Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32-35)
Wow, those apostles and primitive Christians completely missed the metaphor!
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.’
It’s always fascinating to go back and re-read the Bible without the blinders of dogma on. For instance, Paul was held out as a divinely-appointed guide to the early church, but if you don’t take his conversion story at face value it’s quite clear that he’s a conservative trying to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus. That fun children’s story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho (remember the French Peas from VeggieTales)? That was the opening act of a years-long campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing that God commanded the Israelites undertake to claim the Promised Land!
My favorite, though, is Song of Solomon. It’s straight-up erotic poetry, right in the middle of a book handed out to children! I know they claim it’s metaphorical, but come the fuck on… the author spends whole chapters describing his lover’s naked body, that ain’t a metaphor for anything other than “I want to bone you.”
I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s good erotic poetry, though. I’ve tried “your breasts are like fawns, twins of a gazelle” on my wife and was immediately ejected from the bedroom. YMMV, though.
to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus.
tbh authentic Paul was in many ways more radical that Jesus… Jesus told people to give to the poor because the end was near, and so did Paul. Jesus chose all male disciples, Paul refers to Phoebe, Prisca, Euodia and Syntyche (all women) as his “fellow workers” or “ministers”. Jesus affirmed “for this reason a man will leave his parents and be united with his wife”. From Paul we have “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”. Jesus followed synagogue traditions (male only), Paul allowed women to pray and prophesy in his churches. Jesus taught the Jews to follow a loving version of the Torah, Paul pushed the utterly radical idea that Jews were freed from the Torah and united with gentiles in “one body”.
(The conservative line taken in later letters attributed to Paul are believed by academic scholars to be from his later school of disciples, not from him himself.)
There are some aspects of Paul which tick the conservative box in that he comes across as a sex negative asexual who uses part of his soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad and linking the idea of anything but purely reproductive sex with a spiritual uncleanliness and immorality. It fuels a lot of bad shit from purity doctrine to anti-same sex relationship rhetoric.
Not that sexual control over women and reproduction particularly hasn’t been a worldwide phenomenon but instilling pleasure and sex directly to sin really linked in to all the conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained so I feel like there’s a bit of a “depends on your definition of conservative” thing.
Oh both Paul and Jesus were morally conservative, no doubt about that. I was replying to someone I felt was implying Paul was somehow co-opting Jesus’ liberal movement into something more conservative and respectable. Whereas I think the opposite is true. Paul pushed frontiers Jesus never mentioned.
soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad
I don’t think this is quite the right angle though. He was certainly disgusted by same sex acts and the contexts in which likely had in mind: cultic practises, orgies and temple pederasty.
But he is never against sexual pleasure within heterosexual monogamy as if there was something distasteful about pleasure itself. He never states that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Never condemns solo masturbation for instance (which one might have expected since he had a non-jewish audience). Also, neither he nor any other NT writer calls into question sexual pleasure once a couple can no longer bear children. (Which you would expect if they were against unproductive pleasure in a puritan way). On the contrary, his assertion that a wife’s body belongs to her husband and a husband’s body belongs to his wife and that couples were to not deprive each other of sex except by mutual agreement has to be seen as being both radically democratic in how relationships are conducted by also acknowledging that pleasure in sex serves a purpose in itself. (One only has to imagine a would-be prayerful monastic husband, perhaps emulating Paul himself, being told, no, you have to have sex with your wife, to realise that Paul was not some acerbic prude)
Paul’s view he explicitly links to his expectation that the world is ending soon (forgive me I can look up references at the moment). He wishes that everyone was as he was (single and celebrate). But this appears to have been born out of a controversy over whether or not travelling apostles could expect churches to bear the cost of a wife travelling with them. Given his other statements on wishing to never cause stumbling blocks of cost on already very poor communities this seems to be born out of practical mindedness rather than any kind of general anti-sex view. He regards the better practice to be celebrate and await Jesus return. But that if people felt they’d otherwise be too tempted, then they should marry and that was fine. He explicitly notes that married people will suffer a lot in life, which has to be read in the context of the ongoing persecution of Christians. And the use of torture of one’s loved ones as a psychological weapon.
conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained
Yes. I believe Paul was visionary and radical. But I also think he felt his innovations were partially justified given “time was short”. If there weren’t enough male ministers and gospel workers then he was ok with talented women breaking the social mould. (And not begrudgingly, he sings their praises many multiple times). But it’s impossible to tell how he would have felt or spoken had he known his system would be used for 2000 years not 20.
A later generation of disciples apparently decided Jesus’ return was delayed didn’t have the same appetite as Paul for breaking the mould and fell back on traditional gender roles more firmly.
Wow, those apostles and primitive Christians completely missed the metaphor!
