Biblical & Theological Issues, Public Theology & Christian Living

by Shawn Ritenour –

Conventional wisdom has it that only the Religious Right blurs the line between Church and State. Conservative Christians wanting to return official prayer to government schools and fighting to keep plaques of the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls are examples that get a lot of press. Christian conservatives largely supported George W. Bush’s plan to incorporate religious charitable organizations into national welfare programs. One conservative commentator applauded Bush’s foreign aid initiative to Africa, referring to the President as our Good Samaritan-in-chief.¹

However, religious liberals are also eager to use the power of the state to achieve their policy goals. The progressive movement of the early Twentieth Century, for example, was largely fueled by the ideology of the Social Gospel movement.² The Religious Left continues in that tradition, claiming interventionist economic policy is required to produce outcomes mandated by Christian ethics.³ They identify people caught in the subprime mortgage mess or who work in harsh conditions for low pay or who merely make a lot less than the wealthiest among us, and call for the state to fix things in the name of Christian Charity. Such people argue that Christian ethics demand tougher regulation of the credit industry, higher labor standards, mandatory sick leave, mandatory family leave, and mandatory safe, affordable, and enriching child care, and living wage legislation. They lobby for state regulation of the use of goods possibly affecting the environment. After all, they ask, “What Would Jesus Drive?” Many Christians advocate state income redistribution because, they argue, income inequality violates Christian justice.

While many on the Christian Left may mean well, a truly Christian economic policy must not merely be seeking ends that are perceived as desirous or even specifically Christian. An economic policy compatible with Christian ethics must also achieve its ends with ethical means. Any ethical evaluation of economic policy must take into account the nature of economic transactions. The market economy is a vast network in which human beings are brought together by the exchange of property. Therefore, promotion of any public policy from a Christian perspective must be consistent with Biblical ethics regarding property. Holding interventionist policy up to the light of the Christian ethic of property reveals that state interventionism is not an acceptable Christian means for achieving Christian ends.

History of Major U.S. Entitlement Programs

1933 – Agricultural Price-Support programs begun
1935 – Social Security Program enacted
1935 – Aid to Families with Dependent Children program enacted
1939 – Foods Stamp program begun
1939 – Federal Unemployment Tax enacted
1965 – Medicare and Medicaid enacted
1965 – Federal Student Loan programs begun
1972 – Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program enacted
2010 – Patient Protection and Affordable Care (Obamacare) enacted

A Christian View of Property

Historically, Christians have affirmed private property as a Christian social institution. The morality of private property was recognized by many of the patriarchs in the early church, Thomas Aquinas, and the broader Scholastic tradition.⁴ Roman Catholicism continues to affirm that private property is superior to socialistic property arrangements.⁵

Key thinkers in the Protestant tradition also argued for the legitimacy of private property. While commenting on the eighth commandment in his Institutes, John Calvin writes, “To sum up: we are forbidden to pant after the possessions of others, and consequently are commanded to strive faithfully to help every man to keep his own possessions.”⁶ He continues by indicating that this command specifically prohibits theft, fraud, and cheating others out of their property. Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge, argued that in the commandment against stealing, God has instituted a divine right to property.⁷ Southern Presbyterian R.L. Dabney came to similar conclusions.⁸

Francis Wayland, the Nineteenth Century Baptist theologian, summed up the Christian case for private property in his treatise on ethics, The Elements of Moral Science. Wayland explained that the right to property is founded on God’s will that is made known to us in three ways: by our natural conscience, through the observed consequences of either upholding or violating the right to property, and by God’s supernatural revelation.⁹ This article centers on this third mode of communication.

Scripture instructs us that the Christian view of property begins with the understanding that we hold property as stewards of God, who ultimately owns all that there is. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1). God owns all there is because He made it (Ps. 94:4–5).

Our property is God’s gift. God has given the earth to the children of man (Ps. 115:16). God also gave us the cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the earth, fill it and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). This requires much use and transformation of the earth God has given us. An existential fact of the created order is that use is individual.¹⁰ Therefore, if God has given man the earth to use for His glory, it must be that he has distributed particular units of the earth to individual persons so they can use them to fulfill God’s mandate.

