The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  73) On the following, compare Scheibe, Calvins Prädestinationslehre, Halle, 1897. On Calvinist theology in general: Heppe, Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, Elberfeld, 1861.

  74) Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 77, p. 186ff.

  75) This exposition of the Calvinist doctrine in roughly the form given here can be found, for example, in Hoornbeek’s Theologica practica (Utrecht, 1663), Book II Chap. 1: De praedestinatione—typically, the section comes immediately after the title: De Deo. The scriptural basis for Hoornbeek’s argument is chiefly the first chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians. There is no need here for us to analyze the various inconsequential attempts to reconcile the responsibility of the individual with the predestination and providence of God, and to rescue the empirical “freedom” of the will, and so on.

  76) In his fine book Puritan and Anglican (p. 234), Dowden expresses the decisive point in the words “The deepest community (with God) is found not in institutions or corporations or churches, but in the secrets of a solitary heart.”

  77) Contra qui huiusmodi coetum (that is, a Church in which there is pure doctrine, sacraments and Church discipline) contemnunt . . . salutis suae certi esse non possunt; et qui in illo contemptu perseverat electus non est. Olevian, De subs. foed., p. 222.

  78) This negative relationship to “the culture of the senses,” as Dowden (op. cit.) so elegantly put it, constitutes a fundamental element of Puritanism.

  79) The expression “individualism” comprises the most heterogeneous ideas imaginable. I hope that what is understood by it here will become clear in the following passage. Using the word in a different sense, Lutheranism has been described as “individualistic” because it knows nothing of the ascetic regulation of life. In a quite different sense again, Dietrich Schäfer uses the word in his highly instructive article (Zur Beurteilung des Wormser Konkordats. Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie, 1905) when he calls the Middle Ages a period of “marked individuality” because, unlike today, irrational factors were of importance for the historically relevant events. He is right, but so also, perhaps, are those holding opposing views, as each means something quite different by “individuality” and “individualism.”

  Jakob Burckhardt’s brilliant analyses have now been partially superceded, and a new, thorough, historically oriented conceptual analysis would be of enormous value to scholarship now. When certain historians amuse themselves by crudely “defining” the concept purely in order to be able to stick a label on to a historical epoch, then that is quite a different matter.

  80) Bailey, Praxis pietatis (German edition, Leipzig, 1724), p. 187. Philipp Jacob Spener takes the same view in his Theologische Bedenken (quoted here from the 3rd ed., Halle, 1712): the friend seldom gives his advice to honor God, but usually for worldly (though not necessarily selfish) reasons. “He . . . the knowing man . . . is blind in no man’s cause, but best sighted in his own. He confines himself to the circle of his own affairs, and thrusts not his fingers in needless fires. . . . He sees the falseness of it (the world) and therefore learns to trust himself ever, others so far, as not to be damaged by their disappointment.” So philosophizes Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 11).

  Bailey (Praxis pietatis, op. cit., p. 176) recommends that every morning, before going out and mixing with people, you should imagine you are entering a jungle full of perils, and that you should ask God for the “cloak of prudence and righteousness.”

  These feelings permeate all the ascetic denominations and have led directly to a hermitlike existence within the world for some Pietists. Even Spangenberg, in the (Herrnhut) Idea fidei fratrum, p. 382, refers expressly to Jeremiah 17.5: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.”

  As a measure of the peculiar misanthropy of this philosophy of life, one only has to consider Hoornbeek’s Theologia practica, vol. 1, p. 882, on the duty of loving one’s enemy: Denique hoc magis nos ulciscimur, quo proximum, inultum nobis, tradimus ultori Deo. . . . Quo quis plus se ulciscitur, eo minus id pro ipso agit Deus. What a cunning intensification of the ancient Jewish “eye for an eye,” and what an example of Christian “love of one’s neighbor”! On this, see also note 86, below.

  81) It is this combination that is so important for an assessment of the psychological bases of the Calvinist social organizations. They all rest upon inwardly “individualistic” motives. The individual never enters into them emotionally. (At a later stage we shall be looking at the results of this.) “The glory of God” and one’s own salvation remain at all times above the “threshold of consciousness.” This has stamped certain characteristic features on the social organization of the nations with a Puritan history.

