The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recently stated that they were “worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist ideas within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights which are a key concern of the Council of Europe.” This statement begs many questions to be sure. Atheistic and evolutionist Socialism killed it’s hundred millions and denied the survivors the most basic of human rights, let alone “democracy” of any sort. Yet, unless there is a third option between the creationist theory and the evolutionary theory which the Parliamentary Assembly has not made known to the rest of humanity, the Parliamentary Assembly has by default aligned itself with a scientific theory that has historically undermined the human rights and democratic processes they claim to be protecting.
Evolution cannot become the founding theory for a state that wishes to promote human rights and a peaceful social order because in the evolutionary scheme humans are accidental and survival of the fittest theory rewards brute force and revolution over attempts at the peaceful resolution of problems. In other words, evolution easily rationalizes as “progress” any and every violation of human rights. “Human rights” are by definition, “survival of the least fit” and are fundamentally opposed by evolutionary theory. The “rule of law” exists to protect the weak from the strong and thereby hinders certain forms of change because they interfere with individual rights and property rights. The evolutionary theory when applied to the political order is a “revolutionary” theory that justifies the overthrow of any and all rights for the sake of the “greater good”. For all all practical purposes then, evolution as the basis for a society’s order allows the politically powerful promote as their vision of where evolution is headed and encourages despotism. Conveniently, the political class never, in a society founded on evolutionary political theory, see their own rights diminished. At the end of the day, evolution based political theory serves the goals of tyranny, destroys human rights, and mocks even the possibility of the “rule of law” because there are never fixed and inalienable rights and boundaries to be observed.
The political entity founded with evolution as its foundational principle in fact has a most ruthless theocracy for its order. In this case, the “theos” or god behind this “theocracy” is a secular ideology that serves in the place of God and never stops demanding the sacrifice of its human slaves until it is destroyed through external pressure or internal collapse. Europeans of all people should understand this. How short the human memory and how deadly the consequences!
Christians on the other hand affirm “I believe in God the Father Almighty, make of heaven and earth”. Likewise Christians affirm that all humanity is created in the image and likeness of God and therefore responsible to submit themselves to a moral order that is independent of both human reason and folly. This moral order summarized in the Ten Commandments is the basis of all human rights and civilization. Where God’s Law is recognized , “human rights” and peaceful social orders can exist and flourish. History witnesses Europe’s own transformation from barbarity to Christendom, it’s progress from peoples ruled by the revenge code of the blood feud to law derived from the Bible which exchange restitution, forgiveness, and graded punishments. Only Christianity and it’s doctrine of creation can transform nations ruled by the constant threat of homicide also known as the “survival of the fittest” into nations that respect basic human rights.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe betrays its own lust for power in their pronouncements. In thinking they will have no “god” to rule over them, they miss the point. All nations, peoples and individuals serve their “god”. We serve either “God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth” revealed through “Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord” or another. There is no alternative to theocracy that is not some pursuit of demonocracy however secular its guises. The illusion of independence from God through service to a secular ideology does not relieve the Parliamentary Assembly of their burden as image bearers to serve some lord. In this declaration, they have chosen to serve an ideology that promises life and freedom, but historically and unfailingly delivers misery and death.
Do they really seek to preserve human rights and a peaceful social order? They should reconsider their course. Their present course will lead only to decimating human rights and enthroning tyranny – the opposite of the Assembly’s stated intentions.
Unfortunately the Parliamentary Assembly’s statements show the Assembly’s extreme ignorance or willful renunciation of Europe’s own history in this regard. The concept of human rights and the rule of law, and specifically law informed by God’s Law has a long history in Europe.
1. In 1648 Vindiciae contra Tyrannos:A Defence of Liberty against Tyrants was published on the Continent of Europe to express the growing reformational consensus that denied a King’s so-called “Divine Right” to do whatever the King pleased and do so in the name of God. It stated in part:
… The king is established by the Lord God, the King of Kings; to the end he should administer justice to his people and defend them against all his enemies. The vassal receives law and conditions from his sovereign: God commands the king to observe his laws and to have them always before his eyes, promising that he and his successors shall possess long the kingdom, if they be obedient, and on the contrary that their reign shall be of small continuance, if they prove rebellious to their sovereign king. …
At this point the reformation churches re-appropriated the Early Church’s instance that ultimate allegiance was due only to God, not Caesar and that Caesar himself, if he wishes to reign well, must only see himself as the Sovereign God’s lieutenant administering God’s Law instead of ruling by the King or Queen’s own prerogatives or whims.
2. Vindiciae contra Tyrannos merely expounded the principles enunciated in 1566 by Heinrich Bullinger in CHAPTER 30 —OF THE MAGISTRACY in the 2nd Helvetic (Swiss) Confession which linked creation and human rights by admonishing earthly rulers to rule with due regard to the Bible, the Word of God.
The chief duty of the civil magistrate is to procure and maintain peace and public tranquility: which, doubtless, he shall never do more happily than when he shall be truly seasoned with the fear of God and true religion—namely, when he shall, after the example of the most holy kings and princes of the people of the Lord, advance the preaching of the truth, and the pure and sincere faith, and shall root out lies and all superstition, with all impiety and idolatry, and shall defend the Church of God. For indeed we teach that the care of religion does chiefly appertain to the holy magistrate.
Let him, therefore, hold the Word of God in his hands, and look that nothing be taught contrary thereunto. In like manner, let him govern the people, committed to him of God, with good laws, made according to the Word of God in his hands, and look that nothing be taught contrary thereunto.
3. The Savoy Declaration which shaped the Congregationalist roots of the United Church of Christ agrees with the 2nd Helvetic Confession and puts it this way in Chapter 24 of the Declaration entitled, “Of The Civil Magistrate”:
“the magistrate is bound to encourage, promote, and protect the professors and profession of the gospel, and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world, and to that end to take care that men of corrupt minds and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge blasphemy and errors, in their own nature subverting the faith and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them”.
In other words, our ancestors had imbibed the thinking of the Reformation and emerged calling the magistrate (or “king”) to rule as one limited by the interests of Christ precisely BECAUSE of the doctrine of creation which calls all humanity to account to God’s Law. Only then can human rights be recognized and peace without coercion ensue.
The Parliamentary Assembly has sought promote peace, rights, and freedom but has done so by promoting an ideology that destroys and enslaves wherever it prevails. It does, however, empower those currently in power by justifying their actions to retain power by any means. By separating Creation and Human Rights, the Parliamentary Assembly has chosen the path away not only from God, rights, and peace but also chosen a path that betrays Europe’s (and North America’s) own historic development as free peoples under God’s Law.
