n Mediaeval Theology_:[1] 'What do the
expressions of the Fathers mean? At first sight they might seem to be
an assertion of communism, or denunciation of private property as a
thing which is sinful or unlawful. But this is not what the Fathers
mean. There can be little doubt that we find the sources of these
words in such a phrase as that of Cicero--"Sunt autem privata nulla
natura"[2]--and in the Stoic tradition which is represented in one of
Seneca's letters, when he describes the primitive life in which men
lived together in peace and happiness, when there was no system of
coercive government and no private property, and says that man passed
out of this primitive condition as their first innocence disappeared,
as they became avaricious and dissatisfied with the common enjoyment
of the good things of the world, and desired to hold them as their
private possession.[3] Here we have the quasi-philosophical theory,
from which the patristic conception is derived. When men were
innocent there was no need for private property, or the other great
conventional institutions of society, but as this innocence passed
away, they found themselves compelled to organise society and to
devise institutions which should regulate the ownership and use of
the good things which men had once held in common. The institution of
property thus represents the fall of man from his primitive innocence,
through greed and avarice, which refused to recognise the common
ownership of things, and also the method by which the blind greed of
human nature might be controlled and regulated. It is this ambiguous
origin of the institution which explains how the Fathers could hold
that private property was not natural, that it grew out of men's
vicious and sinful desires, and at the same time that it was a
legitimate institution.'

Janet takes the same view of the patristic utterances on this
subject:[4] 'What do the Fathers say? It is that in Jesus Christ there
is no mine and thine. Nothing is more true, without doubt; in the
divine order, in the order of absolute charity, where men are
wholly wrapt up in God, distinction and inequality of goods would be
impossible. But the Fathers saw clearly that such a state of things
was not realisable here below. What did they do? They established
property on human law, positive law, imperial law. Communism is
either a Utopia or a barbarism; a Utopia if one imagine it founded on
universal devotion; a barbarism if one im