The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  133) “None but those who give evidence of being regenerated or holy persons ought to be received or counted fit members of visible churches. Where this is wanting, the very essence of a church is lost.” Thus Owen, the independent (Calvinist) vice-chancellor of Oxford under Cromwell, expresses the principle (Investigation into the Origin of the Evangelical Church).

  134) “Catéchisme genevois, 149.” Bailey, Praxis pietatis, p. 125: “In life we should act as though no one but Moses had authority over us.”

  135) The Reformed Christian sees the law as an ideal to be striven for; the Lutheran feels crushed by it as an unattainable ideal. In the Lutheran catechism it comes first, in order to arouse the necessary humility; in the reformed catechisms it regularly follows the gospel. The Reformed Christians accused the Lutherans of “shying away from holiness” (Möhler); the Lutherans accused the reformed of “servitude under the law” and of arrogance.

  136) Studies and Reflections of the Great Rebellion, pp. 79f.

  137) Of these, in particular the Song of Solomon—which was usually simply ignored by the Puritans—should not be forgotten. Its Oriental eroticism influenced, among other things, the development of Saint Bernardine’s type of piety.

  138) On the necessity for this self-control, see, for instance, Char-nock’s previously quoted sermon on 2 Corinthians 13.5, in Works of the Puritan Divines, pp. 161f.

  139) The majority of moral theologians recommend it. Thus, Baxter, Christian Directory, vol. 2, pp. 77ff., although he does not try to hide the “dangers.”

  140) Baxter, too (The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chap. 12), explains God’s invisibility with the remark: “Just as by means of correspondence one can do profitable business with a stranger one cannot see, so one can also acquire a “pearl of great price” by a sanctified transaction with the invisible God.

  These commercial metaphors, rather than the forensic metaphors of the older moralists and the Lutherans, are typical of Puritanism, and in effect allow man to obtain his own salvation by means of a business transaction.

  Compare also the following passage from a sermon: “We reckon the value of a thing by that which a wise man will give for it, who is not ignorant of it nor under necessity. Christ, the Wisdom of God, gave himself, his own precious blood, to redeem souls and he knew what they were and hath no need of them (Matthew Henry, “The Worth of the Soul,” Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 313).

  141) Against this, Luther says: “Weeping comes before working, and suffering surpasses all activity.”

  142) In the development of the ethical theory of Lutheranism, too, this is most clearly evident. On this, see Hoennicke, Studien zur altprotestantischen Ethik, Berlin 1902, and additionally the informative discussion by Ernst Troeltsch, Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1902, no. 8. In particular, the formal similarity of the Lutheran doctrine to the older orthodox Calvinist doctrine is often considerable, but the difference in the religious orientation breaks through again and again. Melanchthon placed the concept of repentance first, in order to establish a connection between morality and faith. Repentance, brought about by the law, must precede faith, but good works must follow, otherwise it cannot be the true justifying faith. (The Puritans would have expressed it in almost the same way.) A certain measure of perfection can (he believes) be achieved on earth. Indeed, Melanchthon originally taught that the purpose of justification was to make men capable of good works, and whatever degree of earthly [diesseitig] bliss faith could afford consisted in this increasing level of perfection. Even in later Lutheran dogma the idea that good works are the necessary fruits of faith, and that faith brings about a new life, is outwardly quite similar to reformed doctrine. The question as to what “good works” were, was increasingly answered by Melanchthon, and even more emphatically by the later Lutherans, by reference to the law. All that remained of Luther’s original ideas was the lesser extent to which bibliocracy was taken seriously, especially with regard to the individual norms of the Old Testament. Essentially, the Decalogue remained the norm for human action as a codification of the most important principles of the natural moral law.

  However, there is no secure bridge from the statutory validity of the moral law to the exclusive significance of faith for justification (which was constantly insisted upon), especially as this faith (see above) had a completely different psychological character from the Calvinist faith. The genuine original Lutheran standpoint had been abandoned, indeed it had to be abandoned, by a church that regarded itself as an institution of salvation, but no new standpoint had been adopted. In particular, from fear of giving up its dogmatic foundation (“sola fide!”), apart from other reasons, it proved impossible to accept the ascetic rationalization of the whole of life as a moral task of the individual. What was lacking was the motivation to develop the idea of proving oneself to the level of importance that the doctrine of election by grace had attained for Calvinism. Also, the interpretation of the sacraments as magic (which chimed in with the absence of the doctrine of election), especially the postponement of the regeneratio (or at least of the start of it) until baptism, and the acceptance of the universalism of grace, inevitably worked against the development of methodical morality. This was because it (that is, this interpretation of the sacraments) weakened the awareness of the gulf between the status naturalis and the state of grace. The strong Lutheran stress on original sin also played a part here. Another factor was the exclusively forensic interpretation of the act of justification, which presupposes that God’s decrees can be affected by a concrete act of repentance by the converted sinner—and this was something upon which Melanchthon placed increasing emphasis. That complete transformation of his doctrine in the direction of the increasing emphasis on repentance also has a close inner connection with his profession of “free will.” All of this contributed to the nonmethodical character of the Lutheran manner of life. In the mind of the average Lutheran, concrete acts of grace for concrete sins—partly as a result of the continued existence of confession—inevitably made up the substance of salvation, not the development of an aristocracy of saints which created its own certainty of salvation.

