This assertion was unquestioned in the West for 1,500 years, not until one Karl Marx declared Christianity the enemy of his inevitable coming communist revolution. In their little Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Marx and his benefactor, Friedrich Engels, outlined the four enemies of the revolution that must be abolished:
- Private property
- The family
- The nation-state
- Religion, i.e., Christianity
We’ll briefly explore philosophically why these four were on the top of Marx’s enemies list, but the entire secular leftist, progressive, liberal mission requires enmity toward these four pillars of Christian Western civilization. Once overt Marxism in the form of class-based communism failed in the 20th century, cultural Marxism was repackaged in the 1960s by the “New Left,” which transmogrified into woke in the 21st century. Whatever the package, these four pillars are their implacable enemies, and why if we’re to re-Christianize America and the West, it will include an equally implacable commitment to reestablish these four pillars. True societal and personal flourishing requires all four.
The Problem of Evil and Marx
To better understand the lay of the land, we must start at the ground floor of human perception about reality, or how we think about God and man. A person’s theology determines his anthropology. In other words, what we think about God determines our understanding of man, and this applies to atheists like Marx as much as Christians and other theists. Because life is exceedingly difficult and suffering universal, every religion and philosophy has a theodicy, from Greek theos, “god” and dikē, “justice”, meaning it addresses the problem of evil and why it exists. Even without God evil must be accounted for in some way, so in that sense must be justified. Thus the perennial question echoing in every human heart throughout history: why? Nobody is satisfied with, just because.
So having to explain the horrors of life somehow, Marx took his cue from the anthropology of Rousseau who asserted his belief in the innate goodness of man in the first words of his book, The Social Contract: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” Out of Rousseau’s writings the idea of the noble savage, an ancient concept, gained traction in the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, and as a materialist with no concept of original sin, Marx believed man was basically good. It was society in the form of capitalism that corrupted man and made him the perpetual victim of his oppressors.
This perspective on human nature completely eviscerates personal responsibility and human agency, making victimization the driver of human existence. The key fact of Marxist existence is oppression, and all relationships are built on the dynamic of oppressors and oppressed. No wonder those programmed into this worldview (primarily via education and culture) are so miserable. That is the point; only miserable people are ripe for revolution. Thus the anger and vitriol in the left’s never ending protests against everything. In Marxian terms it’s called revolutionary consciousness, and the revolution never ends, which is why eternal vigilance is required if liberty, prosperity, and justice are to prevail and spread. We need to be as patient, persistent, diligent, and determined as the Marxists have been for the last 175 years.
The Four Pillars of Superior Christian Western Civilization
Given the pillars are the enemies of the Marxists, what Americans used to call God-less communism, first we’ll need to explore why the first three are biblical Christian concepts. Then, we’ll need to see why they are required for us to be able to do what God commanded Adam and Even in the garden, and by extension us, to build civilization. We find this command, our mission, in Genesis 1:28:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Throughout Christian history this has been called the cultural or dominion mandate, and it didn’t stop when Adam and Eve rebelled and the earth fell into sin. In fact, this is what life is all about. In New Testament terms, Jesus gave us the same mission when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Given the nature of modern Evangelical Christianity, we tend to see that prayer as moralism, meaning the more God’s kingdom comes the more moral we are, or the more we love and serve others, and it is of course those things, but it is more. This means everything on earth is to be influenced and defined by heavenly values, heavenly truth, wisdom, and righteousness, everything, our schools, our businesses, our homes, our money, our possessions, our buildings, our governments, our music, our art, our stories, every single thing.
This command is given to man made in God’s own image, as verse 27 says, male and female he created them. This is hugely significant for Christians in a secular age in which feminism and egalitarianism have disastrously infected not only Western society, but the church as well. That God differentiates his image into our two, and yes, only two natures, communicates how essential the two distinct natures of man are to true human flourishing. It starts with the most obvious interpretations of “be fruitful and multiply,” having babies. We’re told throughout Scripture that children are a blessing of God, but far too many Christians want to limit the blessings in their lives. We need to be reminded this is a command and not an option. In addition, it also means a life of bearing fruit, a life of multiplication, including in our occupations and relationships. If it is the Lord our God who gives us the ability to produce wealth as a confirmation of His covenant with us (Deut. 8:18), then wealth is an unqualified good, more is better than less. In other words, contrary to much teaching of Christian history, poverty is not a virtue, and in fact to be avoided if at all possible.
