Sketchy and imperfect as the above study necessarily is, it nevertheless gives the primary facts which are essential to an understanding of the important part played by property concepts and property institutions in the transformation of early Christianity from a predominantly eschatological to a practically socialized movement.
We have seen,[38] that the earliest generations of Christians took over from contemporary Judaism a strongly Chiliastic eschatology. The logical consequence of such an eschatology is an indifference to, or undervaluation of, the existing social arrangements including the property concepts and institutions. One form easily taken by this indifference and undervaluation is that of practical communism. We accordingly find in the Acts and in such early writings as the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas a distinctly communistic theory and the traces of more or less effort to put this theory into some degree of practical effect. Chiliasm and communism in these writers go together naturally.
Pari passu with this logical, communistic Chiliasm we can trace the development of an illogical, individualistic Chiliasm in St. Paul, Clement of Rome and Hermas. It is already manifest even at this early stage, that the weight of influence and power of control in the Christian societies is on the side of the individualists. This is due to two causes. In the first place the communists among the Christians worked under a great handicap. The underlying economic institutions of society can indeed be changed. But they can be changed--on any considerable scale--only very slowly and by enormous effort. At any attempt to change them a thousand interested and determined antagonists at once arise. It is not too much to say that had all Christians insisted upon communism as an essential element of the Christian faith and practice, Christianity in the Roman world could never have developed into anything more than an unimportant sect. The very fact that Christianity spread as rapidly as it did in the first century of its existence is proof that the communists in the Church made very little headway. It was hard enough to combat pagan religion and philosophy. Had the property institutions been attacked also, the primary religious objects would have been lost sight of in the conflict.