Ditto, and I think that should illustrate just one point that when talking about “Xtianity as whole” being inherently socialist / capitalist, one has made an error. And when talking about the Catholic Church, to think of it as having a de facto economic system is folly as well. Even if it seems to favour one doctrine it will never announce it as “God’s Will”.
Yes of course I know about them. The Arians were just one example. The Assyrian church of the east is schismatic, while even the heretical churches all had some sort of episcopal succession.
The last time I checked the ten commandments included “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal”. Therefore, I can not seem to make sense of anybody identifying Christianity with supporting socialism. The way people like yourself misquote the Bible is by discussing Jesus’s teachings about giving to the needy and helping the poor; the difference is that Jesus Christ didn’t threaten anybody with violence nor advocate having other people do it. People voluntarily do charitable things all the time and that’s great but given the ten commandments socialism cannot be compatible with Christianity.
I am a Catholic and go to church once a week, I don’t particularly like the hierarchy of the church, don’t like addressing priests as “father” because I believe in the book of Matthew it says that only God will be referred to as father. There is one segment of mass where the congregation prays for certain things together, and the list usually includes something Statist. In all seriousness, they have said things like “a more equitable distribution of resources” , “fair wages” , etc. There is, of course, always some military praise; try attending church on July 4th - I will never do it again.
The Catholic church may be statist (and thus anti-capitalist) but from my perspective of the Bible, Christianity itself is not against freedom and capitalism.
a) Matthew makes no distinction on the way “father” is used. Meaning that he does not specify that it is in a spiritual sense only. Would you only want to take that verse literaly in only a certain way, or would you take it literaly to its logical conclusion and not call your male parent “father”? After all the quote says “call NO MAN…” This would also take into account the words master and teacher as well.
b) Are you positive when taking Mat 1 - 10 as a whole Jesus is not talking about the Pharisees exalting themselves in the place of God as Father, Master, rabbi / teacher.
c) " 24 And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. " Jesus on Abraham Luke 1
1 Jn 2:1, 13-14:
1 My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; 13 I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. 14 I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
1 Cor. 4:14-15 I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
John and Paul on using the term Father, among many other examples that could be given.
Italy, in the specific Lombardy. Mind that I went to a Catholic school as a youth (the only alternative to low-quality government schools) and I believe it was great. I also remember our philosophy professor/headmaster. He was a high-ranking prelate but one the most learned and excellent characters you’ll ever meet. He believed his mission was education and he did it well.
There was no major Christian religious branch comparable to Roman Catholicism after the development of modern Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. Effectively all “Christians” were Catholics, with Catholicism simply being the main development of Christianity from its earliest form.
As usual, you assume wrongly. I’d immediately thought of the Eastern Orthodox Church as I wrote my post, and suspecting that someone would cheerily assert that this represented a new and significant branch of Christianity comparable to Protestantism (as opposed to an outgrowth from what was essentially a political difference with the Vatican and simply replacement of one hierarchy with another, as with Anglicanism), I did make sure to include the word “effectively.” And goodness, isn’t “Western civilization” generally acknowledged as having its basis in Greco-Roman society? Certainly seems rather silly to refer to a lack of focus on the Greek Orthodox Church, historically gaining influence in the Byzantine Empire, as some Western imperialist plot. 
I’m glad that you’ve read Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities; very insightful author. However, we were speaking of major Christian sects once it had developed to its present form, so as to have some connection with contemporary issues.
It is precisely because Christianity is doctrinally opposed to theft and murder that it must be opposed to capitalism, which is reliant on theft and murder as part of its very nature. Please try addressing my statements with something more than empty assertion, which, as seen, could simply be aped by me.
How exactly does un-coerced voluntary trade equate to theft and murder? Last time you were suppose to explain that you abandoned the thread. Why is it that when the questions get tough you get to runnin?
Perhaps it’s your empty assertions that need to be address. [:)]
its just a typo he meant socialism
Leviathan, are you calling eastern orthodoxy a subset of Catholicism? Because that would run against all historical tradition and would be pointlessly confusing.
Ahh that explains everything! [:)]
It doesn’t. But that has about as much application to capitalism as neoclassical perfect competition.
There are three reasons for what might be perceived as me “hitting and running.”
1. I have a life outside of the Internet, and it doesn’t involve David Friedman’s World of Warcraft tournaments. I once heard a complaint from a propertarian opponent that I had been gone for “six hours.” Seriously? I also have a poor Internet connection, as a result of my prole tendencies to expropriate the open WLAN of my neighbors.
