“…and there was not a man to till the ground.” – Genesis 2:5
God created the heavens and the earth, but there was no man to “till the ground”. God created man, among other reasons, to labor in His garden and care for it. Not only to care for it, but to “be fruitful, multiply, replenish and subdue”.
Property, in a narrow and specific view, the earth. Labor, work and effort are the stuff God commanded to use in order to accomplish fruitfulness, multiplication, replenishment and dominion. Ingenuity, which is an implicit human quality, is necessary mental capacity to accomplish the task . These are the basic factors underlying economics.
Man acts and uses mental capabilities because he is made in the image of God, who designed the creation and acted to bring it to pass. Man acts because God has commanded him to do so. There is a specific objective in man’s action because God commanded a specific objective. The specific objective, “be fruitful, multiple, replenish, subdue”.
The results from obedience is fruitfulness – a social order based upon the proper use of property, labor and ingenuity. A multiplication of humanity and the products of human action. The discovery of new processes that bring about a renewal and or a conservation of resources. The glory of God by man’s righteous dominion.
Sin, disobedience to God, has perverted man’s actions, but it has not abrogated the underlying economics of property, labor and ingenuity. The economics is immutable. Man chooses factors contrary to property, labor and ingenuity to achieve a definite end, but always to his own peril.
Force, coercion, violence pervert social order. Property, labor and ingenuity are subject to the specific sinful human actions that bring about the opposite of God’s intended blessing. However, the end achieved is always a perversion and results in disobedience as seen in the fracturing of the social order.
