"Jesus was a socialist" -- rebuttal

[DENNYINMI]

You listed some excellent essays. Rerum Novarum is an excellent encyclical that address this topic, the Church had it right in the late 19th century and it continues to ring true today, amazing grace you could say.
It’s easy to see who actually reads these pearls.

 

[Sophie111]

OK. But the question asked is whether Jesus was a socialist.
Not sure why it matters whether his socialist teaching “works” (whatever that means) on the macro level in a fallen world.

One could equally say Christianity doesn’t succeed very well in a fallen world also.
Nor did Jesus who was executed as a criminal.
But then, maybe that depends on one’s definition of Christianity also.

I recall 40 years ago arguing with a friend whether Jesus was a failure.
He said he wasn’t because he rose from the dead.
That cannot be proven though can it…and typically only “true believers” hold this to be true while “true gainsayers” poo poo such wishful thinking.
We could have the same pointless argument re historical Socialism.

Regardless, Jesus (and the Early Church) did teach/counsel renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community. This is an essential tenet of all Socialist movements regardless of whether they worked well or not.

 

[rose321]

he would have agitated for the Roman government to take care of Jerusalem’s poor – housing projects, welfare payments, and all that. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t.

Respectfully opinion only.
Jesus was he making us aware there are both among us the >> Physical Poor and the Spiritual Poor?
For when Jesus came both existed, did they not?
Jesus makes it clear he defines each does he not? == Like you will always have the poor (physical) among us?

(Besides charity, Jesus also preached other concepts, like repentance from sin, conversion of life, holiness, righteousness, morality, etc., but these concepts get completely overlooked by those who are trying to use Him to make a political point that would have been completely foreign to Him.)

,
Charity- Jesus teaching on charity is, serving the needs of those in want, providing physical care>food, health, clothing, shelter, defending, protecting etc is found throughout the whole Bible it clearly defines who are the>Physically Poor< being part of Jesus teaching also, right?

Repenting > Jesus teaching now about the> Spiritual Poor>>calling out for all to live a life of Holiness, Know who you are? Know who you are not? About sweep clean our Temple (our bodies) within clean…Our Hearts Souls and Mind, could this be what Jesus was teaching also?

Political point?
Why our Heavenly Father sends Jesus?
My kingdom( His Government Laws) is not of this world? Jesus clearly wants to make that known does he not, found within Bible verses?

Jesus tells us clearly? >I come and been sent only to the House of Israel, is this not written?

House of Israel (in the north-10 Tribes of Israel?) was politically conquered by their enemies, who now ruled over them? Kings who worshiped different god or gods, practice idolatry…Spiritual bonds?
Over time 10 lost Tribes of Israels forgot who they were and the only True Creator of all, they once worshiped, would this be correct? etc

Read all of Matthew chapter 23 is Jesus not going after, giving all His Woes Scribes (teachers of the Laws our Heavenly Father’s Kingdom Laws, right??

Jesus was he not well aware of His Ancient forefathers and their Political History?
How many Nations, Political Government ,Empires throughout History at one time conquered and ruled over Israel?

Did Jesus not say, are there not 12 hrs in a day to work?
Did Jesus not say a Honest day work for a honest days wage?
So he was not a socialist was he?
But Jesus was against greed and the powers that be?

Read Leviticus Laws about those who defraud a labor of his true wage or hold it back, also is that not all written?
Did Jesus not say you will know them by their fruits? Works toward others? What they Labor for and what they worship or serve?

Just a lot of questions and did Jesus not work, labor also daily in his own preaching and was out there laboring, defending those who were held in bondage by the authority powers Nations etc?

Did Jesus not come to set His people free out of bondage both Spiritual and Physical?
Not a socialist was he?

Peace

 

[HarryStotle]

Regardless, Jesus (and the Early Church) did teach/counsel renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community. This is an essential tenet of all Socialist movements regardless of whether they worked well or not.

Demonstrate, if your don’t mind, where Jesus taught “renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community,” was meant to be a universal principle or, as you say, “an essential tenet.”

Certainly, he advised the rich young man to sell all he had, but he didn’t say “Give all you own to the community for common ownership.” He said, “Give it to the poor.” And yet when the woman with the expensive ointment was chastised by Judas for not selling her ointment and giving the money to the poor, Jesus said, “You will have the poor always.”

