Theologians and Economists: Decentralized Stewardship

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We have noted the peculiar cosmology of the Hebrews compared to the Ancient Near East (ANE) cultures. Another peculiarity is the construal of property rights in the Bible, particularly as it relates to land and labor.

The idea of private property rights wasn’t foreign to ANE culture. Records dating back to a least the late Third Century, B.C.E., spell out rudimentary property rights. Of course, what we think of as economic concerns were thoroughly embedded in kinship and politics. These societies were ruled by a tiny, but powerful, elite who claimed supreme sovereignty over the land and tended to extract excess wealth to fund the ruler’s projects. That made property rights precarious by modern standards. Various types of servitude and slavery deprived significant portions of the population of the basic right to the fruits of their own labor.

With the arrival of the Hebrews, we see concerns for property rights in the Pentateuch similar to those we see elsewhere in the ANE. The Ten Commandments list prohibitions against stealing and covetousness. The Old Testament simply takes property rights for granted. But we also see some interesting innovations.

While ANE societies had kings who were seen as representatives of the gods (if not gods themselves) and who were sovereign over the land, the law of the Hebrews provided for no such earthly representative. God was directly sovereign over the land. In Leviticus 25:23, regarding the jubilee, God says, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.” “Sales” of agricultural land were more accurately leases set to expire at the next jubilee when the land reverted to the original owner. The jubilee made each family a permanent tenant of the land. Similarly, all servitude expired at each jubilee as did all debts. Slavery among the Israelites was forbidden.

Along with this stewardship came a variety of responsibilities in Old Testament Law. It was presumed that there would always be those who were in need. Farmers were to leave the edges of the field to be gleaned. Special offerings administered by the Levites were to be taken to provide for the poor. There were other provisions that protected the poor as well as the general admonition to be generous toward them.

The jubilee made the Israelite families and individuals directly accountable to God. No divinely appointed ruler acted on God’s behalf. It was a radical decentralization of the control over property and an elevation of each Israelite family to the role of stewardship over God’s resources.

In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Harvard historian David Landes writes:

… The Hebrew hostility to autocracy, even their own, was formed in Egypt and the desert: was there ever a more stiff-necked people? Let me cite two examples, where the response to a popular initiative is directly linked to the sanctity of possessions. When the priest Korach leads a revolt against Moses in the desert, Moses defends himself against the charges of usurpation by saying, “I have not taken one ass from them, nor have I wronged one of them” (Numbers 16:15). Similarly, when the Israelites, now established in the Land, call for a king, the prophet Samuel grants their wish but warns them of the consequences: a king, he tells them, will not be like him. “Whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken?” (1 Samuel 12:3).

This tradition, which set the Israelites apart from any of the kingdoms around and surely did much to earn them the hostility of nearby rulers – who needs such troublemakers? – tended to get lost in Christianity when that community of faith became a church, especially once that Church became the official, privileged religion of an autocratic empire. One cannot well bite the hand that funds. Besides, the word was not getting out, for the Church early decided that only qualified people, certain clerics for example, should know the Bible. The Good Book, with its egalitarian laws and morals, its prophetic rebukes of power and exaltation of the humble, invited indiscipline among the faithful and misunderstanding with the secular authorities. Only after censorship and edulcoration could it be communicated to the laity. So that it was not until the appearance of such heretical sects as the Waldensians  (Waldo, c. 1175), the Lollards (Wiclif, c. 1376), Lutherans (1519 on), and Calvinists (mid-sixteenth), with their emphasis on personal religion and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, that this Judaic-Christian tradition entered explicitly into the European political consciousness, by way of reminding rulers that they held their wealth and power of God, and the on condition of good behavior, An inconvenient doctrine.

Yet Western Medieval Christianity did come to condemn the pretensions of earthly rulers – lesser monarchs, to be sure, than the emperors of Rome. (The Eastern Church never talked back to the Caesars of Byzantium.) It thereby implicitly gave protection to private property. As the Church’s own claims to power increased, it could not but emphasize the older Judaic principle that the real owner of everything was the Lord above, and the newer Christian principle that the pope was his vicar here below. Earthly rulers were not free to do as they pleased, and even the Church, God’s surrogate on earth, could not flout rights and take at will. The elaborate paperwork that accompanied the transfer of gifts of the faithful bore witness to this duty of good practice and proper procedure.

