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Calvinism and Capitalism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

Kemper Fullerton
Kemper Fullerton
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
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Extract

Perhaps in nothing, not even in scientific outlook, is the contrast between the Modern Age and the Middle Ages more striking than in the changed attitude toward money and money-making. In the Middle Ages trade was frowned upon and the money-lender despised. In this attitude church and society generally agreed. The church was always castigating the sin of avarice. The making of money was designated by Thomas Aquinas as ‘turpitudo,’ even though he admitted its necessity. The thesis that the shop-keeper could only with difficulty please God was introduced into canon law. Usury, which meant not only extortionate interest but interest of any kind, was prohibited by several councils of the church, and to a usurer the privileges of the sacraments were often denied. Even in those days there were, to be sure, practical qualifications of these theoretical judgments, due to the need of money— a need often as keenly felt by the lords spiritual as by the lords temporal. Nevertheless the generalization is safe that money-making was regarded as socially degrading and morally and religiously dangerous. Today all this is changed. Money-making has become the chief aim of modern civilization. In countless ways, gross or subtle, it determines our lives and thinking. It entices into its service many of the best minds of our college graduates. Even our professions, law, medicine, the ministry (witness the vast development of ecclesiastical advertising), are more and more entangled in its net, while the commercialization of amusements, including our college sports, is notorious.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1928 , pp. 163 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1928

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References

1 The present article is not intended to defend these generalizations or any others which Weber formulates, but only to summarize them and point out their moral. The reader must consult Weber's own defence of his views against the criticisms passed upon them, especially by Brentano. Yet a careful reading of Weber will, I think, show that he guards himself sufficiently against the strictures of Tawney in his Rise of Modern Capitalism, pp. 316 f., where he seems to have been unduly influenced by Brentano. It must always be kept in mind that Weber is not undertaking to explain the origin of modern capitalism on its purely economic or technological side, but to explain its spirit, through which it has gained such a strangle-hold upon the imagination of our modern civilization.

It may also be well to remark here that Weber uses the word ‘asceticism’ in a kind of technical sense, suggested by the etymology of the word butdifferent from the meaning of ordinary usage. ‘Discipline’ comes near to being an equivalent in plain English, and has been occasionally used instead of ‘asceticism’ in presenting Weber's ideas in the article.

2 This word ‘calling’ is to be especially kept in mind, since it is the clue to all that follows.

3 Contrast this with the feeling of a friend of mine, a very successful young manufacturer, who finally died of overwork. He once said,“If I do not keep at it all the time as hard as I can, I shall be forced to the wall.”

4 The mere speculator or plunger is not here considered.

5 Weber calls attention to the sharp contrast between Luther's view of the secular life and Adam Smith's: “We do not expectour dinner from the benevolence of butchers, bakers or peasants, but from their regard for their own advantage. We do not appeal to their love of neighbor, but to their selfishness. We do not tell them of our needs, but of their own advantage.”

6 In passing, it may be remarked that the real defection in Presbyterianism from its standards is not revealed so much by the heresy-trials and doctrinal controversies that have shaken it during the past thirty-five years, as in its practical abandonment, in company with most of our other Protestant churches, of this other-worldly ideal of life.

7 Note the characteristic emphasis in this citation upon rationality and irrationality, and the implication of the idolatrous character of too much absorption in human relationships.

8 This terrific concentration of the soul upon its own salvation, even at the expense of friends and family, painfully affects our growingly socialized conception of religion, and in nothing, perhaps, is the distance which we have travelled from the religion of our forefathers more clearly indicated than in the usual modern reaction to this passage. It is also instructive to observe in this connection how the old-fashioned individualistic revivalism is rapidly losing its power, as may be seen from its growing vulgarization.

9 In this connection the statement of the Second Helvetic Confession on Good Works (section 16) is very characteristic: “These same works that are agreeable to God's will must be done, not to the end to merit eternal life by them … nor for ostentation's sake … nor for lucre … but to the glory of God, to command and set forth our calling and to yield Thankfulness unto God, and also for the profit of our neighbors [note how this last consideration comes in as a kind of afterthought] … Yet we do not lightly esteem or condemn good works; because we know that a man is not created or regenerated through faith to be idle but rather that, without ceasing, he should do those things which are good and profitable.” In this passage the performance of good works is chiefly in order to glorify God, and hence the emphasis upon ceaseless activity. The thought of assurance secured through good works is not expressed here, it is true, but it is only a step to this new thought, a step actually taken in the Westminster Confession.

10 Similarly the Genoese ambassador Fieschi calls Cromwell's army a collection of monks.

11 For example, to allow our appetite to be the rule and measure of eating, is according to Baxter idolatry, and all sensuous pleasure is a worship of the creature.

12 Compare the original meaning of Methodism.

13 At this point introspection enters in, the anxious diagnosis of one's spiritual state. Weber calls it “spiritual bookkeeping.”

