What is the theory of government presented in the declaration of independence?

Answer 1

The theory is based loosely on many documents including the Mecklenburg Resolve (also know as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence), The Bible, Locke's Second Treatise of Government and what many call "natural law" or "natural rights".

The Declaration's concept of the "pursuit of happiness" as an "unalienable right" given by the Creator to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765)

Many people mistake our heritage to be an extension of Greek culture. That is very inaccurate. The Greeks had no doctrine of equality and believed, as the Romans did later, that some men by nature were superior to others. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans saw property as a right, much less as an "unalienable right."

Many of the claims to unalienable rights spring from basic Bible teachings. The bible was the foundation for certain aspects of this declaration.

The idea that man is created in God's image and has lordship over the earth is the key to the modern notion of subjective rights. Subjective rights are those that are inherent in the individual; they are inseparably part of the human personality. Being made in God's image makes man a being of enormous value and inherent worth thus endowed with these rights. This notion was foreign to all ancient systems of thought and accounts for the lack of any strong concept of subjective rights outside ancient Israel or in non-Christian cultures.

As a steward, trustee, and protector under God, a man may resist other men's unlawful interference with the performance of that duty. This is the historical analysis and starting point of the church's doctrine of the right of self-defense and of rights generally.