Does Acts Show Early Christian Communism? – OpEd |
By Joshua Mawhorter
If economics is continually beset with fallacies, and if Biblical interpretation is likewise beset with common exegetical fallacies, then witness what happens when economic and Biblical fallacies are combined. This is not uncommon. In fact, many often attempt to vest their economic fallacies with Biblical authority, typically revealing ignorance of both economics and the Bible in the process. This may even be done honestly, without even realizing it. Such is often the case when Acts 2 and 4 are appealed to as a Christian sanction and promotion of communism, not only for churches but as a matter of ideal policy.
Superficial reading of some early texts in Acts (2:44-46; 4:32-37) seem to suggest the ideal of Christian communal property ownership, or communism, rather than private property. While this claim will be answered in detail below, it is important to note the logical fallacy of category errors—an error where things belonging to one category are mistakenly presented as belonging to another, or properties are assigned to items that cannot possess them. This is common with concepts like “communism” and “socialism.” For example, people often say something like, “Socialism is the radical idea of sharing,” but that equivocates and switches categories because socialism involves the coercive public ownership of the factors of production, not voluntary sharing.
Due to superficial similarities—sharing, communal ownership, distribution from a common stock—many mistakenly see the Acts texts as promoting communism, privately and publicly, but this would be an obvious category error because the Acts situation is both missing key elements of communism and possesses key elements that exclude it from being categorized as communism. In essence, throughout Acts and within the rest of the New Testament context, we see that—through a simple, contextual reading—Acts is often descriptive rather than prescriptive, private property was universally affirmed, the communal ownership arrangement described was limited, local, and temporary, and the arrangement was private, voluntary, and never required by the church or the state. Further, even if Acts did teach that private, voluntary communism was temporarily practiced within the early days of the first-century Christian church at Jerusalem, and that this was normative, it does not follow that such an arrangement is a model for state policy.
In Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Mises provided a chapter titled, “Christianity and Property,” in which he wrote the following statements regarding the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament,
But all efforts to find support for the institution of private property generally, and for private ownership in the means of production in particular, in the teachings of Christ are quite vain. No art of interpretation can find a single passage in the New Testament that could be read as upholding private property. Those who look for a Biblical ukase must go back to the Old Testament, or content themselves with disputing the assertion that communism prevailed in the congregation of the early Christians….
One thing of course is clear, and no skilful interpretation can obscure it. Jesus’s words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor….
This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenceless against all movements which aim at destroying human society. The Church as an organization has certainly always stood on the side of those who tried to ward off communistic attack. But it could not achieve much in this struggle. For it was continually disarmed by the words: “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the Kingdom of God.” (emphasis added)
As mentioned elsewhere, I disagree with Mises’s assessment here, not because I have some desire........