It is tempting to refer to the undoubted importance for the social character of Reformed Christianity of the necessity for salvation, following from the Calvinistic idea of “incorporation into the body of Christ” (Calvin, Institutio Christianae, III, 11, 10), of reception into a community conforming to the divine prescriptions. From our point of view, however, the centre of the problem is somewhat different. That doctrinal tenet could have been developed in a Church of purely institutional character (anstaltsmässig), and, as is well known, this did happen. But in itself it did not possess the psychological force to awaken the initiative to form such communities nor to imbue them with the power which Calvinism possessed. Its tendency to form a community worked itself out very largely in the world outside the Church organizations ordained by God. Here the belief that the Christian proved (see below) his state of grace by action in majorem Dei gloriam was decisive, and the sharp condemnation of idolatry of the flesh and of all dependence on personal relations to other men was bound unperceived to direct this energy into the field of objective (impersonal) activity. The Christian who took the proof of his state of grace seriously acted in the service of God’s ends, and these could only be impersonal. Every purely emotional, that is not rationally motivated, personal relation of man to man easily fell in the Puritan, as in every ascetic ethic, under the suspicion of idolatry of the flesh. In addition to what has already been said, this is clearly enough shown for the case of friendship by the following warning: “It is an irrational act and not fit for a rational creature to love anyone farther than reason will allow us. … It very often taketh men’s minds so as to hinder their love of God” (Baxter, Christian Directory, IV, p. 253). We shall meet such arguments again and again.
The Calvinist was fascinated by the idea that God in creating the world, including the order of society, must have willed things to be objectively purposeful as a means of adding to His glory; not the flesh for its own sake, but the organization of the things of the flesh under His will. The active energies of the elect, liberated by the doctrine of predestination, thus flowed into the struggle to rationalize the world. Especially the idea that the public welfare, or as Baxter (Christian Directory, IV, p. 262) puts it, quite in the sense of later liberal rationalism, “The good of the many” (with a somewhat forced reference to Romans 9:3), was to be preferred to any personal or private good of the individual, followed, although not in itself new, for Puritanism from the repudiation of idolatry of the flesh. The traditional American objection to performing personal service is probably connected, besides the other important causes resulting from democratic feelings, at least indirectly with that tradition. Similarly, the relative immunity of formerly Puritan peoples to Caesarism, and, in general, the subjectively free attitude of the English to their great statesmen as compared with many things which we have experienced since 1878 in Germany positively and negatively. On the one hand, there is a greater willingness to give the great man his due, but, on the other, a repudiation of all hysterical idolization of him and of the naive idea that political obedience could be due anyone from thankfulness. On the sinfulness of the belief in authority, which is only permissible in the form of an impersonal authority, the Scriptures, as well as of an excessive devotion to even the most holy and virtuous of men, since that might interfere with obedience to God, see Baxter, Christian Directory (second edition, 1678), I, p. 56. The political consequences of the renunciation of idolatry of the flesh and the principle which was first applied only to the Church but later to life in general, that God alone should rule, do not belong in this investigation. ↩
Of the relation between dogmatic and practical psychological consequence we shall often have to speak. That the two are not identical it is hardly necessary to remark. ↩
Social, used of course without any of the implications attached to the modern sense of the word, meaning simply activity within the Church, politics, or any other social organization. ↩
“Good works performed for any other purpose than the glory of God are sinful” (Hanserd Knolly’s Confession, chap. XVI). ↩
What such an impersonality of brotherly love, resulting from the orientation of life solely to God’s will, means in the field of religious group life itself may be well illustrated by the attitude of the China Inland Mission and the International Missionaries Alliance (see Warneck, Geschichte der protestantischen Missionen, pp. 99, 111). At tremendous expense an army of missionaries was fitted out, for instance one thousand for China alone, in order by itinerant preaching to offer the Gospel to all the heathen in a strictly literal sense, since Christ had commanded it and made His second coming dependent on it. Whether these heathen should be converted to Christianity and thus attain salvation, even whether they could understand the language in which the missionary preached, was a matter of small importance and could be left to God, Who alone could control such things. According to Hudson Taylor (see Warneck, op. cit.), China has about fifty million families; one thousand missionaries could each reach fifty families per day (!) or the Gospel could be presented to all the Chinese in less than three years. It is precisely the same manner in which, for instance, Calvinism carried out its Church discipline. The end was not the salvation of those subject to