  Thus neither a morality which was outside the law nor a rational asceticism oriented to the law could be achieved. Instead, alongside “faith,” the law remained inorganically in existence as a statute and ideal demand. Moreover, since strict bibliocracy was shunned as “justification by works,” it was rather insecure and imprecise, and, above all, unsystematic in its detailed content.

  However, as Troeltsch (op. cit.) put it in relation to ethical theory, life remained a “sum of mere beginnings which never quite succeeded.” . . . “Individual fragments of unreliable advice” were not able to “combine to give coherence to the whole of life,” but essentially, in accordance with Luther’s own development (see above), called for adaptation to one’s situation in life in matters both great and small.

  The much deplored propensity of the Germans to “adapt” to foreign cultures, and their rapid changes of nationality, can in part (alongside the workings of the nation’s political destiny) be attributed to this development, which is still active in all the circumstances of our life. The subjective appropriation of the culture remains weak, because it comes about essentially by means of passive acceptance of what is offered in an “authoritarian” way.

  143) On these matters, see, for example, Tholuck’s anecdotal Vor-geschichte des Rationalismus.

  144) Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. 1, p. 152, regarding the period before Labadie, and using only Dutch documents [specimina], identifies the following distinguishing marks of the Pietists.

  I. Formation of conventicles.

  II. Cultivation of the idea of the “vanity of creaturely existence” in a manner “which conflicted with the Protestant [evangelisch] interest in salvation.”

  III. Seeking for “the assurance of grace in a relationship of tenderness with the Lord Jesus” in a manner alien to the Reformation. The latter characteristic applies, in th
is early period, only to one of the representatives he deals with. The idea of the “vanity of the creature” is actually a genuine child of the Calvinist spirit and only diverges from the paths of normal Protestantism where it leads in practice to a withdrawal from the world. Finally, the Synod of Dordrecht had itself, to a certain extent (especially for the purposes of the catechism), called for conventicles.

  Of the characteristics of Pietist devotion analyzed by Ritschl in his book, the following are worthy of consideration:

  1. Punctiliousness [Präzisismus] in slavishly adhering to the letter of the Scriptures in all the outward things of life, in a manner sometimes advocated by Gisbert Voët.

  2. The treatment of justification and reconciliation with God, not as an end in itself, but merely as a means to an ascetically holy life, such as may perhaps be found in Lodensteyn but is also hinted at in Melanchthon, among others [see note 142].

  3. The high value placed on repentance [Buβkampf] as a characteristic of genuine rebirth, as first taught by W. Teelinck.

  4. Abstinence from Communion where unregenerate persons were partaking in it (about which we shall have more to say in a different context) and, arising out of this (a practice which was not within the bounds of the Dordrecht canones), the formation of conventicles, involving a revival of “prophecy,” that is, exposition of the Scriptures by nontheologians, and even women (Anna Maria Schurmann).

  These were all things that represented (sometimes considerable) departures from the doctrine and practice of the reformers. However, in relation to the tendencies not included in Ritschl’s account, particularly those of the English Puritans, they represented, with the exception of No. 3, only a further extension of tendencies that already formed part of this religious development. The impartiality of Ritschl’s account suffers when this fine scholar brings into play his own value judgments relating to the politics of the Church, or rather, of religion, and when, in his antipathy to all clearly ascetic religion, he interprets any tendency toward this as a relapse into “Catholicism.” Like Catholicism, so early Protestantism also embraced “all sorts and conditions of men,” and yet the Catholic Church rejected the rigorism of innerworldly asceticism as embodied in Jansenism, just as Pietism would have nothing to do with the specifically Catholic quietism of the seventeenth century.

  For our particular purposes, at least, the point at which Pietism began to undergo the change into something which is effectively different, not just in degree but qualitatively, was when increased fear of the “world” led to withdrawal from business or professional life and to the formation of conventicles on a monastic and communist basis (Labadie), or—something of which certain extreme Pietists were accused by contemporaries—to the deliberate neglect of secular work in favor of contemplation. This sequence of events naturally occurred particularly frequently when contemplation began to take on the character of what Ritschl termed “Bernardinism” (because it was first clearly developed in Saint Bernardine’s interpretation of the “Song of Solomon”). It was a hysterical and sensual type of mystical religiosity of emotion—striving for a “unio mystica” coarsened by sexual overtones—which from the point of view of the psychology of religion undoubtedly represented something quite other than Reformed piety, but differs too from the ascetic variety represented by men like Voët. However, Ritschl constantly tries to link this quietism with Pietist asceticism and thus to damn the latter equally, and he points to every quotation from Catholic mysticism or asceticism that he can find in Pietist literature. But even English and Dutch moral theologians who are quite “above suspicion” are likely to quote from Bernardine, Bonaventura, or Thomas à Kempis.

