Reformation the Italian Renaissance, in Babcock\'s Account,

Reformation

The Italian Renaissance, in Babcock's account, was more secular than the Northern, which gave us the Reformation. Yet there seem to be contradictions in his account of the Northern Renaissance. For example, Babcock argues that the Reformation is alive today for the reasons that Max Weber emphasized in his 1905 book "whose title gives the whole thesis away": The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (Babcock 212). Weber claims Protestants were looking for "signs of God's blessings on His elect" and found them in "hard work, the acquisition and growth of capital" (213). Babcock summarizes Weber as arguing that "through the acquisition of wealth, and all the capitalistic virtues that go with that, one could demonstrate that there was the blessing of God in your life" (213).

Babcock concedes that Weber's thesis has been "very controversial" but he himself endorses it as a "very powerful interpretation" (213). I can understand the controversy, but not the power, this thesis. How did these Protestants with their "acquisition of wealth" interpret the words of Christ in Matthew 19:23-26, Mark 10:24-27, Luke 18:24-27? When the beggar is taken to Abraham's bosom in Christ's parable (Luke 16:19-31) and looks to the rich man suffering the torments of hell, which did they aspire to be? If these Protestants were so busy with "hard work, labor, discipline" when did they consider the lilies of the field, as Christ's Sermon on the Mount instructs them to? And what did they think of the lilies of the field? That they weren't toiling hard enough?

It is exceptionally odd if Weber and Babcock think that Protestants read the account in all four gospels (Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-48, John 2:13-16) of Christ's rage at the moneychangers who have turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves. Moreover, Babcock endorses the notion that Luther's motivation for challenging Rome was "outrage" that Rome had "the biggest bank in the Middle Ages…financially corrupt…all about money…rak[ing] in the wealth" (Babcock 210). If that is the case, then how did ostentatious wealth become the one thing that would assure Protestants of their ultimate salvation?