Was Jesus A Socialist? - by Daniel Walden

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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You can be sure that when the Left starts explaining Christianity they will get it wrong.

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If you were to ask most people in the United States what the Christian scriptures teach about wealth, they would probably tell you that the Bible is very suspicious of riches. Even people with no religious upbringing could probably quote sayings like “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25; Mark 10:25; Matthew 19:24), or “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10), which would seem to position Christianity very much against the excessive accumulation of wealth. (The author inserts the word "excessive," which misdirects the reader to an assumption that a certain level of wealth is acceptable. Where that line is drawn and by whom now becomes an obstacle to clear thinking.)

This poses a problem for Christians on the American right, because American conservatism (The author substitutes "conservatism" for "Christian.")

has long been dominated by a right-libertarian (The author now substitutes "libertarian." And libertarians are a fairly small number of people, in no way a dominant voice in conservatism, government, or Christianity for that matter.)

ideology that sees wealth accumulation as an inherent good, (What happened to "excessive?")

venerates those who amass sickening quantities of money, (Now we have morphed to "sickening" and "venerates." We see how the author, in the space of a couple of sentences, has manipulated the issue into a straw man.)

and seeks to remove every obstacle (There ought to be obstacles in the way of accumulating wealth? Why? What might those be? Who gets to decide?)

that might stand in the way of amassing even more. One of the time-honored ways to draw attention away from your own moral failings (What moral failings? And according to whose morality?)

is to attempt to discuss someone else’s, which is where Lawrence Reed’s Was Jesus a Socialist? comes in. Reed is both a Christian and a libertarian, and has spent the last 12 years as president of the Foundation for Economic Education, a libertarian think tank. His book attempts to show that Jesus was not a socialist and would not have approved of socialism, because socialists, much like the Bible, are also highly suspicious of wealth accumulation. (Again and again the author misdirects and misleads. Socialists are not highly suspicious of wealth accumulation, they are completely opposed to it and will happily use the coercive power of government to ensure no one has any.)

(...)

In one sense, then, the question around which Reed frames his book is trivial. Jesus was obviously not a socialist, because he lived in first-century Palestine under Roman occupation, about 1600 years before the first stirrings of capitalism (Capitalism has existed since the first man exchanged a chicken for a stone knife. And it isn't people like Mr. Reed who broached the subject. Socialists have long attempted to remake Jesus into their own image. Mr. Reed is quite properly responding to this.)

and 1800 years before the European industrial revolution gave rise to socialism. This is not mere pedantry: socialism is a very historically specific response to social conditions that did not exist in Europe prior to the development of mass production. Among the contributing factors to these social conditions was the development of a legal concept of inviolable private property rights, (People have owned property for millennia.)

which would have been inconceivable even two centuries prior, let alone nearly two thousand years: (Property rights are found all over the Bible. 

Pr. 11:1 The LORD abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.

Pr. 14:23 All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. 24 The wealth of the wise is their crown, but the folly of fools yields folly.

Jesus assumed them in His teachings: 

Mt. 25:27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

Mk. 12:1-2 He then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard."

Mt. 20:1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 

Mt. 20:15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?

Mt. 24:43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 

even English nobility, for example, often had no power to sell or transfer their hereditary estates without resorting to complex legal fictions until as late as 1833. The response of Christians to the contemporary social order must necessarily look very different from our responses to previous ones: it must account for the particular evils of the present order and for our social capacity to rectify them. (What obligations do Christians have to identify and rectify perceived societal evils? Evil according to whom? And by what means are these rectified, government coercion? 

What about abortion? Child trafficking? Are Christians allowed to address these evils, or is it just about who has too much money?)

But Reed wisely decides not to pursue this line of discussion, and instead opts for the traditional libertarian definition of socialism: (Actually, these are textbook definitions, not libertarian ones...)

“No matter which shade of socialism you pick—central planning, welfare statism, collectivist egalitarianism, or government ownership of the means of production—one fundamental truth applies: it all comes down to force.” (Apparently, a libertarian regime (There is no libertarian regime. In fact, the very philosophy of libertarianism excludes the idea of regime.)

in which homeless people are shot by private security forces for camping on a vast private estate has nothing to do with force.) (??? What in the world does this mean, and what does it have to do with libertarians, Christians, socialism, or societal evils?)

Since Jesus is opposed to the use of coercive force (that is, the threat of prosecution and punishment), then, in Reed’s view, he must also be against using force for the purposes of reducing inequalities of wealth or resources. (Is the author actually refuting a statement made by Reed, or is he editorializing?)

Given Jesus’s own quite specific announcement that his return in glory would involve literal damnation for people who had refused to feed the hungry, water the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick or imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-48), I am not sure that Reed’s definition of coercive force holds water. (Jesus speaks to personal obligations, and the author switches it to government. So that would mean Mr. Reed is wrong about Jesus being opposed to coercive redistribution of wealth because His judgment of sinners means that He would favor coercive redistribution. Hmm.)

