NOTES for Act 4:32-37

Brief but weighty lines reveal to us how the Church lived at its earliest dawn. We have no grounds to doubt the reliability of this account, but one can ask: why did this prove impossible later, when the Church spread to every continent? Was it only because its size increased and its structure became more complex, since later, in small communities, it did in fact prove possible to come closer to the early ideal to one degree or another?

The way the early Church lived is explained not by human efforts and good intentions on the part of the newly converted, but by the action of the Holy Spirit. The unity of the first believers was first of all unity in the Spirit, from which followed unity of hearts and thoughts; therefore life together was as natural as breathing. Later, over the centuries, there would be many attempts to overcome people's separation by making their property common, and the overwhelming majority of such attempts would collapse. The reasons for this would vary, but not the least of them would be that the new advocates of common ownership would deny the reality and importance of the spiritual principle, and would put their trust in force and the mechanical redistribution of material property. They would call this the "base," while everything else, which they could not touch, they would call the "superstructure over the base."

But the experience of the first Jerusalem community shows the opposite. What still seems to many to be the "superstructure" is in fact the Foundation.