Jacobus Arminius; John Calvin
Credit...From left: Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden; Ipsumpix/Corbis, via Getty Images
By Alan Wolfe
Jan. 26, 2021
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
By Benjamin M. Friedman
What does an esoteric concept like Calvinist soteriology have to do with the rise of modern economics? Does laissez-faire have its roots in the arcane Quinquarticular Controversy? Can one find the origins of the welfare state in postmillennialist eschatology?
Questions like these, according to the Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman, are essential to understanding his discipline today. This is anything but self-evident; economists, especially of the mathematical sort, are unlikely to be transfixed by the writings of St. Augustine. But once theological questions are rendered into secular language, their relevance, and thus the importance of Friedman’s “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,” becomes clear.
Soteriology refers to the question of salvation, and few thinkers made a greater contribution to it than John Calvin (1509-64), the founder of one of the stricter forms of Protestantism to emerge during the Reformation. Calvin’s theology is frequently summarized by the acronym TULIP. T reminds us that we are totally depraved. U stands for the fact that salvation is unconditional; God and God alone chooses the elect and we cannot influence his choice. Atonement, moreover, is limited; God saves only those so chosen. God’s grace, in addition, is irresistible; if he calls, we have no choice but to respond. Finally, the doctrine of the preservation of the saints reminds us that God is never whimsical; once he grants salvation, he grants it forever.
Calvin’s deterministic, and highly pessimistic, view of human nature, Friedman argues, was destined to give way before a science insisting on the centrality of markets could emerge. As it happens, Calvinism attracted numerous followers in Scotland, the same place in which Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith himself was indifferent toward religion and his close friend, the philosopher David Hume, was actively hostile. Nonetheless, it was the religious atmosphere in which they wrote, Friedman believes, that would shape their ideas, even if mostly as a foil: Inherently depraved people whose fates are predetermined by a Supreme Being need no “invisible hand” to coordinate their behavior, while the citizens of newly emerging market economies do.
In contrast to Calvin, the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) found strict Calvinism insulting to God. Like their rivals, Arminius and his followers summarized their positions in five points; hence the term Quinquarticular Controversy. The essence of those points held that God’s glory could not be fully appreciated if the people who worship him lack the freedom to choose him. If humans have free will, it follows, the concept of predestination must be modified and the idea of a limited elect be expanded. Naturally orthodox Calvinists fought back against what they considered outrageously heretical ideas.
The debates initiated by the Arminians were at first confined to Holland, but it was not long before they were exported to England and Scotland. Citing the writings of relatively unknown thinkers and hymnists, Friedman shows how Arminian thinking insisted on “the natural goodness of man in contrast to inborn depravity, the central role of free human choice and action in contrast to predestination and the design of the universe not solely for the glorification of God but to promote human happiness too.” Ultimately, Friedman concludes, the new science of economics secularized Arminian ideas, foreshadowing a world in which the market and other secular institutions would take over from God the task of improving human prospects.
Arminian theology made its most lasting mark in the United States. The Puritans adhered to the stricter varieties of Calvinism; no one could accuse them of holding an optimistic view of human nature. Perhaps for that reason, their theology increasingly came to seem obsolete to a vibrant new nation. As America expanded so did Arminianism, this time taking the form of Methodism and all the variants that came in its wake. By the mid-19th century, strict Calvinism had become mostly a memory.
Except among those who called themselves fundamentalist. Fundamentalism is associated with what theologians call a premillennial eschatology. (Eschatology concerns itself with the end times.) Jesus will initiate his Second Coming at some point, most Protestants agreed, but when and how is still a matter of considerable dispute. Premillennialists subscribe to the belief that our inherently sinful nature will lead us into a tumultuous epoch, only after which Jesus will make his appearance and whisk away the remnant of the truly righteous.
In a series of steps that seem to lead inevitably away from Calvinism, postmillennialists challenged such notions throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries. They teach that human beings can win Jesus’ favor by carrying out social reforms like the abolition of slavery or improvements in working conditions. Inspired by their goodness, Jesus will postpone his arrival until a world resembling his social teachings has been created.