The individual right to acquire private property is further affirmed if we consider the biblical record. God did not give property to man in general all at once. In order to begin fulfilling God’s cultural mandate, Adam and Eve first appropriated some of the earth. They worked the land and it became theirs. Their sons, Cain and Abel, did likewise. Cain tilled the earth and raised crops that were his. Abel used land to raise animals that were his.

As owner of all He made, God has the right to confer the use of property on whomsoever and under whatsoever restrictions He pleases. In His sovereignty and providence, he can work to make some prosperous and others less well endowed. Additionally, from a Christian perspective, only God has the right to determine how people can morally add to their property. God has established that, when accumulating property, people may not aggress against the property of their neighbor. If one comes into possession of property legitimately, then, with regard to human relationships, he has an exclusive right to the possession and use of that good. We also have a duty not to infringe on rights of others to be secure in their property.

We find in the Old Testament many precepts against acts of theft. Chief among these is the commandment, “Thou shall not steal,” found in Exodus 20:15 and Deuteronomy 5:11.

Elsewhere, the Old Testament Law also explicitly prohibits theft and fraud (Lev. 19:11, 13). Proverbs 30:9 tells us that stealing profanes the name of God. The prophet Jeremiah lists stealing with sins of murder, adultery, swearing falsely, worshiping Baal, and walking after false gods (Jer. 7:9).

The prohibition against theft is affirmed in the New Testament as well. Jesus indicates that not stealing is a commandment to be kept by the rich young ruler (Luke 18:20). The Apostle Paul implies that not stealing is part of loving your neighbor as yourself and commands thieves to repent of their stealing, and instead provide for themselves and others through honest labor (Eph 4:28). When exhorting churches to contribute to the common charity fund, Paul never calls for coercive extraction of property, but voluntary giving (2 Cor. 9:7).

The Biblical ethic forbidding theft includes abstaining from fraud. God tells Moses to tell His people “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. . . .” (Lev. 19:35–36). The condemnation of fraudulent weights and measures is repeated in Proverbs (Pr. 11:1; 20:10). God considers cheating a trading partner an abomination akin to stealing.

The encroachment of someone else’s property by moving recognized property boundaries is likewise prohibited. The Judaic law states, “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess” (Deut. 19:14). In Proverbs we find straightforward confirmation of this prohibition: “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Pr. 22:28). One chapter later God warns, “Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless for their Redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against you” (Pr. 23:10–11). The context of both reminds us that God intends private property rights to be an important legal protection for the poor, not only the wealthy and politically powerful.

Besides outright acts of theft, we read in the Bible that God prohibits the thoughts from which violation of the right of property proceeds. Jesus tells us that the motivation for theft and other sins come from the heart (Matt. 15:19). Not surprisingly, God prohibits our coveting the property of others (Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21; Luke 12:15; Eph. 5:3).

Importantly for the issue of economic policy, the New Testament also teaches that the Christian ethic of property includes the right to voluntary exchange. This is implied by passages teaching that property ownership includes the ability to do with it what one wants (as it relates to interpersonal relations), provided he does not aggress against someone else.¹¹ In Acts Chapter 5, for example, we find the historical account of the demise of Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit. Ananias, with the full knowledge of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property and asserted that they were giving all of the proceeds to the Church in Jerusalem, all the while holding back some of the revenue for themselves. The Apostle Peter confronted Ananias saying, “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?. . . You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:4). Peter expressly says that their property was theirs to do with as they saw fit.

Peter was affirming the same principle Jesus used in his parable of the laborers in the vineyard recorded in Matthew 20. In this parable about the Kingdom of God, Jesus tells the story of a master who hired different laborers to work different amounts of time, but paid them the same amount of money. In response to complaints from the laborers who worked the longest, but received the same pay as those who worked the shortest, the master, who represents God, says,

“‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’” (Matt. 20:13-15)

The moral force of this parable relies on the acceptance of the principle that the owner of property can do with it what he wants. As Beisner concludes, “Justice in economic relationships requires that people be permitted to exchange and use what they own—including their own time and energy and intellect as well as material objects—freely so long as in so doing they do not violate others’ rights.”¹²

Careful study of God’s Word conclusively demonstrates that not only is the social institution of private property generally beneficial, but also it is ethically right. This conclusion has great consequences for Christian social thought. It is the basis for the free society that manifests voluntary exchange and eschews violent coercion.