Then we add the words subdue and dominion or our mission to fruitfulness and multiplication. God has given man, male and female, the position, the authority as his vice regents to take the chaos in the world and turn it into blessing. Built into the creational order, male and female, man and woman, have different roles and abilities to bring blessing and true human flourishing. The Marxists in the form of feminism and egalitarianism want to destroy that by leveling everything. Down that path, as we’ve seen all too clearly and all too sadly, leads to destruction. Unfortunately, because of the fall creating blessing and flourishing was made harder, now full of painful toil, thorns and thistles, but the commands are no less pressing, applicable, and true.
Thankfully, we’re part of a cosmic story in the entire outworking of redemptive history, which gives us confidence and optimism as we are building the four pillars in the face of the death cult of Marxism, whatever package it comes in. The reason for our confidence and optimism is not based on us, but on Christ, the second Adam. What did Paul say about him specifically in this regard? It’s significant that Paul gives us the theology of the second Adam, Christ fulfilling what the first Adam could not, in I Corinthians 15, the epic chapter on the reality of the resurrection, first Christ’s, then ours. Right in the middle of the chapter he gives us a clue to what being the second Adam means:
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.”
The enemies are anything that is contrary to righteousness and justice and love and order, goodness, beauty, and truth, as I said above, every single thing. The cultural and dominion mandate isn’t only what we might consider “spiritual,” but material as well, this earth and everything in it, and Christ will now successfully accomplish it. How? Through us! His church, his people, his body. How else would he do it, by magic? That’s the point of the metaphor of the church being his body, his arms and legs and feet and hands. He can’t put “all this enemies under his feet” without us! But it is by his power and authority as the ascended Lord and King of all creation that this will be done. This is why the Marxists have no chance because all they bring to the table, made abundantly clear in the age of Trump, is lies upon lies built on even more lies, like turtles, all the way down.
Let’s take a look at these four pillars from a biblical perspective and why it is imperative we defend them as Christians.
Private Property – The idea of human beings owning property is foundational to a well-ordered society with maximal liberty. Those who are not allowed to own property, as in communism, are no better off than slaves who can’t own property but are in fact the property of others. There is no direct affirmation of “private property” in the Bible, but it is everywhere assumed. The word property is common, used 50 to 60 times in the Old Testament (depending on the translation). The Hebrew word means possession. What a person possesses they own; it is their property. This is codified in the Ten Commandments in what is called “the second table of the law,” or six through ten. Most directly it is in the command that we shall not steal, which assume others’ property or possessions belong to them. The Lord makes the point even more powerfully in the tenth commandment against coveting, meaning we are not even to desire anything anyone else calls their own.
Contrary to the entire biblical witness, Marx is unequivocal in his antipathy to private property:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
He does qualify this abolition with “in this sense” referring to the Edenic paradise prior to “the fall,” and before man the noble savage was corrupted:
Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.15
In other words, to Marx real private property which is truly (spiritually, ontologically) owned by the person in “modern society” and “capitalist commodity production” can’t exist. So anything called private property in such a society, the only one that exists, must be “abolished” because it leads to “fresh exploitation.” In fact, contrary to Marx, private property is a critical means of fighting exploitation and tyranny.
The Family – As Christians, we don’t need to establish the biblical basis for the family, but we do need to argue that the family, once commonly referred to as the nuclear family, father, mother, children, is the natural order of things. Every society in world history developed with the family as the fundamental building block of its civilization. Even those cultures that practiced polygamy required the man’s commitment to his spouses and children. Through families a culture’s moral values and framework are passed on from generation to generation, and as such must be destroyed by communists. A society comprised primarily of families will never be ripe for revolution or develop the necessary revolutionary consciousness in the population. Thus, Marx is also unequivocal about this:
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.
