Was Jesus a socialist?

Correction:

I wrote:

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Rwingett drives home his point:

“We have James 5:1-6 where the rich are said to have miseries coming to them for exploiting their workers.”

True. But what Rwingett does not recognize is that even here with James, the behavior is a manifestation of the life of Christ which has caused the believers to be born of God:

“He brought us forth by the word of truth, purposing that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18)
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I mean that though James is talking about the bad behavior of worldly people, His exhortation is chiefly toward those born of God. This life within them should guide them not to behave that way.

I have left unaddressed a few important points of rwingett. I want to say something about them, but not too long.

Jesus told the Pharisees that the kingdom of God was in the midst of them not within them.

In saying this He indicated that He Himself is the kingdom of God in it's essential nature and essence. Since He was in their midst the kingdom of God was in their midst. They needed to come to Him.

Jesus did not tell the unbelieving Pharisees who were in opposition to Him that the kingdom of God was within them.

Originally posted by jaywill
Correction:

I wrote:
===================
Rwingett drives home his point:

“We have James 5:1-6 where the rich are said to have miseries coming to them for exploiting their workers.”

True. But what Rwingett does not recognize is that even here with James, the behavior is a manifestation of the life of Christ which has caused the believe he unbelieving Pharisees who were in opposition to Him that the kingdom of God was within them.

I contend that this post is in violation of the debate rules and that the judges discount it. Jaywill has already entered his opening argument. Any corrections or additions he may have should wait until his closing argument.

Originally posted by rwingett
I contend that this post is in violation of the debate rules and that the judges discount it. Jaywill has already entered his opening argument. Any corrections or additions he may have should wait until his closing argument.

that's what i thought actually.

Originally posted by rwingett
I contend that this post is in violation of the debate rules and that the judges discount it. Jaywill has already entered his opening argument. Any corrections or additions he may have should wait until his closing argument.

Ooops. Sorry.

My opponent’s argument seems to rest on two great misconceptions. The first is that he seems to think that my position holds that Jesus is either irrelevant or not necessary. The second is his inability to recognize the rich pre-Marxist history of socialism and its long, historical intertwinement with Christianity.

As to the first point, my opponent could not be more mistaken. While it is demonstrably true that mankind can construct socialist systems without recourse to Jesus, they will necessarily be of the type of -isms (Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism) that have fallen short of the socialist kingdom of God that Jesus espoused. That is because they deal solely with material phenomena - the equitable distribution and allocation of resources. This egalitarian transformation of society may be the bare minimum to qualify something as being ‘socialist’, but it is merely the outward manifestation of the socialism of Jesus. Where Jesus becomes absolutely essential is in the inner transformation of the individuals who are to build the kingdom of God. To quote Leo Tolstoy, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Although he was a prominent Christian socialist,Tolstoy condemned Marxist materialism. He felt that the inner transformation of man was a necessary precondition for the successful transformation of society. And that inner transformation is where Jesus comes in.

Jesus says that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is not applied to just one’s family, or friends, but to everyone. This unconditional and universal sharing of love is the “currency” in the spiritual socialism of God’s economy, or the OIKONOMIA that my opponent speaks of. This inner transformation is the primary, necessary contribution offered by Jesus. To enter into the kingdom one must first transform oneself. To quote Tolstoy once again, “It (the socialism of Jesus)* will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power…There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.” So unlike the “human socialism” that my opponent speaks of (which concerns itself solely with the economic sphere of goods and property), the socialism of Jesus contains a spiritually transformative side as well.

As for the second point, my opponent has chosen to completely ignore my many examples of pre-Marxist, Christian socialist groups that have existed in the last 2,000 years. Even though the Christianity that followed the Great Constantinian Shift sought to downplay and minimize it, the impulse toward socialism is deeply embedded in the Christian subconscious. As I said, pre-Marxist socialism was almost exclusively a Christian endeavor. The emerging Christian groups which eventually gained ascendancy in the first century successfully managed to shift the concept of the kingdom of God into the distant future, or to the afterlife. This protected their status and position in society by convincing people to accept their lot in life and to passively wait. Then with the advent of “godless communism” it became increasingly unfashionable to point out the socialist character of Jesus’ ministry.