  In the case of all the reformation churches, the relationship to the Catholic past is a very complex one. Depending on the particular point of view at any one time, now one, now another appears closer to Catholicism—or to particular aspects of it.

  145) Thus the quite informative article on “Pietism” by Mirbt in the third edition of the Realenzyklopädie für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche treats the origin of Pietism simply as a personal religious experience of Spener, which is a little puzzling.

  As an introduction to Pietism, Gustav Freytag’s description in the Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit is still worth reading.

  146) This view, as is well known, has enabled Pietism to be one of the main bearers of the idea of toleration. Leaving aside for a moment the humanistic, Enlightenment type of indifference—which has never had great practical effects on its own—we can say that, historically, toleration arises from the following principal sources.

  1. Purely political reasons of state [Staatsraison] (archetype: William of Orange).

  2. Mercantilism (for example, especially in the city of Amsterdam and in the numerous cities where landlords and potentates welcomed the sectarians as valuable bearers of economic progress).

  3. The radical thrust of Calvinist piety. Predestination basically excluded any possibility of the state really promoting religion through intolerance. It was not able to save a single soul in this way, and only the thought of the glory of God caused the Church to claim the assistance of the state for the suppression of heresy. The greater the emphasis that was placed upon the need for the preacher and of all communicants to belong to the elect, the more intolerable was any state interference in the appointment to the office of preacher, or of any gift of ecclesiastical benefices to possibly unregenerate graduates of the universities merely because they had been trained in theology. Reformed Pietism strengthened this viewpoint by devaluing dogmatic correctness and by gradually undermining the principle “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” Calvin had regarded the subjection not only of the elect, but also of the reprobate, to the divine institution of the Church as necessary for conformity with the glory of God. In New England the attempt was made to constitute the Church as an aristocracy of proven saints; but even the radical Independents refused to accept any interference by the civil or any hierarchical powers in the testing for “proof” [Bewährung], which was only possible within the individual congregation. The idea that God’s glory demanded that even the reprobate should be brought under the discipline of the Church was superceded by the idea (which had been present from the start but became emphasized more and more passionately) that it was offensive to the glory of God to share the communion with one whom God had condemned. This inevitably led to voluntarism, for it led to the “believers’ Church,” the religious community comprising only the regenerate. It was the Calvinist Baptist Church, to which the leader of the “Parliament of the Saints,” Praisegod Barebone, among others, belonged, that was most rigorous in following through this line of thought. Cromwell’s army advocated freedom of conscience, and the Parliament of the “Saints” even advocated separation of church and state, because its members were devout Pietists, that is, on positive religious grounds.

  4. From their very earliest days, the Baptist sects, as we shall see, always insisted that only those who had been personally born again could be accepted into the community of the Church, and for this reason abhorred the notion that the Church should have “institutional” character, and abhorred any interference by the secular power. Here, too, then a positive religious reason existed for the demand for absolute toleration.

  [Editors’ note: The following section: “Roger Williams . . . Puritanism once again” is missing in the 1920 edition and is replaced by a different passage.] Roger Williams, the founder of the first colony (Rhode Island) that was tolerant for these positive religious reasons, and completely rejected the idea of a state church, was rebaptized there and was then—for a time—the Baptist preacher, but for reasons which are unclear he was already opposed to the principle of the state church. The colony of Maryland, which had been founded by Lord Baltimore, proclaimed toleration—a principle that the Catholic Church, as exclusive institution of salvation, cannot concede. It did this, however, merely for opportunist reasons, because a colony that was officially Catholic would have been su
ppressed. Pennsylvania, of course, held the principle of toleration and the separation of church and state for religious reasons from the beginning.

  The preceding remarks, to which we shall return later, have been included here partly because recently Deputy Gröber has seen fit to claim in the Reichstag that Maryland’s practice of “toleration” predated that of Rhode Island. Toleration for opportunistic reasons of (ecclesiastical) politics, and toleration as a religious principle are, however, two very different things. The latter is unacceptable to the Catholic Church, because, as a divine institution it has a duty to preserve people from damnation, to which heresy unfailingly leads.

  The question of toleration is basically no different from the modern “liberal” idea. The religious foundation of the principle of rejection of all human authorities as “idolatry” and a devaluation of the absolute subjection of the will which is due to God alone and his law (which was found in its most uncompromising form in the Quakers, and in a milder form in all ascetic sects)—this positive religious motivation for “hostility to authority” was the historically decisive “psychological” basis for “liberty” in the Puritan countries. However highly one may rate the historical significance of the “Enlightenment,” its ideals of liberty lacked that foundation in those positive motive forces which were necessary to secure their continued existence and which were similar to those that gave Gladstone’s political work its “constructive” character. It is well known that Jellinek’s “Erklärung der Menschenrechte” is fundamental for understanding the history of the emergence and political significance of “freedom of conscience.” I, too, am indebted to this work for inspiring me to take up the study of Puritanism once again.