Claim. The Christian view of value, however excellent its biblical virtues, has been unable to mount an effective philosophical defense against atheist denials of God’s existence and Communist counter-claims that class-centered love is more actual than universal love.
Elaboration. Lee acknowledges the excellence of Christianity’s virtue catalog — neighbor-love (Matt. 22:39), enemy-love (Matt. 5:44), the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12), the Beatitudes (Matt. 5), the primacy of love (1 Cor. 13:13), the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), love-as-foundation (1 Cor. 8:1), and God-is-love (1 John 4:7-8) (A. Weaknesses in the Christian View of Value). All Christian virtues rest on love, and love rests on God.
The problem is not the virtues but the foundation. Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, Russell, and Sartre denied God’s existence, and Christianity “has not been able to respond effectively.” Once the theistic foundation is contested and not philosophically defended, the love-built superstructure looks ungrounded.
The Communist challenge is sharper. Communists deny absolute love and love-for-humanity as Christian abstractions, asserting that real love is class-centered love (love for one’s comrades). In a society of class conflict, love beyond one’s class is impossible — one must side with proletariat or bourgeoisie. Universal love is “an empty phrase that can not be put into actual practice.” To non-theists, Lee admits, class-centered love sounds more actual than Christian love.
Lee then notes the Third World response: Liberation Theology recasts Jesus as a revolutionary for the oppressed, requiring Christians to fight for social revolution; Dependency Theory blames structural exploitation by advanced capitalist nations. Both align with Communism on practical problems but lack Communism’s coherent philosophy, theory of history, and economic theory — “eventually they can not but be absorbed by Communism. Christianity has been unable to take an effective course of action.”
The diagnosis dates the polemic (post-Cold-War readers will find the Communist threat overstated), but the structural critique remains: a value system without rigorous philosophical defense of its theological foundation is vulnerable to any sufficiently coherent rival. This is precisely why Lee positions UT as supplying that missing rigor for Christian (and other traditional) values.
See also. buddhism-cannot-solve-actual-social-problems, collapse-of-traditional-values-four-causes, modern-axiology-failed-greek-and-christian-decline