An Inquiry Into Kautsky’s Thoughts On The Origins Of Christianity

The origin of Christianity is an important topic of Marxist philosophy.In his later years,Engels published three works,"On the History of Primitive Christianity","Bruno Powell and Primitive Christianity" and "Revelation",focusing on the interpretation of the origin of Christianity.Based on the standpoint of historical materialism,Engels criticized the speculative idealism research methods in the previous studies of religious issues.He used the dialectical materialism method of Marxism to comprehensively and profoundly explain the origin of Christianity.In Engels’ opinion,the study of Christianity must go out of the field of thought and explore the source of Christianity in the social root.Kautsky,as an important theorist of the Second International,was deeply influenced by Engels in his Christian origin thought,which was embodied in the text "The Foundations of Christianity".Kautsky followed Engels’ s path and pushed forward.Kautsky,like Engels,used Marxist methods to study Christian issues.Based on a materialist view of history,he began starting from the foundation of social reality and national history,this paper makes an in-depth study of the "historical background" of Christianity.Kautsky’s thoughts on the origin of Christianity are embodied in three aspects: First,Kautsky believes that the origin of primitive Christianity and the proletarian revolution are inherently isomorphic,both of which are generated from the resistance factors of the oppressed people and classes.Secondly,the organization and activities of primitive Christianity contain the communist concept of equality.Third,through the investigation of historical materialism,Kautsky proposed that when primitive Christianity gained its legitimate status and began to expand,it marked the rejection of its original thought.It can be seen that,on the one hand,Kautsky,under the leadership of Engels’ theory,used Marxist methods to study the origin of Christianity,which provided a very an example for us to use historical materialism research methods to study religious issues.On the other hand,Kautsky’s thoughts on the origin of Christianity did not exceed Engels’ views on Christianity in his later years.The reason was that Kautsky had not yet gotten rid of the limitation of the thinking mode of "intellectual thinking",which inevitably led to the tendency of "only productivity" in the historical motivation of Christianity in his thoughts,and the "one-sided" exaggeration of the historical role of class struggle in the formation of Christianity.This is the limitation of his theory that cannot be overcome.