Wisdom is known by her many children.

That seems to imply that renunciation of private property wasn’t a universal principle but a question of circumstance. Again, the early Church practiced common ownership, but that very well could have been because of the situation the Church found itself in at that time in history.

The CCC doesn’t teach common ownership as the rule, except in monastic communities, which are by definition under one rule in the life of the community.

 

[HarryStotle]

One could equally say Christianity doesn’t succeed very well in a fallen world also.
Nor did Jesus who was executed as a criminal.

True, Christianity doesn’t succeed according to the rules and principles of the fallen world, and (as you point out) neither did Jesus because he was crucified.

So the point here might be: how is success to be measured?

By temporal fallen-world standards, or by the eternal standards of God?

Given that socialism, in all its forms, takes into account only the temporal needs and wants of a delimited world view and absolutizes immediate needs and wants, there is no need to think God shares that aim, unless you also want to absolutize a very limited worldview as the one necessarily espoused by God. As if God is no more or less than merely the embodiment of collective human success.

Still, you would have to argue that socialism is the best system for optimizing human success. Unfortunately, that isn’t borne out by any socialist experiment ever attempted. The genocide toll doesn’t appear to cry out, "Success!“

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Where on this planet is socialism working?

It works better in places of poverty. In some poor areas they have what they call ‘neighbourhood watch’.

People look around to see who is eating, and then they go and sit with them. The food is shared as there is an understanding that those who have today, may have to go and share with those who have tomorrow.

 

[Genesis315]

I think given the varying definitions of Socialism bandied about in this thread, this passage from the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno is helpful:

1. The other section, which has kept the name Socialism, is surely more moderate. It not only professes the rejection of violence but modifies and tempers to some degree, if it does not reject entirely, the class struggle and the abolition of private ownership. One might say that, terrified by its own principles and by the conclusions drawn therefrom by Communism, Socialism inclines toward and in a certain measure approaches the truths which Christian tradition has always held sacred; for it cannot be denied that its demands at times come very near those that Christian reformers of society justly insist upon.
2. For if the class struggle abstains from enmities and mutual hatred, it gradually changes into an honest discussion of differences founded on a desire for justice, and if this is not that blessed social peace which we all seek, it can and ought to be the point of departure from which to move forward to the mutual cooperation of the Industries and Professions. So also the war declared on private ownership, more and more abated, is being so restricted that now, finally, not the possession itself of the means of production is attacked but rather a kind of sovereignty over society which ownership has, contrary to all right, seized and usurped. For such sovereignty belongs in reality not to owners but to the public authority. If the foregoing happens, it can come even to the point that imperceptibly these ideas of the more moderate socialism will no longer differ from the desires and demands of those who are striving to remold human society on the basis of Christian principles. For certain kinds of property, it is rightly contended, ought to be reserved to the State since they carry with them a dominating power so great that cannot without danger to the general welfare be entrusted to private individuals.
3. Such just demands and desire have nothing in them now which is inconsistent with Christian truth, and much less are they special to Socialism. Those who work solely toward such ends have, therefore, no reason to become socialists.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x...s/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html

 

[Sophie111]

Demonstrate, if your don’t mind, where Jesus taught “renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community,” was meant to be a universal principle or, as you say, “an essential tenet.”

Why?
I said loss of individual ownership of property in favour of a community seems an essential tenet of all the many definitions of Socialism that float around. Just as it is in many sub communities of the Catholic Church following Jesus’s own counsel to those who wish to be perfect.

All Catholics know this surely or have I missed something.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Demonstrate, if your don’t mind, where Jesus taught “renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community,” was meant to be a universal principle or, as you say, “an essential tenet.”

Why?
I said loss of individual ownership of property in favour of a community seems an essential tenet of all the many definitions of Socialism that float around. Just as it is in many sub communities of the Catholic Church following Jesus’s own counsel to those who wish to be perfect.

All Catholics know this surely or have I missed something.

What you are missing is the need to demonstrate what you claim to be true rather than just assert that it is.

