georg simmel

Max Weber on Church, Sect, and MysticismAuthor(s): Ferdinand Toennies, Georg Simmel, Ernst Troeltsch and Max WeberSource: Sociological Analysis, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 140-149Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3709720 .

Accessed: 16/01/2014 13:15

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Analysis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 148.228.161.3 on Thu, 16 Jan 2014 13:15:36 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3709720?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Max Weber on Church, Sect, and Mysticism'

Introduction

The following discussion by Max Weber on church, sect, and mysticism offers an exceptional example of the different ways which four of the greatest German sociologists related to key issues in the domains of the sociology of religion and the forms of religiosity in the course of a colloquy held at the first meeting of the German Sociological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Soziologie) at Frankfurt in 1910. The chief themes at issue in their colloquy, though not always so plainly stated, were the varied patterns of relations of churches, sects, mysticisms, rationalisms, rationalizations, and secularizations on the roads to modernity.

The main participants in the colloquium were Ernst Troeltsch, who initiated the discussion by offering an historic paper on Stoic-Christian natural law;2 Ferdinand Toennies, Georg Simmel, and Weber himself. (A fifth man who figured in the background of these discussions but was not named by any of the discussants was Weber's close friend, Georg Jellinek, about whose seminal research we shall speak in an essay on this colloquy now in preparation.3) We shall there wish to focus on the outcomes of Weber's interactions and exchanges with the others in the hope of identifying distinctive contributions he and the others, especially Troeltsch (and Jellinek), made to a wider processual and comparative-historical sociology of religious orientations and movements than is usually ascribed to these men nowadays by specialists in the sociology of religion. (BN)

ITr. by Jerome L. Gittleman, ed. by Benjamin Nelson from "Diskussionsrede zu E. Troeltsch's Vortrag uber 'Das stoisch-christliche Naturrecht'," in Max Weber Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1924), pp. 462-70. The translator and editor thank Professor Stephen Berger of the Department of Sociology of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, N.Y., for some helpful suggestions about the translation. 2A translation of the full text of Troeltsch's paper here under discussion will soon be appearing in a volume of Troeltsch's Collected Papers now being edited by James Luther Adams. (The original will now be found in E. Troeltsch, Aufsatze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie. Tubingen: Mohr, 1924.)

3The editor will have an opportunity along with others to clarify these issues in a subsequent number of Sociological Analysis.

140



141

I

Honored guests! I wish to say something about the points raised by Professor Toennies in his remarks.* With respect to the subject we are discussing, Toennies has-to a considerable degree-avowed himself to be a supporter of the economic interpretation of history (an expression we prefer in place of the "materialist interpretation of history"). One can probably sum- marize his conception as a whole by means of a modern expression which is frequently used but not with entire clarity, namely: that the religious contradictions which were discussed in the lecture were "exponential functions" of some economic contradictions or other. Now gentlemen, there cannot be the slightest doubt that economic relationships enter deeply here, as everywhere. And my colleague and friend Troeltsch has, in his well known works, directed our attention in the most forceful manner to the economic relationships and conditions of specific religious developments. But one ought not to think of this development quite so simply. I believe that perhaps, ultimately, I agree with Toennies on many things. But with respect to what he has said, at least in some of his remarks, there is an attempt at an all too rigidly straight construction.

Professor Toennies: For the time being! Professor Max Weber: If I have understood him (Toennies) correctly, he

has emphasized the relationship of the religious sects to the city in particular. Now, gentlemen, the first specific sect, the model sect so to speak, the Donatist sect in antiquity4 -originated on purely agricultural territory. The characteristic feature of this sect, like every sect, was manifest in the fact that it could not remain satisfied with the Christian church as a kind of entailed endowment of grace, a church indifferent as to which person bestowed this grace in sacraments, and thus indifferent to whether or not the priest was worthy. The church administered magical and marvelous forces which it dispensed as an institution, completely independent of the indwelling worthiness of the individual. Donatism turns against this. It demands that if the priest is to be recognized as a priest by his congregation, he should fully embody his religious qualifications in his personality and mode of life. If one wishes to make a conceptual distinction between a sect and a church, a sect is not an institution (Anstadt) like a church, but a community of the religiously qualified. All the members of the sect are called to salvation; only a community comprised in this way-which also existed as an invisible church in the thought of Luther, Calvin, and Augustine-passes over into the visible church.

