Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism

very order of the creation the paternal solicitude of God for man is conspicuous,

because he furnished the world with all things needful, and even with an immense

profusion of wealth, before he formed man. Thus man was rich before he

was born.

Calvin has much to say about the rightly structured family as an expression of
solidarity and as an institution for cultivating in us a way of life in which we
live out our solidarity with each other. As Biéler shows, Calvin has even more
to say about right economic relationships as expressive of our solidarity:

‘God has created man’, Calvin says,‘so that man may be a creature of fellowship’...

Companionship is completed in work and in the interplay of economic exchanges.

Human fellowship is realized in relationships whichflow from the division of labor

wherein each person has been called by God to a particular and partial work which

complements the work of others. The mutual exchange of goods and services is the

concrete sign of the profound solidarity which unites humanity.^48

It is in this context that the proverbial Calvinist emphasis on hard work in a
worldly vocation must be placed. Max Weber’s interpretation was that hard
work, if crowned with material prosperity, was the only sign available to the
Calvinists that answered their anxious worry as to whether they were among
the elect. What Calvin himself actually said is profoundly different from this
speculative interpretation by Weber. Self-initiated hard work in our worldly
vocations is an expression of our solidarity and is to be done for the sake of the
common good.

Let us realize that as God has thus joined us together each of us is under

obligation to his neighbours. If God had wished us to keep everyone in isolation,

then we would not have the necessity that compels us to mix with each other.

Whatever people may wish, they must communicate with each other. So we have

to come back to this: we have to know, in fact, that God wanted to make us

members of one body.... God has joined us together and linked us as if in

one body, wishing that each one of us should busy himself for his neighbours

and no one should be devoted to himself alone but together we should also serve

everyone.^49

Calvin proposed what one might callgeneral usefulnessas the standard for
evaluating economic performance. He envisions a system of material benefits
that are efficiently produced by the dedication and hard work of all employ-
able human beings and that are universally and justly exchanged and distrib-
uted so as to satisfy the basic needs of all and, in addition, to stimulate
continued production.

(^48) Biéler,The Social Humanism of Calvin,17–18.
(^49) Calvin, Sermon LIII on I Timothy 6:17–19; quoted in Biéler,Calvin’s Economic and Social
Thought, 296–7.
92 Nicholas Wolterstorff