It is not difficult to see the analogies and contrasts of the Christian view of man to that of the Marxist. What Marx calls alienation is in Christian conceptualization the fall of man from his essential innocence into a situation of conflict with himself and his creative ground. Man is not what he could and should be. That holds for the individual as well as for society; and it is true also of the universe, which participates in the fate of man. Man stands against man, group against group, being against being. Schism characterizes everything that exists in the soul of the individual, in humanity, and in the universe. The contrast with the Marxist view of man, however, is clear in spite of all these analogies. The "fall" in Christian conception is universal; "estrangement" in the Marxist view is bound to a special period of time. The Christian symbol of paradise is transhistorical; the Marxist symbol of primitive communism, historical.
