No, The New Testament Does Not Teach Socialism

I started taking my faith seriously when I was 15, and, in a stereotypically Lutheran fashion, immediately began reading my Bible. It became obvious to me after one reading of the New Testament that Christians were obligated to take care of the poor and should be extremely charitable. It was equally apparent how money and wealth can easily corrupt even the most virtuous of people and that I needed to live modestly and generously. As a public school student, I naturally assumed that Christians were called to be socialists. After all, about the only economic knowledge I had were platitudes about how socialism ‘helps poor people’ and capitalism ‘is greed’. Christians aren’t greedy, right?

As I got older, I saw how taxes can hurt people on the margins and that welfare sometimes enabled human degeneracy. I would assert that we only needed a little socialism. Why should I care if the government takes some of my money and gives it to poor people? It makes my job of being charitable much easier! I had yet to be confronted with basic economics. That moment came in the fall of 2016, when, after 8 years of being a bi-vocational student minister, I decided to get a real job and go to graduate school to become a teacher (so ‘real job’ might be a bit of a stretch…). I was forced, at the age of 27, to crack open a textbook on economics for the first time. From the opening pages of A Survey of Economics by Irvin Tucker, I was hooked. The most shocking discovery was that I had been wrong about ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’. According to Tucker, capitalism had but two characteristics: the private ownership of the factors of production and decentralized economic decision-making. Socialism was the exact opposite: government (or “public”) control of the factors of production and centralized economic decision-making. Nothing about greed, charity, morality, or anything else I had associated with these two terms. After a few days of reflection, I realized that I had been a capitalist all along and soon started calling myself a libertarian. For an economics textbook that didn’t mention the Austrian school save for a passing reference to Hayek (but several pages on Keynes and Marx), it convinced me that free markets work.

Most Christians haven’t learned this invaluable lesson. Right-wing evangelicals use the term ‘capitalism’ to denote any economic policy enacted by Republicans, no matter how anti-market the policy may be. The progressive Christians, however, are much more persistent. Even a cursory scroll through progressive Christian Twitter will reveal that they all, to the person, believe that the Bible teaches ‘socialism’, and that Christian charity can and should be mediated by the state. Besides the obvious confusion of terms (apparently no one else read Tucker’s textbook), does a reading of the New Testament justify the proposition that Christians should be socialists? In a word, no. Let’s take Tucker’s definition of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ seriously. It does, after all, accidently correspond to the Austrian conception of these terms, which Ludwig von Mises brilliantly demonstrates in the opening passages of Human Action’s 15th chapter. Socialism means government ownership of the factors of production and centralized economic decision-making. A brief examination of a few key passages in the New Testament puts this economic fallacy to rest.

One famous exchange in the New Testament occurs in Mark 10:17-27. Here Jesus is confronted by a wealthy man (often referred to as the ‘rich young ruler’, a combination of terms from Matthew and Luke’s versions of this story) who asks Jesus what he might do to inherit eternal life (Mk. 10:17). Jesus reminds him of the 10 Commandments, subtly omitting the commandment on idolatry, to which the man responds that he has kept them all (10:18-20). Jesus then tells the man “one thing you lack, go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven (10:21, NASB)”. The man is saddened by this news, turns around, and leaves. Jesus then instructs his disciples about “how hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God” (10:25), how “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (10:25), and that salvation is only possible with God (10:27). The message is clear: wealth is a temptation that can easily lead to idolatry, and many wealthy people will choose wealth over serving God. A haunting warning. Jesus, however, is clearly not advocating for socialism. He says nothing about centralized economic decision-making or government control of production. He lets the rich young ruler leave without confiscating a cent. Jesus doesn’t call up his local Roman procurator, insisting that he raise taxes, pass a law, or regulate the economy. He uses the idolatrous greed of the man to teach a lesson and warn his disciples of the danger of wealth. I give a full interpretive account of this passage in episode 105 of my show, The Protestant Libertarian Podcast.

The next passage that progressive Christians often use to justify ‘socialism’ is Acts 2:43-47, which describes the earliest Jesus-believing Jews living in Jerusalem, united around the teachings of the apostles. Luke, the author of Acts, describes this community as follows: “all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing with them all, as anyone might have need (Acts 2:44-45)”. Checkmate, capitalist pigs. The response to this claim should be obvious: the church is doing this voluntarily! There are no calls for the Sanhedrin (the local Jewish leaders) or the Romans to involuntarily confiscate the wealth of those who don’t believe in Jesus, pass any new laws, or enforce any new regulations. In fact, there is no macroeconomic theory at work at all in this passage. It is an example of one church, in one city, coming together to serve one another, and has nothing to do with the factors of production or centralized economic planning. God honors this (“the lord was adding to their number day-by-day those who were being saved”, 2:47) but it is neither normative for every Christian community or a justification for centralized economic planning. It certainly isn’t socialism in the technical sense of the term.

The paradigm that emerges from these two passages is consistent throughout the New Testament: wealth can be dangerous, charity and generosity are obligations for believers, and there are no calls for socialist central planning and government control. In 1 Timothy 6, which I also cover in detail on my show, Paul makes the famous statement that money is the root of “all kinds” of evil (not ‘all’, 1 Tim. 6:10), and then encourages those that are wealthy (who presumably have not given up all of their possessions) to be generous towards all (1 Tim. 6:17-19), demonstrating the responsibility of charity for those who have faith. Paul holds up the radical charity of the impoverished Macedonians as a model of Christian generosity (2 Corinthians 8:1-6) and then spends the next several passages explaining why the Corinthians need to follow their example and give not under compulsion (which is exactly how socialist welfare programs are funded) but cheerfully. He reminds Timothy to take care of the widows that have no family in his congregation but sternly warns that Christians who don’t provide for their own family members are worse than unbelievers (1 Tim. 5:8)! How about those Social Security checks that take care of your grandparents, Christian socialists?

There are many, many more examples of this call to radical charity in the New Testament (James 2 and Matthew 6, for example), several dire warnings of the trappings of wealth (Paul twice calls greed ‘idolatry’, see Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5), and absolutely zero suggestions that the state needs to centrally plan the economy, own the factors of production, or be given a monopoly on charity. In fact, when Christians advocate for socialism, they are surrendering the church’s call of radically generosity over to rich and powerful politicians who use tax money to enable corporate malfeasance and bomb innocent brown babies in countries that pose no strategic threat the United States. Christian socialism is not only a rejection of the teachings of the New Testament, it is a deal with the devil. Or, more accurately, Babylon. Let the reader understand. When we grapple with the actual meanings of the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ we will find that the former is not incompatible with the New Testament while the latter is nowhere to be found. Anyone who wants to find a way through the maze of economic illiteracy and Biblical inaccuracy needs to take a hard look at the work of Mises and a close reading of the New Testament. Give generously, just not to the government.