Like with most of Marx’s assertions, he begs the question, assuming any family in “modern society” and “capitalist commodity production” is not in fact a “family.” Therefore, such “families” must be abolished. As with everything else in the Marxist philosophy, this is supposed to happen naturally as dialectical materialism works itself out in history: “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its compliment vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.” As we witnessed in the 20th century, nothing vanishes “as a matter of course,” which is why communist regimes are always tyrannical, totalitarian, and bloody.
Marx also addresses education because that can’t be allowed to perpetuate the bourgeois family. Therefore, education must be rescued “from the influence of the ruling class,” and “home education” replaced by “social education.” This didn’t work at all in Marx’s economic model of communism, but has worked brilliantly in the cultural version. Christians must affirm and fight for the family at every point, preferably with many children.
The Nation State – It was the gospel, the good news, given to us in Christ, and expanded to the Gentiles by the Apostle Paul that made Christianity the only universal religion on earth. However, since Christianity isn’t Utopian, the idea of a borderless world never took hold among Christians. It is, however, a requirement for communists. There must be no hierarchy or authority because all such things, including the nation state, will vanish in the inexorable development of history.
As with his critics’ take on private property and the family, Marx addresses those who bring up this criticism, “The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.” His reply? “The workingmen have no country.” So, just like property and family, which by Marxist definition can’t exist in a bourgeois society, neither can “countries and nationality.” This is yet another reason why Christianity was and is the implacable foe of Marxism because it stands in their way. This includes the modern nation-state which developed in Christian Western civilization in many ways because of its Jewish and Christian roots. The idea of nations or peoples is ubiquitous in the Bible, so it stands as a fundamental bulwark to the universalist pretensions of the Marxists as well as the modern globalists who are their offspring.
Religion, i.e., Christianity – Here we come to the crux of the matter. Marx knew it was either Christianity or communism; both can’t exist in the same world. He never saw the need to argue for or in any way try to prove his atheism. Like many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers, it was too obvious to bother. Everything in Marx’s philosophy flowed from his anti-Christian animus. Even though the cultural Marxists believed Marx was in error about economics being the driver of revolution, they embraced this central aspect of Marx’s worldview, that hostility to Christianity would make perpetual revolution possible.
Religion, by which Marx always means Christianity, gets the same treatment as every other “traditional idea.” It is dismissed as historically conditioned oppression. His most famous take on religion, or infamous depending on one’s perspective, is not in the Manifesto, but in his “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sight of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. . . .
The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
His criticism of religion is tinged with a contrived concern for people who supposedly suffer from oppression and look to an illusion to dull the pain. These people may think they are happy, but that too is an illusion keeping them from real happiness. You have to hand it to the guy. Here is a miserable man selling happiness to people who by definition will always be miserable (it’s a requirement) until the revolution brings everything to the dialectical end of history. And people bought it! And still do. The Satanic core at the heart of Marxism is blatant: man must be his own God, he must “revolve around himself.” As Satan said to Eve, you will be like God, knowing good and evil, and like Eve, Marxism has brought only misery, death, and destruction.
Some might argue that the civilizational sweepstakes isn’t just between Christianity and Marxism, and they would be right. However, in the history of the world the evidence from every civilization is that the influence of Christianity is necessary for a society to truly flourish. Tom Holland makes this case persuasively in his book Dominion, a must read for anyone who thinks the blessings of the modern world are in any way a secular Enlightenment inspired phenomenon. In fact, both the Enlightenment and secularism are a product of the Christian West. Hindu, Asian, and African cultures only prospered to the degree they were influenced by Christianity, including free enterprise, private property, and any kind of liberal, democratic governance. American Indians were a noble people, but the American continent was a brutal place before Christians began to colonize it. This is not even to mention the rule of law and political liberty and freedom of conscience brought to America from the British Isles, and eventually to the entire world. Or does anybody who has a choice want to live in the Islamic world unless they are committed Muslims?
The superiority of Christian Western civilization is made all the more apparent by one of the great challenges of the 21st century, illegal immigration. It is primarily to America and the once Christian nations of Europe where the world’s poor flee for the hope of a better life. I’m not sure there is a better testimony to the superiority of Christian Western civilization than that, even in its current secular iteration. The task before us, now, is to make America, and the West, Christian again, even as we seek to disciple the nations.
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