The belief that the early Christians may have practiced Communism is based on two passages. Here is the first one:
“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men as every man had need.”{231}
Two things might be noted here. First, the people formed a community effort by coming together; second, they sold their possessions and goods as they appeared to need cash proceeds for the assistance of their fellow members. It does not say that they sold all their possessions and goods although it is granted that at first reading this may be inferred. Neither does it say that they pooled their resources in a common fund although this has been assumed from the statement that they “had all things common.”
What they actually did is more clearly stated in the second passage which is often quoted:
“And the multitude of them that believed was of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.”{232}
Here we have a declaration indicating that the common effort was not a legal pooling of resources in a communal fund but rather a feeling of unity in dealing with common problems so that no man “said” his possessions were his own but developed and used them in such a way that they would fill the needs of the group as well as himself.
That this is a correct reading of this passage may be verified by events which are described in the next chapter of Acts. There we read of Ananias and Sapphira. They had a piece of property which they decided to sell. They intended to give the proceeds to the Apostle Peter. But the author of Acts says that when they had sold the property they decided to hold back some of the proceeds even though they represented to Peter that their contribution was the entire value of the property received at the sale. For this deceit Peter severely criticized them and then, in the process, he explained the legal relationship existing between these two people and their property. Said he, “While it (the property) remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it (the money) not in thine power?”{233}
In other words, this property had never been required for any communal fund. It belonged to Ananias and Sapphira. It was completely in their power. After the property was sold the money they received from the sale was also in their power. They could spend it or contribute it. If contributed, the money was a freewill, voluntary offering. It will be seen immediately that this is altogether different from a Communist’s relationship to property where there is a confiscation or expropriation of each member’s possessions, and the proceeds are distributed by a single person or a small committee. The member thereby loses his independence and becomes subservient to the whims and capriciousness of those who rule over him.
It would appear, therefore, that the early Christians did keep legal title to their property but “said” it was for the benefit of the whole community.
This is precisely the conclusion reached in Dummelow’s Bible Commentary. It discusses the two passages we have just quoted and then says: “The Church of Jerusalem recognized the principle of private property. A disciple’s property really was his own, but he did not say it was his own; he treated it as if it were common property.”
Dr. Adam Clarke’s commentary also makes this significant observation concerning the Apostolic collections for the poor: “If there has been a community of goods in the Church, there could have been no ground for such (collections)… as there could have been no such distinction as rich and poor, if every one, on entering the Church, gave up his goods to a common stock.”
This, then, brings us to our final comment on this subject, namely, that the Master Teacher made it very clear in one of his parables{234} that property was not to be owned in common nor in equal quantities.
In this parable he said the members of the Kingdom of God were as servants who had been given various stewardships “every man according to his several ability.” One man was given a stewardship of five talents of silver and when he “traded with the same and made them other five talents,” his Lord said, “Well done!” However, another servant who had been given only one talent of silver feared he might somehow lose it, so he buried it in the earth. To this man his Lord said, “Thou wicked and slothful servant!” He then took this man’s one talent and gave it to the first servant where it could be developed profitably.
Two things appear very clear in this Parable of the Talents: first that every man was to enjoy his own private property as a stewardship from God. Second, that he was responsible to the earth’s Creator for the profitable use of his property.
All of the evidence before us seems to clearly show that the early Christians did not practice Communism. They did not have their property in common. Instead, they had their problems in common. To solve their problems, each man was asked to voluntarily contribute according to his ability “as God had prospered him.”{235}
When carefully analyzed, this was simply free enterprise capitalism with a heart!
The student will also probably recognize that whenever modern capitalism is practiced “with a heart” it showers blessings of wealth, generosity, good will and happy living on every community it touches. The ancient Christian order was a great idea.
APPENDIX E
What is the Secret Weapon of Communism?
(This is the text of a speech delivered May 6, 1953, to 1,150 guests at the annual banquet of the Washington State Parent Teachers Association. At the time this speech was given the author was serving on the faculty of the Brigham Young University.)
One hundred years ago there was a little school of philosophers in Europe who called themselves “pure materialists.” They had their headquarters in Germany. Two of those materialists carved a place for themselves in history. Through their speeches and books they lighted a flame which, in a century, has created more distrust, insecurity, bloodshed, war-mongering and destruction of property than all the criminal and gangster elements in the world combined.
