Weber--sin and capital

[MalignD at aol.com]

Lycidas:

<<The "good works" of the Quakers or more generally the "Calling" of 
Protestants to do good in the world, is a product of the reformation and is 
not present in Catholic theology or Christian Antiquity. There is no need or 
desire to do good in this world for a Catholic. because he is not interested 
in this world, this mundane existence. The opposite is true for the 
Protestant. Moreover, any sin that a Catholic commits can be gotten rid of by 
his going to the medicine man or father confessor. Not so for the Protestant, 
who not only accumulates wealth in this world, does good works in this 
world--accumulates moral goodness or evil but accumulates sins. The cycle, 
the life and death cycle of sin, repentance, forgiveness, found in religions 
from Catholicism to Native American religions to African religions, is absent 
from Protestantism and the accumulation of wealth is morally sanctioned, 
provided, of course, it is combined with a sober, industrious, life and not 
to support the luxurious and conspicuous consumptions of self-indulgent 
hedonists like the Pope and the Jesuits. >>

This is hopelessly muddled and, when not entirely wrong, wrongheaded.

Fundamental to Luther's break with the Catholic church was disagreement with 
the idea of good works.  The Catholic church allowed for variable 
relationships to God--those of laymen, priests, and monks--based on works, 
with relative rewards and punishments, purgatory as well as hell.  Luther 
rejected this entirely.  He believed humankind so hopelessly distant from God 
that a lifetime of good works wouldn't justify salvation.  

Luther insisted there are no degrees of separation from God.  One has a 
relationship with God or one does not.  There is simply faith and grace and 
it is paradoxical:  one is worthy although one is unworthy.  Merit has no 
role, only acceptance.  Faith through grace.

One should bear in mind when speaking of Protestantism that it is not a 
singular entity like Catholicism.  The place of work derives not from Luther, 
rather from Calvin, and it is fundamentally different from the Catholic idea. 
 Calvin had no disagreement with Luther around the idea of faith through 
grace, rather with what one did once united with God.  For Luther, reunion 
was joyous.  For Calvin, it was a calling to new life to be given over to 
serving and glorifying God.  Calvin believed God best served by hard work, 
sobriety, temperance and chastity,  but one was not in so living working 
one's way an inch closer to God or earning a place in Heaven.

One consequence of this was an accumulation of wealth in many German 
Calvinist communities.  Opposed to ostentation and sumptuous living, Calvin 
counseled investment of that wealth, increasing production, etc.  It is here 
that the so-called Protestant ethic dovetails with capitalism and it is this 
that Weber commented on.