  82) Regarding Bunyan, compare the biography by Froude in the Morley Collection (English Men of Letters), as well as Macaulay’s (superficial) account (Miscellaneous Works, vol. 2, p. 227). Bunyan is indifferent to the denominational differences within Calvinism, although he himself is a strict Calvinist Baptist.

  83) Admittedly, the effects of this fear are strikingly different for Bunyan and Liguori: the same fear that drives the latter to every kind of self-torment, spurs on the former to a life of manly, tireless, and systematic toil.

  84) I assume that Ernst Troeltsch, in his essay mentioned earlier,2 will discuss the great importance, flowing from the requirement of “incorporation in the body of Christ” (Calvin, Institutio Christiana III, 11, 10), of the Calvinist idea of the need to be accepted into a community which is in keeping with God’s laws in order to attain salvation. This is an expression of the social character of reformed Christianity. For our particular viewpoint, however, the focus of the problem is rather different. That idea could have come to prominence in a church with a purely institutional character, and indeed has done so. And that community-forming tendency even comes into effect outside of the divinely ordained scheme of things. Here the determining factor is the general idea that it is by activity “ad maiorem Dei gloriam” that the Christian proves his state of grace (see below), and the keen abhorrence of idolatry inevitably directs this energy quietly into the paths of unemotional (impersonal) activity. In the Puritan ethic, or any other ascetic ethic, any purely emotional—that is, not rationally determined—personal one-to-one relationship easily falls under the suspicion of idolatry. In addition to what has already been said in note 80, the consequences for friendship are clear enough from, for example, the following warning: “It is an irrational act and not fit for a rational creature to love any one farther than reason will allow us. . . . It very often taketh up men’s minds so as to hinder their love of God. (Baxter, Christian Directory, vol. 4, p. 253). We shall meet this kind of argument again and again.

  In particular, for Puritanism this rejection of idolatry led to the idea that the “public” good, or “the good of the many,” as Baxter puts it (Christian Directory, vol. 4, p. 262, backed up with the rather forced quotation from Romans 9.3) in terms reminiscent of later liberal rationalism, should take precedence over all “personal” or “private” benefit of the individual (although the idea was not in itself new).

  Of course, the modern American abhorrence of personal service is connected (indirectly) with that tradition. There is also the relatively high degree of immunity of formerly Puritan nations to Caesarism, and in general the inwardly freer attitude of the English to their great statesmen—an attitude that, on the one hand, is more inclined to an acceptance of the great man, yet, on the other hand, rejects any hysterical “adulation” and the naive idea than anyone could have a duty of political obedience out of “gratitude.” This contrasts strongly with much that we, for example, have experienced from 1878 onward in Germany—in both positive and negative ways.

  On the sinfulness of faith in authority—which is only permissible when it is impersonal and directed toward Scripture—and the sinfulness of holding even the most holy and outstanding of men in undue esteem (because thereby obedience toward God could be undermined), see Baxter, Christian Directory (2nd ed., 1678), vol. 1, p. 56. />
  We shall have more to say later about the political significance of the rejection of “idolatry” and about the principle that, first in the Church, but ultimately in the whole of life, God alone should “rule.”

  85) “Social” [sozial], of course, without any connotation of the modern sense of the word, but solely in the sense of activity within the political, church, or other community organization.

  86) What such “impersonal Christian charity [Nächstenliebe],” as determined solely by one’s relationship to God, means in the area of religious community life can be clearly seen from the conduct of the China Inland Mission and the International Missionaries’ Alliance (see Warneck, Geschichte der protestantischen Mission, 5th ed., pp. 99, 111). At tremendous expense, hordes [Scharen] of missionaries were equipped (some 1,000 for China alone) to literally “offer” the gospel to all the heathen by itinerant preaching, because Christ commanded this and made his return dependent upon it. Whether those preached to are won for Christianity and thus become partakers of eternal bliss is a minor matter and in any case is in God’s hands. According to Hudson Taylor (see Warneck, op. cit.), China contained approximately 50 million families. One thousand missionaries could “reach” fifty families a day (!), and thus the gospel could be “offered” to every Chinese in one thousand days, or less than three years.