Liberal Protestantism emerged out of postmillennialism and had its own overlap with economics; Richard T. Ely (1854-1943), one of the founders of the American Economics Association, offers a leading example. Ely’s reformist inclinations played a major role in establishing the Social Gospel movement, which ultimately came to fruition during the New Deal. Friedman argues, correctly I believe, that although Social Gospel economics raised serious questions about the efficacy of laissez-faire, it was very much in line with the conception of human progress found in Smith and Hume.
This overview cannot even begin to pay homage to the prodigious research informing Friedman’s analysis. He covers not only the main thinkers in both economics and theology, but also the less-well-known ones who helped shape their thought. He can credibly discuss the philosophy of John Locke and the science of Isaac Newton. As one reads Friedman, words like “magisterial,” “masterpiece” and “magnificent” floated through my thoughts.
In the final analysis, however, such words do not quite hit the mark; let me settle on “major.” For all its brilliance, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” cannot be ranked with Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (although it does surpass R. H. Tawney’s thin book from which Friedman borrowed his title).
For one thing, this book is mistitled; its overwhelming concentration is on only one religion, the Protestant one. You will not find a discussion here of the two great papal encyclicals, “Rerum Novarum” and “Quadragesimo Anno,” that form the basis of Catholic social teaching. By confining himself mostly to the Protestant countries of England, Scotland and Holland, Friedman, for all his range, narrows his focus too much.
What is more, economics and theology may have intertwined in the past, but they rarely do now. If anything, someone could write a contemporary work, surely shorter than this one, on atheism and the resurgence of free-market economics. The 19th-century economic thinkers Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, both influenced more by Darwin than Calvin, were quite hostile to religion. The 20th century’s most widely read advocate for laissez-faire, Ayn Rand, was a militant nonbeliever. Milton Friedman, who needs no identification, was Jewish by birth but nonobservant. The story so brilliantly told by the author, it would seem, has reached its end.
Secular writers have begun to discover theology. Michael Massing, a journalist once concerned primarily with social problems, wrote a fascinating book, “Fatal Discord,” on Erasmus and Luther. Employed by a Catholic university, I found theology a far more humanistic discipline than political science. And if someone had told me that a former chairman of the Harvard economics department would write a major work on Calvinism and its influence, you would have had to consider me a skeptic. Nonetheless Benjamin M. Friedman has, and the result is an awakening all its own.
Alan Wolfe is the former director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
By Benjamin M. Friedman
Illustrated. 560 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $37.50.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 31, 2021, Page 11 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Economic Pieties.
By Alan Wolfe
Jan. 26, 2021
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
By Benjamin M. Friedman
What does an esoteric concept like Calvinist soteriology have to do with the rise of modern economics? Does laissez-faire have its roots in the arcane Quinquarticular Controversy? Can one find the origins of the welfare state in postmillennialist eschatology?
Questions like these, according to the Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman, are essential to understanding his discipline today. This is anything but self-evident; economists, especially of the mathematical sort, are unlikely to be transfixed by the writings of St. Augustine. But once theological questions are rendered into secular language, their relevance, and thus the importance of Friedman’s “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,” becomes clear.
Soteriology refers to the question of salvation, and few thinkers made a greater contribution to it than John Calvin (1509-64), the founder of one of the stricter forms of Protestantism to emerge during the Reformation. Calvin’s theology is frequently summarized by the acronym TULIP. T reminds us that we are totally depraved. U stands for the fact that salvation is unconditional; God and God alone chooses the elect and we cannot influence his choice. Atonement, moreover, is limited; God saves only those so chosen. God’s grace, in addition, is irresistible; if he calls, we have no choice but to respond. Finally, the doctrine of the preservation of the saints reminds us that God is never whimsical; once he grants salvation, he grants it forever.
Calvin’s deterministic, and highly pessimistic, view of human nature, Friedman argues, was destined to give way before a science insisting on the centrality of markets could emerge. As it happens, Calvinism attracted numerous followers in Scotland, the same place in which Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith himself was indifferent toward religion and his close friend, the philosopher David Hume, was actively hostile. Nonetheless, it was the religious atmosphere in which they wrote, Friedman believes, that would shape their ideas, even if mostly as a foil: Inherently depraved people whose fates are predetermined by a Supreme Being need no “invisible hand” to coordinate their behavior, while the citizens of newly emerging market economies do.
