Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 2. Problems of Social Decision
Chapter 8: The Ethics of Economic Life
2. The Christian view of property
whole man; hence they must be a Christian concern. It gradually became — or is becoming — recognized that personal integrity and Christian giving to those in need will not meet the full requirement of the Christian ethic. We have today problems more complex than those of any previous age, but we have also a fuller sense of Christian
obligation in and to a "responsible society."
proprietorship of a portion of economic goods? Christians have not always agreed as to the answer. The main trend of thought, however, both in the Bible and in the history of the Church, reinforces the conviction that some measure of individual ownership is right and Christian. The very existence of the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" presupposes the right of ownership, and one of the offenses against which the prophets had most vigorously to protest was its infringement. While there was for a time in Jerusalem after Pentecost a communal sharing of goods (Acts 2:44-45; 5:1-5), there is no evidence that this became a general arrangement. It was apparently a product of Christian fellowship rather than a social policy. Christian monastic orders with surrender of personal possessions have existed since the sixth century, and outside of Christianity long before that, but there has been no general conviction on the part of Christians that society as a whole should be thus organized. Asceticism and voluntary poverty, where practiced, have been considered as a divine vocation rather than as a mandatory social practice.
Furthermore, quite apart from the biblical and traditional grounds, there are other reasons why private ownership is right and Christian. The most basic of these is that the fullest development of personality requires it. Economic insecurity, we noted, is very closely linked with personal insecurity. The child may find his security in his parents without personal ownership, though even a small child ought to have some things that he can call his own. No adult, unless the Church or some other institution has assumed for him a protective status, can feel secure without some ownership.3 Contemporary Communism has attempted to make the State assume this function, but with very
doubtful results, and has been led by experience to reinstate much more private ownership than was envisaged at the beginning of the Soviet regime. In our society the "lift" one gets from owning something — whether one’s clothing or furniture, a car or a home — is more than an outcropping of acquisitiveness or the prestige of possession; it is a response to a deeply embedded craving for security and a measure of personal independence.
A second factor is one about which the Bible is silent but which cannot be disregarded in the modern world. This is the greater degree of
economic efficiency and the higher standard of living that has ensued where the right of private ownership has been recognized. This is not to say that "enlightened self-interest" or a policy of unrestrained economic individualism will make a society either just or as a whole prosperous.
The contrary is evident. Nevertheless, it is hardly disputable that not only in the production of goods but in the development of human skills and in the increased availability of both goods and skills for the service of human need, the right to possess has played no minor role. Individual ownership has produced a more advanced as well as more opulent
society than has been possible under feudalism or any form of communal ownership in ancient or modern times.
A third and closely related factor is the relation of property to work.
Personal ownership is necessary for economic motivation. There are some kinds of work one delights to do regardless of pay, as Bliss Perry elaborated in his book with the intriguing title And Gladly Teach.
Christian leaders do not ordinarily choose their vocations chiefly from considerations of salary, or they would choose occupations better paid.
Nevertheless, society as a whole with all of its hard, monotonous, and disagreeable jobs could not run without private profit and private
ownership. It is fatuous to say that throughout all society there ought to be glad, voluntary co-operation; the fact is that there is not! With the human impulse what it is, it is unlikely that it will be possible to dispense entirely with personal profit as the reward of labor.
Private ownership and private profit are so deeply embedded in both our Christian and our democratic heritage that few would wish to see them eradicated if this were possible. But this is not to say that all the results are either beneficial or Christian. It is essential that the Christian
conscience remain sensitive to perversions and continue to challenge evils which thrive all too frequently within this view of property.
The most common evil is the encouragement of acquisitiveness, and with it all the perils of self-aggrandizement, self-righteousness, and a false trust in material possessions against which Jesus spoke so
vigorously. It is a half-truth, which when cited to justify unrestrained individualism becomes an untruth, to say that the sin does not lie in the system but in the people. Only persons can sin, but in the complex structures of present-day economic life it is impossible to draw a clear line between willful acquisitiveness and fair profit, or between
individual and group sinning. Private ownership we must have, but not the amount and range of possession-centeredness that dominates our current society.
