Torch, Summer 1985

., ~· : ' I I » ', • I . ' President's Perspective by Dr. Paul Dixon F rancis Schaeffer said that the marks of a Christian are holiness and love. How very true. I would suspect that another distinguishing mark is ownership. The genuine follower of Jesus Christ has a deep sense that he is not his own. God owns us and we are His servants, His stewards. This means that our property, possessions, talents, careers, families - our very lives– belong to God. Harvey Reeves Calkins had some excellent thoughts on this basic concept. There was but one nation whose concep– tion of property, of 'owning' things , was based on the doctrine of a personal God, and that nation was Israel. Of all the other nations of which we have knowledge - the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabians, the Romans - their understanding, thought of property, and their laws relating to property were based on the conception of impersonality in the divine being . For paganism is just that: think of deity in terms of impersonality. Where did we receive our accepted stan– dards of property relationship? From the common law? Certainly. But our 'common law' - where does it come from? From the common law of England. And does this not come from the jurisprudence of the Roman Empire? Yes , and where does that come from? From the Stoic philosophy of the Roman lawyer. When Cicero stood up in a Roman court and pleaded for 'the law', he never dreamed of 'the law of the Lord.' The Roman philosophy of life, crystallized in Roman law and through the law standard– ized in Christian civilization, was not builded on 'the law of the Lord'; it was based on the law of nature . Do you not recognize at once where we are? The average man - and that takes in all of us - unless he has met the issues squarely and jarred himself loose from inherited tradition - remains caught in a pagan con– ception ofproperty. His Christian instinct is entangled with the honest belief that he 'owns' what has been given only to possess. There is no intelligent recognition of stewardship . How can there be? His whole history, and the entire combination of life forces that have made him what he is, compel him to believe - what he sincerely does believe - that he is the owner of his property. When it comes to our possessions, are we thinking like pagans or like Christians? Surely the arguments for God 's ownership are weighty. He owns us because He created us. David declared in Psalm 24:1: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." Again in Psalm 100:3: " ... it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture ." As Paul said in I Corinthians 6:20: "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." In the previous verse He reminds us that the indwelling Holy Spirit speaks to the same important truth. "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Stewardship is ownership. We must keep this before us as individuals, as families, as churches, and as Christian colleges. Cedarville College is the Lord's institution of higher learning. We dedicate this TORCH issue to the princi– ple of our stewardship and His ownership. 3