In contrast to Calvin, the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) found strict Calvinism insulting to God. Like their rivals, Arminius and his followers summarized their positions in five points; hence the term Quinquarticular Controversy. The essence of those points held that God’s glory could not be fully appreciated if the people who worship him lack the freedom to choose him. If humans have free will, it follows, the concept of predestination must be modified and the idea of a limited elect be expanded. Naturally orthodox Calvinists fought back against what they considered outrageously heretical ideas.
The debates initiated by the Arminians were at first confined to Holland, but it was not long before they were exported to England and Scotland. Citing the writings of relatively unknown thinkers and hymnists, Friedman shows how Arminian thinking insisted on “the natural goodness of man in contrast to inborn depravity, the central role of free human choice and action in contrast to predestination and the design of the universe not solely for the glorification of God but to promote human happiness too.” Ultimately, Friedman concludes, the new science of economics secularized Arminian ideas, foreshadowing a world in which the market and other secular institutions would take over from God the task of improving human prospects.
Arminian theology made its most lasting mark in the United States. The Puritans adhered to the stricter varieties of Calvinism; no one could accuse them of holding an optimistic view of human nature. Perhaps for that reason, their theology increasingly came to seem obsolete to a vibrant new nation. As America expanded so did Arminianism, this time taking the form of Methodism and all the variants that came in its wake. By the mid-19th century, strict Calvinism had become mostly a memory.
Except among those who called themselves fundamentalist. Fundamentalism is associated with what theologians call a premillennial eschatology. (Eschatology concerns itself with the end times.) Jesus will initiate his Second Coming at some point, most Protestants agreed, but when and how is still a matter of considerable dispute. Premillennialists subscribe to the belief that our inherently sinful nature will lead us into a tumultuous epoch, only after which Jesus will make his appearance and whisk away the remnant of the truly righteous.
In a series of steps that seem to lead inevitably away from Calvinism, postmillennialists challenged such notions throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries. They teach that human beings can win Jesus’ favor by carrying out social reforms like the abolition of slavery or improvements in working conditions. Inspired by their goodness, Jesus will postpone his arrival until a world resembling his social teachings has been created.
Liberal Protestantism emerged out of postmillennialism and had its own overlap with economics; Richard T. Ely (1854-1943), one of the founders of the American Economics Association, offers a leading example. Ely’s reformist inclinations played a major role in establishing the Social Gospel movement, which ultimately came to fruition during the New Deal. Friedman argues, correctly I believe, that although Social Gospel economics raised serious questions about the efficacy of laissez-faire, it was very much in line with the conception of human progress found in Smith and Hume.
This overview cannot even begin to pay homage to the prodigious research informing Friedman’s analysis. He covers not only the main thinkers in both economics and theology, but also the less-well-known ones who helped shape their thought. He can credibly discuss the philosophy of John Locke and the science of Isaac Newton. As one reads Friedman, words like “magisterial,” “masterpiece” and “magnificent” floated through my thoughts.
In the final analysis, however, such words do not quite hit the mark; let me settle on “major.” For all its brilliance, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” cannot be ranked with Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (although it does surpass R. H. Tawney’s thin book from which Friedman borrowed his title).
For one thing, this book is mistitled; its overwhelming concentration is on only one religion, the Protestant one. You will not find a discussion here of the two great papal encyclicals, “Rerum Novarum” and “Quadragesimo Anno,” that form the basis of Catholic social teaching. By confining himself mostly to the Protestant countries of England, Scotland and Holland, Friedman, for all his range, narrows his focus too much.
What is more, economics and theology may have intertwined in the past, but they rarely do now. If anything, someone could write a contemporary work, surely shorter than this one, on atheism and the resurgence of free-market economics. The 19th-century economic thinkers Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, both influenced more by Darwin than Calvin, were quite hostile to religion. The 20th century’s most widely read advocate for laissez-faire, Ayn Rand, was a militant nonbeliever. Milton Friedman, who needs no identification, was Jewish by birth but nonobservant. The story so brilliantly told by the author, it would seem, has reached its end.
