Man is the source of rationality, the first point of reference, and the final condition of right and wrong. This is Burlamaqui’s starting point for his investigation of man. It is helpful to see that Burlamaqui is not neutral, nor does he claim to be. He has his own pre-commitments to a worldview, commitments which cannot be challenged. They are, as he says, “fixt and uncontestable.”
“We must therefore set out with acknowledging as a fixt and uncontestable principle, that the human understanding is naturally right, and has within itself a strength sufficient to arrive at the knowledge of truth . . .” (Burlamaqui, 34).
“By natural law we understand a law that God imposes on all men, and which they are able to discover and know by the sole light of reason, and by attentively considering their state and nature” (Burlamaqui, 123).
“. . . man finds within himself, and in his own reason, the rule he ought to follow; and since the counsels which reason gives him point out the shortest and safest road to his perfection and happiness, from thence arises a principle of obligation, or a cogent motive to square his actions by this primitive rule” (Burlamaqui, 87).
“. . . this faithful guide [i.e., reason], which is to direct the steps of man, and whose directions and counsels he may follow with an entire confidence” (Burlamaqui, 70).
“. . . Right . . . is nothing else but whatever reason certainly acknowledges as a sure and concise means of attaining happiness . . . Does it not evidently follow that Right in general is whatever reason approves as a sure and concise means of acquiring happiness?” (Burlamaqui, 69).
When Burlamaqui discusses man and gives an account of his nature, he makes no distinction between regenerate and unregenerate. While he does not recognize this traditional Reformed distinction, he prefers to point to the distinction between child and adult as the primary one to be made.
When does man become the possessor of rights? Burlamaqui denies that children have rights; rather, “This state does not properly commence with respect to man till he has attained the age of knowledge and discretion” (Burlamaqui, 71). Until man can rationally express the existence of rights, there can be no such thing.
He sees the mind of man as perfectly free to choose the good. He does not see man as unregenerate, but rather as unconstrained.
“Can any one seriously deny that in the choice of good and evil our resolutions are unconstrained . . . we have it in our power . . . to weigh the arguments on both sides, and to do, in short, whatever can be expected from the freest agent?” (Burlamaqui).
“The second question we have to examine is whether we are equally free in our determinations in regard to good and evil. To decide this point, we need not stir out of ourselves; for here also, by facts, and even by our internal experience, the question may be determined” (Burlamaqui, 45).
Burlamaqui is not neutral in his view of man. Man is the perfectly balanced scale, capable of determining right from wrong. His presupposition is that man is the measure — this he calls a “fixt and uncontestable principle.” He goes on to write that man is not indifferent between right and wrong, but possesses a natural tendency toward good. If this is true, then man — at least in some sense — possesses a kind of positive righteousness by his own nature.
“We are formed in such a manner that good of necessity allures us, whereas evil, by an opposite effect, repels us, as it were, and deters us from attempting to pursue it” (Burlamaqui, 45).
Burlamaqui is a prime example of the antithesis between the natural rights position and Reformed theology. Cornelius Van Til points out that the unbeliever’s position requires that man be spoken of in abstraction — abstracted from the context of a sovereign, personal God who determines whatsoever comes to pass. It is man’s attempt to independently identify himself prior to and apart from God. Such abstraction from the context of a sovereign God comes at the cost of rationality itself. It is an attempt to build a worldview piecemeal, without being able to bring the particulars into relation. In The Defense of the Faith, Van Til writes, “According to the principle of Protestantism, man’s consciousness of self and of objects presupposes for its intelligibility the self-consciousness of God” (Van Til, 100).
Any ability to identify man for what he truly is must at the same time know God for who he is. This is Calvin’s basic position in The Institutes: he faithfully points out that knowledge of God does not precede knowledge of self. Each is involved with the other. From man’s point of view, it cannot be said which comes first.