Because the right to property is a Divine right, it is not something that can be set aside by men, even if they achieve ultimate political power. Not only does the Christian ethic of property forbid individuals from killing and stealing from each other, but rulers are also called to submit themselves to the property ethic. God does not forbid stealing, except if we work for the state. God commands rulers to serve the Lord with fear (Ps. 2:10–12). The Scriptures exhort those in power to rule and judge with justice towards everyone. King David’s last words include the encouragement, “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he [God] dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes the grass to sprout from the earth” (2 Sam. 23:3–4). In the Old Testament law God explicitly tells the ruler to defend the poor and fatherless, but at the same time warns that this mandate does not imply that the ruler should be partial to the poor (Lev. 19:15). God likewise warns against being biased in favor of the poor when adjudicating lawsuits (Ex. 23:3).

The passages in the New Testament that speak most explicitly about the role of the magistrate also affirm that rulers are not above God’s moral law. In Romans 13:4 we read that the governing authority is God’s servant for the good by carrying out God’s wrath on wrongdoing. Some may hope to read this passage as giving carte blanche to the state as a minister for good, but it is clear from this passage that the chief function of the powers that be are negative injunctions for those who violate the good by doing wrong. The magistrate bears the sword for the punishment of those who do works of evil.¹³ Rulers do not have the divine mandate to punish all sin. They are not to be thought police and neither are they to be nannies. They are called to punish those acts that are antithetical to the good.

By the term the good, the Apostle Paul meant essentially keeping the peace. As biblical commenter John Murray notes, “Paul provides us with a virtual definition of the good we derive from the service of the civil authority when he requires that we pray for kings and all who are in authority ‘that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”¹⁴ The English Standard Version renders “tranquil” as “peaceful.” The charge God gives to the civil authority is to keep the peace and thereby allow believers to enjoy peaceful and quiet lives. This charge implies that the main function for any magistrate is to protect the innocent from aggression. The state is not authorized to become an agent of aggression who takes from the productive and gives to the politically connected.

The limited mandate for the civil authority also has implications regarding government budget policy. In Romans 13:6-7, we are provided reasons we are to pay taxes to the powers that be. Taxation is justified for the magistrate for performing their lawful duties. Again as John Murray explains, taxes “subserve the ends for which rulers are appointed and not the abuses which are so frequently attendant upon the expenditures of them.”¹⁵Calvin warned that the civil authorities “should remember that all that they receive from the people is public property, and not as means of satisfying private lust and luxury.”¹⁶ The magistrate is not morally allowed to fleece his subjects to help pay for a lavish personal lifestyle that is wholly unconnected to his fulfilling his divinely ordained career. Neither is he allowed to use government expenditures as a way to gain votes and political power.

In summary, if the civil authority is to fulfill its function, the magistrate must use divinely ordained means. Just as all people are to respect the property of others by not stealing from or defrauding their neighbor, neither should the ruler. Just as private citizens should not steal, the state should not steal either. God’s Word mandates that none of us should individually take what is not ours. Likewise, we should not collectively take what is not ours through the state. Good government, then, is one that protects citizens from violence and refrains from intervening in the economy to take wealth from some people and give it to others.

The Christian Ethic of Property and Economic Policy

The implications of Christian doctrine regarding private property are relatively straightforward. Applying the right to property to the actions of rulers, who he saw as the agents of society, Wayland concludes, “Each one has a right to use what is his own, exactly as he pleases. If society interferes by directing the manner in which he shall appropriate it, it is an act of injustice.”¹⁷ Here Wayland was echoing a similar conclusion from the Sixteenth Century Spanish Scholastics. Henrique de Villalobos, in his treatise on moral theology argued that if a person owns something, he “…can sell it, transfer it and if he wants, destroy it.”¹⁸ Christian justice demands not merely freedom from socialist tyranny, but also from state intervention in the economy.

The economic institution that maintains justice in social relations regarding property is the free market, the vast network of voluntary exchange. Any intervention hampering voluntary exchange is a violation of the Christian ethic of property. This is the point that the Christian Left forgets. Good intentions are not enough. For economic policy to be truly ethical, it has to respect private property, and to the extent that it does not, the policy is not compatible with Christian morality.