One of these men was Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche. It was Nietzsche who rose up out of the school of pure materialism to advance the idea of a superman. His ideas could be summarized as follows: “Since there is not any God and since human beings are only graduate beasts without any souls and without immortality, men should not therefore follow a system of ethics and morals. The natural law of force should prevail in the universe. The weak deserve to serve, the strong deserve to rule. Somewhere on the earth there is a nation which is just naturally superior and which should ruthlessly subdue the rest of mankind. Within that nation a single individual should rise up as the natural leader and dictator to rule over humanity because he is a superman.” It was Nietzsche who made up Superman, not the comics.
Who Inspired Hitler?
Now it was Nietzsche’s thinking which inspired Adolf Hitler with his apocalyptic nightmare of total war. Hitler envisioned himself as the man of destiny—the superman—who would one day rule the world. When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf it was as though Nietzsche were speaking from the dead. Said Hitler, “Look at these young men and boys! What material! I shall eradicate the thousands of years of human domestication. Brutal youth—that is what I am after…. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam… of the beast of prey. With these I can make a new world… and create a new order!”
Mankind felt the crushing, brutal impact of Hitler’s mammoth war machine during World War II as he forced millions to join his ranks of imperialistic conquest which was designed to make him dictator of the world. In this country we watched in amazement as he rose to power. Finally, after several years of seeing the black boots of National Socialism stomp out the light of civilization wherever they marched, we rose up in our wrath and joined forces with other nations of the world to smash Nietzsche-inspired Nazism.
However, the spirit of total war which was spawned by the materialists was not confined to the National Socialists in Germany. It had been projected into the ambitions and philosophies of the leaders of
several nations. It was codified into the political aims of the military leaders of Japan and Italy who also collapsed under the mighty blow which struck down National Socialism.
However, with the ending of World War II, many people felt that the conflict with materialism was at an end. Almost immediately the spirit of sacrifice seemed to wither within us. Virtually overnight our armies were demobilized, the world’s largest air force was practically scrapped, and the world’s largest navy was put into mothballs. All this was on the presumption that the war with materialism was finished. Time, of course, proved this presumption to be a mistake.
In putting down National Socialism and the Axis we had only conquered one form of materialism. Another form, equally strong, immediately rose to take its place. This new form of materialism came from Nietzsche’s comrade-in-arms—Karl Marx—a man out of the same school of philosophy, with the same motivations as Nietzsche. Karl Marx thought of himself as the father of dialectical materialism, more commonly known as Communism. Today, the great force of conquest and imperialism which he envisioned stands arrayed against the people of the free world and marches under the banner of the hammer and sickle.
What Was the Mission of Karl Marx?
Some people have mistaken the mission of Karl Marx and his followers as purely economic in nature, but like all other materialists their mission was to gain power through ideological warfare. Note how they denounced any competitive ideology, even religion: “We must combat religion—this is the ABC of materialism, and consequently of Marxism.”{236} And another disciple declared that when they took over, “God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools.”{237}
Now since we are dealing with the field of ideological warfare, one might well ask, What is the objective of these militant atheists? What are they trying to set up as the new ideal for human relations? Listen to the words of Lenin:
“We must hate-hatred is the basis of Communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not Communists.” And listen to the amazing declaration of the former Russian Commissar of Education, Anatole Lunarcharsky: “We hate Christians and Christianity. Even the best of them must be considered our worst enemies. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the revolution. Down with love of one’s neighbor! What we want is hate…. Only then will we conquer the universe!”{238}
I am sure you would agree that when men like these rise to positions of power in the earth it is indeed a challenge to the youth of the free world. When Karl Marx was asked what his object in life was, he said, “To dethrone God and destroy capitalism!”
In a declared war against morals, ethics, and spiritual values among the people, Marx and his associates resolved to completely eliminate the worship of the Almighty among men. Heinrich Heine declared: “Our hearts are filled with compassion for it is… Jehovah Himself who is making ready to die,”{239} and Nietzsche, so successful in the atheistic campaign, said: let the “death of God” be boldly proclaimed.{240} Ludwig Feuerbach announced that: “The turning point of history will be the moment man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself.”{241}
Pirates of Science and Religion
The strategy of the materialists was to appropriate to themselves the toga of “science” and take credit for all scientific accomplishments. Then they determined to ridicule and rationalize away all the things which they opposed by pronouncing them “unscientific.” Thus they attacked the Bible, called themselves higher critics, and attempted to explain it away. They explained the worship of God as being merely the effort of man to project the qualities of his own better nature into some fictitious superior being. They called Jesus Christ an itinerant preacher whose life and writings were effeminate and weak. They ridiculed the possibility of his resurrection; They denied the immortality of human life or the existence of the spirit or soul.