An accompanying evil is the vast disparities of wealth and poverty that have developed within every country, and in particularly acute form
between opulent America and the hungry Orient. It is this which gives Communism its primary appeal, and no informed person needs to be reminded that this disparity is one of the major sources of world
tension. Such vast inequalities of possession have always existed, but as the instruments of potential destruction become more deadly and the underprivileged become more conscious of the possibilities of change, the ferment of revolution and unrest becomes inevitable. Whether this will lead to global destruction in the clash of competing systems or to a greater measure of freedom and justice through the lifting of the living standards of the underprivileged peoples of the earth, no one can predict.
How much property ought a person, or a group, to possess? There is no simple answer. Competition alone cannot ensure justice, for competition encourages not only effort and skill but shrewd manipulation and the scramble for power. Equality is not the answer, for whether income and ownership are measured by earning or by need, inequalities must
inevitably be reckoned with. An equal wage for all would not be an equitable one, for great differences exist both in the quality of services rendered and in family obligations, cost of training, and many other factors.
In judging what one ought to receive or possess, two simple rules may suggest the answer as well as anything more complex: (1) every person ought to have enough income to meet his basic physical and cultural needs without anxiety and with some surplus for saving and for giving;
(2) no person ought to have so much that possession breeds indifference to the needs of others or becomes a peril to the soul. Within these limits a Christian society will find some latitude to be both inevitable and desirable. If this seems somewhat lacking in equalitarian justice, a higher spiritual justice is established by the principle of responsibility announced in the words, "Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required" (Luke 12:48).
A third major evil is the linkage of power with possession of economic goods. This is not wholly evil, for power may be constructively
exercised. There are rich men who manage a business benevolently without its being a benevolent despotism, and who use their money constructively for great philanthropies. These facts ought to be neither overplayed nor overlooked. Nevertheless, the temptation to an
irresponsible and selfish use of power is always near at hand, and only a few at any economic level successfully resist it.
One of the major causes of social conservatism is the fact that churches, schools, and other social institutions are so largely influenced by
persons whose advantage it is to preserve the status quo and who are prone to regard any departure from it as an affront to Christian morality.
Not all social change is good. Yet under the guise of preserving freedom (and in the present scene, of resisting Communism) unjust conditions are perpetuated, and any attempt at social criticism is viewed as subversion. When the attitude is joined, as it frequently is, with a deep Christian piety in personal matters, the power becomes the more impregnable. Since human motives usually "come mixed," only God is wise enough to judge how much of this resistance to social change is due to self-interest, how much to the pull of tradition, and how much to sincere Christian conviction.
Yet it is not this exercise of power by individuals that is the most serious aspect of current society. Widespread though it is, where it can be isolated, challenged, and changed, there is the possibility of a
creative use of economic power. It is corporate social sin, by great groups of persons against great groups of persons, that causes the most serious evil consequences and is hardest to reckon with. Persons are involved, as both sinners and victims, or it would not be sin.
Unemployment, for example, is more than an inevitable, tragic fate; it is caused by circumstances for which human beings are morally
responsible. When a worldwide depression occurs, as in the early 1930’s, many millions of persons are made to suffer acutely, and economists can give some reasons for its occurrence. But this is not to say that guilt can be precisely allocated. In less widespread but deeply disrupting conflicts, as in a clash between a giant corporation and a giant labor union, the fault is seldom all on one side; and while some persons are more responsible than others, it is seldom possible with justice to pin the responsibility wholly upon particular individuals.
This illustrates what was said in Chapter 6 — that there is social evil and there is social sin, and the two must be neither identified nor too sharply separated. The Christian view of property is that to the degree that a person is even indirectly responsible for a misuse of it which is harmful to others, his conscience must remain sensitive and he must do all in his power to turn it to just and creative ends. Not everything is within his power, but some things are. It is in those areas where he can act, as these are prayerfully and reasonably discerned, that his Christian duty lies.