I once sat through a whole ass sermon about how actually that’s not communism 🙃
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.’
It was the only time it happened and it was voluntary. That’s pretty different from most real world communist systems.
It’s always fascinating to go back and re-read the Bible without the blinders of dogma on. For instance, Paul was held out as a divinely-appointed guide to the early church, but if you don’t take his conversion story at face value it’s quite clear that he’s a conservative trying to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus. That fun children’s story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho (remember the French Peas from VeggieTales)? That was the opening act of a years-long campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing that God commanded the Israelites undertake to claim the Promised Land!
My favorite, though, is Song of Solomon. It’s straight-up erotic poetry, right in the middle of a book handed out to children! I know they claim it’s metaphorical, but come the fuck on… the author spends whole chapters describing his lover’s naked body, that ain’t a metaphor for anything other than “I want to bone you.”
I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s good erotic poetry, though. I’ve tried “your breasts are like fawns, twins of a gazelle” on my wife and was immediately ejected from the bedroom. YMMV, though.
tbh authentic Paul was in many ways more radical that Jesus… Jesus told people to give to the poor because the end was near, and so did Paul. Jesus chose all male disciples, Paul refers to Phoebe, Prisca, Euodia and Syntyche (all women) as his “fellow workers” or “ministers”. Jesus affirmed “for this reason a man will leave his parents and be united with his wife”. From Paul we have “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”. Jesus followed synagogue traditions (male only), Paul allowed women to pray and prophesy in his churches. Jesus taught the Jews to follow a loving version of the Torah, Paul pushed the utterly radical idea that Jews were freed from the Torah and united with gentiles in “one body”.
(The conservative line taken in later letters attributed to Paul are believed by academic scholars to be from his later school of disciples, not from him himself.)
There are some aspects of Paul which tick the conservative box in that he comes across as a sex negative asexual who uses part of his soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad and linking the idea of anything but purely reproductive sex with a spiritual uncleanliness and immorality. It fuels a lot of bad shit from purity doctrine to anti-same sex relationship rhetoric.
Not that sexual control over women and reproduction particularly hasn’t been a worldwide phenomenon but instilling pleasure and sex directly to sin really linked in to all the conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained so I feel like there’s a bit of a “depends on your definition of conservative” thing.
Oh both Paul and Jesus were morally conservative, no doubt about that. I was replying to someone I felt was implying Paul was somehow co-opting Jesus’ liberal movement into something more conservative and respectable. Whereas I think the opposite is true. Paul pushed frontiers Jesus never mentioned.
I don’t think this is quite the right angle though. He was certainly disgusted by same sex acts and the contexts in which likely had in mind: cultic practises, orgies and temple pederasty.
But he is never against sexual pleasure within heterosexual monogamy as if there was something distasteful about pleasure itself. He never states that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Never condemns solo masturbation for instance (which one might have expected since he had a non-jewish audience). Also, neither he nor any other NT writer calls into question sexual pleasure once a couple can no longer bear children. (Which you would expect if they were against unproductive pleasure in a puritan way). On the contrary, his assertion that a wife’s body belongs to her husband and a husband’s body belongs to his wife and that couples were to not deprive each other of sex except by mutual agreement has to be seen as being both radically democratic in how relationships are conducted by also acknowledging that pleasure in sex serves a purpose in itself. (One only has to imagine a would-be prayerful monastic husband, perhaps emulating Paul himself, being told, no, you have to have sex with your wife, to realise that Paul was not some acerbic prude)
Paul’s view he explicitly links to his expectation that the world is ending soon (forgive me I can look up references at the moment). He wishes that everyone was as he was (single and celebrate). But this appears to have been born out of a controversy over whether or not travelling apostles could expect churches to bear the cost of a wife travelling with them. Given his other statements on wishing to never cause stumbling blocks of cost on already very poor communities this seems to be born out of practical mindedness rather than any kind of general anti-sex view. He regards the better practice to be celebrate and await Jesus return. But that if people felt they’d otherwise be too tempted, then they should marry and that was fine. He explicitly notes that married people will suffer a lot in life, which has to be read in the context of the ongoing persecution of Christians. And the use of torture of one’s loved ones as a psychological weapon.
Yes. I believe Paul was visionary and radical. But I also think he felt his innovations were partially justified given “time was short”. If there weren’t enough male ministers and gospel workers then he was ok with talented women breaking the social mould. (And not begrudgingly, he sings their praises many multiple times). But it’s impossible to tell how he would have felt or spoken had he known his system would be used for 2000 years not 20.
A later generation of disciples apparently decided Jesus’ return was delayed didn’t have the same appetite as Paul for breaking the mould and fell back on traditional gender roles more firmly.
To be fair, the monk robe and tonsure haircut might not have helped…