The Way of the Humanist

A morphology of Christianity and Communism has teased many minds, primarily those of latter-day “humanists,” striving to reconcile the irreconcilable in the name of welfare. Certain “modernist” theologians, subordinating their transcendental heritage to the “social gospel,” find, or affect to find, in Marxism a Christian heresy. Other theologians, Protestant and Catholic alike, more intent on the essence, have made phenomenological comparisons with a view to vindicating Christianity’s superior claims to the allegiance of twentieth-century man. Such a one is the Rev. Martin Cyril D’Arcy, S. J., onetime lecturer on philosophy and master of Campion Hall, the Roman Catholic college at Oxford.

Father D’Arcy, in Communism and Christianity (Devin-Adair, $4.00), concedes the familiar likenesses between the opposites of his title. “Both sides,” as he says, “racing against each other, proclaim a universal faith, a philosophy of life . . .” Both offer a complete statement of the human condition. Both Marxism and Christianity proselyte, both cite canonical scriptures, both avow a Messianic concern for the last days, “a vision of the end.” Both include the idea of sacrifice: on the one hand the ordeal of the Cross, on the other Marxism’s sacrifice of whole generations to the paradisaical Utopia of a “classless society.”

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Forrest Davis

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A morphology of Christianity and Communism has teased many minds, primarily those of latter-day “humanists,” striving to reconcile the irreconcilable in the name of welfare. Certain “modernist” theologians, subordinating their transcendental heritage to the “social gospel,” find, or affect to find, in Marxism a Christian heresy. Other theologians, Protestant and Catholic alike, more intent on the essence, have made phenomenological comparisons with a view to vindicating Christianity’s superior claims to the allegiance of twentieth-century man. Such a one is the Rev. Martin Cyril D’Arcy, S. J., onetime lecturer on philosophy and master of Campion Hall, the Roman Catholic college at Oxford.

Father D’Arcy, in Communism and Christianity (Devin-Adair, $4.00), concedes the familiar likenesses between the opposites of his title. “Both sides,” as he says, “racing against each other, proclaim a universal faith, a philosophy of life . . .” Both offer a complete statement of the human condition. Both Marxism and Christianity proselyte, both cite canonical scriptures, both avow a Messianic concern for the last days, “a vision of the end.” Both include the idea of sacrifice: on the one hand the ordeal of the Cross, on the other Marxism’s sacrifice of whole generations to the paradisaical Utopia of a “classless society.”