As I await the launch of my book on dispensationalist Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992),[1] I’m reflecting on materials on oikonomia, the Greek behind “dispensation” (e.g., Ephesians 3:2), from the late Reformed historian and economist Gary North (1942–2022). I’m alive to the danger of equivocation, in this case of reading theological dispensationalism into North’s understanding of “economics.” Still, the theological system and the modern field of inquiry must be related even as they’re distinguished. A dispensationalist myself,[2] I cite the anti-dispensationalist North “against interest,” if you will. Please charitably consider what follows in this long post not a finished treatise, but rather a collection of unfinished notes that will feed into such work. Criticism is welcome!
What I’m finding, without looking for it, is the metaphysical significance of God’s sovereignty as the ground of ownership. The sovereign God of Scripture is the first and ultimate moral owner (not merely physical possessor) of all things, the One Who delegates stewardship responsibility to His created image-bearers. Non-Christian free market economists have grounded deductive systems, but fail to establish that anyone owns anything morally. At best, these utilitarians demonstrate that failure to respect property rights leads to consequences that they (or the audience for whom they presume to write) find undesirable. Natural law theorists try to avoid the subjectivism of the utilitarians, but unless they start with the sovereign God of Scripture, they’re no better off than their utilitarian rivals. The matter in a nutshell: God prohibits stealing, which implies that its victims owned the things stolen.
The economic (oikonomic?) dimension of Christian Individualism
North discusses the etymology of oikonomia explicitly, but not, as far as I know, in his multivolume Economic Commentary on the Bible.[3] See, however, his Unconditional Surrender:
The Bible says that God owns the entire creation, including all the souls in the universe. He proposes and disposes. None can resist His will. But man, who was made in the image of God and who still has a twisted image of God at his very being, has been appointed to be God’s steward.