Jesus himself was a communist.” So how would that be for a political slogan. How would most who attend Christian services respond to this statement in church on Sunday morning! It is said this early church experiment was a failure. Miranda clearly points out a case can be made that the sermon on the mount was a failure…yet “its normative character remains intact”. (Though how well lived into is the sermon on the mount?) So it seems he is saying failure is not a reason to ignore either the sermon on the mount or the lived structure of the first century Jerusalem church.
Most interesting for me is that I was raised in one of the “biblical literalist” traditions. Yet this passage was dismissed as a failure. It was socialist or communist and utopian. It would work in a perfect world but not in a fallen world. No one I can remember ever said we should seriously study this aspect of the early church as something taught by those who walked with Jesus in the flesh. No one ever said that maybe we should take this seriously as just maybe, maybe Jesus actually was promoting something like this. It raises this prospect for me; is failure even relevant to learning to live into the “christian communism” Miranda is writing about.
Of course the difficult part is giving up our wealth, some of our individual choice and learning to work in a community setting that involves submitting to the whole. The submission also needs to be infused with divine grace so that all have what they need. I wonder if Miranda is hoping to redirect our focus so that we struggle with just what it means to live into this early christian style of community. The Acts account provides a very harsh “reality” check regarding the role of personal integrity as it relates to living in this early christian community.
Gollwitzer makes a salient point…if we think the first century church failed at “christian communism”…then find a better way to do it! If we say we want to follow Jesus then maybe we need to be more willing to set aside any of our current attitudes. Gollwitzer prods me to re-evaluate my perspectives and my lifestyle. I will need to put aside my biases and really study what Jesus was about and how that led to the Acts account of the life of the early followers of the way. And, am I willing to then live out what I learn from Jesus…even if it means failing?
On page 41 Gollwitzer provides us with words to meditate on. He addresses being ensnared. He addresses our excuses. He addresses sin and grace. Making it personal for me he dares to address coffee. He addresses how we benefit from government policies. He addresses freedom. He addresses and asks us to address the question of how can we carry on as before?
My very biased perspective is that Gollwitzer hits the proverbial nail on the head. If I try to reinterpret the life of the early church and make it comfortable I will be missing the point. It was important enough that our spiritual ancestors made sure it was passed down. At the least I want to be honest…I don’t yet live fully this way. I am very intrigued to learn to live into this type of communism and discover the freedom Gollwitzer points to as he concludes the essay.
https://pcpe.smu.edu/blog/christian-communism-reflections-on-acts-4-32-35
Did Jesus and the early Christian communities actually practice a kind of communism, where everything was owned in common and there were no rich or poor? We have to tread carefully here, as Luke is the only gospel writer to make such a claim, assuming that Luke wrote the book of Acts. We know that a good deal of Acts which speaks about Paul’s ministry, does not accord with what Paul writes about himself. We also know that Luke in his own gospel writes that at the birth of Jesus, the Roman emperor ordered a census and a tax which was to be imposed on the entire Empire and that no record of any such census or tax exists. While Luke’s reporting of events may not always be reliable history, there are important lessons in this account.
Let’s assume that there was some real sharing between small groups of early Christians, including selling off all property and giving it to a central and shared treasury. It appears there was almost at once, a group of people who “took charge” of that treasury, and made decisions about resources, structure and religious doctrine to which everyone was expected to adhere. To oppose their decisions meant risking expulsion from the group. This “communism” was not democratic. Notwithstanding the reality on the ground, this description yields us a hope of what might be, a vision of what the Household of God could truly look like.
When we call people “communists” we are usually referring to people sympathetic to state-controlled socialism, which in Marx’s theory was only a stepping stone to real communism, where the State, like class distinctions, would wither away, because it wasn’t needed. But State controlled socialism, which had replaced an aristocratic class (at the time of Marx, most Russians were peasants – there was no real middle class or even by modern standards, a working class), was not inclined to give up its power to “the people.” Communism – the sharing of all basic resources for all basic needs – was not and is not obtainable without a moral revolution, a jettisoning of greed and pride and control.
The real issue before us is not what system we have in place, but with what heart. Every system will fail and fall if its only anchor is ego, rather than truly loving all our neighbors as family, as ourselves. And to do that, we must engage in “giving everything away” which Jesus certainly does seem to advocate. But he advises giving it to the poor, not to a central treasury for the benefit of just one community. It is part of his transformational teaching, that having more than you need is an impediment, a hindrance, a cumbrance, to living in the Light and Love of God. Only Simplicity of Life and Purity of Heart allow us to share not only our tangible goods but our time and energy as well.
I recall once long ago, a friend of mine who had been a Franciscan, saying that not one of the friars in his community owned anything, but that the community itself was rich, both in land and resources. The Church has in fact acted exactly like a socialistic State, asking for everything but maintaining tight control over its use. It lays claim to being “for the people,” but it is clearly not “of the people.” It is a religion of “churchiness” not of Jesus, of holdings and treasures, not of love. Do we believe for a single minute that Jesus would be welcome in most of our churches? Do we think that Paul would find a home in our sanctuaries? Jesus was not only a communist, but a bit of a drifter, a rule-breaker, doing odd manual jobs, and challenging every single authority save God.
Christian Communism an idealistic society which sounds perfect.
Common ownership with participation according to ability and needs meet entirely.
Many have elaborated on these theories without being able to agree on the way to achieve this vision.
The demise of capitalism has been forecast by many. Yet historically many Christian sects have tried to put Christian Communism in place and failed miserably.