(...) The first Christians escaped from misery in the present with hopes for the future, looking forward to the millenaire imperium that Christ would create on earth.  They imagined the millenaire imperium in a very earthy and emotional way.  The church fathers of the first century did not hesitate to describe the pleasures of love and wine that would reign in the this imperium.  But once the Christian religion was no longer the faith of the unfortunate and oppressed, once it became the faith of the powerful and rich, waiting for chiliasm fell out of favour with the official church.  The church sensed a revolutionary flavour in chilliasm and that is why the empire of the blessed was placed in the heavens.

Although the dominant hope of first century christianity was chiliasm it was not hope that brought victory to christianity but its active tries to help the declining world power to eliminate its biggest social problem, mass famine. 

At first Christian communities tried to organize themselves in a communistic way.  However, these endeavours failed because pre-christian communsim included only consumption, not production. Because in this slave economy productive work was despised, the first christian communities neglected to give any consideration to production at all.  Even if they had done so the private ownership of the means of production was absolutely necessary at that time.  This very soon led to the end of this old christian communism although the church fathers very often and fiercely spoke out against property and inequality of ownership.  Moreover – even though christianity was unable to solve the problem of mass famine and could not stop inequalities of  material wealth - in the beginning it did do a lot to alleviate famine. This is what brought Christianity such success in world history.

But the new religion, after the failure of the old christian communism was unable to fight the class antagonism of the time and gave birth to a new class antagonism.  The dominant class, the clergy, emerged from the unlimited self-governance of the Christian communities and from the development of their power and economy.  The class of ordinary members of the community gradually submitted to this dominant class.  The poor and destitute who formed the first communities were not wise enough and did not have the strength to defend their democratic structures, archbishops became less and less dependent on their electors.  Already in the third century local church hierarchies almost everywhere had the right to confirm church clergy.  (...).