The Scriptures plainly teach the concept of private property rights or private ownership. The commandments against theft and covetousness (Exo. 20:15,17) teach explicitly that there are possessions that belong rightfully to other private citizens which we may not take, nor even desire, because they belong to someone else. The owner of at least some possessions has the right to exclude others from the use of his property, so long as he adheres to Biblical law with respect to the use of his property. It is this concept of having the final earthly word—to buy or sell, to keep or destroy — which delineates where ownership resides. If a State or community official can tell the individual, in the final analysis, what is to be done with something in the individual's possession, then temporal ownership resides in that official, not the possessor of the goods.
- Ian Hodge, Baptized Inflation: A Critique of “Christian” Keynesianism 66 (1986), at www.garynorth/freebooks.com: HTML, DjVu.