2. The nature of this forum is not conducive to mass replies. Instead of a multi-quote button, I have to quote one user, copy and paste his or her comments, hit the back button, progress to the next post, and repeat this over and over again. Long posts are also subject to moderator approval and frequently report mismatched quote BB code, preventing me from posting. My poor Internet connection also sometimes prevents replies from being posted.
3. Quantity can overwhelm quality. There are many of you and one of me. If any of you came to RevLeft alone, I suspect that it would be you defending yourself against charges of “running.”
Regardless, I still make attempts to eventually respond to things, and I notice that there are also threads in which I have had the last word, despite there being one of me. No one has responded to my comments on monopsony and the minimum wage, and for a time, I held the last word in the “best arguments for socialism” thread, though that has since changed.
Obviously not. It simply did not represent a radical shift from the Roman Catholic paradigm in the same way that the Protestant Reformation did.
I never made a comparison between orthodoxy and Protestantism. I pointed out that your assertion that there were virtually no non-Catholic Christians before the Reformation is simply not true.
Great than you admit to using your own pet definitions. For whatever ideological agenda you have.
Yet you always come back and post on new threads rather than address old ones.
Yes we are still waiting for the quality. Employing your own pet definitions makes that difficult.
I seem to have missed this.
That is not what I said; my comment was that there were not non-Catholic Christians in existence “for centuries” before the Reformation, not that there never were. But the more important aspect is that the Protestant Reformation was the first major Christian schism founded on deep and severe doctrinal differences rather than managerial quibbles, and the isolationism (what some would incorrectly term “individualism,” I’d say) that it emphasized in contrast to Roman Catholicism places it at greater odds with socialist and communist ideology. I believe that individual liberty is at the fundamental heart of the socialist commonwealth, but that can itself only be achieved through social organization.
My ideological agenda is combating the fallacies that your disingenuous rhetoric and semantics twisting is riddled with.
This is not true, I’m afraid.
Was the word “capitalism” first used as a self-description?
Ironically, your reply made it all the more apparent that you had “missed” it.
I offer no rhetorical arguments for you my friend. And ask for none in return. <3
Of all people on this forum I am the least able to express arguments eloquently, I have to rely on logic and reason as my defense. In the art of rhetoric, I am definitely at the bottom of the barrel. You don’t seem to be too shabby yourself though. [:)]
Free, voluntary, non-coercive trade somehow implies murder and theft? I think that’s a long shot to make such a ridiculous claim. I would just like to know how socialism exists without violence and/or the threat of violence, and hence theft. I don’t think what I said is an empty assertion at all. Somebody once posted something here a while ago along the lines of "A libertarian society would tolerate a socialist community, but a socialist society would never tolerate a libertarian community. " Mostly everybody on this form wouldn’t mind if you and some people VOLUNTARILY decided to follow your illogical, backwards socialist way of life so long as you don’t force it on anybody. The reality is that parasites like yourself will always seek to STEAL from people that actually produce. Unless you can demonstrate that socialism doesn’t involve theft, you can’t begin to say it’s anywhere close to compatible with Christianity. I can easily say voluntary transactions are not theft and are not violent; can you say the same for what you advocate?
What you do is twist definitions of words so that you can reject all attacks on capitalism as attacks on “corporatism” and express support for “free market” ideology despite its utopianism and nonexistence outside of the textbook. Meanwhile, as I examined in another thread, there is still effective support of actually existing capitalism. The reason that corporate interests might seek to provide grants to the likes of the Stato Institute, for example, is because they know that the wealth distribution accorded by actually existing capitalism will be protected.
We did not speak of free, voluntary, non-coercive trade; we spoke of capitalism. Freedom has about the same relevance to capitalism as neoclassical perfect competition does, as I mentioned. The capitalist labor market is dependent on coercive entry into a cycle of theft and robbery from workers that involves the extraction of surplus value in the production phase to maintain the circulation phase, which builds a greater basis for compelling entry into the labor market.
What you call “socialism” is in fact a form of state capitalism comparable to Western capitalism in terms of its hierarchical structure and elitist minority control of productive resources that ought to be collective assets.
What if those products sold for less, say $5 a piece? So now, the evil capitalist pig old white man only gets $15 although he paid the worker $25. Does that mean that the evil capitalist pig old white man is paying the employee $10 so that he tells the employee to work faster?
Don’t we have enough of these “Actually capitalism means…” pages already? This game is getting old.