Fortunately, there have been many Christians over the years who have seen through the spiritual bankruptcy of the established churches. Some, like John Ball and Thomas Meunzer, instigated peasant revolts with their preaching. Unfortunately for them, they failed to see that you cannot divorce the ends from the means. A Christian socialist kingdom of God cannot be ushered in through violent or coercive means. The Hutterites (like the Amish) clearly saw that nonviolence was the key, and as a result their pacifist, egalitarian, communal lifestyle has continued to flourish even after nearly 500 years. They were living a Jesus inspired socialist lifestyle for more than 300 years before the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

It is now time to pull Jesus down from the distant heavens and make him relevant to our life in this world. It is time to scrape away the many calcified layers of mythology that have built up around him and get back to the original man. It is time to realize that caring for the poor, the sick and the needy is not an option that Christians may avail themselves to as they see fit. It is the very essence of what it means to be a Christian. There will be no physical second coming of Jesus, with the kingdom following in his wake. The second coming occurs within each man as he disavows a life of covetousness and greed and works to build the kingdom by his own effort. As the Gospel of Thomas said, “the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.” Change yourself, then you can change the world.



*The actual term Tolstoy uses is ‘Anarchy’. This is a term that means many things to many people. For Tolstoy it means antinomian Christian socialism.



Response to Jaywill’s late addition:
My opponent chooses to go with the translation from Luke 17:21 that says the Kingdom is “in your midst.” This translation is far from unanimous. The King James Version, the American Standard version, the English Revised Version, and several other versions all say, “the kingdom of God is within you.” The New American Standard Bible says, “the kingdom of God is in your midst." A few other translations say, “the kingdom of God is among you." So which is it? The Gospel of Thomas tells us that, “the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.” It is both. As I have demonstrated in my closing argument above, the kingdom is first within you. Its outward manifestation on earth follows in due course. In any event, it is not a GPS coordinate fixed upon the present location of Jesus, as my opponent would have you believe. Jesus is not the kingdom himself. He provided people with the information people needed to find the kingdom themselves (the kingdom is spread upon the earth and men do not see it).

I wish to thank the judges and the readers who have followed this debate for their patience. I hope it will lead to a vigorous debate after Jaywill has made his concluding argument.

Originally posted by rwingett
I contend that this post is in violation of the debate rules and that the judges discount it. Jaywill has already entered his opening argument. Any corrections or additions he may have should wait until his closing argument.

Noted.

For my part, I had already decided not to consider those corrections but it's good to make this explicit so that jaywill may be able to address any possible corrections in his final post. As such, I will also not consider your reply to it.

Obviously, I speak only for myself here.

Originally posted by Palynka
Noted.

For my part, I had already decided not to consider those corrections but it's good to make this explicit so that jaywill may be able to address any possible corrections in his final post. As such, I will also not consider your reply to it.

Obviously, I speak only for myself here.

I second the abv mentioned quote.

Originally posted by rwingett
I contend that this post is in violation of the debate rules and that the judges discount it. Jaywill has already entered his opening argument. Any corrections or additions he may have should wait until his closing argument.

I concur. Jaywill may of course make whatever corrections/clarifications he wants in his closing statements.

Since I am disregarding jaywill's late addition I will also disregard your reply to his late addition.

Dealing with my opponent’s two objections:

Rwingett’s indeed espouses a socialism in which the resurrected Jesus is not necessary. He points out that Tolstoy vouches for the “inner transformation” of people changing themselves. But my opponent wishes to deny that this “inner transformation “comes about through Christ’s. If this is what Jesus taught and if this is what the apostle bore witness too, then we should accept that this is what Jesus established.

Here in John 14 through 17 we see a portion of Christ’s teaching about His presence with the disciples in His state of resurrection:

“Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me, because I live, you also shall live. In that day you will know that I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you.” (John 14:20). Their very living will be because He lives in resurrection. In His resurrection presence He become a sphere and realm within which the disciples are to live - “you in Me”. And He lives in them in resurrection “and I in you”. In this manner though the world does not see Him the disciples will see Him.

Christ resurrection and indwelling is therefore the key to the regeneration of the disciples. For Peter writes
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Pet. 1:3)
Because Christ is alive and within them, what is within them is a “living hope.”

