Luther’s Conception of the Calling

In Chapter 3 of his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber explores the idea of the “calling.” He pins it to the Protestant notion that everyday work is a kind of religious duty and, indeed, “the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume.”

Weber traces this meaning of the word to Luther, who first used the word with the modern meaning in his translation of the Bible. Luther wasn’t the first to praise worldly labor, but the Protestant Reformation gave a new religious significance to it:

It is true that certain suggestions of the positive valuation of routine activity in the world, which is contained in this conception of the calling, had already existed in the Middle Ages, and even in late Hellenistic antiquity. We shall speak of that later. But at least one thing was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume.

Luther’s inspiration for this idea could actually be rooted in early Christian attitudes towards labor. But these attitudes didn’t carry the same religious weight as Luther’s. Early Christians viewed the world through an eschatological lens:

Since everyone was simply waiting for the coming of the Lord, there was nothing to do but remain in the station and in the worldly occupation in which the call of the Lord had found him, and labor as before. Thus he would not burden his brothers as an object of charity, and it would only be for a little while.

During the Reformation, this indifference was reinterpreted. One must accept his lot in life, being called by God to perform his duties as part of a “divine ordinance.” What was once a small, temporary burden became a lifelong, divine mandate.