The world is in upheaval as the old cultures that built modern civilization succumb to socialism.  Nobody knows where it will take us as we watch helplessly the implosion of our Anglo-centric structures. 

The plain-sight goal of hegemonic progressives is to collectivize property and people into a global pool of nobody-nothingness, while middle-class private ownership (responsible self-sufficiency) and the existence of meaningful persons shrink toward zero.

Socialism is often mistakenly reduced to an economic construct, or to one of its scientific sub-theories such as Marxism or communism.  However, in its essence, it is a spiritual condition with a structural narrative that can be summarized as follows:

A chosen people are called to destroy the old world and liberate society from its cultural captivity, ushering in a new Golden Age.

This is achieved through the abolition of private property and family, hostility toward religion, and a general push for commonality or “sameness,” which is mischaracterized as “equality.”

The underlying motivation behind socialism is a loss of faith in a person’s intrinsic worth and a bitter spiritual craving for its destruction and death.  It is an inevitable result of a humanist-existentialist view of human origins and existence.

The modernist worldview embraced by the West over the past couple of centuries has rejected the supernatural Christian God in favor of an immanent, rationalist, man-centered or “humanist” version of reality.  This has resulted in a philosophical collapse due to the insoluble tension between the “One” and the “Many.”  Within this worldview, the person cannot be both individual and communal at the same time and subsequently becomes an irrelevant and meaningless “concept.”

The meaningless individual draws power and authority toward itself at the expense of the collective.  The meaningless collective welcomes authoritarianism as the source of ultimacy, at the expense of the individual. 

Power is then concentrated into the hands of ever fewer individuals, who direct authoritarian control over a meaningless human collective.

Perhaps because he spent his life within the stranglehold of the USSR, Igor Shafarevich’s thesis on socialism failed to make a religious connection with socialism’s inherent nihilism.  However, from a Christian perspective, socialism becomes comprehensible, and even curable.

Socialism as viewed within a Christian context becomes the antithesis of Christianity.  To use the word in its broad sense, socialism is a form of anti-Christ.

It is clearly so in an ontological sense, given that Christology is about creation, life, and love of humanity, whereas socialism seeks destruction, death, and the collapse of humanity.

What is even more striking are the eschatological and soteriological parallels between socialism and Christianity.  Socialism effectively replaces God’s salvation as the solution to humanity’s problem with ultimate meaning. 

Within the Christian axiom, the problem of the meaningless person is resolved by rejecting death and raising humanity to an essential life.  God’s chosen one is the key to deliverance through humble sacrifice, leading to the destruction of a rebellious death-culture, so that God can renew creation according to the rules of God.  The repentant and faithful will inherit the Earth in this new society.

Within the humanist axiom, the problem of the meaningless person is resolved by rejecting an essential life and reducing humanity to death (equality).  Self-chosen humans are the key to deliverance through authoritarianism, leading to the destruction of a despised life-culture, so that humans can create a utopia according to the rules of men.  The powerful and faithless will inherit the Earth in this new society.

The Christian alternative to what Shafarevich suggests is an incurable spiritual condition is not just a pleasant counter-story, but is grounded in a unique Trinitarian philosophy that promotes the flourishing of humanity and culture.  According to Scripture, the ontological Trinitarian nature of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit passes into biblical revelation and creation itself.  The Gospel according to John is the outstanding example of this Trinitarian total reality.  Jesus is the Word through whom the world was created; if you know the Son, you know the Father; if you’ve seen the Son, you’ve seen the Father; Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The One and the Many no longer cancel each other and dissolve.  Instead, they exist in a harmonious reality in which the individual remains distinct from the collective, but both are equally and inseparably human.  In nature, the parts and the whole, the attributes and the meaning, are harmoniously reliant upon each other and exist within each other, because of their Trinitarian creator.  Not only is a supernatural cause necessary to maintain philosophical and logical harmony, but that cause must necessarily be Trinitarian by nature.  It is no accident that all Christian heresy stems from a subordination of the persons of the Trinity.

When mankind fell into sin, this perfect symbiosis was broken, and humanity’s vain challenge is to piece it back together.  We do this through our families, churches, and social clubs, or as nations.  None of this is justifiable from within an existential humanist philosophy, which, while appreciating the virtue of these relationships, inevitably destroys them with more socialism.

Therefore, we see that socialism is the sinful human’s antidote to, firstly, the ontological meaning of Christology; second, to its soteriological praxis in Christ; and finally, to Trinitarian philosophy as the solution to the dialectic of the one and many.  It is humanity’s spiritual solution to Christ — a spiritual anti-Christ.

If socialism is merely the futile attempt of sin to replace salvation, and if the Triune God is the only philosophical solution to the disintegrating person, then the cure for the sickness of socialism becomes clear.

For the individual to successfully resist socialism in its current manifestation, the pursuit of Christian anti-socialism is a given.  This involves acknowledging the God-created sanctity of all individuals and living accordingly, in vassalage to God and with self-sacrificial love for all men.  It also requires a willingness to serve and contribute to the corporate entities in which we find collective meaning.  The collective is rooted in God’s church, which brings individuals together in common cause and meaning, as one body. 

Although the Western church is being overwhelmed by apathy and socialism, the nature of God is a concept that it gives scant attention.  It was the focus of debate for several centuries within the early church, with the issue fully resolved at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 456, bringing with it the advent of modern Western civilization.

Chalcedon confirmed the nature of God in the Trinity, and of Jesus as both truly human and truly God, while his two natures remain both distinct and as one.  We know from the history of the church upon which our civilization was built, and its socialist antithesis, that to focus on a Trinitarian God is the only way to rebuild a robust and free civilisation.

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.  And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  John 8:31-32 (NKJV)

Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).