Anxious About Grace

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https://mbird.com/theology/reformation/anxious-about-grace-some-thoughts-on-max-weber/

Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) has been immensely influential, with the “Weber thesis” being one of the most well-known Interesting Ideas around.  The idea, basically, is that Protestantism, especially in Calvinist and Wesleyan and Baptist and ‘Pietistic’ forms, has been a major contributor to the ‘Spirit’ behind capitalism.

But there’s so much more. In looking at religious ideas not strictly in terms of their truth or doxological value, but also in terms of emphases and influence, Weber helped map out a distinctly modern way of doing and evaluating theology.

When I read his book, I hear a trenchant appreciation of how human hearts take the gifts of divine grace and turn them into methods for propelling ourselves toward God. From the perspective of Christian anthropology, the psychic respon…………………………………………….