but a consequence of the loss. Maggots don’t steal my dignity, and it is not frail, fallible, faltering flesh that impinges on any claim I could make to basic human rights. Intrinsic dignity and rights are still wrong ideas, but the problem with them lies somewhere else than in our human flesh that is doomed to decay.

The inherent problem with inherent human dignity and rights lies in another unquestioned dictum: that of human autonomy which is, supposedly, made manifest in a person’s ability to choose and act on individual desires, or what we ordinarily label as “free will.” A commitment to the absolute necessity of free will goes hand-in-hand with the idea of human dignity. After all, to have dignity, people must be free; and so reciprocally and logically, since humans obviously must have dignity, then it is required that they have free will as well. Along with the commitment to inherent human dignity, the idea that humans must, by definition, enjoy the exercise of their free will or cease to be fully human, is also deeply rooted in the western experience, even among the most ardent Christians. It is simply taken for granted that people must have autonomous free will if they are to function as fully human beings. Luther, of course, disagreed. Or rather, Luther simply rejected outright the idea of human free will, and never gave much thought, at the time, to what this might mean to ideas of inherent human dignity.

In The Bondage of the Will, a work he himself considered one of his most important, and one that is, not surprisingly, widely read and applauded by Calvinists, Luther unequivocally renounced the idea of human free will. Basing his argument on Scripture, the church’s teaching, and even human experience, he declared, “Thus we find it written in the hearts of all alike, that there is no such thing as free choice, though this fact is obscured by the many arguments to the contrary and the great authority of all the men who for centuries have taught differently.”[5] And then later he concluded with even more zeal, “If, therefore, we submit the case to the judgment of Scripture, I shall win on all counts, and there will not be a jot or tittle left that will not damn the dogma of free choice.”[6] In his battle with Erasmus, Luther’s driving concern, certainly, was to allow nothing to sully or steal the reality of God’s gracious working of salvation for the good of his chosen people. No human element can be allowed to diminish the confidence, certainty, and joy that come to the child of God who knows that he has been chosen for no other reason than God’s gracious, eternal election. But Luther extends the argument, as he should, to emphasize the absolute dependence and utterly contingent status of every human. We are God’s creatures who exist only by his decision and design. We are not our own lords. We are not autonomous. We are not the self-sufficient masters of our own fates. We do not have free will. We do not possess inherent dignity. We are not endowed with inalienable, natural, human rights.

This means, then, that man did not lose inherent dignity when he sinned and forfeited the untainted, Edenic, image of God. Indeed, the Fall into sin did shatter the image of God in which he had been created, leaving us with only the jagged bits and pieces of what was once a glorious unity of structure, relationship, and purpose. But the image of God was never about dignity. Adam could not lose what he did not have, and he did not have inherent dignity simply by virtue of his being human, or even being made in the image of God. The imago Dei did not confer autonomy, rights, or dignity on Adam or his descendants. The fall certainly was disastrously cataclysmic, but not because it ended man’s dignity, but because it ruptured man’s relationship with God. And that spelled the end of any notion of dignity.

The fall was man’s rebellious rejection of God’s authority and dominion. It was man declaring his independence and refusal to live as God’s contingent creature. The fall brought an end to man living as a dependent, trusting, and obedient creature before God. By rejecting God’s plan, man rejected the only dignity he had—not dignity that was inherent, but dignity that was derived and dependent on his relationship with God— and man also lost the only possible means available to retrieve a semblance of dignity. Without a relationship of trust in God, there is no such thing as human dignity. This means that any lingering vestiges of the image of God that continue to shape and define us do not automatically grant the inheritance of inherent human dignity. To be clear, the fall did not negate human dignity because man lost “God’s image.” Whatever dignity man could arguably have enjoyed was never tied to the bare fact that he was made in God’s image; instead, rather counter-intuitively, his only dignity was that he was God’s contingent creature and not a self-determining, autonomous being.