14 At this point Weber analyses the quasi-ascetic movements in non-calvinistic Protestantism, especially Pietism, Methodism, and some of the Baptist sects. In these movements the dogmatic support given by Calvinism to the methodically disciplined life within the world is more or less modified. Nevertheless the question of assurance in one form or another played an important part in all these movements. The ‘state of grace’ in the theory of all these manifestations of Reformed piety separates from the worldly life as a species of idolatry; and at the same time the guarantee of the preservation of this state of grace is not finally found in the sacraments, or confession, or in special incidental good acts, but only in the methodically good life distinguished from the worldly life though lived within it, in other words, in ‘inner-worldly asceticism’. Thus Calvinism impressed its practical ideal of life upon all these movements, even when its dogmatic system had begun to disintegrate.

15 Baxter is chosen as the best exponent of the Puritan conception of ‘calling’ in its more practical aspects.

16 Note the phrase “service of work”; work is really a service, a cult, one form of the service or worship of God.

17 In the exposition of this text the Puritan point of view strikingly contrasts with the Roman Catholic. Thomas Aquinas interpreted the verse as applicable to the species man, rather than to the individual. The species must undoubtedly work, but how much the individual must labor will depend upon circumstances. If he is rich, he will not have to work. According to Baxter, rich and poor alike must work in order to obey and glorify God. This obligation to ceaseless activity also contrasts with the Lutheran type of piety, as we have already seen.

18 At times Baxter seems to exalt the service of calling above worship itself. “To neglect this [work for the good of the church and the commonwealth] and to say, I will pray and meditate, is as if your servant should refuse your greatest work and tie himself to some lesser, easier part.”

19 “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Mt. 12, 36). This may account, according to Weber, in part at least, for the restraint and reticence of the Puritan in conversation.

20 Weber calls attention to the fact that the first persons in the Middle Ages to regulate their time carefully were the monks, and the principal use of the church bells was to enable them to do this. He also refers to Sombart's observation that the development of the capitalistic spirit is indicated by the fact that on pocket watches the hours came to be divided into quarters. And how frequent is the exclamation of the modern business man, “I have no time for it!” Weber also notes the singular fact that in connection with the Puritan emphasis upon industry the towns, with their greater industry as compared with the rural districts, were looked upon as examples of the virtue of self-discipline! Baxter said of his laborers in Kidderminster: “Their constant converse and traffic with London doth much to promote civility and piety among tradesmen.”

21 See below for Wesley's warning on this head.

22 In these remarks Baxter unconsciously approaches dangerously near to the position of Mr. Money-love in the Pilgrim's Progress: “[A clergyman's] desire of a greater benefice is lawful (this cannot be contradicted), since 't is set before him by Providence. … I conclude, then, that a Minister that changes a Small for a Great should not, for so doing, be judged as covetous; but rather, since he is improved in his parts and industry thereby, be counted as one that pursues his call, and the opportunity put into his hand to do good.”

23 At this point the Old Testament theory of the close connection between goodness and prosperity is made much of. Weber points out how the self-made man now became a morally transfigured man. To him, not to the feudal inheritor of wealth, comes the glory. He has obediently availed himself of the providentially offered chances of profit-making. “God blesseth his trade.” It is also interesting to notice how in these Puritan writers thrifty Jacobis praised rather than his rival, the squanderer Esau.

24 Tawney in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism freely acknowledges the great contribution which Weber has made at this point.

25 He sought, in the interest of economy, uniformity in dressing and in the manner of life generally. The modern capitalistic counterpart of this, according to Weber, is standardization.

26 Compare this with Franklin's advice as to saving. The motives differ, but the effect is the same.

27 Mr. Money-love speaks of the tradesman who, by becoming religious, may mend his market.

28 It was this self-disciplined, methodical manner of life which enabled the New England Puritan to outstrip so quickly the Southern Cavalier. By a restrained, methodical life investment-capital was accumulated in New England, whereas in the South it was spent. See above.

29 It will be seen from the above, if I have correctly represented Weber's views, that it would be a gross misunderstanding of his essay if it were supposed to teach that modern capitalism is to be explained solely out of the Protestant ‘ascetic’ movement. Modern capitalism is an immensely complicated development. Reaching as it does into every nook and corner of our civilization, it would be idle to attempt to explain it out of any one cause. But what Weber does maintain is that one main reason why it has secured such a grip upon our civilization is to be found in the Protestant ‘ascetic’ movement which preceded it. This movement changed the attitude of the world toward money-making, and Weber shows how this was done through the conception of ‘calling.’ The spirit of capitalism, its peculiar system of motives, can only be adequately understood when its religious roots are taken into account. This fact economists and sociologists have largely ignored, but since the publication of Weber's essay they can no longer afford to neglect it.

30 Sir William Petty attributed the great economic power of Holland in the seventeenth century to the fact that the dissenters (Calvinists and Baptists) looked upon industriousness as a duty toward God. Compare what was said above about the industriousness of German laborers in Pietistic circles.

31 Compare what was said above, p. 167.