This Week

This week at praxis...Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, 
and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, 
but everything they owned was held in common.  
With great power the apostles gave 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 owned lands or 
houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  
They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as 
any had need.  There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, 
to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means "son of encouragement").  
He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and 
laid it at the apostles' feet. 
-Acts 4:32-35

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts.  
And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit 
the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a 
neighbor who is a member of the community, because God's remission 
has been proclaimed.  Of a foreigner you may exact it, 
but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you.  
There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the God is 
sure to bless you in the land that the  God is giving you as a possession to occupy.
-Deuteronomy 15:1-4

"There was not a needy person among them."  
By seeing to it that the needy are cared for, 
the early church came to embody the Old Testament ideal (cf. Deut 15:4).  
Yet by sharing goods in common, they also came to embody the Greek ideal, 
which held that "for friends all things are in common."  
Clearly, Luke is presenting the early church as the embodiment of both 
the Jewish and Greek ideal community in which unity and charity thrive.
- Fred Craddock
 


The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive 
feature of Communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to 
historical changes consequent upon the change in historical conditions.  
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor 
of bourgeois property...In this sense, the theory of the Communists 
may be summed up in the single sentence:  Abolition of private property.

...You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.  
But in your existing society, private property is already done away with 
for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due 
to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.  
You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, 
the necessary condition for whose existence is, 
the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.  
Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

...All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and 
appropriating material products, have in the same way, 
been urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating 
intellectual products.   Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of 
class property is the disappearance of production itself, 
so the disappearance of the class culture is to him identical with the 
disappearance of all culture.
- Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
  

Questions:

	How does the idea of "holding things in common" fit your understanding of 
	Christianity, or the Gospel?  Where do you see this concept of property 
	and justice today?
	Does it matter who we call our neighbor, our friend, our community?
	How are the statements quoted here from the Communist Manifesto similar 
	or different from Luke's vision of Christian community in Acts?
	Do you agree that wealth for some means poverty for many?  
	How should the Church respond to this inequality?  How do you respond?