But if you think of capitalism as economic liberty, then there are several New Testament passages that argue in favor of it. I want to explore three passages that bring out foundational issues regarding the nature of economic justice and demonstrate a biblical sympathy with liberty and the market. The Son of God certainly had the power to rearrange the atomic structure of rocks into the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms found in bread. We really do not. I suppose we could if we worked on it, but it would be an expensive way of solving the world's hunger problem.
Scarcity is a real and tenacious problem of human existence.
Every human being cannot have a claim on a specific quantity of a finite and limited resource such as food or land. If someone decrees, therefore, that the demands of justice require large amounts of certain scarce resources to exist in order to meet certain vast needs, he submits to the temptation that Jesus resisted, the temptation to turn stones into bread. Property rights are not somehow inferior to other human rights. They are the only juridical rights to resources, the only economic rights that exist. If every human being is to have modern health care, it requires that resources be commanded into existence.