Theology Detail
Applied to: Right to repair and meaningful ownership
Genesis 1:28 is not a direct proof-text for modern right-to-repair laws. But in its context, it gives a creational principle that supports the idea of real stewardship and meaningful ownership.
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…” (Genesis 1:28)
This verse comes before the fall, so it speaks to man’s original calling in creation. God gives mankind a blessed task: to fill the earth, cultivate it, order it, and exercise dominion under Him. This dominion is not abuse or tyranny. It is responsible stewardship. Genesis 2:15 explains the same calling more concretely:
“And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)
So the context shows that dominion means using, maintaining, cultivating, and guarding what God places under man’s care.
If God made man to exercise real stewardship in the world, then ownership should ordinarily be real, not imaginary.
A man cannot meaningfully “dress and keep” something if he is allowed to possess it only in name, while being denied ordinary access to maintain, open, restore, or repair it. So the principle is this:
God’s creation mandate assumes that human stewardship involves real use and responsible care of material things.
That does not create an absolute right to do anything whatsoever with property. But it does support the ordinary expectation that if a man truly owns a lawful good, he should ordinarily be able to maintain and repair it, or hire a lawful tradesman to do so.
Applied carefully, Genesis 1:28 suggests that Christians should favor an order where:
So with “right to repair,” the biblical concern is not modern autonomy for its own sake. The concern is that ownership under God should not be emptied of its substance.
Genesis 1:28 teaches dominion as stewardship. In context, that supports the idea that lawful ownership should ordinarily include the practical ability to care for, preserve, and repair what one truly owns. That is the strongest Reformed use of the verse in this discussion: not slogan-first, but creation-first, then application by good and necessary consequence.