*Toennies, as a commentator on the Troeltsch lecture, was the first speaker preceding Weber at the German Sociological meeting. (Tr. 's note.)

4Research since Weber's day has confirmed his emphasis on the rural backgrounds of the Donatist opposition to the so-called Orthodox. On this extremely important sect, see W. H. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).



142 SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Everything which arose later from sects is linked in the decisive points to the demand for purity, the ecclesia pura-a community consisting only of those members whose mode of conduct and life style do not carry public signs of heavenly disfavour, but proclaim the glory of God. The churches, in contrast, permit their light to shine on the just and the unjust alike, according to the Calvinist and the Catholic, as well as the Lutheran doctrine. According to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, for example, it is the church's task to coerce even those who are irredeemably damned to all eternity, into external conformity to the church. The formation of the "isect" type of community occurs first, as was said, outside the city.

Now, what was the situation outside antiquity? Professor Toennies has ascribed responsibility for the kind of development typical of medieval Christianity to the simplicity of circumstances in the agricultural middle ages. He has stressed that the conception of church was fractured in the city, partly in favor of a purely worldly, or at least, the pure worldliness of a self-developing rationalism, partly in favor of the sect principle (I simplify what he said without falsification, perhaps with his agreement). Against this view it can be ascertained that the power of the papacy rested directly (and by no means merely politically) upon the cities. The Italian cities supported the pope in opposition to the feudal forces. The Italian guilds were generally the most Catholic ones anywhere during the period of the great conflicts. Saint Thomas and the mendicant orders were not possible on any territory other than that of the city, simply because the orders lived by begging. They could not live among farmers who turned beggars away from their door.

Professor Toennies: They revolted against the Benedictine order. Professor Max Weber: Certainly, but from the territory of the city. The

most intensely charged thoughts of the church, as well as those of the sects (both, the highest forms of piety) are first upon city territory in the middle ages. . .

Professor Toennies (interrupting the speaker): The Franciscans have very important relationships to the sects!

Professor Max Weber: Undoubtedly, there is no question of that. But not the Dominicans, and I merely state here that the Christianization of the middle ages by the churches was first completed after there were cities. The church form and its natural law, as well as the sect form and their flourishing, were first discovered on the territory of the city. Thus I would not concede that there is a fundamental distinction to be made here. The idea that Protestantism was really the form in which Christian piety accommodated itself to the modern money economy has been advocated endlessly. In quite the same way it has been supposed that Roman law was only accepted as a consequence of the relationships of the modern money economy. But in strong contrast to these positions is the fact that-without exception-all specific forms of capitalist law in modern times originate in medieval law (directly Germanic, for the most part), and are completely



MAX WEBER ON CHURCH, SECT, AND MYSTICISM 143

unknown in Roman law. It is certain furthermore, that the Reformation was first set in motion from regions that were economically far behind Italy, Florence, etc. Also, all sects, even the Baptist sects, have developed in rural areas (e.g. of Friesland), and especially well upon agricultural soil. Nonetheless, you shall see how far we both agree. I only object to this (and perhaps you shall not dispute what I say against it). We should not yield to the opinion (which could be drawn from your words, even though indirectly and probably against your intention), that one might view religious developments as a reflex of something else, of some economic situation. In my opinion this is unconditionally not the case. If one wishes to clarify the relationship between economic and religious matters, one should recall the following.