In every form of socialism yet practiced, and according to Marx himself, socialism as the removal of private property and control of all goods by the state was a step towards communism – the gradual erosion of state control as individuals simply shared all goods communally as a matter of normative practice.

https://stream.org/on-communism-and-socialism-many-americans-are-still-clueless/

If voluntary communism is indeed the end towards which socialism is aimed, then why couldn’t a Catholic or Christian merely assert that capitalism could just as easily lead to communal sharing of property by autonomous choice rather than as imposed or enforced by the State?

If morally autonomous actions, where all goods are shared equally, is the goal of Christianity, then why would a Catholic or a Christian opt for state enforced sharing of goods? Why not permit individual autonomy and a free marketplace to lead to what we would suppose to be a utopia of communal sharing, if human beings are “naturally good?”

Isn’t the optimal political state one where all individuals freely choose to share goods equally with each other? So why wouldn’t we simply permit that to naturally and organically happen by free enterprise and a free market place? Why would we force it to occur through transitional socialist control?

We wouldn’t, as Catholics, exactly be in favour of forced conversions, so why would we be in favour of forced socialism leading to communism? As if such a utopian communism would come about more easily by force as by free choice?

The fact is, communal sharing, as a widespread political reality, won’t be realized because of the fallen nature of humankind – neither by choice nor by force. That is why the Kingdom of God is not of this world, although it is manifest in the world as the Body of Christ, the Church.

 

[Sophie111]

If morally autonomous actions, where all goods are shared equally, is the goal of Christianity,

No I dont think anyone is saying this. Renunciation of personal possessions is a counsel not a command - and only for those who wish to be perfect in this life.

If voluntary communism is indeed the end towards which socialism is aimed

No, I dont think this is a widely agreed definition of socialism.
Simply assuming any socialist group that doesnt tend to totalitariansim or communism isnt really socialism just begs the question even further I would think… Though it seems self-evident to me that a common tenet of all socialists is willingness to live in a community where individual ownership is forgone. The rest seems to vary wildly among different forms of socialism.

What you are missing is the need to demonstrate what you claim to be true rather than just assert that it is.

Yes sharing my experienced, personal opinion is where I am coming from. If you believe my observations re the Church are grossly mistaken you are welcome to demonstrate that rather than simply assert it is so. Having said that I think my limited observations re Jesus’s counsels on perfection are fairly self-evidently true.

Yes I would also think it self evident that monastic communities do relinquish personal property and often have communal ownership of their means of production. This is clearly not commanded, nor a goal, for all Christians. Just as perfect chastity is not a goal for all Christians - God did say go forth and multiply afterall didnt He .

 

[HarryStotle]

Sedona:

At the time of Jesus, there were a good number of other known Messiah’s circulating their ideas around the area where Jesus lived. Jesus had the fewest followers of any of them.

You’ve got an interesting perspective on Jesus Christ thank you for sharing!

I would ask you this: if there were many other messiah’s at the time and they had many more followers; why aren’t we talking about them 2000 years later? I’m seriously curious as I hadn’t heard that.

First off, the claim that there were a “good number” of Messiahs and that Jesus had “the fewest followers of any of them,” is a pretty bold one. Note that it was merely asserted without any corroboration. In fact, I haven’t ever seen such a claim made by anyone, anywhere, so it would be interesting to see something like a plausible case be made for the claim.

I’m not sure how “good” a “good number” needs to be to sustain such a claim – two, three, two hundred? How about at least a dozen? The names and circumstances would be a good starting point.

I suspect that won’t happen, however, but your question is a good starting point, since it gets at the question of why his numbers of followers exploded in a short span of time while the others merely disappeared into the fissures of history.

 

[HarryStotle]

No, I dont think this is a widely agreed definition of socialism.

Except that it is the definition from Marx, himself, and the one given as the main driver for the imposition of state ownership (socialism) in the Hegelian inspired political journey towards communism.

Merely because you or your modern socialist sources don’t agree to it might be more of a function of modern leftists trying to distance socialism from communism owing to the complete genocidal disaster that self-proclaimed communists have wrecked upon humanity in the past century, than it is about authentic Marxist political theory.

 

[1cthlctrth]

Agreed. Socialism condemns personal property and religious liberty.

 

[Sophie111]

Except that it is the definition from Marx, himself,

So what???

