by Josh » October 1st, 2007, 3:17 pm
I'm not sure it's accurate to say that protestantism caused capitalism. The protestant work ethic, after all, involves work in obedience to God, for the glory of God, not for pecuniary gain. In the early U.S. colonies, Puritanism was decidedly non-capitalistic. John Winthrop's "City on a Hill," as he envisioned it for the Puritans, was a rigid communal economy. It was a theocracy, not the sort of approach to government or economy that would spawn economic freedom. The rise of economic liberalism in the American colonies instead was, in part, a reaction against the rigidness of Puritan society. Winthrop and others in the early American Puritan tradition, though, emphasized community over individual property rights. Perhaps the early European protestant tradition was a bit more liberal; Calvin, after all, was an early humanist and individualism was at the core of protestantism, then and now. That humanism (in the sense the word was used prior to the latter 20th century) spawned Locke, Smith, and capitalism as well as protestantism. But Calvin's Geneva likewise was a theocracy and a model for Winthrop in the U.S. It's probably more accurate to say that the protestant work ethic and capitalism evolved together under the influence of economic liberalism.
As to the origin of the protestant work ethic, it is a return, like what all of protestantism sought to be, to scripture as a primary source of religious truth. Hard work, in the Hebrew Bible, exists before the fall of mankind (Gen 2:15) and is encouraged (e.g., Ecc 9:10), and the same emphasis on work (out of obedience to God) can be seen in the NT evangelical letters. So I don't think that it is an idea originating with protestantism. It was the Hebrew work ethic before it became the protestant work ethic.
I do think it's to the detriment of protestantism and the Church that the original Puritanical economic incentive, which is to work hard for the glory of God, was replaced by a work ethic founded primarily on pecuniary gain.
ecclesia semper reformata, semper reformanda.
--John Calvin