What is the Real Meaning of
E
aster
?


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13: Property/Communism

Focus text:

Micah 4:4

Vine and under his  fig tree,

The Bible holds out the ideal of property free from princes and pirates.

"Dwell safely" -- "none to make them afraid"

The Bible says "Thou shalt not steal" stuff that pertains to another. This means someone possesses something and should not be dispossessed. The world "Property" comes from the Latin proprietas, from proprius ‘one's own, particular.’ Related to the word "proper." Someone representing himself in court comes before the court "In Pro Per" or In Propria Persona. Your person is your basic property. If you turn a wilderness into a garden, the garden is your property. It was wrong for Jezebel and Ahab to steal Naboth's vine and fig tree. Naboth said to Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my patriarchs to you!” (1 Kings 21:3)

But the Bible is also communitarian (or some English word that substitutes for κοινωνία, koinōnía).

If you turn wilderness into a garden, you "own" the garden.
But if a garden is held communally, the pirate is not permitted to say that it is not anyone's property because it is not held as an individual under Lockean homesteading theory.

Some opponents of archism are also opponents of private property. The French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon famously said, "Property is theft." But what he meant was what Isaiah likely intended: "Woe to you who add more houses to your houses and more fields to your fields. Finally there is no room left for other people. Then you are left alone in the land" (Isaiah 5:8). Some people hire archists to prevent farmers from living off the land. Accumulation without use and productivity is not the ideal. But one individual accumulating more property than others and producing more than others and becoming richer than others need not be discouraged. See Abraham, Genesis 13:2. God's creation consists of unlimited wealth.

How some Christians practice "communism": Bruderhof – Community of Goods