Nov 10
29
A biblical view of private property
Excerpt from “A Biblical View of Private Property”…
Since the family is the primary institution whereby the Dominion Covenant is to be extended, laws were given to protect the property of families. The Jubilee laws of Leviticus 25 insured a family that it would always have land so that dominion could be exercised. Property could not be taxed. Even the father could not dispossess his family from the land because of carelessness, poor stewardship, or debt. Fathers were instructed to lay up an inheritance for their children so that the work of dominion under God could continue.
When a man is secure in the possession of his property, he has an area of liberty and dominion that is beyond the reach of other men. If no man or no State can reach in to tax and confiscate property, man can enjoy true liberty and great security, whether he’s prosperous or poor. Every attack on private property is, therefore, an attack on man’s liberty. Man’s freedom and security in the possession of his property is not only basic to man’s independence, but it is also basic to his power. A man has power if he can act independently of other men and the state, if he can make his stand in the confidence of liberty. Every attack on private property therefore is also an attack on the powers of free men as well as their liberty. ((R. J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty, 83.))
Is it any wonder, therefore, that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared in their 1848 Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party, that the right to hold individual private property was a crime against the State? Their first “commandment” called for the “abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.” Their third “commandment” abolished “all right of inheritance.”[1] Both of these edicts sought to overrule the biblical order where laws against theft operate and inheritance laws are the norm. Marx understood that “property is power.”