In an “Ermanung” of 1513, which also appeared at Mayence, we read: “To work is to serve God according to His command and therefore all must work, the one with his hands, in the field, the house or the workshop, others by art and learning, others again as rulers of the people or other authorities, others by fighting in defence of their country, others again as ghostly ministers of Christ in the churches and monasteries.… Whoever stands idle is a despiser of God’s commands.”[196]
These instances must suffice. Though many others could be quoted, Protestants will, nevertheless, still be found to repeat such statements as the following: “Any appreciation of secular work as something really moral was impossible in the Catholic Church.” “The Catholic view of the Church belittled the secular callings.” “The ethical appreciation of one’s calling is a significant achievement of the reformation on which rests the present division of society.” Luther it was who “discovered the true meaning of callings … which has since become the property of the civilised world.” “The modern ethical conception of one’s calling, which is common to all Protestant nations and which all others lack, was a creation of the reformation,” etc.
Others better acquainted with the Middle Ages have argued, that, though the olden theologians expressed themselves correctly on the importance of secular callings, yet theirs was not the view of the people.—But the above passages, like those previously quoted elsewhere, do not hail from theologians quite ignorant of the world, but from sermons and popular writings. What they reflect is simply the popular ideas and practice.
That errors were made is, of course, quite true. That, at a time when the Church stood over all, the excessive and ill-advised zeal of certain of the clergy and religious did occasionally lead them to belittle unduly the secular callings may readily be admitted; what they did furnished some excuse for the Lutheran reaction.
What above all moved Luther was, however, the fact that he himself had become a layman.
To assert that even the very words “calling” or “vocation” in their modern sense were first coined by him is not in agreement with the facts of the case.
On the contrary, Luther found the German equivalents already current, otherwise he would probably not have introduced them into his translation of the Bible, as he was so anxious to adapt himself to the language in common use amongst the people so as to be perfectly understood by them.[197] It is true that Ecclus. xi. 22, in the pre-Lutheran Bible, e.g. that of Augsburg dating from 1487, was rendered: “Trust God and stay in thy place,” whereas in Luther’s—and on this emphasis has been laid—we read: “Trust in God and abide by thy calling.” All that can be said is, however, that Luther’s translation here brings out the same meaning rather better. That the word was not coined by Luther, but was common with the people, is clear from what Luther himself says incidentally when speaking of 1 Cor. vii. 20, where the word vocatio (κλῆσις) is used of the call to faith. “And you must know,” he writes, “that the word ‘calling’ does not here mean the state to which a man is called, as when we say your calling is the married state, your calling is the clerical state, etc., each one having his calling from God. It is not of such a calling that the Apostle here speaks,” etc. The expression “as we say” shows plainly that Luther is speaking of a quite familiar term which there was no need for him to invent when translating Ecclus. xi. 22. Much less did he, either then or at any time, invent the “conception of a calling.”
Luther’s Pessimism Regarding Various Callings. The Peasants
When olden writers dealt with the relation between the Gospel and the worldly callings as a rule they pointed out with holy pride, that Christianity does not merely esteem every calling very highly but embraces them all with holy charity and cherishes and fosters the various states as sons of a common father. Nothing was so attractive in the great exponents of the Gospel teaching and renovators of the Christian people—for instance in St. Francis of Assisi—as their sympathy, respect and tenderness for every class without exception. The Church’s great men knew how to discover the good in every class, to further it with the means at their disposal and indulgently to set it on its guard against its dangers. They wished to place everything lovingly at the service of the Creator.
Had Luther in reality brought back to humanity the Gospel true and undefiled, as he was so fond of saying, then he should surely have striven, in the spirit of charity and good will, to make known its supernatural social forces to all classes of men, and to become, as the Apostle says, “All things to all men.”