102 \ The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism \God.^^i/All creation, including of course the fact, as irUhdoubtedly was for Calvin, that only a small pro-i portion of men are chosen for eternal grace, can have i/ any meaning only as means to the glory and majesty; 3f God. To apply earthly standards of justice to His, sovereign decrees is meaningless and an insult to His Majesty,^* since He and He alone is free, i.e. is subject to no law. His decrees can only be understood by or even known to us in so far as it has been His pleasure to reveal them. We can only hold to these fragments of eternal truth. Everything else, including the meaning of our individual destiny, is hidden in dark mystery which it would be both impossible to pierce and pre- sumptuous to question.
For the damned to complain of their lot would be., much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh i^ separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His Majesty jjWe know only that a part of humanity is saved, the rest damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God's absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. The Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and under- standing, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human understanding, who with His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided 103 I The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism '1 the fate of every individual and regulated the tiniest.^^< details of the cosmos from eternity.^^ God's grace is, "^ -since His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those ^1 to whom He has granted it to lose as it is unattainable, ri for those to whom He has denied it. ^ In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual. ^^ In what was for the man of the age of the Reformation the most important thing in life, his eternal salvation, he was forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed for him from eternity. No one could help him. No priest, for the chosen one can understand the word of God only in his own heart. No sacraments, for though the sacra- ments had been ordained by God for the increase of His glory, and must hence be scrupulously observed, they are not a means to the attainment of grace, but only the subjective externa subsidia of faith. No Church, for though it was held that extra ecclesiam nulla salus in the sense that whoever kept away from the true Church could never belong to God's chosen band,^'^ nevertheless the membership of the external Church included the doomed. They should belong to it and be subjected to its discipline, not in order thus to attain salvation, that is impossible, but because, for the glory of God, they too must be forced to obey His commandments. Finally, even no God. For even Christ had died only for the elect,^^ for whose benefit God had decreed His martyrdom from eternity. This, the complete elimination of salvation through the 104 The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism Church and the sacraments (which was in Lutheranism by~ no" means developed to its final conclusions), was what formed the absolutely decisive difference from \\ Catholicism.
That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world^^ which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.^^ There was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no means whatever. Combined with the harsh doctrines of the absolute transcendentality of God and the corruption of everything pertaining to the flesh, this inner isolation of th^Jndividual contains, on the one hand, the reason for [the entirely negative attitude^ of Puritanism,. tQ_, all the sensuous and emotional» elements in culture and in religion, because they are of no use toward salvation and promote sentimental illusions and idolatrous superstitions. (Thus it provides a basis for a fundamental antagonism to sensuous culture of all kinds. ^^ On the other hand, it forms one of the roots of that disillusioned and pessimistically inclined individualism^^ which can even to-day be identiHed^ih'the national characters and the institutions of the peoples with a Puritan past, in such a striking 105 1/ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism contrast to the quite different spectacles through which the EnHghtenment later looked upon men.^^ We can clearly identify the traces of the influence of the doctrine of predestination in the elementary forms of conduct and attitude toward life in the era with which we are concerned, even where its authority as a dogma was on the decline. It was in fact only the most extreme form of that exclusive trust in God in which we are here interested. It comes out for instance in the strikingly frequent repetition, especially in the English Puritan literature, of warnings against any trust in the aid of friendship of men.2'* Even the amiable Baxter counsels deep distrust of even one's closest friend, and Bailey directly exhorts to trust no one and to say nothing compromising to anyone. Only God should be your confidant.^^ In striking con- trast to Lutheranism, this attitude toward life was also connected with the quiet disappearance of the private confession, of which Calvin was suspicious only on account of its possible sacramental misinterpreta- tion, from all the regions of fully developed Calvinism. That was an occurrence of the greatest importance. In the first place it is a symptom of the type of influence this religion exercised. Further, however, it was a psychological stimulus to the development of their ethical attitude. The means to a periodical discharge of the emotional sense of sin ^^ was done away with.
