To Invent Is Divine
A Conversation with James R. Edwards Jr. on Creativity, Ownership, & Intellectual Property
To Invent is Divine: Creativity and Ownership by James R. Edwards Jr.
Published by Fidelis Publishing in 2025
344pp / 978-1956454857 / Purchase
Q. Thank you so much for doing this, Jim. Can you tell me about your background and how you came to write this book, To Invent Is Divine: Creativity and Ownership?
A. Early on, I became interested in American history and politics. As well, I was born into a Christian family, which fostered faith in Jesus Christ and biblical literacy. My first real job after college was a staff position in the U.S. Senate. There, I got very interested in honoring the Lord in my work. After graduate school and a couple of jobs, I found my way back to Washington, where I served in the Senate, the Republican National Committee, two House members’ staffs, and a trade association before going into consulting on public policy. Those positions taught me legislative and policy processes, honed my writing skills, provided a wide range of contacts, and gave me a degree of expertise in certain issue areas, including intellectual property.
The idea of the book came from a 2019 speech. A state director with an organization I work with on patent policy invited me to come to her church and talk about patents and invention from a biblical perspective. Preparation for that speech involved delving deeply into Scripture regarding what’s at the heart of inventing and patents: creativity and ownership. It unveiled the Creation Mandate and Common Grace through examples from the lives of inventors. These ranged from devout Christian inventors such as Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and a painter, to the religiously skeptical, such as the inventively prolific and brilliant Thomas Edison. The audience’s positive response led me to turning the speech into a book.
Q. I suspect this goes to the title, but what do you mean when you say that “creativity is divine”?
A. It has more than a single meaning. First, as God the Creator spoke the various aspects of the universe into existence, He concluded each day by calling His creative work “good” and, at the end of creation, “very good.” Obviously, our good God does divine work. He makes only good things.
Second, human beings alone among all creatures bear the Creator’s image. Humans are given certain communicable, divine attributes, including creative abilities and intellect. While still in the Garden of Eden, the Lord directed Adam to work. That is, the God who made the universe instructed His image bearers to employ those qualities. This is the Creation Mandate given to all humanity.
Thus, work—applying our faculties to working and keeping lower creatures like the garden and animals and to making things from the Earth’s raw materials—is what we’re made for and called to do. In a sense, we share the kind of satisfaction and fulfillment our holy God had upon the completion of His creative efforts. When human beings, bearing the image of God and possessing creative abilities akin to His, work constructively and improve our surroundings and the human condition, our creativity reflects the divinity behind these gifts. For Christian creators, this is a means of glorifying and enjoying God.
Q. Your book provides an interesting model of creativity in linking it to “truth, beauty, and goodness.” Can you explain this?
A. Truth, beauty, and goodness are seen in God’s handiwork. I love seeing them in sunsets, with their changing hues, shapes, and angles of light. God regarded His completed universe, with its complex systems like the respiratory and circulatory systems, the tiny worlds of genes and subatomic particles, and the immeasurable vastness of outer space, as “very good.” Certainly, if the Lord’s creation reflects His truth, His beauty, His goodness, then this divine framework should serve as our ideal, the model for creative human endeavor. Augustine noted how our intelligence and what we learn from its use are gifts from God, whether one realizes this or not. Our best creative efforts glorify God by applying the truths of His universe, reflecting beauty in what we’re capable of creating, and whose goodness stems from constructive, uplifting contributions to humanity and God’s glory.
Q. In reading your book, I was thinking about an interesting tension between creativity and ownership. Can you talk to me about this important connection as it relates to private property, especially considering the seeming mandate in Matthew 22:22 that everything we do be given back to either Caesar or God?
A. In my book, I explore and explain how we humans are given both creative ability and inherent ownership rights. In this life, we all are stewards of certain resources, whatever property God entrusts to us. We own property on Earth; we possess agency over how that property is put to use, disposed of, and so forth; however, God ultimately owns it all. That’s the basis for our holding exclusive rights with temporal authority under God. This includes owning whatever property we come to possess, either by inheritance, purchase, or our own efforts. Patents and copyrights secure exclusive rights for the limited time of their terms; otherwise, our creative works are held in perpetuity as a trade secret.
In Matthew 22, we see that we owe what’s due to civil government, which God establishes as His agent for protecting the innocent and punishing wrongdoers. We owe what’s due to the Lord—the Creator and Owner of everything. Matthew Henry says what’s due comes from our consciences, our time, and our estates. When we give back to God our tithes and offerings from the first fruits of our labor, that portion represents the fact that all that we own here is God’s property. This doesn’t negate the clear biblical teachings about humans having a right to the fruits of our labor. Otherwise, “thou shalt not steal” makes little sense.
Q. You argue that the American patent system (when it works properly) is fulfilling the Divine Mandate. What does that mean?