They said that man was nothing but a graduate beast and that human life—especially the other man’s life—was no more sacred than that of a centipede, a caterpillar, or a pig. In other words, the materialists turned their backs on six thousand years of human history and achievement. As Marx and Engels boasted in their Manifesto: Our program “abolishes eternal truths; it abolishes all religion and all morality… it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”
Men Who Worship Themselves
But having denounced God, the scriptures, morals, immortality, eternal judgment, the existence of the spirit, and the sanctity of individual human life, the materialists turned to worship themselves. They decided that man, collectively speaking, was the epitome of perfection among nature’s achievements and therefore the center of the universe. This gave Nietzsche an excellent opportunity to teach his concept of “superman.”
As Nietzsche exalted himself and all other men as the most superior of all existing things he burst forth into statements like this: “Now this God (of the Bible) is dead! You higher men, this God was your greatest danger…. Do you understand this saying, Oh my brothers? You are frightened? Do your hearts fail you? Does the abyss yawn at your feet? What of it? Forward, higher men! Now at last the mountain of man’s future is about to give birth. God is dead; now it is our will that superman shall live!”{242}
In the egotistical tunnel vision of these men who sought to dethrone God there flamed the phantom hope that somehow they may have made the discovery of the ages. Nietzsche made a studied attempt to assume the proper humility which he felt was becoming to such a genius as himself. Said he, “Great heavens!” Who has any idea of the burden that weighs upon me and the strength that it takes to endure myself! I don’t know why it should fall upon me of all people—but it may be that I am the first to light upon an idea which will divide the history of mankind in two…. It takes some courage to face that thought.”
The Fruits of Materialism
But it took more courage than Nietzsche realized. His writings groaned with the burden: “Since there ceased to be a God, loneliness has become intolerable.” But then he bolstered his timidity by reminding himself that after all he was a superman and resolved that he, as “the man who overtops the rest must set to work.”{243}
But if there is no God, no design, and nothing for the future but an accidental destiny, what is there to work for? In the dark hours of his anti-theistic reasoning and just a short time before he went insane, Nietzsche could not help asking himself:
“How did we come to do that? How did we manage to empty the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe out the whole horizon? What were we about when we undid the chain which linked this earth to the sun? Are we not wandering through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of the void in our faces? Isn’t it growing colder? Is not night always coming on, one night after another, more and more?”{244}
Such was the final, fearful lamentation of the men who started the chain-reaction of pure materialism.
Now we have reached an interesting point in the history of the United States when the word “Communism” has become universally unpopular. If the label of Communism is placed upon a person or an institution it may bring ruin overnight. The disgraceful conduct of Communist leaders has given their name a deep-dyed stigma in the United States.
Communists Without Labels
But how many Americans could recognize a Communist without his label? What does a Communist really believe? Most people identify Communism as “state-ownership of property” or Socialism. It is interesting, however, that the economics of Communism are primarily for propaganda purposes. The idea of sharing the wealth appeals to the masses. However, when the Communists took over in Russia you will recall that the first thing they did was impose upon the Russian people a form of economics which we got rid of back in the feudal days. It is a system where a privileged few dispense the necessities of life to the serfs who work for them and rely upon them for protection and leadership.
But if Communist economics are primarily propaganda, what, then, does the Communist believe?
In the interest of time I have endeavored to reduce the basic belief of these people to four fundamental concepts which turn out to be the basis for their philosophy. These beliefs are the heart and soul of dialectical materialism. They pretend to provide a complete explanation for the whole universe. They provide the reasoning which gives an excuse to the Communist for his revolutionary violence and amoral conduct. They are the things which convert a few intellectual people to this foreign ideology, and they are the things which even make a few wealthy people think that Communism is the last great hope of the modern world. Understanding these beliefs helps to evaluate the actions of the Communists when we sit down with them to discuss world problems.
First Major Premise of Communism
Their first major premise is this: “Everything in existence came about as a result of ceaseless motion among the forces of nature.” Everything is a product of accumulated accident. There is no design. There is no law. There is no God. There is only force, the force of nature. Force is right, force is good, and force is natural.
The idea of “dialectics” as propounded by the Communist intellectual is that “conflict in nature” is the womb of all creation; that out of fierce, writhing forces in the elements we obtained all that now is—stars, solar system, plants, animals and the intelligence of man.
The Naked Communist Page 35