As an example they point out that the authors of the Declaration ignored the inconvenient fact that in the new states they were now declaring independent, a preponderant majority of persons were excluded from enjoying the inalienable rights with which they were supposedly endowed by no less than their Creator. To the charge of falsity, critics sometimes add hypocrisy. If a claim like that is supposed to state a fact about human beings, they insist, it is self-evidently false.
If the assumption is not self-evidently true, can we reasonably justify adopting it? And if we cannot, how can we defend a process for governing that seems to assume it to be true?Ĭritics have often dismissed assertions about equality like that in the Declaration of Independence as nothing more than empty rhetoric. Yet for most of us it is very far from self-evident that all men-and women-are created equal.
Misc.In words that were to become famous throughout the world, in 1776 the authors of the American Declaration of Independence announced: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If equality is self-evident then no further justification is needed. PRC-Related: RFPA, Standard Bearer, Reformed Witness Hour, Etc. Missions, Sister Churches, Christian Schools. Covenant PRC Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia. Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church of Singapore. Even when they suffer the inequalities of life, they are able to say, "This God is our God, He will be our guide, even unto death" (Ps. 3:5-6 9:14), but glorifies Him as God alone.įor believers, this truth that God determines and brings to pass all things is of endless comfort. This does not mean God is arbitrary or unjust (Rom. He has dealt unequally with them, predestinating not only the inequalities of life, but also their eternal destinies, decreeing some to eternal life and passing others by in His decree that they perish in their sins. Indeed, this sovereign God has not only dealt unequally with mankind in time, but eternally, as GOD. Ungodly men always oppose this sovereign rule and right of God, denying the authority of parents over their children (denying them the right to punish their children), denying the headship of the man over the woman, and teaching as the DoI does that Government is not of God, but "of the people." He created the man to be the head of his wife, and gives parents authority over their children. Some are raised up by God to positions of authority and others not. If that is true, and it is, then it is God who makes one rich and another poor, who gives life to one and takes it away from another already at birth, who gives peace and health to some and sends to others a life of misery and trouble, who brings it about that one is born into wealth and freedom, while another is born into poverty and slavery.Įven in human relationships men are not all equal. This follows, first of all, from the doctrine of Providence, the Biblical teaching that God rules and controls and brings to pass all that happens in the world (Matt. The Bible, in fact, teaches that God not only creates men unequal, but that He deals with them unequally in time (Ps. That statement especially comes from the God-hating French Revolution, whose slogan was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." That men do not have certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and happiness, also suggests that the DoI is wrong when it teaches the equality of men. Perhaps we could say in connection with the fall, that they do have one unalienable right, the right to eternal damnation! Nowhere, does Scripture say that men have certain "unalienable rights." In fact, the truth of Scripture is that men have no rights with God at all, especially in that they are fallen into sin (Dan. The fact that the DoI mentions a Creator should not blind us to this fact. They come from the Deism (a denial of God's presence in and government of the world) of the French Revolution rather than from Scripture. What they overlook is the fact that these statements are humanistic lies from beginning to end. Many Americans believe that the DoI is a Christian document, and point to such statements as these as proof. It says that "all men are created equal." Their equality, according to the DoI, consists in this, that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
Perhaps the most famous statement of equality is found in the American "Declaration of Independence" (DoI). Our question for this issue is indeed an interesting one: A reader asks: "Has God created all men equal?"
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