Any inner transformation is through submitting to the indwelling of the resurrected Christ as the Spirit of reality, the “Another Comforter” which Christ promised would be in and with the disciples forever (John 14). After Jesus had taught, healed, cast out demons, raised the dead, and feed multitudes for three and a half years only a slim minority of beneficiaries were interested in remaining together for further building of the kingdom of God. Notice that there were only 120 waiting for the promise of this Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. One might ask where were the thousands of others who had been fed and healed by Jesus. Relatively few were interested in receiving the Holy Spirit into them.


cont. below

And the transformation of the followers of Jesus doesn’t come from them changing themselves as Tolstoy said. The law keeping Jews were able to keep Moses law. Adding new laws from Jesus wasn’t going to help. God sent Christ because the fallen sinners are unable to change themselves. Of course God had told man already that the sinnered needed such a radical inner transformation even in the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 13:23 - “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also may be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.”

cont. below

The “new covenant” to come as Jeremiah prophesied, was not only one of the forgiveness and forgetting of the sinner’s sins. It was also of God writing His living law into the inner being of the saved one (Jer. 31:31-33). This new covenant is the foundation of the New Testament church. And Jesus enacted the redemptive portion of it in His crucifixion as He Himself taught:

“ … He took a cup and gave thanks, and He gave it to them, saying, … this is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:28)

“This cup is the new covenant established in My blood, which is being poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20)


Only briefly have I pointed out the redemptive aspect and the life empowering and indwelling aspect of the new covenant was what Jesus taught as the vitality of His community. Rewingett wants to blame the following of the Apostle Paul as the source of Christianities deviation. I would repeat that it is rather NOT following closely the Apostle Paul’s example and teaching which is more of a problem. For Paul entirely echoes these two aspects of Christ’s work – the judicial redemption and the organic indwelling:

Romans 5:10 –For if we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled.”

The community of Christ consists of those reconciled to God by believing in Christ’s redemptive death. And then they are to be saved in the sphere and realm of His resurrection life “much more”. Christians need to pay much more attention to the much more salvation in the realm of His life. Where they do the church manifests victory over injustice, inequality, and cultural and religious schisms.

The proper church life is possible with God distributed into man for his transformation. Paul agrees with John 14 that the disciples must be transformed by the Lord Who is the Spirit: “And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. … we all … beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory even as from the Lord Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:17,18). Self improvement is of no avail. Only yielding to the transforming Spirit can transform the disciple into the image of Christ. Therefore the church community comes into its most normal expression as human beings are together being transformed by the Lord Spirit.

Christ in His resurrection is essential and necessary to the ekklesia (church). Rwingett denies the resurrection and teaches that simply to have in the past a great teacher speaking wise words is enough for his socialism. Somehow my opponent thinks the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas will help him. But Christ’s teaching was that His very life would be present, available, enterable, and an ever present enjoyment in which there would be freedom, transformation and building up of the called out community. So I repeat that God’s Economy is firstly to distribute Himself in Christ as the Holy Spirit into those who believe into the resurrected and living Christ.


It is therefore no surprise that the (Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism) fell short of the testimony of the proper Christ community as the kingdom of God for like rwingett’s socialism they were mostly atheistic and in denial of the resurrected Christ as Lord. How can Jesus be Lord if Mao is supreme? If fact the very community which rwingett is hunting for was flourishing in China in many cities before the cultural revolution. Mao sought to destroy those communities of Christians , imprison their leaders and force the remainder to conform any religious impulses to only what the Communist state sanctioned. They not only fiailed to be the testimony of Jesus but they vehemently opposed it. Watchman Nee the author the radical book “The Normal Christian Church Life” in which he goes the furthest to return Christians to the model of the book of Acts, was imprisoned for 20 years by the Communist. www.watchmannee.org


Thankfully, Watchman Nee’s vision of the recovered normal church life has not been destroyed. And models of the communal local churches have sprung up by this time on all five continents - www.localchurches.org

Now Tolstoy may have thought that “inner transformation” was necessary for a changing of the society. I am pretty sure that Tolstoy would not deny a resurrected Christ even though he may not have seen so clearly that this Christ was the Spirit. For the Apostle Paul totally echoes Christ’s teaching and tells the Roman believers that at one time Christ is at the right hand of God in the heavens interceding for them (Rom. 8:34) and also within them (Rom. 8:10). Furthermore the church, the community, is not the society of the world in general. Rather the church is the called out community to be a testimony to the world of Christ, redemptive death and resurrection and availablilty in resurrection. Jesus spoke of the kingdom as a city on a hill. And in Revelation the local churches (one in each city representing the city) are golden shining lampstands. In the darkness of the Satan poisoned world society the recovered church life stands as a luminous “testimony of Jesus” (Rev.1:1,9;12:17;19:10;20:4).

