Liberating Planet Earth

118 Liberating Phet Eatih
For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand
hills. I know all the birds of the mountains: and the wild
beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you:
for the world is Mine, and all its fullness (Psalm 50:10-12).
God’s sovereignty is absolute. The Biblical concept of property
rests on this definition of God’s authority over the creation. The
Bible provides us with data concerning God’s delegation of responsibility
to men as individuals and as members of collective associations,
but all human sovereignty, including property rights,
must be understood as limited, akkgated, and covenantal in nature.
Christ’s parable of the talents presents the sovereignty of God
in terms of an analogy of a loan from a lord to his servants. The
servants have an obligation to increase the value of capital entrusted
to them. They are directly responsible to their lord, who is
the real owner of the capital. Ownersh@ is therefore stiwardsh@
Men’s rights of ownership are delegated, covenantal rights. God’s
‘loan” must be repaid with capital gains, or at the very least, with
interest (Matthew 25:27).
Each person is fully responsible before God for the lawful and
profitable administration of God’s capital, which includes both
spiritual capital and economic capital (Luke 12:48). This is one of
Christ’s “pocketbook parables,” and while it was designed to illustrate
God’s absolute sovereignty over the afYairs of men, it nevertheless
conveys a secondary meaning, namely, the legitimate
rights of private ownership.
God distributed to Adam and Eve the resources of the world.
They were made covenantally responsible for the care and expansion
of this capital base when God established His dominion covenant
with them. This same covenant was reestablished with Noah
and his family (Genesis 9:1-7). In the originally sinless condition of
Adam and Eve, this initial distribution of the earth’s resources could
be made by God in terms of an orz~nal hmnonz of nuzd intemts.
This harmony included hierarchy, for Eve was functionally
subordinate to Adam (though not ethically inferior). The Goddesigned
harmony of interests was never an equalitarian relationship.
It is not equalitarian in the post-Fall world. The church,