That for England, Cranmer’s Bible translation is the source of the Puritan conception of calling in the sense of Beruf, trade, has already, quite correctly, been pointed out by Murray. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century calling is used in that sense. In 1588 unlawful callings are referred to, and in 1603 greater callings in the sense of higher occupations, etc. (see Murray). Quite remarkable is Brentano’s idea (op. cit., p. 139), that in the Middle Ages vocatio was not translated with Beruf, and that this concept was not known, because only a free man could engage in a Beruf, and freemen, in the middle-class professions, did not exist at that time. Since the whole social structure of the medieval crafts, as opposed to those of antiquity, rested upon free labour, and, above all, almost all the merchants were freemen, I do not clearly understand this thesis. ↩
Compare with the following the instructive discussion in K. Eger, Die Anschauung Luthers vom Beruf (Giessen, 1900). Perhaps its only serious fault, which is shared by almost all other theological writers, is his insufficiently clear analysis of the concept of lex natura. On this see E. Troeltsch in his review of Seeberg’s Dogmengeschichte, and now above all in the relevant parts of his Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen. ↩
For when Thomas Aquinas represents the division of men into estates and occupational groups as the work of divine providence, by that he means the objective cosmos of society. But that the individual should take up a particular calling (as we should say; Thomas, however, says ministerium or officium) is due to causae naturales. Quaestiones quodlibetal, VII, Art. 17c: “Haec autem diversificatio hominum in diversis officiis contingit primo ex divina providentia, quae ita hominum status distribuit … secundo etiam ex causis naturalibus, ex quibus contingit, quod in diversis hominibus sunt diversae inclinationes ad diversa officia. …”
Quite similar is Pascal’s view when he says that it is chance which determines the choice of a calling. See on Pascal, A. Koester, Die Ethik Pascals (1907). Of the organic systems of religious ethics, only the most complete of them, the Indian, is different in this respect. The difference between the Thomistic and the Protestant ideas of the calling is so evident that we may dismiss it for the present with the above quotation. This is true even as between the Thomistic and the later Lutheran ethics, which are very similar in many other respects, especially in their emphasis on Providence. We shall return later to a discussion of the Catholic viewpoint. On Thomas Aquinas, see Maurenbrecher, Thomas von Aquino’s Stellung zum Wirtschaftsleben seiner Zeit, 1888. Otherwise, where Luther agrees with Thomas in details, he has probably been influenced rather by the general doctrines of Scholasticism than by Thomas in particular. For, according to Denifle’s investigations, he seems really not to have known Thomas very well. See Denifle, Luther und Luthertum (1903), p. 501, and on it, Koehler, Ein Wort zu Denifles Luther (1904), p. 25. ↩
In Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, (1) the double nature of man is used for the justification of worldly duties in the sense of the lex natura (here the natural order of the world). From that it follows (Erlangen edition, 27, p. 188) that man is inevitably bound to his body and to the social community. (2) In this situation he will (p. 196: this is a second justification), if he is a believing Christian, decide to repay God’s act of grace, which was done for pure love, by love of his neighbour. With this very loose connection between faith and love is combined (3) (p. 190) the old ascetic justification of labour as a means of securing to the inner man mastery over the body. (4) Labour is hence, as the reasoning is continued with another appearance of the idea of lex naturae in another sense (here, natural morality), an original instinct given by God to Adam (before the fall), which he has obeyed “solely to please God.” Finally (5) (pp. 161 and 199), there appears, in connection with Matthew 7:18 f., the idea that good work in one’s ordinary calling is and must be the result of the renewal of life, caused by faith, without, however, developing the most important Calvinistic idea of proof. The powerful emotion which dominates the work explains the presence of such contradictory ideas. ↩
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love; and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” (Wealth of Nations, Book I, chap. II). ↩
“Omnia enim per te operabitur (Deus), mulgebit per te vaccam et servilissima quaeque opera faciet, ac maxima pariter et minima ipsi grata erunt” (“Exigesis of Genesis,” Exegetica opera latina, ed. Elsperger, VII, p. 213). The idea is found before Luther in Tauler, who holds the spiritual and the worldly Ruf to