As Professor Toennies will remember, the nobility led the Calvinist-Hugue- not revolt in Scotland and France-entirely so in Scotland and predominant- ly so in France. And this was the case everywhere. The split in the church went perpendicularly and vertically through the social strata of the 16th century; it embraced persons from the highest to the lowest classes of the population. It is certainly no accident (and doubtless there are also economic reasons) that the nobility returned to the lap of the Episcopal church, and vice versa; that the Scottish middle class found an outlet in the Scottish Covenant Church. It is no accident that more of the French nobility quit the banners of the Huguenots after a period of time, and that what remained of the Huguenots in France was increasingly middle class in character. But this too should not be taken to mean that the middle class as such had developed the piety in question from economic motives. On the contrary. The middle class that was shaped in Scotland has a John Keats, for example, to show as one of the products of their type of church man. And Voltaire knew the genuine type well in France. In short, it would be entirely mistaken (and I only object to this) to wish to give a one-sided economic interpretation (even the sense that the economic was the chief cause), or that these matters could be treated as a mere reflex of the economic.

11 Now I wish to say something directly concerning Professor Troeltsch's

lecture. First of all, the different types which he introduced to us. For the present

one must regard them as having mutually permeated each other to a considerable degree-that is evident. Thus, Calvinism (for example) is a church that could not have endured on the strength of its own dogmatic foundation. For if one man was destined to go to hell and another to heaven because of God's decree prior to the creation of the world, then eventually one would have to raise the question which Calvin himself avoided-would it be possible to see whether a man was predestined to the one place or the




other? In addition it must have awakened the following reflection: What purpose could be served by the interference of state power and the discipline of the church? It is absolutely useless for the man who is condemned to hell. No matter what the man does, or what he is, God has decreed that end for him many thousands of years ago-he goes to hell and is damned. There is nothing to be done. And this is the purpose for which those instruments possessed by the church (in contrast to the sects) are generally set in motion! In fact-I simplify the matter again-it occurs repeatedly. Witness the colossal expansion in England of a Baptism dependent upon predestination beliefs, which was a strong supporter of Cromwell's movement. Even the situation in New England, for instance, furnishes evidence. The only ones who dominated the church there were those whose external conduct at least embraced the possibility that they did not belong among the condemned. This went so far, that the others-those who did not carry these external signs-were, on these grounds, not invited to communion because it would have dishonoured God. And their children were not admitted to christening.

I wish to expand on the following point. The Greek church played a specially significant role. It did not quite permit itself to be placed in this role without further development. Gentlemen, three decades ago Russia found itself, politically and organizationally, approximately in the situation of Diocletian's empire (and even more so of course until the abolition of serfdom), although the cultural relationships, and in many respects the economic relationships, were, in part, essentially different. Russian Chris- tianity was, and still is today to a considerable measure, classically Christian in its specific type. Whenever one looks at an authoritarian church this is the first question to be raised with respect to it: Where is the court of last resort in which the ultimate infallible power rests for deciding whether or not someone belongs to the church, or if some church doctrine is correct or incorrect?-and so forth. We know that in the Catholic church today, after prolonged struggles, this authority is the Pope's alone. We know that in the Lutheran church authority rests in the "word," the Holy Scriptures, and also with those who are called upon to interpret the Scriptures in virtue of their office, and only these.

If we now ask who represents the court of last resort in the Greek church, the official answer (as Khomiakov5 in particular has interpreted it) is the community of the church united in love. And here it becomes apparent that while the Calvinist church is permeated by sectarianism, the Greek church is saturated, in great measure, with a very specific classical mysticism. There lives in the Orthodox church a specific mysticism based on the East's

5For Khomiakov's views, see: S. Kuznets, s.v., "Khomyakov, A.S.," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, ed. E. R. A. Seligman, IV (1932), pp. 562-3; Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, ed. and tr. M. Raeff (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966) pp. 208-29; cf. also I.V. Kireevski's very important letter, "On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of Russia," ibid, pp. 174-207.




unforgettable belief that brotherly love and charity, those special human relationships which the great salvation religions have transfigured (and which seem so pallid among us), that these relationships form a way not only to some social effects that are entirely incidental, but to a knowledge of the meaning of the world, to a mystical relationship to God. It is known how Tolstoy came to terms with this mystical belief.

