What’s a burgomaster?
But the doctrine is the same, and it is the doctrine, the fundamental doctrine, of Protestant morality, from which the whole system of Christian ethics unfolds. It is the great doctrine of “vocation,” the doctrine, to wit, that the best service we can offer to God is just to do our duty - our plain, homely duty, whatever that may chance to be. The Middle ages did not think so; they cut a cleft between the religious and the secular life, and counseled him who wished to be religious to turn his back on what they called “the world,” that is to say, not the wickedness that is in the world - “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” as we say - but the work-a-day world, that congeries of occupations which forms the daily task of men and women, who perform their duty to themselves and their fellowmen. Protestantism put an end to all that. As Professor Doumergue eloquently puts it, “Then Luther came, and, with still more consistency, Calvin, proclaiming the great idea of ‘vocation,’ an idea and a word which are found in the languages of all the Protestant peoples - Beruf, Calling, Vocation - and which are lacking in the languages of the peoples of antiquity and of medieval culture. ‘Vocation’ - it is the call of God, addressed to every man, whoever he may be, to lay upon him a particular work, no matter what. And the calls, and therefore also the called, stand on a complete equality with one another. The burgomaster is God’s burgomaster; the physician is God’s physician; the merchant is God’s merchant; the laborer is God’s laborer. Every vocation, liberal, as we call it, or manual, the humblest and the vilest in appearance as truly as the noblest and the most glorious, is of divine right.” Talk of the divine right of kings! Here is the divine right of every workman, no oneof whom needs to be ashamed, if only he is an honest and good workman. “Only laziness,” adds Professor Doumergue, “is ignoble, and while Romanism multiplies its mendicant orders, the Reformation banishes the idle from its towns.
- B.B. Warfield @ “The Religious Life of Theological Students”
Re-posting from last year’s spring quarter because it’s still helpful and practical for my soul. One of the most salient points from perhaps the best article I have ever read under 15 pages. :) http://www.tms.edu/tmsj/tmsj6g.pdf
Happy finals week! Let’s be good students, and by good, i mean God’s students.
button
