It was communal spirit. Yes you can call that communism if you want. But what most people mean by communism is the state backed variety that you are forced to participate in. And this wasn’t that. What happened in the early church was voluntary, as is made quite clear in the passage. The rest of the epistles make it quite clear that private property was ok and the church couldn’t force people to share anything (not even a fixed percentage) because all pleas to help the poor are i) voluntary and ii) based on ones conscience as to what the right amount is. That looks a lot more like “moral capitalism” than any kind of communist system.
I’m an atheist socialist by the way, I’m not saying this to defend Christianity or capitalism in any way.
It’s been so long I honestly don’t remember, this was at least 20 years ago. He might have, but all that stuck with me was how stupid it was to spend this much time on ‘this obvious parallel with modern communism isn’t communism, because communism is bad.’
Mark of a good sermon: did they say what it is?
It was communal spirit. Yes you can call that communism if you want. But what most people mean by communism is the state backed variety that you are forced to participate in. And this wasn’t that. What happened in the early church was voluntary, as is made quite clear in the passage. The rest of the epistles make it quite clear that private property was ok and the church couldn’t force people to share anything (not even a fixed percentage) because all pleas to help the poor are i) voluntary and ii) based on ones conscience as to what the right amount is. That looks a lot more like “moral capitalism” than any kind of communist system.
I’m an atheist socialist by the way, I’m not saying this to defend Christianity or capitalism in any way.
It’s been so long I honestly don’t remember, this was at least 20 years ago. He might have, but all that stuck with me was how stupid it was to spend this much time on ‘this obvious parallel with modern communism isn’t communism, because communism is bad.’