Generally speaking, if you wish to understand Russian literature in its full greatness, then you must regard the mystical as the substratum upon which everything is built. When one reads Russian novels like The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, for example, or Tolstoy's War and Peace, one has the impression, above all, of the total meaninglessness of events, a senseless promiscuity of passions. This effect is absolutely not accidental. It does not merely rest upon the fact that all these novels were written for newspapers, and when they were begun the author had no suspicion of how they would end (as was the case with Dumas). Rather the cause lies in the secret conviction that the political, social, ethical, literary, artistic, and familially shaped life is really meaningless in contrast to the substratum which extends beneath it, and which is shown and embodied in the specific forms of Russian literature. This, however, is extraordinarily difficult for us to grasp because it rests upon the simple classical Christian idea which Baudelaire calls the "holy prostitution of the soul," the love of our fellow creature, i.e., anyone at all no matter who he may be, even the second-best. That it is this amorphous unshaped life-relationship that grants access to the gates of the eternal, timeless, and divine.' The artistic unity of these productions of Russian literature, which we customarily fail to see, the forming principle of their greatest works lies on the reverse side of what is obtained through reading. It lies in the gravitation of the person, in his behavior, toward the spiritual extremes, the antipodes, this man whose acts appear to occur on the world's stage. And that is the result of Russian religiosity. From this acosmic quality, characteristic of all Russian religiosity, is derived a specific kind of natural right which is stamped upon the Russian sects and also on Tolstoy. In addition it is supported by that agrarian communism which still serves as divine law directing the peasant in the regulation of his social interests. I cannot detail the matter thoroughly now. But all fundamental ideals of people like W. L. Solovjev go back to that basis. Solovjev's specific concept of the church, in particular, rests on it. The concept rests on "community" (in Toennies sense), not on "society."

I wish to point out one thing in the short time remaining. In his lecture our colleague Troeltsch treated the contrasts between church, sect, mysti-

6Helpful suggestions on the backgrounds broached in Weber's remarks on Russia will be found in the following: M. Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1961); Robert C. Williams, "The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and Non-European Nationalism," Journal of the History of Ideas, 31: 4 (Oct.-Dec., 1970), pp. 573-88, esp. 584 ff.




cism and their relationship to the world and to natural law structurally,7 and of course he must deal with them structurally. But the justification for this procedure depends upon the fact that when one asks a sectarian about those trains of thought which made him a sectarian, he will come at last (no matter how obscurely he expresses it) to what we gathered today from our colleague Troeltsch. If one asks a member of the Catholic church why he is a member of this church and not a sectarian, in a similar manner he is ultimately led to these thoughts. And you can grasp the evidence for this with your own hands when you discover that Baron von Hertling assured his co-religionists as follows: whether the Bible is construed in one way or another, and whatever has happened with it historically, is a matter of indifference, for the church as a divinely entailed endowment tells us what is in the Bible no matter who wrote it. Whatever fits in with this is a divine norm, a divine truth. If we did not have the church the Protestant Bible would not help us at all. That being so, this conception of the church manifestly corresponds in its ultimate consequences to the one reported to us. I have some possible objections to the lecture, namely that this chain of reasoning does not have to be consciously alive in every adherent of a church or sect, as an anticipation just for the sake of belief.

Finally, I shall only point out one thing. When one analyzes natural law doctrines from the perspective of the church, the sect, etc., as Troeltsch does, one has not of course thereby said that these doctrines did not result in practical consequences for conduct which appear to us to be entirely heterogeneous with respect to the inherent content of the church doctrine. The principle of irrationality, and the lack of congruity in value between cause and effect is due to the following: A doctrine like that of sectarian Protestantism, Calvinism, Pietism, which most piously condemns the collecting of the earth's treasures, may strengthen the psychological motive which this doctrine set in motion in such a way, that it leads just these very people to become the great bearers of modern capitalist development. For, the use of treasures for one's satisfaction were even more sharply condemned than the gathering of treasures; consequently, nothing less than an ever renewed utilization of these treasures for capitalist purposes was brought about. It fostered capitalist development because the necessity for ascetic proofs in the world bred the man of vocation upon whom capitalism rests.

