Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

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Acts 2:44-46 describes property sharing among the early Christian communities. Some people have concluded that they were communists, or running some sort of communes.

Of course, the early Christians did all sorts of weird things, just look at all the rebuking Paul does in his letters. For example, the Christian community in Corinth was infested by literal motherf*ckers, until Paul rebuked them: 1 Corinthians 5:1

Anyway, if these property sharing experiments were real, they seem to have quietly fizzled out, because nobody spoke of them again. As if they were embarrassed. That's the pattern most communes follow.
What was going on before the fizzle? Well, sharing tends to cause trouble after a while, or sooner during normal times. But during times of emergency and high excitement people can often set aside their normal selfishness and work together. And those early days of foundings and persecution would have been a very exciting time. In fact, people thought they were living in the final days!

This mistake happens a lot in history, with people thinking the endtimes would come in their lifetimes, rather than ours, which the Bible is clear about: Mt.16:28, Mt.23:36, Mt.24:34, Mt.26:64, Mk.9:1, Mk.13:30, Lk.9:27, Lk.21:32, Phil.4:5, Heb.1:2, Rev.22:20.

As we speculate on how they did things, the communistic features of the early communities should not be exaggerated.

The most detailed blueprint for their economic system is in Acts 4:34-36. It's a straightforward charity. People donate money to the Apostles, who decide what to do with it. So it's not "From each according to ability, to each according to need". It's "from each according to generosity, to each according to what the Apostle thinks is a good idea." With the Apostles there to bail you out, it would have been easier to follow advice like Matthew 6:34, and Matthew 6.25. That's also not "From each according to ability".

The feasting table looks almost empty: maybe they were communists after all?

[Dr. Anthony J. Toole]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

Brother, we were lucky in the first few centuries after Jesus' death, that the authorities were very thorough in cleaning up His perfect message. I've read heretical gnostic texts that distinguish Jesus the individual (him), Christ the universal self (Him) who is the same in everyone, and God who is consciousness existing independently of the vehicle (a perceiving entity).

Heaven is actually here and now but living as the universal self rather than as an individual ego. And yet even the disciples taught directly by Jesus did not know how to access this psychological state.

John 14
4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Of course this is all complete nonsense. What about the Holy Ghost? What about discipline? What about tithing? In any case, I have not heard of the communist spin on early Christianity. No doubt it is a modern take on the heretical views of those early fake Christians.

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

people thinking the endtimes would come in their lifetimes, rather than ours, which the Bible is clear about: Mt.16:28, Mt.23:36, Mt.24:34, Mt.26:64, Mk.9:1, Mk.13:30, Lk.9:27, Lk.21:32, Phil.4:5, Heb.1:2, Rev.22:20.

I shake my head sometimes, when I see some of those "interpretations" of The New Testament made by people who obviously didn't understand what they were reading because their claims were wrong. It's similar with some of the new-age denominations who go on about being spiritual but if you ask them what "spiritual" means, they can't tell you.

There are many words in The Bible meaning different things such as soul, mind, nous, spirit, flesh, body, breath, heart and so on. Listening to the street preachers it's clear they confuse those different words as though

• they'd made up some new stuff for themselves
• then ascribed words from The Bible
• then pretended The Bible was talking about the new stuff they'd just made up
  • which it couldn't be because they just made it up last week
  • or 200 years ago (which amounts to the same thing)

and throughout recent centuries what a load of garbage they've dreamed up! They didn't know what the words meant at all. Many advocates are out there, on the streets preaching nonsense; some of them are communists, a particularly doctrinaire clique. They do not accept there is a soul (or spirit, but they are two different things referred to in The Bible using two different words) therefore Christians were never communists.

It's funny though how although they quote Marx and Lenin like it's going out of fashion [spoiler alert: IT IS] they squabble so vehemently among themselves.

James 4:1-2 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

Christians are not like that, being in agreement on all things as taught by God. If anyone makes up something contradicting what God has already revealed it goes without saying they have a contrary source of inspiration and are therefore not Christians. They're easy to identify:

I Corinthians 11:18-19 When ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

Those people may very well be communists.

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

Many advocates are out there, on the streets preaching nonsense;

Times of founding and change in general are a great time for crazies. I would have invested in soap boxes if I were alive then. If they had invented soap. And boxes.

Just look at the crazy ideas going around at the time of the American revolution. Some people said America should have had a king, even though Donald Trump hadn't even been born yet. And as for Thomas Paine....

Thomas Paine, a philosopher and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, advocated a capital grant and an unconditional citizens pension in his 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice.

The work is based on the contention that in the state of nature, "the earth, in its natural uncultivated state... was the common property of the human race." The concept of private ownership arose as a necessary result of the development of agriculture since it was impossible to distinguish the possession of improvements to the land from the possession of the land itself. Thus, Paine viewed private property as necessary while at the same time asserting that the basic needs of all humanity must be provided for by those with property, who have originally taken it from the general public. In some sense, that is their "payment" to non-property holders for the right to hold private property.

He was a Yang-Gang-Banger.

His logic is flawed from the start: the Earth and its natural resources are not the property of all people, they belong to the people to prayed for them to become valuable. The oil underground exists because True Christians prayed for oil.

