Private Property or Common Property: What does the Bible Say?

From an economic perspective, the question of who owns the tools of production--land and capital (factories, machinery and other productive resources) is a very important one. In a totally free market system, these are owned exclusively by the private sector (individuals and companies); in the other extreme--communism-- they are owned by society in common --as represented by government. Private ownership and free enterprise are intrinsically linked. For individuals to operate in a market economy, they need to be able to possess their own property. Of course, in practice, the choice is not a clear one between private and common property. The issue is, how much property should government own?—part and parcel of the free enterprise versus socialism debate.

The issue--private versus public (government-owned) property--has been controversial among Christians as well. Some, for example, have claimed a strong biblical mandate for private property, for instance, that "private property is a Divine providence"–everyone must, therefore, own property. On the other hand, others use the reference in the story of Annanias and Saphira in Acts 4:32 that "no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own but they shared everything they had" as an indication that the Bible requires us to "hold all property in common" and, therefore, requires government to own all.

God is Owner:-Neither position is, however, biblically supportable. Rather, the basic thrust of Biblical teaching about property is the stewardship principle--the mandate that the "earth is the Lord's and everything in it (Ps 24:1)." God is the "absolute Owner" of everything so that the rights of the human owner are, in principle, of a limited character. That thrust is accepted by many Christian economic authors. Chewning , for instance, stresses that God is the Owner (Gen 25:23; Ps 24:1) and man holds all property as His steward with "appropriate obligations and granted rights."[i]

 

The Dutch theologian J.Douma has provided an extensive analysis of biblical proofs and historic Christian views concerning ownership. He concluded that man is steward under God, who remains absolute Owner. Both Old and New Testament indicate that private ownership is permitted. There is no evidence, however, that we all must have private property: "Differences in ownership are nowhere condemned; communal ownership, centrally controlled, is nowhere commanded."[ii] But, the Bible does make clear that personal money and property should be used for the benefit of others. 

Private Ownership Assumed-Not Mandated:-That the Bible accepts or assumes private ownership, as such, is also supported--among others, by Grudem, and Griffiths[iii]  The Eighth Commandment "You shall not steal" is generally recognized as biblical protection of such private ownership. Removing the landmarks that establish property boundaries was expressly forbidden (Deut 19:14, 27:17). The fact that God gave Israel the promised land and allotted to each family group according to size can certainly be seen as God’s material blessing on his people[iv] and an indication that private property is understood to be the normal pattern. From the underlying theme from the Old Testament land distribution, we can also derive the need to search for “effective structures...that will enable every family to have the basic capital needed to earn a living.”[v] It would go too far, however, to take this Old Testament distribution to Israel as a mandatory pattern for us at this time.[vi]

The contrary contention that the Bible rejects all private property has been adequately demolished by these and many other authors.[vii] Neither private or public ownership is specifically scripturally mandated or rejected. As Chewning concludes, 

Scripture must...not be forced to answer questions that are culturally foreign to it...One cannot automatically extrapolate from the property arrangements of an agrarian and tribal culture the specifics that should be applied to a complex modern arrangement.[viii]

Those who argue for a biblical mandate for private property also point to the division of the land in Israel and the protection of these inheritances through the Jubilee laws. That is, it is argued that since God ordained that the Israelites must all have their own land, we also must all have our own land or private property. As Douma has shown, however, "these laws, intended as they had been for the old covenant people in the land of Canaan" have "no validity as integral legislation for Christians in other lands."[ix] To take these Old Testament laws as meaning that God requires us to have private property is, therefore, unwarranted.

Proponents of absolute private property rights also point to Acts 4 and 5 where Peter tells Ananias, "didn't it belong to you before it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal?" However, socialists use the same passage by pointing to 4:32: "no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own but they shared everything they had." While they are wrong to interpret this to mean that be Bible requires us to "hold all property in common," it would be equally wrong to use this narrative to say that the Bible requires individual property holdings. In sum, the exaggerated claim that private property is required or a matter of divine providence should be rejected.

The Theft Fallacy:-Yet various Christians do, in fact, claim that the Bible provides much more definite guidance than the relatively limited conclusions presented above. Of particular concern is the view of Beisner and others[x] that the Eighth Commandment's prohibition against theft mandates unlimited private property rights which can also not be encroached upon–even by the government-- for instance, through taxation to assist the poor. Now, in opposition to Beisner's claim that if the government were excluded from this commandment, the Bible would have said so, McKinney argues that "If individual property rights were absolute, the Eighth Commandment would [explicitly] forbid the state's taking of income or property away from an individual for the common good."[xi] While that claim is also speculative, it does indicate the weakness of Beisner's claim. McKinney does point to God's ownership of everything and the distribution of the third-year tithe to the "Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow" and concludes:

Given God's concern for the poor, is it inconceivable that society, through the state, could legitimately redistribute some of this property to alleviate the plight of the poor? I think not.

