Work and Dominion

The Biblical doctrine of work can be briefly summarized in two key verses:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Gen. 1:28)

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. (II Thess. 3:10)

In Genesis 1:28, we have, first, the commandment to work. To exercise dominion and to subdue the earth requires work. This commandment to work is not a curse, and it precedes the Fall, so that work is clearly a part of the state of innocence. It is emphatically not a product of sin.

Second, the English translation, replenish, has sometimes created problems. The meaning here is to fill the earth, to colonize it and to bring every area under man’s dominion. The modern environmentalist’s attitude, based commonly on a hatred of God and man, is hostile to filling the earth, as though this is of necessity a destructive calling. This is a myth. Man the sinner can be and commonly is destructive, but the calling of the redeemed man is to work for a subduing and a dominion which develops the resources and potentialities of the earth for God’s Kingdom.

Third, the goal of work should be godly dominion. Work is not an end in itself, nor is the monetary income it produces the goal. The laborer is emphatically worthy of his hire (Luke 10:7; I Tim. 5:18); work and pay cannot be separated, but neither can they be equated as though there is nothing more to work than its monetary return. In other words, work is an economic fact, but it must be more than an economic fact. In any society where work is seen as simply an economic necessity and fact, there will be a decline in productivity towards the subsistence level. If men only work to eat (or to play), the meaning and the goal of work soon fades away. As we have seen, work is a moral fact, to be contrasted with theft. There is another contrast: work, true, godly work is productive, not destructive. If work is reduced to economics, then destructive forces are unleashed. Marxism in particular is guilty of this. Work is an economic fact and little more; value is also an economic fact. As a result, Marxist societies are retrogressive. A man when free from the corruption of modern humanism, will work in terms of God’s calling, and, under God, for his family, for his personal realization of his abilities, and more. These are essentially non-economic motives. Economies self-destruct when their motivating forces become essentially economic. God’s commandment ties true work to dominion in terms of His covenant and Kingdom. This is why work is a commandment, and implicit in God’s law. The Ten Commandments declare, “Six days shalt thou labour” (Ex. 20:9); the six days can mean work at our place of employment or at our home in household duties. The Fourth Commandment thus commands rest on the seventh day, and work on the other six days of the week.

Fourth, God, in giving the commandment to work and to exercise dominion, thereby blessed man. After the Fall, man’s total life, thus including his work (Gen. 3:9-19), was placed under the curse, but the curse was not work but God’s judgment on man in all his being and work. By blessing work and dominion, God pronounced it happy, good, and fulfilling for man. As we give ourselves to godly work, we place ourselves under God’s blessing, whereas work apart from God moves under His curse.

Fifth, the dominion mandate (Gen. 1:26-28) separates work from necessity. This is a very important fact. In much of the world, work is an economic fact and necessity, and, as such, a manifestation of the curse. In this perspective, work becomes drudgery. In the perspective of fallen man, deliverance from work is seen as a blessing and privilege. Thus, it is said with envy of some men, “He doesn’t have to work.” A society with such an ideal, and such a goal, is in serious trouble. Its life-purpose has become non-productivity, which is another way of saying death. When the elite becomes a leisure class, we have a society or culture in its decline. A leisure class is parasitic; where it is viewed as an elite, the goal of that society is a parasitic one. Only those segments which reject that ideal, and are free to reject it, can then maintain and advance social order. Their destruction is the destruction of the culture. The rise of a leisure class, an elite, means also the rise of statism, because priority is given to money and power over faith and work. The elite in fiction and film today is, behind the variety of facades, a leisure class of self-styled elite peoples. Not surprisingly, the businessman is presented as a villain, because he is a producer. Such film and fiction tales may seemingly idolize the worker, but what these writers mean by worker is actually a revolutionist, not a producer, which a true working man is. To reduce work to a necessity is to view it as an evil, perhaps a necessary evil, but an evil all the same. Let us remember that some of the student movements of the 1960s called for a work-free world, one in which total automation would produce, supposedly, all food, goods, and machines. Men would then be “free” for drugs and fornication. The role of modern art and the media in propagating a false view of work, and the idea of total leisure as a worthy goal, has been very great. Not surprisingly, at the same time work and self-discipline have been abandoned by the arts and by many people as well. It is interesting to note that film scores have at times given us better music simply because the discipline of the form commands better resources in the musician or composer.

Elitism is anti-work because its goal is a superior status, power and money. The role of elitism in history has been a deadly one. It very early had a classic statement in Plato’s Republic. In this country also it has had an ugly history. Thus, basic to the Southern defense of slavery was an elitism and, for the reigning white males, a leisure class concept. This was the first deadly force to inflict itself on the South. The second was the imposition of a coercive order by the North after 1864. However, what the North condemned in the South it hypocritically adopted, and the Northern way of life became elitist also.

Elitism is a form of abdication of responsibility in favor of control and power. A man can control his family without any sense of responsibility. By means of controls, he seeks power and self-exaltation. Elitism seeks exclusiveness, because it has no legitimate grounds for claiming superiority. If the elitist travels, he wants “unspoiled” places, i.e., where no one from his country except his own circle can be or have been, because he cannot stand being compared to his “lesser” fellow countrymen.

The goal of elitism is power, control, and money, to gain social status. The elitist will give lip service to equality while undercutting it by his controls. What he hates is a legitimate hierarchy, because the essence of a true hierarchy is responsibility. The word hierarch comes from two Greek words, sacred, and to rule. Hierarchy means to establish leadership, authority, and rule on holy premises, on God’s word and order. An elite order is man-made; men determine who shall lead, and, usually, the elite claims that power on its own authority. Modern political orders, democracies, Marxist and fascist societies, dictatorships, and the like are all elitist because man-ordained. Where a hierarchy is concerned, we can differ as to the structure of that hierarchy, but we cannot Biblically differ from the premise that God requires a hierarchy, i.e., godly rule and authority in a society.

Both elitism and hierarchy have to do with dominion. It should be apparent by now that godly dominion, in whatever field, agricultural, commercial, scientific, ecclesiastical, or any other, must begin with work and end in service to God and man.

The implication, moreover, of Proverbs 8:36 is not simply that the hatred of God and His law-word is death, but that the love and service of God and His law-word and order is life.

Taken from Systematic Theology in Two Volumes, pp. 1044-1047