The history of economic thought is filled with eminent economists who have ably demonstrated the harmful effects of government intervention in the economy.¹⁹The state’s effort to hamper the free operation of the market fails from even the point of view of the advocates of the intervention. Government manipulation of the money supply creates less economic stability not more. The welfare state results in less prosperity not more. Price controls result in fewer goods being supplied not more. Minimum wages and other union restrictions on wages result in fewer workers, and especially lower skilled workers employed and hence poorer, not more prosperous laborers. Government regulation results in fewer ends being satisfied, not more. It is foolish for Christians to lobby for socialism and various forms of interventionism because it results in poor stewardship.²⁰ A free market is necessary for the development of a prosperous, life-sustaining, flourishing civilization. Private property is the institutional requirement for our fulfilling the cultural mandate to have dominion over creation without descending into a barbaric struggle for survival.²¹

Not only is interventionism unhelpful in providing a net social benefit, however, it is an unethical means of doing so. Government lending regulations prevent borrowers and lenders from entering into voluntary contracts. Forcing entrepreneurs to pay for sick or family leave when workers would voluntarily agree to work without such benefits also prohibits some laborers and employers from freely exchanging their property. Likewise, minimum and living wage laws prohibit some workers and entrepreneurs from making mutually beneficial work agreements. Some workers, who are not productive enough to warrant their employment at the artificially high wage are prohibited from exchanging their labor as they see fit.

American labor law provides special privilege to labor unions. If a simple majority of employees vote to be represented by a collective bargaining unit, the firm is prohibited to negotiate with its workers individually. The firm is prevented from engaging in voluntary labor contracts with individual workers. Individual laborers are prohibited from negotiating with a unionized firm themselves. Some states even require every employee to pay union dues, whether they want to or not. All of this hampers voluntary exchange and, hence, violates the Christian property ethic.²²

All environmental regulations that prohibit a person from using his property as he sees  fit, as long as he does not aggress against someone else, due to excessive pollution for example, also violates that person’s right to property. Of course, the issue of pollution and environmental damage can be complicated. People can engage in actions that generate pollution some of which harms other people.  However, identifying specific causes of damage can be hard to identify, especially if suspected
pollution is only one potential cause of such harm. Maintaining strict liability and property rights provides a way of dealing with such problems.²³ Nevertheless, while Christians are of course called to do unto others as they would like others to do unto them, Scripture nowhere gives the state authority to violate property rights when a specific aggression cannot be established.

Government income transfers to the poor are likewise unjust because they involve coercive taxation for ends that are not the legitimate function of the civil magistrate. Taking money from productive taxpayers for illegitimate means is essentially legalized theft. Private citizens cannot rob from the productive to give to the low-income. Likewise, neither can their elected officials. No one, no matter how well intentioned, can justly look to the welfare state as a legitimate Christian way of addressing the problem of poverty. It is simply unjust for Christians to seek to use the state in this manner.

It is understandable that Christians feel compassion when others less fortunate must endure harsh working conditions, find themselves in bankruptcy, or support a family on very low wages. The Christian ethic of private property, however, requires that we do not resort to acts of violent aggression in order to alleviate the suffering of the downtrodden. Just as we are not allowed to use the power of the state to force people to go to church, we are not allowed to force people to give to others. We are not allowed to use the power of the state to keep people from entering into voluntary contracts. We are called to be charitable to those who need it. We are called to be merciful to the poor and to see that widows and orphans are not oppressed. Justice demands, however, that we use our own resources to help those in need and work to convince others voluntarily to do so. Lobbying for government intervention in the economy to force others to do so violates the right to property and therefore violates the Christian ethic.

Some Christians might think that such a free society will result in unbridled capitalism which produces a society characterized by harsh, greedy, unrestrained capitalists who would be able to stop at nothing if it helped them increase their fortunes. This worry misconstrues the nature of voluntary exchange. In a free market, entrepreneurs cannot force anyone to buy their products. To receive revenue, firms must convince people to voluntarily purchase from them. The action of a profit-seeking entrepreneur is far from unregulated. In a free market, the entrepreneur may not be regulated by the state, but he will be regulated by his own conscience and especially by the preferences of the consumers. If people do not want to buy from an entrepreneur who has a reputation for wrong-doing they are free to refrain. The accounting firm Arthur Andersen, for example, went into bankruptcy at the mere allegation of improper accounting.