A. The Creation Mandate combines divinely endowed human creativity and our faculties’ use with ownership rights. Together, our creativity and ownership result in human flourishing. Flourishing through our labors and the owning of our labors’ fruits benefits not only the creator but other people and perhaps even humanity. Human creativity with ownership makes possible economic exchange. The abundance of fruits from human labor is wealth creation—producing more than one needs for subsistence. This wealth improves the human condition. Nobel economist Edmund Phelps’s work confirms that mass flourishing coincides with private property rights, and poor economic performance occurs in countries hostile to private ownership. The U.S. patent system adopts the biblical model in which creative work and ownership rights mutually reinforce each other. The flourishing resulting from this mutual reinforcement is how the Founders designed our patent system to operate. That is how American patenting has fulfilled the biblical mandate.
Q. How do you balance man’s need to create and, therefore, use (and sometimes abuse) natural resources and his stewardship to creation as laid out in Genesis 2:15?
A. A steward manages someone else’s property or affairs. It’s understood that that management involves doing so in the best interests of the ultimate owner. We aren’t given carte blanche. However, every human stewarding a portion of God’s property has latitude to use the property in various ways. God has entrusted certain property and endowed us with certain abilities and aptitude. We’re free to make something, to apply reason, observation, and our creative abilities and other faculties in our working and keeping the property under our care. If creation is, in part, intended for humans to develop and employ, this will necessarily involve using some natural resources as tools, others as raw material for certain creations, still others for consumption. Creative effort is part of God’s work mandate, and we have certain property at our disposal. It doesn’t make sense for Genesis 2:11-12 to mention gold, resin, and onyx if these and like resources are to remain unused. The other side of the stewardship coin is employing prudential judgment in a given location or circumstance to discern appropriate limits on use. I’m not sure abuse of natural resources is appropriate, though that judgment call likely depends on one’s definition of “abuse.” Considerations such as how vital a resource is to human life, how abundant it is, how its depletion would affect human existence, and similar factors enter the equation for making such decisions.
Q. One topic you did not engage with is what the bankruptcy professor Christopher Hampson calls the “spirit of Jubilee.” This is the Old Testament tradition of canceling debt and restoring land after a certain time as a socioeconomical model for Israel. Just curious how this tradition fits into your theory of ownership?
A. My book focuses on patents and invention as related to biblical teachings. Jubilee, as found in Scripture, was a unique facet of the Mosaic Covenant that applied specifically to the people of Israel. Like the Old Testament sacrificial system, its purpose has been fulfilled, and it has passed away. In contrast, the Creation Mandate that God gave Adam is universal. It’s combined with Common Grace, whereby God sends sunshine and rain on the crops of both the saved and unsaved.
Thus, God’s provision for much of humanity now entails rewarding human creative endeavor by way of inherent property rights and democratized, merit-based systems. This applies whether someone creates new property, builds, manufactures, or grows. Patents, copyrights, and other means of securing ownership equalize individual opportunity. Private ownership rights over one’s creative works combine opportunity to flourish with the benefits of the fruits of one’s labor. This leads to mass flourishing, as Edmund Phelps has affirmed. This result from the creativity-ownership combination mitigates inequalities that Jubilee theorists are concerned about.
Q. You tease an interesting idea in Revelation 21:5 that God is not finished with his creative endeavors. Can you explore that further?
A. I’d never taken in the present progressive tense in ”I am making all things new” before working on the chapter about God as Creator. It just didn’t sound like the verb choice one would use upon something’s completion. That verse is preceded by God’s making statements about the future of saved humanity: no crying, pain, or death in Heaven. The rest of Revelation 21 and 22:1-5 doesn’t indicate that God will create more at that point. For redeemed humans, there seems to be general agreement among theologians that the saints will perform work in the new Heaven, though specifics are missing. But any future creating by God remains undisclosed to us.
Q. One of my favorite parables is the one about the talents in Matthew 25 as it relates to good stewardship. How do you interpret that story in light of your vision for work and wealth?
A. The three servants are given opportunity to apply themselves and show what they can do with their master’s property—i.e., steward the money entrusted to them. Jesus’s parable doesn’t provide explicit directions from the master. Every human being, as image bearer of God, possesses God-given faculties and is subject to the universal mandate to work and keep stewarded property. Work and the right to the fruits of one’s labor will likely yield something: crops, return on investment, a creative work, a useful implement. The two who doubled their money worked toward increasing what they’d been given, and each was successful. The other one who put no effort toward growing his holding was called wicked and lazy. The squandering of one’s abilities and opportunities produces no yield. We have to put forth effort, be diligent, and act responsibly. That will usually create wealth. Another thing is that the master wasn’t as concerned with the size of the yield but was focused on the size of the effort. We’re meant to fulfill our calling with work that represents honest effort. Under Common Grace, human flourishing comes from each of our industrious efforts and our ownership stake. For Christians, there’s also the reward of pleasing God through our work.
Q. Among the things I noted is the importance of incentive structures for creativity (e.g., Chapter 10). An obvious example could be that creativity is fueled by the incentive for ownership and, when government makes ownership difficult, it stifles creativity. Can you talk to me about this big concept as it relates to the importance of incentivizing creativity and how to accomplish this best through intellectual property law?