It is true that after the second coming of Christ the world society left from those not killed in the great tribulation, will be the peoples of the earth over which Christ will reign. This is what is alluded to in Matthew 25:31-46 as the sheep inheriting “the kingdom prepared from them from the foundation of the world” (v.34). But if rwingett regards the resurrection and second coming of Jesus as mythology it immediately takes away the force of him appealing to this teaching. For how can Christ come as a King to the living nations after this age, separate them, and punish some and reward others if He is dead and not to be expected to return? The entire hope of a world wide just system with an earth no longer cursed by shortage, is dependent upon His second coming.

In the mean time, the church as the called out community is a pilgrim body passing through this world, in it but not of it, testifying to the world as a city on a hill. The motivation of her righteousness is not an absent and mythical Jesus but available and present one within whom the disciples are to continually submit to and abide in. This was the teaching and fellowship of the apostle in which the first church continued steadfastly in a daily way (Acts 2:42).

“And they continued steadfastly in the teaching and the fellowship of the apostles

Next my opponent extends the teaching of love to all men outside of the church sphere also. Rwingett writes:

”Jesus says that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is not applied to just one’s family, or friends, but to everyone. This unconditional and universal sharing of love is the “currency” in the spiritual socialism of God’s economy, or the OIKONOMIA that my opponent speaks of.”

I agree that Jesus commands us to love all men without regard to whether they are His disciples or not.
There is no debate on this point. Paul reminds them “ … as we have opportunity let us do what is good toward all, but especially toward those of the household of faith. “ (Gal. 6:10). In the church age God’s Economy is to build up the household of faith.

Now it may be true that the rise of Marxism influenced some evangelicals to underplay those aspects of the early church were reminiscent of communism. Christians can be very reactionary. But when I read a book like E H Broadbent’s The Pilgrim Church, I see expressions of Christ’s community which were apart from mainstream Christiandom embracing a resurrected Jesus and not a mythical one. The Moravian Brethren, under the leadership of Count Nicholas Von Zinzendorf around 1722 were brought into a wonderful practical and spiritual unity. But I am sure that they would have not agreed with Rwingett’s mythical Christ. And I doubt that they would have had any appetite for the Gospel of Thomas either.

I would not argue against the fact that some communal like groups may have had their beginnings as Christian gatherings around a resurrected Christ but evolved into something else. And I would not deny that there are some things that could be learned from them by society. For example there is a theologically liberal branch of the Quakers which might agree with my opponent’s concept of a mythical Jesus. Yet in their communities one might see socialism of sorts. My point is that such groups are far off from what happened in Jerusalem in the book of Acts which is the beginning of the church which Christ said that He would build.

The churches as Christ spoke of them and as the Apostle Paul labored to produce them, was not a building on a corner. But in each city where Christian’s lived they were to unite as one city wide assembly, a spiritual community within a community. This explains why in all cases except when a house is mentioned, a church is identified by the name of a city:

The church in Ephesus, the church in Smryna, the church in Pergamos, the church in Thyatira, the church in Sardis, the church in Philadelphia, the church in Laodicea, the church in Jerusalem, the church in Corinth, the church of the Thessolonians, the church in Cenchrea, the church in Colossia, the church in Philippi. Etc.

They were never identified by a race, a nation, a doctrinal interpretation of some minor point of the New Testament. When a area larger than a city was mentioned the plural “churches” was always used such as “churches of Judea” or “churches of Asia”. We do see a “churches of the nations (Gentiles)”. But never any Asian Church, European Church, Jewish Church, Black Church, White Church, German Church, Dutch Church. Churches were designated by cities. I think my opponent would agree that nation churches like an American Church or a Spanish Church or a Church of England are against the model and spirit of the “one new man” which Paul taught was the expression of the church on earth. And Paul’s practice as well as the resurrected Christ’s teaching was that one city should be matched with one church (Rev. 1:11).

In this century there is a move of the Spirit of Christ back to this recovered stand of the local city wide communal church. www.localchurches.org