The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
more important, but in many ways also more certain, than all the interests of life in this world?[37] The question, Am I one of the elect? must sooner or later have arisen for every believer and have forced all other interests into the background. And how can I be sure of this state of grace?[38] For Calvin himself this was not a problem. He felt himself to be a chosen agent of the Lord, and was certain of his own salvation. Accordingly, to the question of how the individual can be certain of his own election, he has at bottom only the answer that we should be content with the knowledge that God has chosen and depend further only on that implicit trust in Christ which is the result of true faith. He rejects in principle the assumption that one can learn from the conduct of others whether they are chosen or damned. It is an unjustifiable attempt to force God's secrets. The elect differ externally in this life in no way from the damned[39]; and even all the subjective experiences of the chosen are, as ludibria spiritus sancti, possible for the damned with the single exception of that finaliter expectant, trusting faith. The elect thus are and remain God's invisible Church.
Quite naturally this attitude was impossible for his followers as early as Beza, and, above all, for the broad mass of ordinary men. For them the certitudo salutis in the sense of the recognizability of the state of grace necessarily became of absolutely dominant importance.[40] So, wherever the doctrine of predestination was held, the question could not be suppressed whether there were any infallible criteria by which membership in the electi could be known. Not only has this question