  This is exactly the schema according to which Calvinism operated its Church discipline. The chief purpose was not the salvation of those subject to it—which is solely a matter for God (and in practice a matter for them)—but to give greater glory to God.

  Calvinism as such is not responsible for those modern missionary efforts, since they are interdenominationally based. (Calvin himself does not accept that there is a duty to engage in foreign missionary work, since the further expansion of the Church is “unius Dei opus.”) However, these efforts clearly do emanate from that general idea which pervades the Puritan ethic, according to which one fulfils one’s duty of “Christian charity” if one carries out God’s commandments for his glory. In this way one gives one’s neighbor what is due to him, and anything beyond that is God’s own affair.

  The “humanity” of relationships to one’s “neighbor” is, so to speak, dead. This is expressed in the most varied circumstances. Thus, for example—to mention one small indication of that atmosphere—in the sphere of reformed charity, which is (to some extent justifiably) celebrated: the Amsterdam orphans are still today dressed in coats and trousers with black and red, or red and green, stripes—a form of carnival costume—and paraded to church. In the past this must have been a most edifying spectacle in the minds of those watching, and served to “glorify God.” Yet it must have been offensive to any personal and “human” feelings. And the same principles apply—as we shall see—in all the details of private activity.

  Of course, all this is no more than a “tendency,” and later we shall have to make certain qualifications. But as a “tendency” of this ascetic religiosity, it needed to be stated here.

  87) Hundeshagen (Beiträge zur Kirchenverfassungsgeschichte und Kirchenpolitik, 1864, vol. 1, p. 37) defends the point of view (which has often been heard since), that the doctrine of predestination was always a doctrine of the theologians, never a doctrine of the people [Volk]. That is only true if the term “Volk” is taken to refer to the mass of the uneducated lower strata. Not only Cromwell—whom Zeller (Das Theologische System Zwinglis, p. 17) treated paradigmatically as an example of the effect of the doctrine—but also his “saints,” knew perfectly well what it was all about, and the Canons of the Synods of Dordrecht and Westminster relating to the doctrine were national affairs in the grand style. The idea that the reformed Pietists, the members of the English and Dutch conventicles, were unsure about the doctrine is quite out of the questions; it was after all this doctrine that drove them together to seek the certitudo salutis. What predestination meant, or did not mean, where it was a doctrine of the theologians, can be shown by Catholicism, which was not entirely unfamiliar with it as an esoteric doctrine in various forms. (The decisive point was that the view that the individual had to regard himself as chosen and must prove himself was always rejected. Compare the Catholic doctrine, for example, in A. van Wyck, Tractatio de praedestinatione, Cologne, 1708.)

  Hundeshagen, who dislikes the doctrine, evidently draws his impressions predominantly from the German situation. His antipathy derives from the opinion, arrived at purely deductively, that it must inevitably lead to moral fatalism and antinomianism. This opinion has already been refuted by Zeller, op. cit. It cannot be denied that such a danger existed—both Melanchthon and Wesley speak of it. But it is noteworthy that both of them were speaking of it in combination with an emotional religiosity of “faith.” For this type of religion, which lacked the rational idea of proof, such a consequence flowed from the essence of the doctrine.

  The softening of the doctrine, which practical experience (e.g., that of Baxter) brought with it, did not detract from its essence as long as the idea remained intact that it was God’s decision to elect and put to the test the concrete single individual.

  Most important, all the great figures of Puritanism (in the broadest sense of the word) started out with this doctrine, and their early years were influenced by its somber earnestness. This applies to Milton as well as to Baxter and even Franklin. Their later emancipation from its strict interpretation corresponds to the development of the religious movement as a whole.

  88) This is overwhelmingly true for Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, where it constitutes the underlying atmosphere.

