Predestination Term Analysis

This doctrine [of predestination], with all the pathos of its inhumanity, had one principal consequence for the mood of a generation which yielded to its magnificent logic: it engendered, for each individual, a feeling of tremendous inner loneliness.

Tireless labor in a calling was urged as the best possible means of attaining this self-assurance. This and this alone would drive away religious doubt and give assurance of one’s state of grace.

The consequence of this systematization of the ethical conduct of life, which was enforced by Calvinism (unlike Lutheranism), is the permeation of the whole of existence by Christianity.

Lutheranism, as a result of its doctrine of grace, simply failed to provide the psychological drive to be systematic in the conduct of life, and thus to enforce the rationalization of life.

If we may sum up what has been said so far, then, innerworldly Protestant asceticism works with all it force against the uninhibited enjoyment of possessions; it discourages consumption, especially the consumption of luxuries. Conversely, it has the effect of liberating the acquisition of wealth from the inhibitions of traditionalist ethics; it breaks the fetters on the striving for gain by not only legalizing it, but […] seeing it as directly willed by God.