Christian Activists

Hard Work the Highest Service

The general medieval world-view was deeply suspicious of economic motives.  Lucre was, after all, filthy.  Therefore, it had to be limited, controlled, and governed.  All economic activity had to be carried on for the public good; profits must be restricted to sustenance payments.  Clearly, the medieval world had a problem with the Parable of the Talents. 

These generalisations hold generally true.  But there were exceptions.  Gradually, as Western economies developed, the exceptions became more common, more widespread.  Medieval theology, and the economic theories it produced, were broken apart by economic realities.  Theological understanding did not catch up until the Reformation--and then, only gradually.

John Calvin argued that laws against usury were entirely inconsistent.  They simply did not make sense.
  If someone leased his land and took gain from the terms of the lease, how was that different from someone lending money at interest?  Why was the former not usurious, whereas the latter was?  Moreover, why ought income from a business not be allowed to be larger than the profits from landowning?  Surely, the merchant profited from his own diligence and industry, as did the landowner?  Both alike deployed capital.  Why is the one sanctified, and the other suspect? 

The upshot was that capital (whether in the form of land, cash, buildings, livestock) all came to be viewed alike.  They all came to be viewed as property which could be used to produce goods or provide services from which profit could be taken.  If one did not use it actively, but left one's capital stock idle, indolence and laziness would doubtless multiply. Either way, capital would produce something--either good or bad.  

The final step in this Christian thought-revolution over work and business was to understand that the owner of capital was a steward accountable to God for the use and deployment of the capital goods entrusted to him by God, in the same was the labourer, or tradesman was accountable to God for the deployment of his skills and labour.  Here lay the final piece of the puzzle: to make profit and to increase capital came to be seen as a holy calling, not usury or greed.  This calling sat alongside the responsibility to take care of one's family, of the neighbour, of the poor, of the orphan, and of the sick.  The more business, the more profit; the more the nurture and care of others could be facilitated.  God would require an accounting of each servant for his service. 

[The true aim of man's existence] is not personal salvation, but the glorification of God, to be sought, not by prayer only, but by action--the sanctification of the world by strife and labour.  For Calvinism, with all is repudiation of personal merit, is intensely practical.  Good works are not a way of attaining salvation, but they are indispensable as a proof that salvation has been attained. . . .

For the Calvinist the world is ordained to show forth the majesty of God, and the duty of the Christian is to live for that end.  His task is at once to discipline his individual life, and to create a sanctified society.  The Church, the State, the community in which he lives, must not merely be a means of personal salvation, or minister to his temporal needs.  It must be a "Kingdom of Christ", in which individual duties are performed by men conscious that they are "ever in their great Taskmaster's eye", and the whole fabric is preserved from corruption by a stringent and all-embracing discipline.  [R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. (London: John Murray, 1923), p. 109.]

This theology of economic service and labour reached its logical zenith at the hands of the latter Puritans.  Whereas the medieval Schoolmen and  the Church courts sought to restrict earnings and labour to that which was necessary for survival of self and family (all else being a manifestation of the sin of greed), Puritan theologians turned the matter on its head.  If one did not apply oneself with lifelong arduous dedication to one's calling, the deadly sin into which one would inevitably fall would be sloth--the sin of the self-indulgent sluggard.

On the lips of Puritan divines, [one's calling] is not an invitation to resignation, but the bugle-call which summons the elect to the long battle which will end only with their death. . . . The calling is not a condition in which the individual is born, but a strenuous and exacting enterprise, to be undertaken, indeed, under the guidance of Providence, but to be chosen by each man for himself, with a deep sense of his solemn responsibilities. . . .

The labour which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam.  It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline . . . imposed by the will of God. . . . It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied.  It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity. (Ibid., p. 241f). 

From a necessary evil to an spiritual, holy duty is a long distance to travel.  But that doctrinal and theological revolution, we venture to say, has done more to release the Church to manifold works of spiritual service than any other.  It gives us the Christian ideal of the hard-working, hard-worshipping saint--the kind of person who is too consumed with his duties and responsibilities to God and to man to fall into the idle life of a busybody.