All of this made Europe very different from civilizations around. (34-35)

The idea of decentralized stewardship was clearly a central component of Judeo-Christian values. Families and individuals are to participate with God in their own provision through the resources entrusted to them and to participate with God in the provision of others who because of stage of life or disability are unable to provide for themselves.

Are there other implications you see from the Old Testament law and the jubilee?

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Comments

[Travis Greene]

Psalm 72
Endow the king with your justice, O God,
the royal son with your righteousness.
He will judge your people in righteousness,
your afflicted ones with justice.
The mountains will bring prosperity to the people,
the hills the fruit of righteousness.
He will defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
he will crush the oppressor.
He will endure as long as the sun,
as long as the moon, through all generations.
He will be like rain falling on a mown field,
like showers watering the earth.
In his days the righteous will flourish;
prosperity will abound till the moon is no more.
He will rule from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The desert tribes will bow before him
and his enemies will lick the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores
will bring tribute to him;
the kings of Sheba and Seba
will present him gifts.
All kings will bow down to him
and all nations will serve him.
For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy
and save the needy from death.

The holders of political power will be blessed when they look after the weakest and most vulnerable.

In regard to property rights, I am fond of the Catholic idea of the social mortgage. That is, property rights aren't absolute, but exist for the purpose of encouraging the common good. Just as copyright doesn't exist because of some inherent right to own an idea, but as a tactic for encouraging creativity and the arts.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Travis.

As we look at the issues of the poor, what is their biggest challenge? Unjust transactions and no protection for property rights!

The prophets rail against the use of unjust measures in weighing grain. Procedures are used to drive the poor into debt in an effort to convert them into serfs and deprive them of product of their land and labor. Bribes are used by the rich to prevent judgments against themselves in the courts or to oppress those with less resources. In general the poor cannot get justice at the city gate (the courts).

In short, the reason the poor are needy and afflicted is because the powerful will not honor the property rights, and other rights, of the poor. The issue here is not a centralized ruler who is not taking enough taxes to help the poor but rather the powerful unjustly taking the private property of the people and driving them into poverty.

I'm not entirely sold on the social mortgage idea. First, we need to keep in mind that the mortgage holder is not the state or any other human institution, but God. Who enforces the mortgage terms of God's mortgage? There is danger here of seeing property as the state's property that people are permitted to own. That takes us back to the mindset of the ANE cultures and to modern excesses like communism.

Second, we are back to whose definition of the common good to use? The libertarian? The Communist? The capitalist? The distributivist? Saying we should seek the common good is little bit like saying we should work for world peace ... a general sentiment that is useless if content is not specified. That is why I preferring saying we need to work for the elements of shalom I articulated in an earlier post ... and even that is at the 40,000 foot level.

[Travis Greene]

"In short, the reason the poor are needy and afflicted is because the powerful will not honor the property rights, and other rights, of the poor. The issue here is not a centralized ruler who is not taking enough taxes to help the poor but rather the powerful unjustly taking the private property of the people and driving them into poverty."

No, but a centralized ruler is seen as a buttress against the excesses of the economically powerful, yes?

[Michael W. Kruse]

Absolutely! While it is jumping the gun at bit, I think it is important to ask in what ways the economically powerful may deny others their property rights, particularly with the emergence of corporations.

I think one of the great blunders with economic development in Latin America (and elsewhere) in the 20th Century was the attempt to radically impose market economies on cultures where there were not already strong legal frameworks where the poor could count on just enforcement of contracts, enforcement of property rights, freedom to move from job to job, and having reasonable certainty that they would not be stripped of their wealth by authorities. The wealth from trade flowed into the coffers of a tiny elite and did little for the poor. I think we are still learning the lessons of how critical cultural values we take for granted (trusting strangers, respect for property, etc.) are in economic prosperity.