Of the consequences for the ethical conduct of everyday life we speak later. But for the general religious situation of a man the consequences are evident. In spite of the necessity of membership in the true Church ^'^ for salvation, the Calvinist's intercourse 1 06 i The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism with his God was carried on in deep spiritual isolation. To see the specific results ^^ of this peculiar atmosphere, it is only necessary to read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,^^ by far the most widely read book of the whole Puritan literature. In the description of Christian's attitude after he had realized that he was living in thft City of Destruc- tion and he had received the call to take.up his pilgrim- age to the celestial city, wife and childreh cling to him, but stopping his ears with his fingers and crying, "life, eternal life", he staggers forth across the fields. No refinement could surpass the naive feeling of the tinker who, writing in his prison cell, earned the applause of a believing world, in expressing the emotions of the faithful Puritan, thinking only of his own salvation. It is expressed in the unctuous conversations which he holds with fellow-seekers on the way, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Gottfried Keller's Gerechte Kammacher. Only when he himself is safe does it occur to him that it would be nice to have his family with him. It is the same anxious fear of death and the beyond which we feel so vividly in Alfonso of Liguori, as Döllinger has described him to us. It is worlds removed from that spirit of proud worldliness which Machiavelli expresses in relating the fame of those Florentine citizens who, in their struggle against the Pope and his excommunication, had held "Love of their native city higher than the fear for the salvation of their souls". And it is of course even farther from the feelings which Richard Wagner puts into the mouth of Siegmund before his fatal combat, "Grüsse mir Wotan, grüsse mir Wallhall — Doch von Wallhall's spröden Wonnen sprich du wahrlich mir nicht". But 107 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism the effects of this fear on Bunyan and Liguori are characteristically different. The same fear which drives the latter to every conceivable self-humiliation spurs the former on to a restless and systematic struggle with life. Whence comes this difference? / It seems at ßrst a mystery how the undoubted / superiority of Calvinism in social organization can be / connected witn this tendency to tear the individual I away from the closed ties with which he is bound to \this world. ^^. But, however strange it may seem, it Ifollows fron\ the peculiar form which the Christian brotherly love was forced to take under the pressure of the inner isolation of the individual through the Calvinistic faith. In the first place it follows dogmatic- ally.^^ The world exists to serve the glorification of God and for chat purpose alone. The elected Christian is in the world o^Jy to increase this glory of God by fulfilling His commandments to the best of his ability. But God requires social achievement of the Christian because j He wills that social life shall be organized according to I His commandments, in accordance with that purpose. The social ^2 activity of the Christian in the world is solely activity in majorem gloriam Dei. This character is hence shared by labour in a calling which serves the mundane life of the community. Even in Luther we found specialized labour in callings justified in terms of brotherly love. But what for him remained an un- certain, purely intellectual suggestion became for the Calvinists a characteristic element in their ethical system. Brotherly love, since it may only be practised for the glory of God^^ and not in the service of the flesh, ^^ is expressed in the first place in the fulfilment io8 The Religious Fowtdatiom of Worldly Asceticism of the daily tasks given by the lex naturce\ and in the process this fulfilment assumes a peculiarly objective and impersonal character, that_of service in thejnterest _ ^ of the rational organization of our social environmej:^' For the wonderfully purposeful organizatior.-^ and arrangement of this cosmos is, according botj-'i to the revelation of the Bible and to natural intuitior^» evidently designed by God to serve the utility of the V"^^'^ race.
- This makes labour in the service of imperso/?al social I usefulness appear to promote the glory of <^»^od and hence to be willed by Him. The complete elimifiation of the theodicy problem and of all those questions about the meaning of the world and of life, which have tof*^ tured others, was as self-evident to the Puritan as, for quite diflferent reasons, to the Jew, and even in a certain sense to all the non-mystical types of Christian religion. ^To this-£CQnomy of forces Calvinism added another tendency which worked in the same direction. The conflict betw€€ft-^he Jftdi^ddual and the ethic (in Sören Kierkegaard's sense) didJiot^exist fqr^jyinisjn, although it placed the individual entirely on his own responsibility in religious matters. This is not the place to analyse the reasons for this fact, or its signifi- cance for the political and economic rationalism of Calvinism. The source of the utilitarian character of fcalvinistic ethics lies here, and important peculiarities [of the Calvinistic idea of the calling were derived from ; the same source as well.^^ But for the moment we must 1 return to the special consideration of the doctrine of Wedestination.