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

As you know, I take no interest in politics. There was one point you could clear up for me:

Paine viewed private property as necessary while at the same time asserting that the basic needs of all humanity must be provided for by those with property, who have originally taken it from the general public.

The salient expression being:

those with property who have originally taken it from the general public

with Paine's argument being straightforward there, whether one agrees with it or not, but he's missed out another group:

those with property who have..NOT originally taken it from the general public

which is where I'm getting confused. I'll stick with oil because you used that as an example. Jesus also used oil in a parable.

Matthew 25:1, 6-9
1.. The kingdom of heaven [shall] be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom
6-8 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose
. . and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.
9a. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you:
9b. But go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

Are you saying that the product offered for sale (lamp oil) is the result of someone's effort to refine a raw material and therefore NOT originally taken from the general public?

The alternative would be for those lamp-virgins to find some wild oilseed (or seepage somewhere) and refine their own lamp oil but that would take far longer than the time it would take to earn the price of buying some. The vendor in that case is GIVING TIME to the general public, boosting earning capacity.

According to Paine's logic, wouldn't that mean the general public owed something to the vendor for taking time "in its natural uncultivated state" and improving it? The general public after all have not lost time but gained it.

[Social Construct]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

Isn't that a sickle? Aren't sickles used to cut broccoli? I've already said that Broccoli is triggering because it looks like the Mushroom cloud that blew up Herosumo.

Maybe I didn't really say it per se, but it's the sort of thing I would be expected to say, and it's deplorable of you not to anticipate this.




Also, communism, what's up with that?

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

communism

Perhaps you missed Paine's idea about those adsorbing resources in common ownership having a duty to provide compensation in the form of pensions? Looking beyond the surface it's apparent that other forms of recompense are equally beneficial.

Or more beneficial. When hunter/gatherers were in vogue anyone scooping in all the hazelnuts and selling them would be a menace. The human race, locally in this case, would lose access to the earth in its natural uncultivated state (insofar as hazelnuts were concerned) and be deprived of a common resource. In the case of communism, the state took the hazelnuts and they all went rotten. Oligarchs could enforce exchange rates

. . . . . . . hazelnut . . .mammoth . . . .opium
Oligarch 1 . . . 1 . . . . . . 1
Oligarch 2 . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Oligarch 3 . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . 1

but the problem is that no new resource is being generated and no-one has any more time than they had before. Agriculture enables not only earning capacity to increase but leisure time too. Let's say that a special caste took all the leisure time. They could exploit superstitions about weather and livestock fertility to get the best for themselves but essentially it's a parasite caste and every society based on such lies collapsed. The more you look to lies the more likely you are to collapse. Thomas Paine may not have obsessed over broccoli but did he see the value of distributed leisure? Where everyone could pursue their own leisure activities but not co-opt others as their minions?

Obadiah 1:3 The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Were the early Christians communists? A look at Acts 2:44-46

[1 minute excerpt]

The speaker here wants us to imagine that aliens turned up bringing a mechanism perfectly tailored for deception.

Imagine today that aliens came down ... Imagine for a minute folks that the aliens have the ‘real’ Bible. And that's what they say. They say, ‘Listen now, you people have been dealing with a lot of mumbojumbo’ (or) ‘you've got the real Word Of God but you've got it as it was written for practically chimpanzees; it's no wonder you people can't understand it today, it was written for much more simple people – we have a Bible that's written for scientific intelligent, you know, people like yourselves, you're almost at the point where you could understand it, unfortunately it's written in Alpha-Centaurian. But we'll explain it to you.’ What kind of power does that convey to the people who are going to explain it to you? You just kinda have to take their word for it, don't you, and if you honestly believe this is the Word Of God, that's a heluva lot of power. That's the power the church had before Luther translates The Bible into a vernacular language.

When we see such techniques being used, what doubt can there be that deception is being practised? Jesus saw it in the false teachers of the day, we see it now. And not only in Rome. Mecca is the same.

Perhaps the false teachers of Christendom have had their claws drawn for now and ecclesiastical law can only affect those who submit voluntarily. Sure, but have they repudiated their former stance? No! Do they refund the assets extorted? No! These are our parasite caste, arrogating to themselves as much leisure time as possible and promulgating lies. I do not believe they are deceived themselves, certainly not in the higher echelons, and like vermin given half a chance they'll encroach wherever there's an opening to infest our lives with demonstrable lies and bloat themselves at our expense. If anyone wants to know what that would be like, varying degrees of influence over laws-of-the-land may be found in places where clerics still have that influence or are themselves The Law. None of them are places any sane person would want to live.

There are also places where that influence has been removed or where a nation was constituted without established functions for liars. In those places do the false teachers quietly lick their wounds? No! They're banging at the drawbridge like savages, yearning to get back in. Unfortunately we know their game has moved on from the Alpha-Centaurian example, can see the consequences, can see what their trying to do and what the alien menace perpetuates in places where it still holds sway.

Only by reading The Bible can The Truth be understood, the motivation behind all liars perceived, just as Jesus understood and told us, so that we would know.