  89) This question was further from the mind of the Lutheran of the later period than from the Calvinist, not because he was less interested in his soul’s salvation, but because, given the development which the Lutheran Church was undergoing, the Church had taken on more of the character of an institution of salvation, and the individual felt himself to be an object of its activity. Typically, Lutheranism was only awakened to the problem by Pietism.

  90) This is expressly stated in the letter to Bucer, Corpus Reformatorum, 29, pp. 883f. Compare also Scheibe, op. cit., p. 30.

  91) The genuine Calvinist doctrine was centered on faith and the consciousness of sharing with God in the sacraments—it mentioned the “other fruits of the Spirit” only incidentally. See the relevant passages in Heppe, Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, p. 425. Calvin himself emphatically rejected works as marks of merit before God, although, like Luther, he does regard them as fruits of faith (Institutio III, 2, 37, 38). The practical shift of emphasis toward looking for proof [Bewährung] of faith in the works, which characterizes asceticism, parallels the gradual transformation of Calvin’s doctrine from being one by which (as with Luther) the true Church is primarily characterized by pure doctrine and the sacraments, to one in which the “disciplina” enjoys equal status with them. This development may be observed in the passages of Heppe, op. cit., pp. 194, 195, as well as in the manner in which church membership was acquired in the Netherlands, toward the end of the sixteenth century (definite contractual acceptance of subjection to the discipline as a central condition).

  92) See, for example, Olevian, De substantia foederis gratuiti inter Deum et electos (1585), p. 257, and Heidegger, Corpus Theologiae, vol. 24.

  93) On this, see, inter alia, the remarks of Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. 48.

  94) Thus, for example, in Baxter the distinction between “mortal” and “venial” sin reappears—quite in the Catholic manner. The former is a sign of the absence or loss of a state of grace, and only a “conversion” of the whole man can guarantee its restoration. The latter is not incompatible with a state of grace.

  95) Thus, in various ways, Baxter, Bailey, Sedgwick, and Hoornbeek. See also the examples in Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. 262.

  96) Thus—as we shall discuss later—in numerous passages of Baxter’s Christian Directory and in the final section.

  97) To repeat the title once again: Vergleichende Darste
llung des lutherischen und reformierten Lehrbegriffs, edited by Güder Stassfurt, 1855. The very clearly written account by Lobstein in the festschrift for H. Holtzmann is argued along the same lines, and should also be considered in conjunction with what follows. It has been criticized for its supposed undue emphasis on the leitmotiv of “certitudo salutis.” However, here a distinction needs to be made between Calvin’s theology and Calvinism, and between the theological system and the needs of pastoral care. All religious movements which reached the broad mass began with the question “How can I be certain of my salvation?”

  98) It cannot, however, be denied that the full development of this concept only took place in the late Lutheran period. (It is also present in Johannes Gerhard in precisely the sense here discussed). In the fourth book of his Geschichte des Pietismus (vol. 2, pp. 3f.), therefore, Ritschl sees the introduction of this concept into Lutheran religiosity as a revival, or adoption, of Catholic piety. He does not dispute (p. 10) that the problem of individual assurance of salvation was the same for both Luther and the Catholic mystics, but he believes that the solutions they found were precisely opposite to each other. I am in no position to pass any judgment on the matter. Of course, anyone can see that the atmosphere of Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen is different from that of the sentimental dalliance with “dear little Jesus” in later literature, or from Tauler’s religious mood. And similarly the clinging to the mystical and magical element in the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper certainly has different religious motives from the “Bernardine” piety—the “Song of Solomon” atmosphere—that Ritschl identifies again and again as the source of the cultivation of the “bride of Christ” idea. But could it not still be the case that the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was partially responsible for the revival of the mystical religion of emotion? It is by no means true to say that (op. cit., p. 11) the liberty of the mystic consisted per se in withdrawal from the world. In writings that are very interesting for the psychology of religion, Tauler in particular speaks of the practical effect of those nocturnal periods of contemplation that he recommends especially for those times when one cannot sleep. The effect was, he said, to bring order into one’s thoughts concerning work in the secular calling [Berufsarbeit]: