Did Calvin Have a Better Understanding of Modern Economics as Luther (original) (raw)

Did Calvin Have a Better Understanding of Modern Economics as Luther? Max Weber's Ideas to the Test

Research in World Economy, 2015

For the Christian tradition there seems to be a critical attitude towards economy, it's perspective and it's logic. But it can be shown that not only the language of Luther and Calvin is dominated economically, but even the language of the Bible itself. Purpose of that is to bring the Christian faith in the "everyday life" of each era. And thus just Luther and Calvin had made use of economic terms and have dealt engaged with economic (everyday) questions. But by the works of Max Weber it became quite popular to estimate Luther low compared to Calvin concerning economic relationships. In this paper these ideas of Max Weber shall be tested: namely concerning the representative economic topics "property", "vocation/ profession" and "interest". It will be shown that there is nearly no reason to estimate Luther low compared to Calvin

Martin Luther and the making of the modern economic mind

International Review of Economics, 2018

Martin Luther has, in the modern economic as well as historian's literature, often been portrayed as a mediaeval ignoramus helplessly shouting against the forces of modern capitalism, with little meaningful economic insight or contribution made to modern economic reasoning. In my paper, I would like to challenge this view. A first section provides a brief sketch of the evolution of economic knowledge in Europe during the centuries of capitalism's ascendancy, 1250s-1850s. I would like to suggest that what today is claimed as having been the past "mainstream" does not necessarily correspond to what the mainstream way of thinking about the market process really was in the past or the centuries of European capitalism in its ascendancy, 1250s-1850s. A second section then discusses the intellectual origins of Martin Luther's theology and market theory in the light of the remarks made in section one. It argues that to fully understand Luther's economics also means we have to engage with the origins of his theology, not only because his economics and theology were intrinsically related and built upon one another, but because in a historical context it makes little sense to analytically disentangle theology from economics. A third section provides a sketch of Martin Luther's economics, also demonstrating how Luther fits into the genealogy of modern economic knowledge. The fourth section concludes.

Martin Luther on Usury and the Divine Economy

Human Flourishing Economic Wisdom for a Fruitful Christian Vision of the Good Life, 2020

One reason for categorizing Luther’s economic thought as scholastic is his unrelenting condemnation of usury. The judgment his view usury represents a scholastic line of thought is not entirely wrong. He deploys a version of a scholastic argument that usury contradicts the natural law, as epitomized by what we now call the “golden rule:” do to others what you would have them do to you. Here, Luther’s ethic of the natural law breaks with the dominant scholastic habits of thought, offering an economic ethic grounded in a theology of creation that conceives of the world as a sheer gift of God. In what follows, I will argue that Luther’s view of the world as created—that is, divinely blessed and abounding with the generosity of God—gives shape to his economic thought. Based on this theology of the world as divine gift, the goal of economic exchange is the flourishing of humans as neighbors in community. The Christian thus enacts practices of generosity to root out the besetting sin of greed and join in the divine economy.

Calvinist Ethics and the Rise of Capitalism

Max Weber sought to answer the question: “why were the districts of highest economic development at the same time particularly favourable to a revolution in the Church?” Closely linked to the answer of the question, he found, was the higher wealth of ascetic Christians relative to Catholics, and a higher concentration of these Protestants in capitalist-focused endeavours.

Review of" Calvin and Commerce: The Transforming Power of Calvinism in Market Economies"

2012

This book is the fifth of eight planned entries in The Calvin 500 Series. The book series is one element of the broader Calvin Quincentenary, an international, multidisciplinary, and nondenominational celebration of the life and work of John Calvin, corresponding to the five-hundredth anniversary of his 1509 birth. The volume shares two authors. The first, David W. Hall, is senior pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia, and is the general editor of the Calvin 500 book series. His coauthor, Matthew D.

The Theological Origins and Critique of Political Economy

My thesis in this essay accords in one important respect with the mainstream view in social science since Max Weber, which is that Christian doctrine, ethics and practices uniquely shaped modern political economy. On this view, capitalism, though now a global set of practices and procedures, emerged as a result of politico-theological developments in Northern Europe between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. However there is radical disagreement over the precise chain of causation. For Max Weber Protestant anxiety over predestination, and the secularisation of the holy calling of monks, were key cultural stimuli to the early modern turn from commons management, yeoman farming, and gift exchange to joint stock holding corporations, rent and wages, profit and loss, usury, and factories (Weber 1930). But against Weber, many now argue that it was innovations in Christian political theology, and not those factors Weber identified, which were generative of ideas and practices conducive to the development of capitalism, and in particular of primitive accumulation and the related development of a rentier and waged economy, first in England, and then in continental Europe and the European colonies.