f For us the decisive problem is: How was this doctrine borne^^ in an age to which the after-life was not only 109 \/ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more important, but in many ways also more certain, [than all the interests of life in this world?^^ The question, Am I one of the elect? must sooner or later ha«.ve arisen for every believer and have forced all other interc^^ßts into the background. And how j:an I be sure of this:?^tate of grace P^^ For Calvin himself this was not a proLS>|em. He felt himself to be a chosen agent of the Lord, " -id was certain of his own salvation. Accord- ingly, t^)', the question of how the individual can be certain:of his own election, he has at bottom only the answe'r that we should be content with the knowledge that '^Jod has chosen and depend further only on that 'implicit trust in Christ which is the result of true faith. He rejects in principle the assumption that one can learn from the conduct of others whether they are chosen or damned. It is an unjustifiable attempt to ;force God's secrets. Tlie._elect differ externally in this^iife in no way from the damned^®; and even all the subjective experiences of the chosen are, as liidihria Spiritus sancti, possible for the damned Y^ith. the_single_exception of^hat finaliter expectant, trusting faith. The elecTlKus are and remain God's invisible Church.
Quite naturally this attitude was impossible for his followers as early as Beza, and, above all, for the broad mass of ordinary men. For them the certitudo salutis in the sense of the recognizability of the state of grace necessarily became of absolutely dominant impor- tance.*^ So, wherever the doctrine of predestination was held, the question could not be suppressed whether there were any infallible criteria by which membership in the electi could be known. Not only has this question no The Religious Foundations of' Worldly Asceticism continually had a central importance in the develop- ment of the Pietism which first arose on the basis of the Reformed Church; it has in fact in a certain sense at times been fundamental to it. But when we con- sider the great political and social importance of the Reformed doctrine and practice of the Communion, we shall see how great a part was played during the whole seventeenth century outside of Pietism by the possibility of ascertaining the state of grace of~ the individual. On it depended, for instance, his admission to Communion, i.e. to the central religious ceremony which determined the social standing of the participants.
It was impossible, at least so far as the question of a man's own state of grace arose, to be satisfied ^^ with Calvin's trust in the testimony of the expectant faith resulting from grace, even though the orthodox doctrine had never formally abandoned that criterion. '^^ Above all, practical pastoral work, which had immediately to deal with afl the suffering caused by the doctrine, could not be satisfied. It met these difficulties in various ways.*^ So far as predestination was not reinterpreted, toned down, or fundamentally abandoned,** two prin- cipal, mutually connected, types of pastoral advice appear. On the one hand it is held to be an absolute j/ duty to consider oneself chosen, and to combat all doubts as temptations of the devil, *^ since lack of self- confidence is the result of insufficient faith, hence of imperfect grace. The exhortation of the apostle to make fast one's own call is here interpreted as a duty to attain certainty of one's own election and justifica- tion in the daily struggle of life. In the place of the III The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism humble sinners to whom Luther promises grace if they trust themselves to God in penitent faith are bred those self-confident saints ^^ whom we can rediscover in the hard Puritan merchants of the heroic age of capitalism and in isolated instances down to the present. On the other hand, in j^ldei^o attain that self-con- fidence intense worldly^activity is recommended as tue most suitable means. ^^ It and it alone dispersesTeligious I doubts and gives the certainty of grace.
That worldly activity should be considered capable of this achievement, that it could, so to speak, be considered the most suitable means of counteracting feelings of religious anxiety, finds its explanation m the fundamental peculiarities of religious feeling in the Reformed Church, which come most clearly to light in its differences from Lutheranism in the doctrine of justification by faith. These differences are analysed so subtly and with such objectivity and avoidance of value- judgments in Schneckenburger's excellent lectures, ^^ that the following brief observations can for the most part simply rest upon his discussion. ^ The highest religious experience which the Lutheran faith strives to attain, especially as it developed in the course of the seventeenth century, is the unio mystica \with the deity. ^^ As the name itself, which is unknown to the Reformed faith in this form, suggests, it is a feeling of actual absorption in the deity, that of a real entrance of the divine into the soul of the believer. It is qualitatively similar to the aim of the contemplation of the German mystics and is characterized by its passive search for the fulfilment of the yearning' for rest in God.