Secular writers have begun to discover theology. Michael Massing, a journalist once concerned primarily with social problems, wrote a fascinating book, “Fatal Discord,” on Erasmus and Luther. Employed by a Catholic university, I found theology a far more humanistic discipline than political science. And if someone had told me that a former chairman of the Harvard economics department would write a major work on Calvinism and its influence, you would have had to consider me a skeptic. Nonetheless Benjamin M. Friedman has, and the result is an awakening all its own.
Alan Wolfe is the former director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
By Benjamin M. Friedman
Illustrated. 560 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $37.50.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 31, 2021, Page 11 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Economic Pieties.
PDF THE ORIGINAL BY TAWNEY
Max Weber and the spirit of capitalism
Max Weber (1864- 1920) is perhaps best known of his work on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. His views have been much debated but the key idea in Weber was that there was a link between the rise of capitalism and an ethos of self control associated with Protestant reformation. By stressing the cultural, rather than the economic, dimension Weber has often been seen as anti Marxist camp but things are more complicated than that, Weber was choosing to focus on the cultures we create rather than dismissing structural and other issues (see Giddens 1970 below if you want to carry this further ).
Weber is also much known for his later work on authority. Put briefly he identified three types of authority: rational (rule based); traditional and charismatic. All three were ideal types – or generalisations. In practice all aspects of authority were interrelated and dynamic, though there was a tendency towards rational authority in the modern state.
Weber has been hugely influential in our understanding of social theory but his work is difficult to categorise. You can find some self styled Weberian analyses (for example Bocock, 1971 below) but he offers more a way of thinking about social research rather than a particular method or methodology. Key to this perspective is a concern for what may today recognise as interdisciplinarity, criticality and and interest in the consequences of cultural beliefs.
References
Bocock, R. (1971) The Ismailis in Tanzania: A Weberian Analysis, The British Journal of Sociology, 22, 4, 365-380.
Giddens, A. (1970) Marx, Weber, and the development of capitalism, Sociology,4 , 3, 289–310.
Weber, M. (1922) Economy and society; an outline of interpretive sociology. (various editions or simply search Internet archive at archive org) https://archive.org/details/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety
Weber, M. (1904 / 1905) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
https://archive.org/details/protestantethics00webe
And for a simplistic overview you could try
Max Weber (1864- 1920) is perhaps best known of his work on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. His views have been much debated but the key idea in Weber was that there was a link between the rise of capitalism and an ethos of self control associated with Protestant reformation. By stressing the cultural, rather than the economic, dimension Weber has often been seen as anti Marxist camp but things are more complicated than that, Weber was choosing to focus on the cultures we create rather than dismissing structural and other issues (see Giddens 1970 below if you want to carry this further ).
Weber is also much known for his later work on authority. Put briefly he identified three types of authority: rational (rule based); traditional and charismatic. All three were ideal types – or generalisations. In practice all aspects of authority were interrelated and dynamic, though there was a tendency towards rational authority in the modern state.
Weber has been hugely influential in our understanding of social theory but his work is difficult to categorise. You can find some self styled Weberian analyses (for example Bocock, 1971 below) but he offers more a way of thinking about social research rather than a particular method or methodology. Key to this perspective is a concern for what may today recognise as interdisciplinarity, criticality and and interest in the consequences of cultural beliefs.
References
Bocock, R. (1971) The Ismailis in Tanzania: A Weberian Analysis, The British Journal of Sociology, 22, 4, 365-380.
Giddens, A. (1970) Marx, Weber, and the development of capitalism, Sociology,4 , 3, 289–310.
Weber, M. (1922) Economy and society; an outline of interpretive sociology. (various editions or simply search Internet archive at archive org) https://archive.org/details/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety
Weber, M. (1904 / 1905) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
https://archive.org/details/protestantethics00webe
And for a simplistic overview you could try
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