Working, across the Very Long Reformation: Four Models

There are few matters of such moment in any given culture as the relation of deserving and reward. Understand a given culture's system of reward, and you understand that culture's structure and values. How, then, could both Liberalism and left-wing historians have been so wrong, for so lon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReformation (Oxford, England) Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 181 - 194
Main Author Simpson, James
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 03.07.2019
Subjects
Arminianism
Calvinism
Gaskell
Lutheranism
semi-Pelagianism
Weber
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Summary:There are few matters of such moment in any given culture as the relation of deserving and reward. Understand a given culture's system of reward, and you understand that culture's structure and values. How, then, could both Liberalism and left-wing historians have been so wrong, for so long, about the way Reformation theology defined works and merit? In this essay I define the error and then suggest four non-exclusive ways we might understand it. The error is (i) a misunderstanding of Weber's thesis about Protestantism and working; (ii) a failure to understand the relation of Lutheran and Calvinist soteriology in relation to its pre-Reformation counterpart; (iii) a refusal by literary critics to recognize the full range of soteriological positions in the English Reformation; and (iv) the result of nineteenth-century Whig transformation of Reformation culture. Here my focus is Elizabeth's Gaskell's North and South.
ISSN:1357-4175
1752-0738
DOI:10.1080/13574175.2019.1665284