What Does Liberty Look Like: Property

This is the fourth post in the ongoing What Does Liberty Look Like series. Last week we looked at the cultural mandate; this week we examine how God created the institution of private property to provide us with one of the means we need to carry out cultural mandate, i.e., how private property allows humans to fill the world without starving, or without stealing from or killing each other to survive.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1 ESV).

Nothing existed before God spoke the universe into existence. This makes God the Creator the original owner of everything. He signified his ownership by making the tree of the knowledge of good and evil off limits. Additionally, His prohibition provided a clear distinction between Creator and creatures: “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3 ESV).

Yet, while God is God the Creator and we are not, He declared that mankind was going to be intimately involved in the management of His creation as steward-owners:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. (Genesis 1:28–29 ESV)

This delegated ownership is the foundation of mankind’s ownership of property (Gary North). We learn a number of things from this.

The first is that our ownership is like God’s ownership. In other words, human ownership of property is trinitarian in nature. It involves individuals, families, and institutions—including government. There are individual and collective aspects to property ownership. Here is how North puts it:

“Certain pieces of property are owned primarily by individuals but only secondarily by the state. In other cases, property is owned by individuals, but families also have rightful claims. In other words, property must never be defined as exclusively and absolutely owned by any single human being or any single human institution. This conclusion is implied by the very statement which begins this chapter: God alone is the absolute owner of all the creation. He, and He alone, possesses absolute rights of ownership. All other ownership claims are subordinate.”

Trinitarian ownership is not all collective, however. There is also a reliance on a single person (be it an individual, trustee, corporation, etc.) to properly steward the land. We see this in the creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3 ESV). God the Father and God the Spirit had their roles, yet it was Christ who was primarily responsible for doing the work of creation. The trinitarian aspect of human ownership does not—except in limited circumstances—give others (including the government) the authority to supersede the individual’s management and use of property; rather, it bestows upon the individual the responsibility for proper management and use of property keeping the collective in mind.

This leads us to the second aspect of delegated ownership. The steward-owners of property are required to manage and use property according to God’s purpose. We can infer God’s purpose for property from the cultural mandate: the land beyond the garden is to be made suitable for habitation so that God’s people can dwell on earth, i.e., the promised land, with Him. Human ownership of property, then, is one of God’s economies for carrying out the cultural mandate. As we can easily see today, it takes a great amount of wealth to support the billions of people living on earth. God designed the world so that people made in His image would use their creativity to create out of the land the wealth needed to support God’s ordained growth of the human population. A key aspect of our ability to be faithful to His mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” would come through human ownership of private property.

Satan had other ideas, however. He knew he could not attack God directly, so he sought to undermine God’s purposes by gaining the cooperation of humans. And the very first place he started was an assault on property ownership. Satan convinced Eve (who was followed by Adam) to cross over the property boundaries that God had placed around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their violation of God’s command was not only a denial of God as the Creator, it caused great harm to God’s economy of property ownership in a way from which we have still not completely recovered.

One aspect of this was that it transferred functional ownership of the earth from Jesus to Satan. As Creator, Christ certainly remained the True Owner of earth. But Adam and Eve had been delegated sovereignty over the earth through the cultural mandate, and their switch of allegiance placed Satan at their head and thus the de facto ruler/owner of the earth. Satan’s violent usurpation of God’s ownership (it came at the cost of human death) has since been reversed by Christ on the cross. Yet the violent usurpation of property ownership by government and individuals continues at great cost to the ability of humans to create the wealth necessary to maintain our multiplying population.

A quick review of property rights throughout the world shows this. The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom ranks countries on multiple categories, including property rights. The top 10 countries when it comes to protecting property rights average an 18.1 country ranking in terms of GDP per capita. The bottom 10 property rights countries average a 147 country ranking in GDP per capita. Correlation does not prove cause, yet the biblical perspective on property rights tells us that these correlations are on the mark.

The biblical perspective of human property ownership found in Genesis is further developed in the law. For instance, the eighth commandment instructs us: “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). Just as the seventh commandment presupposes marriage, the eighth presupposes private property. Forcibly taking away the possession or use of another’s property is (usually) breaking God’s law, as seen here: “Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor’s landmark” (Deuteronomy xxxx). And breaking God’s law brings sanctions:

“But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. (Deuteronomy 28:15–18 ESV)

Notice how these sanctions are related to the cultural mandate. They focus on the land, where people live and work, on the ability of the people to make the land fruitful and support themselves on it. The curses are economic in nature, bringing to the fore the difficulties of carrying out the cultural mandate for humans living under the Adamic curse.

Obedience, on the other hand, brings blessings to the faithful that reverse the Adamic curse as they seek to carry out the cultural mandate:

“if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, … all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, … Blessed shall you be in the city, … in the field … the fruit of your ground and … of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. – Deuteronomy 28:1-6

This helps us see, as North explains, that “[t]he biblically mandated system of private ownership establishes an unbreakable legal connection between ownership and responsibility.” Property owners are responsible for using their property to carry out the cultural mandate. In addition to the general problems associated with the curse, two things can get in their way: their own disobedience and the disobedience of others through the wrongful taking of their property, i.e., theft.

Theft by individuals is fairly straightforward; we’ll discuss it when we get to criminal justice. The effort of determining under when a government has stolen a private citizen’s property has become more complex in the modern world. Yet the underlying biblical principles are straightforward. We will examine them in our discussion on government. Which is where we will turn next.