socialism is. Thus: "Christian socialism is the application to society of the way of Christ;"[1] and again, "Christian socialism is socialism springing from and lived in obedience to and dependence upon the life of God in man, as witnessed to and realized by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the natural Head and King of all Humanity."[2] These definitions are from pamphlets purporting to tell definitely what Christian socialism is.
UNCHRISTIAN CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM.
This twofold indefiniteness is further complicated by the fact that many claiming this title fail on the one hand of being socialists, or on the other of being Christians in the common acceptance of those terms. Bierbower's "Socialism of Christ" is a good example of this latter extreme, and since it represents a class a brief presentation of his view is in place. It does not take an exegete to impeach his presentation, if the usual interpretation of Christ's mission is fairly correct. At the same time the impeachment need not deny that a prevalent conception of Christ's kingdom is also partially erroneous, representing the antithesis of Bierbower's idea. This latter is, briefly, that Christ came to establish a kingdom—"the kingdom of God"—that this kingdom was to be on this earth, and that it was to be a material kingdom, Christ's words being interpreted in a most literal sense. Now, while a too common interpretation puts the kingdom of God in a supermundane region having only a spiritual nexus with the present life, such interpretations as Bierbower's put a very strained construction of an opposite sort upon Christ's teachings. A spiritual interpretation is not necessarily a figurative one. According to Bierbower's view, Christianity was largely political and social to the exclusion of the spiritual: the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount are made the key to this interpretation. "In short," he says, "all the beatitudes were a group of promises to the people that the weaker, submissive and non-resisting element should arise to conquer and rule in
- ↑ What Christian Socialism Is, by W. D. P. Bliss, p. 3.
- ↑ Objections to Christian Socialism, by W. D. P. Bliss, p. 1.
