NY Times Sunday Book Review, Jan. 31, 2020
The Religious Roots of Our Free Enterprise System
By Alan Wolfe
RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
By Benjamin M. Friedman
Illustrated. 560 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $37.50.
What does an esoteric concept like Calvinist soteriology have to do with
the rise of modern economics? Does laissez-faire have its roots in the
arcane Quinquarticular Controversy? Can one find the origins of the
welfare state in postmillennialist eschatology?
Questions like these, according to the Harvard economist Benjamin M.
Friedman, are essential to understanding his discipline today. This is
anything but self-evident; economists, especially of the mathematical
sort, are unlikely to be transfixed by the writings of St. Augustine.
But once theological questions are rendered into secular language, their
relevance, and thus the importance of Friedman’s “Religion and the Rise
of Capitalism,” becomes clear.
Soteriology refers to the question of salvation, and few thinkers made a
greater contribution to it than John Calvin (1509-64), the founder of
one of the stricter forms of Protestantism to emerge during the
Reformation. Calvin’s theology is frequently summarized by the acronym
TULIP. T reminds us that we are totally depraved. U stands for the fact
that salvation is unconditional; God and God alone chooses the elect and
we cannot influence his choice. Atonement, moreover, is limited; God
saves only those so chosen. God’s grace, in addition, is irresistible;
if he calls, we have no choice but to respond. Finally, the doctrine of
the preservation of the saints reminds us that God is never whimsical;
once he grants salvation, he grants it forever.
Calvin’s deterministic, and highly pessimistic, view of human nature,
Friedman argues, was destined to give way before a science insisting on
the centrality of markets could emerge. As it happens, Calvinism
attracted numerous followers in Scotland, the same place in which Adam
Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith himself was indifferent
toward religion and his close friend, the philosopher David Hume, was
actively hostile. Nonetheless, it was the religious atmosphere in which
they wrote, Friedman believes, that would shape their ideas, even if
mostly as a foil: Inherently depraved people whose fates are
predetermined by a Supreme Being need no “invisible hand” to coordinate
their behavior, while the citizens of newly emerging market economies do.
In contrast to Calvin, the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609)
found strict Calvinism insulting to God. Like their rivals, Arminius and
his followers summarized their positions in five points; hence the term
Quinquarticular Controversy. The essence of those points held that God’s
glory could not be fully appreciated if the people who worship him lack
the freedom to choose him. If humans have free will, it follows, the
concept of predestination must be modified and the idea of a limited
elect be expanded. Naturally orthodox Calvinists fought back against
what they considered outrageously heretical ideas.
The debates initiated by the Arminians were at first confined to
Holland, but it was not long before they were exported to England and
Scotland. Citing the writings of relatively unknown thinkers and
hymnists, Friedman shows how Arminian thinking insisted on “the natural
goodness of man in contrast to inborn depravity, the central role of
free human choice and action in contrast to predestination and the
design of the universe not solely for the glorification of God but to
promote human happiness too.” Ultimately, Friedman concludes, the new
science of economics secularized Arminian ideas, foreshadowing a world
in which the market and other secular institutions would take over from
God the task of improving human prospects.
Arminian theology made its most lasting mark in the United States. The
Puritans adhered to the stricter varieties of Calvinism; no one could
accuse them of holding an optimistic view of human nature. Perhaps for
that reason, their theology increasingly came to seem obsolete to a
vibrant new nation. As America expanded so did Arminianism, this time
taking the form of Methodism and all the variants that came in its wake.
By the mid-19th century, strict Calvinism had become mostly a memory.
Except among those who called themselves fundamentalist. Fundamentalism
is associated with what theologians call a premillennial eschatology.
(Eschatology concerns itself with the end times.) Jesus will initiate
his Second Coming at some point, most Protestants agreed, but when and
how is still a matter of considerable dispute. Premillennialists
subscribe to the belief that our inherently sinful nature will lead us
into a tumultuous epoch, only after which Jesus will make his appearance
and whisk away the remnant of the truly righteous.
In a series of steps that seem to lead inevitably away from Calvinism,
postmillennialists challenged such notions throughout the 19th and into
the 20th centuries. They teach that human beings can win Jesus’ favor by
carrying out social reforms like the abolition of slavery or
improvements in working conditions. Inspired by their goodness, Jesus
will postpone his arrival until a world resembling his social teachings
has been created.
Liberal Protestantism emerged out of postmillennialism and had its own
overlap with economics; Richard T. Ely (1854-1943), one of the founders
of the American Economics Association, offers a leading example. Ely’s
reformist inclinations played a major role in establishing the Social
Gospel movement, which ultimately came to fruition during the New Deal.
Friedman argues, correctly I believe, that although Social Gospel
economics raised serious questions about the efficacy of laissez-faire,
it was very much in line with the conception of human progress found in
Smith and Hume.
This overview cannot even begin to pay homage to the prodigious research
informing Friedman’s analysis. He covers not only the main thinkers in
both economics and theology, but also the less-well-known ones who
helped shape their thought. He can credibly discuss the philosophy of
John Locke and the science of Isaac Newton. As one reads Friedman, words
like “magisterial,” “masterpiece” and “magnificent” floated through my
thoughts.
In the final analysis, however, such words do not quite hit the mark;
let me settle on “major.” For all its brilliance, “Religion and the Rise
of Capitalism” cannot be ranked with Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism” (although it does surpass R. H. Tawney’s
thin book from which Friedman borrowed his title).
For one thing, this book is mistitled; its overwhelming concentration is
on only one religion, the Protestant one. You will not find a discussion
here of the two great papal encyclicals, “Rerum Novarum” and
“Quadragesimo Anno,” that form the basis of Catholic social teaching. By
confining himself mostly to the Protestant countries of England,
Scotland and Holland, Friedman, for all his range, narrows his focus too
much.
What is more, economics and theology may have intertwined in the past,
but they rarely do now. If anything, someone could write a contemporary
work, surely shorter than this one, on atheism and the resurgence of
free-market economics. The 19th-century economic thinkers Herbert
Spencer and William Graham Sumner, both influenced more by Darwin than
Calvin, were quite hostile to religion. The 20th century’s most widely
read advocate for laissez-faire, Ayn Rand, was a militant nonbeliever.
Milton Friedman, who needs no identification, was Jewish by birth but
nonobservant. The story so brilliantly told by the author, it would
seem, has reached its end.
Secular writers have begun to discover theology. Michael Massing, a
journalist once concerned primarily with social problems, wrote a
fascinating book, “Fatal Discord,” on Erasmus and Luther. Employed by a
Catholic university, I found theology a far more humanistic discipline
than political science. And if someone had told me that a former
chairman of the Harvard economics department would write a major work on
Calvinism and its influence, you would have had to consider me a
skeptic. Nonetheless Benjamin M. Friedman has, and the result is an
awakening all its own.
Alan Wolfe is the former director of the Boisi Center for Religion and
American Public Life at Boston College.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#6006): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6006
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80293435/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