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Except that it is the definition from Marx, himself,

So what???

That is your reply?

Keep in mind that you haven’t yet explained why free market capitalism isn’t a better route to voluntary communal sharing than top-down state sanctioned socialism.

The “so what” is that you haven’t made the case that “Jesus was a socialist,” nor that he and the early Church taught “in favour of common OWNERSHIP by the community.”

Regardless, Jesus (and the Early Church) did teach/counsel renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community. This is an essential tenet of all Socialist movements regardless of whether they worked well or not.

Jesus never anywhere suggested common ownership – he specifically said to the rich man, “Give to the poor!” and not “Start a communal sharing program with the poor!” – and a strong case could be made that the Church practiced common ownership only during very difficult times or limited to small monastic communities. When monastic communities, even at their apex, grew beyond a certain size, they split and new ones were founded.

Large scale, national socialism was never taught by the Church and the CCC explicitly teaches against it.

So your “So what?” amounts to you having made absolutely no case for the trajectory from Jesus and the early Church to a ringing endorsement of political socialism.

You have to actually make a case for anyone to rebut that case.

What you have so far, are some examples – Jesus suggesting to some individuals to divest themselves of wealth and some instances of the early Church pooling limited resources – from the past that have some passing resemblance to the “from each according to his ability…etc.” doctrine of socialism, but on that basis you have no real grounds for claiming an irrefutable connection between the two.

You haven’t made any such case. That is the so what!

 

[HarryStotle]

No, I dont think this is a widely agreed definition of socialism.

Oh, and by the way, I am using the very same definition you posted in #66.

"Jesus was a socialist" -- rebuttal Apologetics

You need to define socialism. Americans likely define it differently from others. If we use this definition: “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” then I suggest a better case could be made for saying the Church is socialist than not. The Church is a community. It counsels but does not command that this community hold things in common and that…

IE., a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

It is just that Marx and many other socialists following him advocated that State (“community as a whole”) control was only meant to be a temporary measure until the community normalized the egalitarian production, distribution and exchange such that became habitual and voluntary at the micro level rather than imposed from above (macro.) This voluntary state of sharing – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’” – was what Marx called “communism.”

 

[HarryStotle]

Regardless, Jesus (and the Early Church) did teach/counsel renunciation of private property in favour of common ownership by the community.

Promote this as a foundational strategy for each nuclear family and to an attenuated degree beyond the family to the parish and community, bottom up, and you have the essential teaching of the Church. Communities like the one you cited in France are more like an extended family than a state government, which is why it cannot serve as a model for that State, unless you want also to promote the family as a functional model for the State to emulate.

Where your sentiment goes wrong is in thinking that socialism could work large scale and imposed from the top down, as if the State were even capable of that kind of organizational prowess without moving far beyond its reasonable mandate.

 

[Sophie111]

Oh, and by the way, I am using the very same definition you posted in #66.

You need to define socialism. Americans likely define it differently from others. If we use this definition: “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” then I suggest a better case could be made for saying the Church is socialist than not. The Church is a community. It counsels but does not command that this community hold things in common and that…

Yes I think its readily apparant that Jesus himself did not live fully according to the above definition.
But I never said he did.
I said his teaching directly and quickly led to many Church sub-communities (eg monastics) doing so.

 

[Sophie111]

Where your sentiment goes wrong is in thinking that socialism could work large scale and imposed from the top down,

May I suggest you look up the Catholic Encyclopedia for an understanding of the difference between a “counsel” and a “command” in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04435a.htm

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Oh, and by the way, I am using the very same definition you posted in #66.

You need to define socialism. Americans likely define it differently from others. If we use this definition: “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” then I suggest a better case could be made for saying the Church is socialist than not. The Church is a community. It counsels but does not command that this community hold things in common and that…

Yes I think its readily apparant that Jesus himself did not live fully according to the above definition.
But I never said he did.
I said his teaching directly and quickly led to many Church sub-communities (eg monastics) doing so.

So the only thing remaining for you, then, is to show that the Church promoted entire empires, kingdoms, countries, sub-national states, or even cities, “doing so.”

We would suppose that the Vatican itself would be an ideal candidate for “thriving socialist state” if the Church actually thought socialism were feasible, large(r) scale.