The stewardship principle is also used by Hay to argue against absolute property rights. He observes that,

these rights are not those of Roman law, which imply 'unconditional and exclusive use of the property by the individual'. They are rights which impose duties and obligations in the sense of stewardship.[xii]

Given those obligations, is it not legitimate that the government as God's servant should place limits on an individual's use of private property? It would certainly seem that the Bible contains no prohibition against such limitation.

Conclusion:-In any case, we can conclude that the Bible teaches directly only that:

1. All property belongs to God; we hold it as stewards on His behalf; we must use it to His glory, in His service.

2. The Bible does not require or forbid either private or public ownership of property.

3. Private ownership, where it exists, must be protected.

Tragedy of the Commons: I do believe, however, that it does appear possible to derive a biblically inspired preference for private ownership which I hope to deal with in the future. I conclude this posting with a note on, what economists refer to as the “tragedy of the commons” as an illustration that holding property “in common” is unstewardly. The term derives from the old English custom of holding some grazing land in common—everyone could graze his cattle there. With everyone entitled to use the grass, the incentive for all to let their cows or sheep graze there as soon and as long as possible. "If my cows don’t get it now, someone else’s will!" Instead, of orderly rotating the use of the field in order to allow the grass to regrow, all users are motivated to let it be “grazed  to death”. Another example of this tragedy is the demise of the American buffalo. Since no one owned the herds, all hunters took as many as they could get without worrying about the sustainability of the herds. 

Ownership in common means, in reality, that no one manages the property on a stewardly basis. Private ownership encourages careful management!

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[i] Richard C. Chewning, ed., Biblical Principles & Economics: The Foundations, Christians in the Marketplace Series, Vol. 2, Navpress, Colorado Springs, 1989, p.117. Similar points of departure are found in Griffiths Morality and the Market-Place, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1989 (Originally 1982), p.82 Donald A. Hay, Economics Today: A Christian Critique, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1990, p.151and many others. See my book p. 183ff.

[ii]  J. Douma, Vrede in de Maatschappij [Peace in Society], Gereformeerd Maatschappelijk Verbond, Zwolle, 1985, Ch. 4. See also his The Ten Commandments: Manual for the Christian Life, P &R Publishing, Phillipsburg, N.J., 1996 (translation Nelson D. Kloosterman), pp.297ff.

[iii] Griffiths, The Creation of Wealth, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1984, p.56 and 1989, op. cit., P.92.

[iv] Blomberg, op. cit., p.40.

[v] Sider, 2005, p.74

[vi] Chewning, Vol. 2, p.130

[vii] See Brown in Chewning, Vol. 2, Ch.6, E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity, Crossway, Westchester, 1988, Ch.5,  John R. Schneider, The Good of Affluence: seeking God in a Culture of Wealth, Eerdmans, 2002, p.195ff. and Blomberg, op. cit.,p.163ff

[viii] Vol.2, p.61.

[ix] J. Douma, Christian Morals and Ethics, translation by John P. Elliott and Andrew Pol, Premier, Winnipeg, 1980, p.28. Of course, they still have meaning for us. He says we have to  seek out the substance, the essence of these laws, e.g., "God wanted to impress upon His people that He not only had an eye for man and his social relations but also for land and animals". It is worth noting that the jubilee laws applied only to agricultural lands not to town houses and other property. It would be, therefore, be a further unwarranted extension to apply them to all private property as we now know it.

[x] See McKinney in Chewning, Vol.2, Ch. 11. Pointing to Beisner as a "forceful statement of this view," he lists other writers espousing this view as Gary North, An Introduction to Christian Economics, Nutley, N.J., Craig Press 1973; David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, Tyler, Tex., Institute for Christian Economics, 1981; Ronald H. Nash, Social Justice and the Christian Church, (Milford, Mich, Mott, 1983, Poverty and Wealth, Westchester, Ill, Crossway, 1986. See also Harold Lindsell, Free Enterprise- A Judeo-Christian Defense, Tyndale, 1982 and John Jefferson Davis, Your Wealth in God's World, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing House, 1984, p.80.

[xi] In Chewning, Vol. 2, p.235

[xii] Op. cit., p.78, where he responds to Griffiths who also uses the prohibition against theft to justify property rights