To suggest or defend the idea of inherent human dignity and rights misses the point, and badly. It suggests that there is something about humans that is intrinsically worthy or valuable. Such is not the case. We have no intrinsic dignity or value, but we do have derived dignity and worth. We are valuable because God deems us so. This distinction is sharply outlined in the 28^th thesis of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.”[7] When humans make a claim to inherent human dignity, it is nothing more than man trying to love himself by finding in himself, by fiat if necessary, that which is pleasing and lovable and worthy. In reality, man has nothing in himself that could be named worthy or precious. The only value and dignity that may be attributed to man must be granted to him from outside. Human dignity comes not from inside, but from outside the man. It is not a given; it is granted. Indeed, it is all extra nos! has dignity only because God chooses to love and honor him. And what love he has! God’s love for man reaches the breath-takingly crazy height of God’s willingness even to join himself to human flesh and suffer the horror of hell itself for the sake of his worthless, rebellious creatures. Earlier, I noted that it is the incarnation that rules out any Gnostic rejection of the material world. And it is also the incarnation that delivers dignity to desperately corrupt creatures.

Toward the end of his remarkable work, Nachfolge, or The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer focusses on the enormous significance of the incarnation for our anthropology. It’s worth hearing him at some length:

Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He became Man even as we are men. In his humanity and his lowliness we recognize our own form. He has become like a man, so that men should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race.[8]

We matter only because we matter to God. We have dignity only because Jesus died for us. Of course, having such derived dignity is fantastically more significant than any manufactured and illusionary dignity purportedly based on our human nature or intellect or soul or any other anthropocentric nonsense. We do not have inherent dignity; but in Christ, we have dependent dignity. We do not have intrinsic worth, but loved by God in Christ, we have been given infinite worth.

Getting human rights right, follows a similar trajectory. There is no such thing as inherent human rights somehow granted simply by virtue of being a living human. To be clear, there is a right way to talk about rights. When a person is given a vocation to fulfill, he is also granted the prerogatives, or authority, or rights necessary to carry out that vocation or office. This is easy to see with a prince who is to govern and thwart evil and so is given the right of the sword. Similarly parents, and pastors in their vocations can be said to possess peculiar rights necessary for them to do their given vocations. But, these rights are strictly not inherent in their being, and they do not extend equally to all people. Rather, they are vocation-specific rights that are granted for the sake of accomplishing one’s vocational responsibilities. Rights granted by a government, such as the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights should be understood along these same lines—even if those rights were conceived by the Enlightenment framers as inherent human rights. Christians should know better, and should think and act accordingly by using the rights they have as gifts to be utilized and even exploited for the sake of fulfilling vocations and proclaiming the gospel, but not as sacred, eternal privileges owed to them simply because they are human.

So why does any of this matter, and what’s actually at stake, here? Simply this: Christians should live not as children of the Enlightenment, but as children of Christ. We know the score. Like Luther, we know that we are nothing: a bit of inconsequential flesh and blood; a fearful, prideful, sinful self; a lost soul; a meal for maggots. Yet we know that in spite of that bleak reality, we are loved by God, joined in the fulness of our humanity by the eternal Son, and ransomed from hell, and rescued from the worms by the perfect death and bodily resurrection of that incarnate Word of God, Jesus our savior and Lord. That’s a source of dignity and worth that endures and that always counts. Its foundation is not in us, but in Christ.

We do not need to jump on the inherent-dignity-bandwagon with the rest of the Enlightened world as the supposed firm foundation for universal human cooperation, kindness, generosity, peace, and altruism. The 21^st century is proving to be every bit as problematic for the support of that false thesis as was the 20^th, and every century before. As we all know from the brutal lessons of recent history: clinging to the idea of inherent human dignity does not increase love and cooperation in the world and it does not stem hatred or end genocide. The world’s hope does not lie in promoting the myth of inherent human dignity. It lies in Christ and Christ alone. Dignity does not derive from within us, and rights are not inherent in our humanity. Both are given only in Christ and Christ alone, and it is up to us to show and tell the world this great, foundational truth.

[1] United Nations. Charter, Preamble, 1945. Accessed on 11/7/2023 https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

[2] United Nation. UDHR, Preamble, 1948. Exported from Wikisource on October 7, 2022.

[3] Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Translated by Elizabeth Livermore Forbes, in Ernst Cassirer, et al., ed. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Selections in Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, 223.

[4] Martin Luther. AE 45, “Sincere Admonition against Rebellion” 1522, 70.

[5]Rupp & Watson, 245.

[6] Ibid., 327.

[7] AE. Vol. 31, 41

[8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship. Touchstone: New York, 1959, 301-301.

Dr. Joel D. Biermann is the Waldemar A. and June Schuette Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.