Such market constraints point to a way the church can properly act to regulate the economy. The Christian ethic of private property does not allow it to use the coercive state to achieve its ends for a better society. We are instead called to make disciples of all men and lead them in the paths of righteousness. As the Church does what it is called to do, people will have their preferences changed. They will begin to be more loving toward their neighbors. They will act with more charity. If Christians really want different market outcomes, they should be obedient in their calling and have faith that God can transform the hearts and minds of men and women. They should not try to achieve desirable ends by resorting to unethical means. Because of its violating the ethic of property, state intervention in the economy is an unacceptable means for Christians to achieve their socioeconomic goals.

Shawn Ritenour is Professor of Economics at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania

notes
¹Paul Kengor,. “Africa, AIDS, and the Good-Samaritanin-Chief,” Online at the Center for Vision and Values (2008), accessed at http://www.visandvals.org/ Africa_AIDS_and_the_Good_Samaritan_in_Chief. php.
²Murray Rothbard, “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies IX:1 (Winter 1989): 81–125.
³See Jim Ball, “From the Publisher’s Desk,” Creation Care (Fall 2002); Harlan Beckley, “Minding the Gap: Facing Up to Inequalities,” Christian Century, June 14(2003); Heather Boushey, “Working Family Values, Sojourners Magazine 36:9 (September/October 2007): 7; Danny Schechter, “Mortgage Blues,” Sojourners Magazine 36:11 (December 2007): 9; and John P. Tiemstra, W. Fred Graham, Gerge N. Monsma, Jr., Carl J. Sinke, Alan Storkey, Reforming Economics: Calvinist Studies on Methods and Institutions (Dyfed, Wales: Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 234-41.
⁴Murray Rothbard, Economic Thought before Adam Smith (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1995), 32–36; Alejandro A. Chafuen, Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003), 31-50.
⁵Leo XIII, “Rerum Novarum” (May 15, 1891), accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/library/ docs_le13rn.htm; Pius X, “Motu Proprio.” (1903), as quoted in V. Cathrein, “Property,” Catholic Encyclopedia, accessed at http://www.newadvent. org/cathen/12462a.htm; Thomas Woods, The Church and the Free Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005.
⁶John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, [1559] 1960), 408-11.
⁷Charles Hodge,. Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, [1871-72] 1999), 434.
⁸Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1878] 1985), 457-58.
⁹Francis Wayland, The Elements of Moral Science The Elements of Moral Science 32.
¹⁰Robert L. Dabney, The Practical Philosophy (Sprinkle Publications, [1897] 1984), 456-60. 
¹¹E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1988), 53-54; and Francis Wayland, The Elements of Moral Science, 231.
¹² E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty, 54. 
¹³See John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 151.
¹⁴Ibid., 152.
¹⁵Ibid., 155.
¹⁶John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 295, accessed at http://www.ccel.org/ ccel/calvin/calcom38.html.
¹⁷Francis Wayland, The Elements of Moral Science, 259.
¹⁸Alejandro A. Chafuen, Faith and Liberty, 41. 
¹⁹Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar’s Edition (Auburn, Alabama: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004), 875–1369; and Ludwig von Mises, Critique of Interventionism (New York: Arlington House Publishers, [1929] 1972.
²⁰E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty Prosperity and Poverty 87.
²¹Shawn Ritenour, Foundations of Economics: A Christian View (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 501–33.
²²See Gary North, “A Christian View of Labor Unions,” Biblical Economics Today 1:2 (April/May 1978): 1-2. 
²³Murray Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution” in Logic of Action Two: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School(Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1997), originally published in The Cato Journal.

For Further Study

Questions for Ritenour’s, “The Scriptural Case for Private 
Property and a Free Economy” 

1. What has been the Christian tradition over the centuries regarding private property?

2. What is the biblical evidence that Ritenour musters on behalf of the concept of private property? Is his case convincing?

3. What is the biblical view of the government’s role regarding private property?

4. What are the implications of the Christian private property ethic for our society and government today?

5. Why does Ritenour think that a free market system will not lead to “harsh, greedy, unrestrained capitalists who would be able to stop at nothing if it helped them increase their fortunes”? Do you agree?

6. What method for helping the poor does Ritenour think is biblically supported? What can Christians do to make this method work well?

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 10 No. 3 – What is Social Justice?)