Thinking Asceticism

Reading Chapter IV The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism

One thing I do believe is if we can live like the others and we can feel what the others feel.

This note is totally based on my reading of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism from Max Weber in English version. The reason why I don’t read the original one is because I know nothing about German language, both in recent days and before the recent days.

The Chapter IV is about “The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism.” Actually, the word “asceticism” is so strange for me. In my Chinese understanding, it is more inclined to “limit one’s ability”. There is no “who” to “who” and also “no purpose” and “no reason.” Every time I listen to the word “asceticism” in Chinese “禁欲主义”, I will think my mother’s command. Here I mean, for me, it is more like an authoritarian limitation and for a reason which I don’t know at that time.

Four principle forms of ascetic Protestantism is from the four phenomenon or their mixture:

• Calvinism: oppose Baptism at the beginning, close contact in the latter part of the 17th century.
• Pietism: spilt off (especially in Holland) from the Calvinistic movement (in England), and was absorbed into Lutheranism under Spener’s leadership in the end of 17th century.
• Methodism: originated from a new awakening of the ascetic spirit within the old, separate when it go to America, dominated by Zinzendorf, affected by lingering Hussite and Calvinistic within the Moravian brotherhood.
• Baptist movement

The author argue that “People who chose to be the staunchest champions of the ascetic movement” is Puritanism. The difference between Puritanism and Anglican Church (Anglicanism) mainly because of the dogmatic difference, which caused by predestination and justifications. The predestination is like a field waiting for exploration and justification is more like re-exploration. Weber finds similar ethical maxims may be correlate with different dogmatic foundations. Here, for my opinion, ethical maxims is ambiguous so their adherents would judge all through their standards. Otherwise, their judgement standards would be updated day by day through observations, self feelings and later cogitations. And dogmatic foundations is easy to tell by their different “-ism” like Anglicanism, Puritanism. That’s reason he continue to define the ethical theory and moral practice.

Even it is difficult to find the dogmatic roots of ascetic morality, maybe there is another causal to revert the diversion, from terrible struggles to the dogmatic roots. Then, the original dogmas has left traces in the later undogmatic ethics. This kind of traces can be divided into a further trichotomy (just a try), left to theory, left to forget, and left to diversity.

I agree that to know the original body of ideas on the connection between morality with the idea of the after time-life. But I am doubt that this connection would be dominated the most spiritual men of that time. “dominate” and “spiritual” seems to emphasize a description or purpose of “after-life”. If it is difficult to predict the “after-life”, maybe we infinitely try our best to be closed to the “after-life”.

Through what kind of ways to be closed to there?

Weber frames the practical religious interests:

• A. Calvinism

Calvinism is a definition we can tell. From geographical border, it lays on the Netherlands, England, and the France, the most highly developed country in Web’s perspective. Weber define it for its most characteristic dogma in Calvinism: the doctrine of predestination. It co-exists with the Reformed Church but we don’t know if it is essential to Reformed Church and to what extent.

Weber go back to the Westminster Confession of 1647, and some part of it both was regarded by both independence and Baptist creeds has been taken out to analyze.

They use “sin”, “salvation”, “convert”, “prepare”, “thereunto” in “Free Will”, how to “free” rather than how not to “free”.

They use dichotomy to set the choice that go to the everlasting whether life or death.

Why are we live / survive in this world, the reason is God chose us to be left and it is the glorious grace from God. There is a concrete narrative between “God” and “mankind”, is they use “glory” to describe “God”, and use “sin” to describe “mankind”. Where is the boundary between “glory” and “sin” especially at least space and time perspectives. And God can say human is out of earlier sin / future death before some specific time point. And the insurance, God has almighty power so God is correct all the time, because God defines. Those who are wicked and ungodly, even God help them more, they are still wicked and ungodly direction. And Milton refuse this conception of “for predestination.”

Because there is a combination of the phenomenon and a sense of certainty for the things people unfamiliar / new / do not understand why / don’t know what to what / mechanism / from where to where. Here, certainty produced by summary of phenomenon, certainty create credit / envy, then credit /envy updates or decrees, uncertainty also develop, so the whole story / solution is framed to find uncertainty or wrong things in the earlier summary.

I don’t know who is Luther actually, but for me, it is more like a person who summarize the phenomenon via already known Bible and then make it more actuate and then apply this to the continues phenomenon. He needs this kind of certainty for the phenomenon at the space-time level, including his status. If he do really believe certainty, why he choose to face the uncertainty under his understanding of certainty, maybe even add more countable situations to supply a complement.

People born with know nothing already in this world. This is not change.

So for Calvin, he intuit the meaning of his feeling, he recognize he is not accepted by God because he does not know whether he was selected only when he died. The father in the heaven of the New Testament is easy to accept the repentance from a sinner. How do a sinner say and behave? I don’t know, but it seems the father is just need a result, a mark to signify “the repentance”, then transfer to father’s human and understanding. I can feel the excitement for woman’s found her lost piece of silver. She does really own a piece of silver, then lost, they own it again.

Web argues this to the extreme inhumanity to magnificent consistency. Each one see self an eternal salvation, the people, environment and all mixed, interaction and until the death, here, the death is he knows people go die physically. He does not consider / care about the eternity life or death, why not just to choose death.

