St. Germain in Doctor and Student has the doctor of divinity say this about the law of property:
For the law of property could have been instituted from the beginning, but because the population was yet small, the law that all things should be common was suitable and necessary. But when the population increased, it was necessary to have a law of property lest the slothful and the wicked should oppress the good (19).
That use of the phrase, “that all things should be common,” seems to echo Acts more than it echoes anything in the Genesis account. It leaves me wondering if there is a line of thought here that St. Germain is drawing on, which would compare the early Church to the newly created world. Or that the relationship of the early Church to private property was only reasonable at the beginning, when the community was quite small.
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