How do property rights relate to human rights? I thought humans weren’t property.
Question 15 in Faith Seeking Freedom: Updated & Expanded
This question is from Faith Seeking Freedom: Updated & Expanded, launching June 2026 in paperback, PDF, and Kindle. Subscribe to this Substack so you don’t miss updates, previews, and the launch announcement.
It may sound odd that we would speak about human rights in terms of property rights. Isn’t the argument against slavery, for example, that human beings are not property? We completely agree that slavery—owning another human—is both a sin and a rights violation. However, the reason why this is the case is because each individual already owns themself, and therefore no one else has a legitimate claim to own them. We call this self-ownership. You are your own property.
We then come to own things outside of ourselves through the just acquisition of ownership of scarce resources. This is an extension of our self-ownership. Humans have been called by God to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28; 9:1; 9:7; 35:11; Jer 23:3). Though the immediate sense of these verses are most obviously about human procreation, we also fulfill this call through our own creative work. Biblical theologian, Dr. Meredith G. Kline in Kingdom Prologue notes,
“The procreation mandate was accompanied by the command to work. [Humankind] must labor to secure from [their] environment its life supporting stores for [the] multiplying race... [Humans were] to subdue the earth and rule its creatures. Human labor was to be an exercise of [humanity’s] dominion and a march of royal conquest.... Appropriation of earth’s riches for the cultivation of [humankind] was to be achieved through [humans’] cultivation of the earth.”
We acquire things found in nature and mix them with our labor to create new things. This very concept, articulated by libertarian philosophers and Austrian economists, is illustrated for us in Deuteronomy 8:10–18. This passage references the wealth God gave his people as land, food, homes they build, and herds and flocks. It references part of that wealth is the multiplying of these things, the fact that human action has played a role in the production of these things, and that God is responsible for giving us the ability to produce it all. Add to this the prohibition in the 10 Commandments not to steal and murder, and we can see that we have a God-given right to our property, including that of ourselves.
These new things are our property by virtue of our own self-ownership. And as Matthew 20:15 and Acts 5:4 point out, it is lawful for us to do what we want with our own property, including selling and buying. So the foundations of human rights are very clearly indicated by what God gives us: our life, our ability to produce, the products of our labor, and the multiplicity of those things. We are stewards of these things in our relation to God, but owners of these things in relation to others.
So no one can claim to own you, nor lawfully sell you. Who owns you? Well, you do! And no one may make claims against the products of your labor; those are rightfully given to you by God because you produced them. The ultimate human right and the ultimate property right are one in the same: self-ownership.