Marxism and Christianity: Theology Book

Mostly functions as a very good history of Marxist thought by a superbly analytical mind. The two main points on which he finds comparisons between Marxism and Christianity are at the very beginning, seeing in Marxism, and its predecessor Hegelianism, a secularization of some core elements of Christianity -mainly the Fall of Man and the future promise of Man's rehabilitation- and at the very end, seeing some of the same declines and regressions in Marxism as Marxists diagnosed in religion -reification of the Real. As a general point, he takes both Christianity and Marxism as the only great narrative that can deal effectively with the modern human condition. One can also see some of his future themes emerging: mainly the confusion in moral language for modernists, and for the critics of modernity (Christian and Marxist) who attempt to use the same modernist individualist "moralities".

Here is where one can sense, and from further reading one can also confirm, that when Alasdair MacIntyre speaks about Christianity he is primarily referring to the Thomistic appropriation of Aristotelian ethics. It is not entirely clear to me that this approach is authentically Christian, and why one should take up Christianity rather than Aristotelian ethics alone is a bit of a mystery. I tend to suspect that part of the blame for modernity's individualist confusion of moralities can be laid on the secularization of another Christian feature: the belief in the soul, and that ultimately what matters is the individual soul's choice in relating with God and with others. The emphasis on community and reason and human nature came out much later in Christianity, specifically in Catholicism, when the idea of a fallen nature was pushed further in the background. I tend to agree with Kierkegaard that ultimately Christian morality is only a morality of personal engagement with the Other. It involves not just the community but also God, but ultimately with the subject as the starting point or point of view. Not that this affirms the modernist individualist morality. As the older MacIntyre would say of Marxism, this individualist morality is a form of secularized Christian heresy.

It might be more difficult to surgically divide between this modernist individualist morality and the similar Christian personalist morality, but that's not to say that any other effort such as the rehabilitation of Aristotelian ethics is more authentically Christian. It is also not clear that MacIntyre is concerned with authentic Christianity as much as with the moral utility of its Thomism.