I can’t find evidence of anti-communism in the Bible?

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There’s Christian communism. Your church claims it’s a heresy. I disagree
 
EvangelistVictor said:
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Curious11:
Nope. Ever heard of liberation theology? There’s such a thing as Christian communism
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Communism is against any religion. The early church in the book of Acts was socialist and shared everything in common. Sadly we have not followed this model of the early church
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The early Church was NOT socialist. They practiced a form of distributism.

And they shared among friends. It was not a govt imposed system like socialism and communism
 
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Curious11 said:
Distributism is a private property system. It doesn’t abolish private property, it abolishes capital accumulation by spreading the ownership of the means of production equally among the population. That’s not common ownership
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Yes, but the right to private ownership is a traditional Christian human right. In the time of Jesus, even slaves were allowed to own personal possessions.

Common ownership among friends is cool, but state controlled common ownership is a lie. It’s not commonly owned, it’s owned by the government. Real life communism does not practice true “common ownership.” Its really government ownership.
 
EvangelistVictor said:
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phil19034:
The early Church was NOT socialist. They practiced a form of distributism
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Doesn’t socialism spread the wealth equally? But yes, it was as distribution.
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No. Socialism does not spread the wealth equally. Socialism robs from the rich AND the middle class and gives to the poor.

The problem with socialism is that the middle class suffers.

In socialism, the rich are still rich. Even if you tax them over 50%. Anyone making personally over $1,000,000 a year can easily afford to pay 50% or 75% in taxes. They might not like it, and they may not be able to live lavishly but they can afford it and can still live comfortably.

The money from the rich goes to the lower class, and so does the money from the middle class.

Essentially, what socialism does is it allows the rich to remain rich and to remain in power, while making the lower class happy and stepping on the middle class.

The rise of the middle class was/is a threat to the rich ruling class, and socialism is their way of eliminating / shrinking / silencing the middle class and holding onto power.
 
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This is true. However, within Distributism and other ownership economies you have voluntarily established common ownership when it comes to cooperatives, to some extent guilds, “common lands” (like what used to be the case in England before enclosure), etc. You are specifically asking where there might be anti-communism in the Bible, not just Church teaching. You also defined Communism specifically as follows, right?
Curious11 said:
Common ownership of the means of production in a classless society, preferrably stateless as well
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So let’s assume this definition. It does not have anything about atheism, about the class struggle, or how the act of establishing such a system may involve violence.

However, I am assuming here that you are seeing this “common ownership” as a universal thing? So it’s not just enclaves of communes, but there is no actual thing as personal property? And I am guessing there is no such thing as private property in principle (some personal property would make this closer to social democracy, which is different from communism, right?). If this is included or implied in your definition, then I can see two possible lines of objection to such a system as you propose it.
 
(cntd)
  1. The scriptures, both the old and the new testament, do speak in favor of private property as a thing. On the Old Testament front, we consider the Torah, and how property was distributed when the Israelites settled in their promised land. First, you had you tribes, and your clans within the tribes, each with their properties. Furthermore, you had laws in place to ensure that land was passed down the family in order to prevent the usurpation of land from one clan by another. While ownership was not absolute (see passages on jubilees, or procedures for harvesting that mandated that land owners leave whatever falls on the ground for the poor), you also see praise for people who preserved the familial ownership of their land (see the story of Naboth’s vineyard and Jezebel, for example) The system promoted in the Torah was definitely distributist in feel, rather than communist. Such passages do not oppose common ownership, but they would contradict an in principle abolition of private property. Now, you could say that a universal common ownership that is voluntary might be possible and avoid this, but in practice this has never happened, even in the early Church which looked down on private property beyond what was needed.
  2. That the society be classless. First, Both Jewish and early Christian societies were definitely hierarchical. Now you say that priests are no longer a different class, but while this is true in the “political” sense, it is certainly not true in the “societal” sense. Jewish society had a complex hierarchy structured via family lines, elders, kings, priests and Levites vs lay people, etc. Some (like kings) were the people’s own doing. But others were in some sense established by God. When Jesus established his Church, he did so in a way that modeled the Davidic kingdom, with him as the heir to David, the apostles as “princes”. The Church lived in commmon early on, but they had elders/priests, bishops, deacons, orders of virgins and widows, who had distinct social roles in the Church. This kind of structure is the opposite of a classless society. The classes were certainly not economic or familial, but they are nonetheless classes. Even in the early church where common ownership was practiced, the apostles and elders had the distinct role of distributing the property. How are they not a different class? Communism would seem to contradict, therefore, the creation of a Church with a hierarchy built into it.
 
Kibbutz practice common ownership. Slaves and everyone else owned property because it was the norm, and it was already so long before Jesus came, at no point did he ever say it was a human right
 
There is personal property. What communism is about is common ownership of things like agricultural fields, factories, corporations… not things like your personal car or your watch or your clothes
 
The church hierarchy is not composed of social classes, communism wouldn’t be against it necessarily.

Jews and Christians accepted private property because it had always been the norm, there is no evidence they did it for theological reasons rather than practical or political reasons
 
spiderweb said:
It is anti-Christian at it’s core.
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That is how it was in the past, but not today in Russia. According to Gennady Zuyganov, chairman, Russia’s Communist Party. “It is a holy duty of Communists and the Orthodox Church to unite.”
“Jesus Christ was the world’s first Communist, Tamara Lavrischeva announced cheerfully.
“Jesus said, ‘Don’t collect earthly wealth, you won’t take it with you after death,’” the 78-year-old pensioner and Orthodox Christian told Al Jazeera”

 
MonteRCMS said:
The elite in socialism and communism are more equal than others.
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It depends what you mean by socialism and communism .

Simply by reading through this thread I can see that they mean different things to different people .

Until the folk on this thread agree to a definition there will be no genuine dialogue , and you could all stop wasting your time , and find something better to do . :roll_eyes:
 
Rob2 said:
It depends what you mean by socialism and communism .

Simply by reading through this thread I can see that they mean different things to different people .

Until the folk on this thread agree to a definition there will be no genuine dialogue , and you could all stop wasting your time , and find something better to do . :roll_eyes:
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This has been discussed in DETAIL for many decades.

Papal Encyclicals.

All kinda stuff.

The latest senior writer is Paul Kengor.

Look him up on Amazon.
 
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