A. The biblically literate Founders, who lived in a Christian culture, adapted and improved upon British intellectual property laws. In order to stimulate mass creative initiative as the means of achieving rapid technological advancement and the accompanying economic benefits, the Founders adopted the biblical creativity-ownership model and the exclusivity-limited time features and added the merit-based, democratized patent-granting facets. That is, the Founders wrote Scripture’s key features for human work into the Constitution and the third U.S. statute the First Congress adopted.
One of the clearest, undeniable biblical precepts is the individual’s ownership rights to the fruits of his or her labor. For instance, Psalm 128:2, Isaiah 65:21, and 1 Corinthians 9:7 teach this natural right. Whether we’re talking about literal or figurative fruits of human work, the prospect of compensation serves as the main incentive to create. Without this economic incentive, what Lincoln called “the fuel of interest” fails to feed “the fire of genius.” Short of this kind of fuel, much creativity and invention would either not be pursued or would remain merely a hobby. Crucially, IP secures exclusive legal rights to the fruits of one’s creative labor. The government doesn’t grant those rights. Rather, it ascertains the boundary lines of newly created property and issues title to the creator of that property. IP’s fulfillment of its incentive role occurs when there’s clear, quiet title that carries enforceable rights and sufficient remedies, such as permanent injunction. And when government violates property rights, making them tentative through price controls, expropriation, redistribution, and the like, the incentive to work and create is stifled.
Q. One fascinating concept you bring up is “predatory infringement.” The series, The Billion Dollar Code, first introduced me to this concept, so I was excited to see you tackling it in some detail. What is this concept mean and how does it stifle creativity?
A. “Predatory infringement” is a business practice that’s grown popular among technology implementers as patent rights have steadily been weakened. It amounts to “infringe first, ask questions later.” Intellectual Asset Management recently quoted former Intel General Counsel Doug Melamed: “ “the optimal course for the infringer . . . is to infringe and deal with patents later.” “Deal with” translates into litigate the patent dispute in as many fora as possible for as long as possible. This echoes a former Apple executive from several years ago who called predatory infringement practically a “fiduciary responsibility” for implementers rather than licensing the patented invention.
Predatory infringement involves theft by lawfare. This misconduct stifles creativity by jeopardizing the certainty of ownership rights in the contested IP. These disputes typically involve a large, deep-pocketed patent infringer and a smaller innovator, often an early-stage firm. The prolonged litigation siphons off the wronged patent owner’s valuable financial resources that would otherwise go toward R&D, developing a commercial market, and regulatory compliance.
Q. You note that legislation is the answer to reviving the “golden age of patenting.” What would that look like?
A. First, since the Supreme Court handed down its Bilski v. Kappos decision in 2010, that court and lower courts have thrown the law governing patent-eligible subject matter into utter confusion. This mess centers around abstract ideas and laws of nature, typically pertaining to the eligibility of computer-implemented inventions and medical diagnostics, respectively. Congress should restore the breadth of what’s eligible for patenting and return this question to a matter of categorical threshold, not substantive patentability. The bipartisan, bicameral Patent Eligibility Restoration Act would end this jurisprudential nightmare.
Second, the America Invents Act (AIA) in 2011 established a quasi-judicial tribunal called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to administratively adjudicate adversarial patent validity disputes between parties—something reserved for more than 200 years for federal courts. PTAB quickly became a weapon in the predatory infringement arsenal. Congress is considering the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act, which would impose on PTAB more of a level playing field with due process and fairness rules.
Third, in 2006, the Supreme Court decided eBay v. MercExchange, whose subsequent interpretation by other courts has erected a near-insurmountable barrier against patent owners from obtaining permanent injunctive relief in infringement cases. The inability to stop infringers from continuing their infringing commercial activities effectively hollows out the right to exclude that patents supposedly secure. The Restoring Exclusive Patent Rights (RESTORE) Act would correct the judicially created default against awarding injunctions in patent cases.
Fourth, Congress should legislatively override SCOTUS’s 2018 Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group ruling, asserting that patents are merely a government franchise, not private property.
Fifth, antitrust should be constrained where IP is concerned. The optimal remedy would be codification of the tenets of former Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim’s New Madison Approach.
Other reforms to revive American patenting’s golden age include repealing a number of AIA changes that undid longstanding features unique to the American system, such as a one-year grace period before filing a patent. Returning strict confidentiality at the Patent Office toward pending patents by ending the practice of automatic publication 18 months after a patent’s filing would protect the property right in an invention while denying China a head start on commercializing an American invention.
In short, these changes would strengthen ownership rights in inventions, thereby incentivizing venture capital investment in patented technologies, securing patent exclusivity, and encouraging the taking of the risks of creative endeavor.
James R. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D., Founder and CEO of ELITE Strategic Services, L.L.C., consults on intellectual property, antitrust, health, and transportation policy. He plays leadership, strategic, and advisory roles on IP, particularly patents. Edwards consults to corporations, trade associations, and nonprofits, and has mentored start-ups and early-stage companies, many in med tech.