How to show gratitude for God? Through what? From Heart or material things? Or how to be accepted by the subjective externa salus of faith? So many question, like the baby who just is born or a person who was lost in the mountain and just touch the new world? Maybe this person know more than the baby, because this person know how to survive in an environment with no other people. And now, new challenge happens to the person at the same time, then space-time quantified and the other is what we called quality today. (We find Science in the Nature and use Science to explore Nature, I mean. )

Do people need to benefit God is the core controversy between Church / the sacraments and Lutheranism. Totally refuse those “subjective externa salus” is also another extreme, they do refuse. They refuse those signs, mixed with sense, summary experience and emotion (I don’t know the difference between sense and emotion.) When people refused what they feel in absolute or relative level, they confused. And I totally understand why antagonism happens here, because the Puritan refuse what they feel.

And to the direction of the extreme would be the disillusioned and pessimistically inclined individualism. This depends on people’s cognation.

I do really want to read Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

What is “fields”? Or across the “fields”, what can we see? Maybe the mountain, the river? Fields is so big to across and seems to be endless. Does Europe have a lot of fields? I mean the plain, relative lower altitude between here and there.

So the anxious fear of death is another kind of predestination to the certainty they chose. People feel uncertainty when there is a certainty and feel certainty when there is an uncertainty. Before that, people seek certainty when they feel uncertainty and now they fail to see uncertainty from beside themselves, even refuse themselves through the sense, summary experience and emotion.

It is quite like “trained labor” who will ignore unobservable efforts.

How can people been chosen by God of totally uncertainty? This certainty would be knowledge. The knowledge God has chosen / believe ? Christ is one person just like the individual, either “I” or “the other”? Any idfalliable criteria in absolute? No absolute but maybe relative can.

And we see Call of Duty emphasized for a compromise from the Church inclined to Luther by Pietism.

Penitent faith transfer to the self-confident based on the credit from Luther. And worldly activity does help self-confidence if people can have activity in the world rather than as a labor.

Unio mystica, which can not be understand by others, echo the poenitentia quotidiana of the faithful Lutheran. Ok, and then God, or a private coach just one to one, make the person feel fair than ever, a relative decrease than before. God worked (operatur) through them, only the chosen one. And people do not know de facto God chose whom? But they got confidence when they worked for God / himself / herself.

Now from one person to the mass, it changed from Holy Spirit to divine will, from Luther to the so-called Calvinism. And then convergent to a relative balance with confidence. Calvin wants to solve the uncertainty within the doubt, the new certainty, so he find effectual calling to the call of salvation. Effectual seems more pursuable, right? The deny to the feel / along with the cognition expands.

No doubt the advantage in technology happens, at least can be visible recognized from accumulation? What is the cost of those invisible cost like housework (more inclined to the quality) based on my personal experience. We can’t count so we take it for granted? How can we call this a takenism (Here recommend a Chinese Writer Lu Xun鲁迅 for his novel “拿来主义”)?

Now, we can be sure more visible comparison and showing more in-satisfaction just encouraged than ever for the purpose of efficiency. Most of the individuals want to be selected as the one, and the one means no one, means everyone for a long long time. And then, this certainty of salvation is more like a “enough lucky” guy with destination. Or just a group of people who know the technology (how to fulfil the expectation / effectual ). A desired effect, oh, both quality and quantity. Quality of one thing’s baseline standard is be able to use to solve a problem. It is an ability. Quantity is more easy to recognize as a credible behavior, more than ever, than others and than space-time. So if the human can make efforts to one, quantity looks more efficiency, oh ha? How quality change interact to the quantity and quality itself, also how quantity change interact to the quantity itself.

Anyway, better than ever, especially the feeling of decrease from the fear, but fear comes to the earlier cognition, no matter how reform change, the behaviors of work unchanged, the value turned to from the concrete, visible service to the effort from work and the production from the work. Who define the salvation? And self-control is direct a responsibility transformation rather than ability.

“For a more intensive form of the religious valuation of moral action than that to which Calvinism led its adherents has perhaps never existed.” This is a temporary boundary recognization of moral action.

Now, people have something to be proved. Which means the method to communicate with God now is visible, stable. So here comes one sentence.

“Contrary to many popular ideas, the end of this asceticism was to be able to lead an alert, intelligent life: the most urgent task the destruction of spontaneous, impulsive enjoyment, the most important means was to bring order into the conduct of its adherents.”

Going back to that boundary, maybe the minimum moral standard defined by? And asceticism become a competition where people only can see themselves and ignore the others.

The border is the personality, the small unit which cannot be divided more. So, the quality can be pursued now, a new doctrine of predestination determined by self.

• B. Pietism

I have to note that Pietistic and non Pietistic Calvinists are different. Some people may mix the Puritanism and Pietists. So people from Holland rather than England would like to use the term Pietism.

Here, consider the geographic impact, the Dutch and Lower Rhenish are belong to the Continental, actually a simple intensification of the reformed asceticism such as doctrines of Bailey. And Pietism distrust the Church. They are not going to set a separate sect but attempt to live in the community.

“by means of intensified asceticism, to enjoy the blissfulness of community with God in this life. “

Weber argues that kind tendency in Pletism is quite link to the Lutheran unio mystica. And the Pietism is more on the emotional side of religion acceptable to orthodox Calvinism. So the decisive characteristic of the Pietism is in practice to strive for the enjoyment of salvation in this world rather than to engage in the ascetic struggle for certainty about the future world.

And I think Calvinistic idea is quite random, and it really depends on the personal understanding. For example, these people may like without number and neuro-pathologically understandable, of half-conscious states of religious ecstasy with periods of nervous exhaustion. Feel abandonment by God, the depravity of the flesh, taken emotionally, for the instance in the form of the so-called worm-feeling, leading a deadening of enterprise in worldly activity.

The practical effect of Pietistic principles was an even stricter ascetic control of conduct in the calling, this kind of bottom-up construction provide more stable situation than the normal Reformed Christian, felt to be a second-rate Christianity.