Rent as God's Provisioning for All

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Chapter 2: First Principles: "The Earth is The Lord's"

§ 4. If, therefore, God, the sole Landowner, has given the land to "the children of men" — i.e. to the whole human race in its widest extension through time and space — it follows that no single generation, still less any single individual, has absolute ownership in land. It is not the right of property in land, but the right to use land — limited by the equal right of every one else, now and for ever, to use land — that God has given to man. No man can claim land as "his very own," "to do as he likes with," e.g. to sell. "The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me," saith the Lord. No man could sell land "for ever" for any man's interest in it was only a life-interest; a temporary usufruct, and not a permanent, absolute ownership. It is only the interest of the race that is perpetual. "The days of the life of man may be numbered; but the days of Israel are innumerable." For God has given the land — i.e., the use of it — not to any particular class or generation of men, but to all generations of mankind.

§ 5. Lastly, "the profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field."

If these be, as I believe they are, the leading principles of the ancient teaching of "Moses and the Prophets" on the Land Question, the most surprising thing about them is, perhaps, their modernity. The mode of their expression is of course, always colored by the Theocratic perceptions of the Hebrew Commonwealth. But when our own great legal and constitutional authorities tell us

• that "all landlords are merely tenants in the eyes of the law;"
• that "the idea of absolute ownership … is quite unknown to the English law; no man is in law the absolute owner of lands, he can only hold an estate in them";
• that "the king, therefore, hath only absolutum et directum dominium. … A subject hath only the usufruct, not the absolute property of the soil";

they are only expressing in different language the same ideas as are embodied in the passages of Scripture above quoted. The theory of the old English law, which vested the ownership of the land in the Crown, as the visible embodiment of the claim of the whole Nation, generation after generation, to "the land which the Lord their God hath given them," resulted in exactly the same negation of private and individual ownership of land as followed upon the Hebrew formula, "The earth is the Lord's; the earth hath He given to the children of men." For, as the last of the Theocratic Republicans told the Israelites, "The Lord your God was your King." The highest interest in land which a Hebrew could hold was a tenancy in capite from the Lord Jehovah, the unseen King of Israel. There was no rent to pay, unless the small offering of firstfruits — a basket of "the first of the first-fruits of all the fruit of the earth"— be regarded as a sort of quit-rent, — a formal acknowledgement of Jehovah's absolutum et directum dominium. The Deuteronomic edition of the Law does, in fact, prescribe a ritual for the offering of the first-fruits, in which this view is clearly and beautifully implied.

So when Henry George, in drafting the first manifesto of the first National Society for the propagation of his teachings, wrote that "no number of individuals can justly grant away the equal rights of other individuals to land, and no generation can grant away the rights of future generations," he was merely re-echoing, as he would have been the first to admit, some of the most primitive doctrines on the Land Question. For, in the youth of the world, when the relation of man to the earth on which he lived was still simple and natural, was easier than it is now for men to see the truth about the Land Question steadily, and to see it whole.

Again, when the modern Land Reformer draws from his general principles the practical deduction that the value of land should meet the cost of the public expenses, he is only restating, in terms of modern conditions, the truth that "the profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field." ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

10. The Promised Land and the Kingdom of God

The Promised Land, like Eden, is a place of unhindered scope in which to glorify God and manifest his will. But it is not the Kingdom of God. It represents liberation from external bondage — from oppression and restricted access to material opportunity. It is the temporal matrix within which the Kingdom may find full expression. But it is not itself the Kingdom. Although it is a heresy that locates this Kingdom exclusively in the afterlife or an ethereal paradise, Jesus declared it to be "not of this world" (John 18:36) but "within" (Luke 17:21). It is no reproach to Henry George that he lost sight of this distinction between the Promised Land and the Kingdom of God, enraptured by his vision of a just society:

With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age.... It is the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with walls of jasper and gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

By equalizing opportunity, political and economic liberation tend to draw both poor and rich into the middle class. As an expression of social justice, this constitutes a genuine advance, ethical as well as material. But it is no easy guarantee of spiritual gain. Middle-class traits include virtues such as industry, thrift, restraint, commercial and professional rectitude, but, on the other hand, low prudentialism, self-satisfaction, and an inclination to regard material well-being as a sign of righteousness. Hence, even in the Promised Land, what Paulo Freire calls "conscientization" (roughly, consciousness-raising through social commitment), emphasized and refined by liberation theology, must continue although in a different vein. The Kingdom of God will flourish only when outward liberation gives rise to inward liberation, a victory over the limitations of the bourgeois ethos.

"The Earth Is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1). This statement tells us something about God. He is attached to the land and loves it. He is not a spiritual abstraction oblivious to the Wasteland in which we live. God is the maker of the world of eating and sleeping, working and begetting. It also tells us something of our place in this world. With God as the true owner of the earth, every person has a right to the produce which equitable usufruct yields to his or her efforts.

To recognize that "the earth is the Lord's" is to see that the same God who established communities has also in his providence ordained for them, through the land itself, a just source of revenue. Yet, in the Wasteland in which we live, this revenue goes mainly into the pockets of monopolists, while communities meet their needs by extorting individuals the fruits of their honest toil. If ever there were any doubt that structural sin exists, our present system of taxation is the proof. Everywhere we see governments penalizing individuals for their industry and creativity, while the socially produced value of land is reaped by speculators in exact proportion to the land which they withhold. The greater the Wasteland, the greater the reward. Does this comport with any divine plan, or notion of justice and human rights? Or does it not, rather, perpetuate the Wasteland and prevent the realization of the Promised Land?

This not meant to suggest that land monopolists and speculators have a corner on acquisitiveness or the "profit motive," which is a well-nigh universal fact of human nature. As a group, they are no more sinful than are people at large, except to the degree that they knowingly obstruct reforms aimed at removing the basis of exploitation. Many abide by the dictum: "If one has to live under a corrupt system, it is better to be a beneficiary than a victim of it."

But they do not have to live under a corrupt system; no one does. The profit motive can be channeled in ways that are socially desirable as well as in ways that are socially destructive. Let us give testimony to our faith that the earth is the Lord's by building a social order in which there are no victims. ... Read the whole synopsis