This is frequently the case. When for example, Troeltsch pointed out that a national church (Volkskirche), a national Christianity is the only conceivable form of church that is universal in accordance with its own idea of universality, then of course the objection to be made against this is that

7For other expressions of Troeltsch's view that "the church, the sect, and mysticism" constituted "the three main types of the sociological development of Christian thought," see esp. Troeltsch's Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1919) in Harper Torchbook ed., 2 vols. (N.Y., 1960), esp. II, pp. 993, 1007.




experience shows that America was the most pious country (measured not only quantitatively but qualitatively) until the threshhold of this century. It did not know a state church for the longest time and Christianity generally took on the form of the sects. If I am not mistaken, in the middle of the 1890's only 5% of the American population did not officially belong to a religious community. And membership in a religious society costs un- believably more in America than with us. It costs something even for those who lack the means. It costs the worker who emigrated from Germany to America (and with whom by chance I became acquainted in the region of Buffalo) 1,800 marks, yearly revenue payments to the church of 100 marks, quite apart from the collections and so forth. Try to find a German worker who would pay as much for any church community, any at all. Precisely because there (in America) the religious type is the sect type, the religion is a national (Volk) affair. Because the sect type is not universal but exclusive, and because its exclusiveness offers definite privileges inwardly and externally to its supporters, the real place of Christian universalism is, therefore, in effective membership in a religious community there and not, as in Germany, among the Christians in name only, where a part of the well-to-do pay all the taxes for the church-"to preserve religion for the people"-and, otherwise are happy if they don't have to have anything more to do with the matter. The only reason they don't leave the church is because the consequences for advancement and for all other possible social prospects would be disagreeable.

III

I wish to say only a few words about Simmel's remarks.* The question concerning the genuine meaning of Christian religiosity is not up for discussion today. Nevertheless, we have certainly been happy to receive these arguments. Since they have been partly directed against me, I shall therefore permit myself to reply briefly.

Having entirely conceded the thesis that in accordance with the metaphysical meaning of Christianity, nothing might be placed between the soul and its god, these matters, the empirical relationships which sociology is concerned with, stand as follows. Every devoutly pious soul, even the majority of the religious among the highly resolved souls in primitive Christianity and in all times of religious excitement, these souls must feel that they really had been standing face to face with their god, and not something else, to be able in any fashion to enjoy assurance (in faith) in their everyday lives, that is, to have the "certitude salutis." This certitude can be

*Simmel commented on Troeltsch's lecture after Weber made the remarks translated in section I and II above. Just prior to Troeltsch's reply, Weber rejoined the discussion and spoke again. (Tr.'s note.)




won in various ways. First of all it is not a sociological certitude, but a purely psychological question that is therewith touched upon, but one which has sociologically interesting consequences. The most extreme contrasting poles which exist are, on the one hand, the forms of world-rejecting religiosities (which we also experience in modern times) which are preserved in those spiritual movements of which I spoke earlier and were also characteristic of certain parts of primitive Christianity: a kind of "acosmic" love of man, that is the one possibility. On the other hand, there is its most extreme counter pole: the Calvinistic religiosity which finds the certitude of being God's child in the to-be-attained "proving of oneself" (Bewahrung) ad majorem dei gloriam within the given and ordered world. In other words, we have on the one side the completely amorphous formlessness of acosmic love; on the other side that unique attitude extremely important for the history of social and political practice, that the individual feels himself placed within the social community for the purpose of realizing "God's glory" and therewith the salvation of his soul.

This last peculiarity of Calvinism determines the meaning of the entire inner configuration of the social structure which we see originating on this foundation. In the rearing of these structures there is always a distinctive moment which reveals the formation of the social structure upon an egocentric base. It is always the individual who seeks himself by serving the totality, whatever it may be called. To make use here of the conceptual polarities used in one of the fundamental books of our modern social- philosophical orientation, