{"id":78035,"date":"2022-08-28T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=78035"},"modified":"2022-09-09T10:41:05","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T14:41:05","slug":"calvinist-work-ethic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/calvinist-work-ethic\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Calvinist Work Ethic Changed the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What’s the Calvinist work ethic? Where did it come from, and how did it shape society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Max Weber, John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination created the Calvinist work ethic. Weber contends that it was this value (which he commonly refers to as “the Protestant ethic”) that gave rise to capitalism<\/a> as a world economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to understand Weber’s argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Calvinist Work Ethic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em>, Weber introduces Martin Luther\u2019s key contributions to the Protestant ethic\u2014challenging the Catholic church and introducing the notion of the calling. Then he turns to a discussion of John Calvin. Calvin was a French priest and theologian who carried the Reformation beyond Luther\u2019s initial changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how the Calvinist work ethic came about, we must look at the doctrine of predestination, which Calvin introduced. The teaching holds that humans are inherently sinful and deserve only death. God chose everyone\u2019s fate at the beginning of time. Some lucky few would be \u201celect\u201d (saved), while most of humanity was \u201creprobate\u201d (damned). There was nothing you could do to change this. You couldn\u2019t lose salvation<\/a>, and you couldn\u2019t earn it. Further, there was no way you could know your status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Weber presents Calvin\u2019s doctrine of predestination as profoundly grim. However, Calvin may not have seen it as such<\/a>\u2014to him, it was simply an important truth he\u2019d reasoned out from reading the Bible. He also understood it as a way to humble the prideful, as well as a means of comforting the faithful. The idea was that since God has determined your life ahead of time, you can take comfort in faith and worry not about the trials of life. However, it\u2019s clear that whatever nuance Calvin might\u2019ve intended to convey, the doctrine was frightening and lost many of its finer points to popular thought.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calvin\u2019s God<\/strong>, Weber says, was profoundly distant and inhuman<\/strong>. He was divinely, infinitely more than mere humans\u2014cold and removed from worldly concerns. At the same time, Calvin taught that it was your absolute duty to have faith and glorify him, regardless of your status as elect or reprobate (which you couldn\u2019t know, anyway). To think you could understand his will would be presumptuous and unfaithful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This view of God stood in sharp contrast to Luther\u2019s, who taught that you could find salvation through faith and could earn or lose it. Weber argues that, by removing Luther\u2019s more easygoing God, Calvin\u2019s doctrine created a powerful motivation for people to live utterly devoted religious lives (though it differed from Catholicism in its focus on the secular rather than spiritual world).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Calvin himself had a reputation for being cold and focused on the abstract, theological world<\/a> rather than immediate human concerns. He took his faith very seriously, and he expected others to do the same. There\u2019s some evidence that Calvin even condoned or contributed to the executions of a handful of religious figures<\/a> who took issue with his teachings. In one letter, he wrote of one such theologian \u201cServetus offers to come hither\u2026 if he shall come, I shall never permit him to depart alive\u2026\u201d Michael Servetus, an acquaintance of Calvin, was arrested when he next visited Calvin in Geneva, charged with heresy, and burned alive<\/a>\u2014though Calvin may have pressed for a lesser form of execution.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How People Reacted to Predestination<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You might imagine that Calvin\u2019s doctrine worried people. In fact, <\/strong>Weber stresses that it caused people to feel profoundly anxious and alone.<\/strong> <\/strong>Since nobody knew their status, people couldn\u2019t trust each other\u2014nobody wanted to associate with the potentially damned. This intense inner isolation was the psychological backdrop of a Calvinist\u2019s life.    <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Calvin\u2019s teaching that you couldn\u2019t<\/em> know your status, people still wanted<\/em> to know. Everyone, Weber asserts, would\u2019ve asked: \u201cAm I saved? Or am I damned? <\/strong>How can I know?<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/strong> Calvin was not much help. As an ordained man of God, he considered himself elect and said that you must only trust in God\u2019s will for you. Lack of faith meant, most likely, that you were not chosen for salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Thomas Bayes, a statistician and Presbyterian minister<\/a>, might have approached this dilemma with Bayes\u2019 theorem<\/a>. Given a range of probabilities from a 1% through to a 100% chance of salvation, where each probability is equally likely or unlikely (since there\u2019s no way you can know), you end up with a coin toss: 50\/50 chances of salvation. To some, this might seem decent\u2014but believers wanted certainty rather than a chance. However, the insistence on a way of knowing actually goes against Calvinist doctrine, which says that it\u2019s presumptuous to think you can understand the mind of God.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, Calvin\u2019s answer didn\u2019t do much to assuage people\u2019s anxieties, so Calvinist pastors tried to give better answers. Weber says that they gave two main pieces of advice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n