112 The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism Now the history of philosophy shows that rehgious behef which is primarily mystical may very well be compatible with a pronounced sense of reality in the field of empirical fact; it may even support it directly i on account of the repudiation of dialectic doctrines. Furthermore, mysticism may indirectly even further the interests of rational conduct. Nevertheless, the positive valuation of external activity is lacking in its relation to the world. In addition to this, Lutheranism combines the unio mystica with that deep feeling of sin-stained unworthiness which is essential to preserve the poenitentia qiiotidiana of the faithful Lutheran, thereby maintaining the humility and simplicity in- dispensable for the forgiveness of sins. The typical religion of the Reformed Church, on the other hand, has from the beginning repudiated both this purely inward emotional piety of Lutheranism and the Quietist escape from everything of Pascal. A real'pene- tration of the human soul by the divine was made impossible by the absolute transcendentality of God compared to the flesh: finitum non est capax infiniti. The community of the elect with their God could only take place and be perceptible to them in that God ^ worked (operatur) through them and that they were u/ conscious of it. That is, their action originated from the faith caused by God's grace, and this faith in turn justified itself by the quality of that action. Deep-lying differences of the most important conditions of salva- tion^o which apply to the classification of all practical religious activity appear here. The religious believer,' can make himself sur^ of his state of grace either in that he feels himself to be the vessel of the Holy Spirit 113 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism or the tool of the divine will. In the former case his religious life tends to mysticism and emotionalism, in the latter to ascetic action; Luther stood close to the former type, Calvinism belonged definitely to the latter. The Calvinist also wanted to be saved sola fide, ^nt since Calvin viewed all pure feelings and emotions, no matter how exalted they might seem to be, with suspicion,^1 faith had to be proved by its objective results in order to provide a firm foundation for the certitudo salutis. It must be a fides efficax,^^ the call to salvation an effectual calling (expression used in Savoy Declaration).
If we now ask further, by what fruits the Calvinist /thought himself able to identify true faith? the answer [is: by a type of Christian conduct which served to j increase the glory of God. Just what does so serve is to be seen in his own will as revealed either directly through the Bible or indirectly through the purposeful order of the world which he has created {lex natura). ^^ Especially by comparing the condition of one's own soul with that of the elect, for instance the patriarchs, according to the Bible, could the state of one's own grace be known.^* Only one of the elect really has the fides efficaXy^^ only he is able by virtue of his rebirth (regeneratio) and the resulting sanctification {sanctifi- catio) of his whole life, to augment the glory of God by real, and not merely apparent, good works. It was through the consciousness that his conduct, at least in its fundamental character and constant ideal (propositum oboedientice) y rested on a power ^^ within himself working for the glory of God; that it is not only willed of God but rather done by God'^^ that he attained the 114 The Religions Foundations of Worldly Asceticism highest good towards which this reHgion strove, the certainty of salvation.^® That it was attainable was proved by 2 Cor. xiii. 5.^® Thus, however useless goo^ works might be as a means of attaining salvation, for even the elect remain beings of the flesh, and everything they do falls infinitely short of divine standards, nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of elec- tion.^^ They are the technical means, not of purchasing, salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnationj In this sense they are occasionally referred to as directly necessary for salvation^^ or the possessio salutis is made conditional on them.^^ Injpra^ice this means that God helps those who help themselves.^^ Thus the Calvinist, as it is some- times put, himself creates®* his own salvation, or, as Nvould be more correct, the conviction of it. But this creation cannot, as in Catholicism, consist in a gradual accumulation of individual good works to one's credit, but rather in a systematic self-control which at every moment stands before the inexorable alternative, chosen or damned. This brings us to a very important point in our investigation.
It is common knowledge that Lutherans have again and again accused this line of thought, which was worked out in the Reformed Churches and sects with increasing clarity,®^ of reversion to the doctrine of salvation by works.®® And however justified the. protest of the accused against identification of their dogmatic position with the Catholic doctrine, this accusation has surely been made with reason if by it is meant the practical consequences for the everyday life of the average Christian of the Reformed Church.®^ For a 115 h/ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more intensive form of the religious valuation of moral action than that to which Calvinism led its adherents has perhaps never existed. But what is important for the practical significance of this sort of salvation by works must be sought in a knowledge of the particular qualities which characterized their type of ethical con- duct and distinguished it from the everyday life of an average Christian of the Middle Ages. The difference ,.Pf may well be formulated as follows: the normal mediaeval v/ Catholic layman^® lived ethically, so to speak, from ^ pJjiand to mouth. In the first place he conscientiously ^ ^ ^fulfilled his traditional duties. But beyond that mini- '/U^mum his good works did not necessarily form a con- ^'m^nected, or at least not a rationalized, system of life, 0;] T)ut rather remained a succession of individual acts. •^'^' He could use them as occasion demanded, to atone for ^ {3 particular sins, to better his chances for salvation, or, >^ toward the end of his life, as a sort of insurance premium. Of course the Catholic ethic was an ethic of intentions. But the concrete intentio of the single act / determined its value. And the single good or bad / action was credited to the doer determining his tem-