This myopia around a nebulous and incoherent concept of “force” carries through to Reed’s exposition of several of Jesus’s parables, among which his treatment of the parable of the workers in the vineyard stands head and shoulders above the rest for its exegetical crudity and moral infantilism. (The author will never provide evidence of these accusations.)

The parable, which begins chapter 20 of Matthew’s gospel, likens the kingdom of heaven to a landowner who hired laborers to work in his vineyards at a standard day’s wage. Throughout the day he hires more workers, promising to give them “whatever is right,” and even hires more workers at the very last hour. At the end of the day, he gives all of them a full day’s wage, no matter how long each worked, and tells those who object to his generosity that he may dispose of his money as he pleases. Like all of Jesus’s parables, and like the Jewish allegorical tradition out of which they arise, its combination of simple narrative language and slightly off-kilter logic invites deep thought about how this exemplifies the kingdom of heaven and how human beings should conduct themselves on earth. Reed, however, declines to take up the parable’s invitation to thought. Instead, he glosses it as follows: (The author will never actually attempt to refute this.)

The ingredients of this parable are: A private individual who owns the land; workers whom he hires and who willingly accept his compensation offers; employment terms that involve a wide disparity of hourly wage rates; an implicit assumption that work is good and idleness is bad; claims of unfairness and inequality, though no dishonesty or breach of contract; and an unequivocal assertion of the rights of private property and contract.

Supply and demand probably come into play here, too. As the day wore on, the landowner offered an ever higher hourly wage. He probably had to do so to attract additional workers and bring in the harvest.

None of that reads like a tract on socialism. Everything is voluntary and market-based. Jesus never mentioned government, and he never suggested greed or exploitation. The kicker is the landowner’s response to the workers who complained about their higher-earning comrades: “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money?”

This parable, of course, is explicitly an allegory for the kingdom of God, not a business manual. Reed acknowledges this, but contends that “[the allegorical] view is not inconsistent with the more economic interpretation I’ve provided. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that Jesus’s story rests on fundamentals of private enterprise, not socialism.” (That is, Reed recognizes the purpose of the parable, but is drawing his own conclusions by observing the details of it.)

But his “economic” view is, in fact, wildly inconsistent ("Wildly inconsistent?" We shall see.)

with the basic structure of the parable, and the hypothetical reader’s objection to Reed’s casual steamrolling over the content of the Christian scriptures is not, in fact, hypothetical. Interpretation of this parable has a long and storied intellectual lineage, articulated most famously and beautifully in the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, which is read every year to inaugurate Easter in the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches. Its first portion borrows heavily from the structure of the parable, but interprets it very differently: (The author is able to dig up a differing interpretation of the parable, which apparently means Reed is wrong.)

If anyone has labored from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let him keep the feast. If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; for he shall suffer no loss. If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near without hesitation. If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let him not fear on account of his delay. For the Master is gracious and receives the last, even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first. He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one he gives, and to the other he is gracious. He both honors the work and praises the intention.

This is a far cry from Reed’s obsession with contract and property. (No, not particularly. Chrysostom offers an entirely different context than does Reed. That does not make Reed's observations inferior or invalid.)

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Reed’s glib refusal (When did Reed refuse?)

to put himself in dialogue with this ancient and traditional reading of the parable (One what basis does the author insist that Reed must quote or conform to Chrysostom's interpretation? Chrysostom is not a benchmark for doctrinal interpretation or application of Scriptural principles. 

Nor does this prohibit Reed from making his own observations about certain details of the story.)

is, in many ways, essential to the success of his argument: if he were to place the two expositions side by side, it would only underscore the sheer ineptitude of his reading and reasoning. (The author piles on. Chrysostom has an interpretation. Reed draws his own inferences. But this makes Reed inept for reasons the author is unable to articulate.)

The ease with which his argument falls apart in the face of this contrast (Ah, now we begin to see where the author is going. He is unable to refute the observations Reed draws from this parable, so he must dredge up an obscure quote from a historical figure. And because that historical figure describes a different take, the author concludes that Reed's observations fall apart. How did they fall apart? We will never find out.)

means that he absolutely cannot engage in a substantive way with competing interpretations, even when those interpretations are central to the worship and belief of hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. (An undocumented and preposterous claim.)

By refusing serious dialogue (When did Reed refuse?) 

with the enormous tradition of literary and theological commentary, Reed is able to construct an intellectual greenhouse in which his cultivar of mutant Christianity can thrive despite its severe allergy to sunlight and oxygen. (Now Reed is a heretic. Yet the author has yet to even discuss the specific content of Reed's claims.)

But there is a reason that a walk in the woods is far preferable to a tour of a greenhouse: a greenhouse, even a large one, is not a true ecosystem, and an argument sealed against outside considerations is not true thought.

(...)

I wish that I could give a step-by-step method for engaging with arguments like Reed’s; (We also have this wish, for the author has yet to engage the argument.)

(...)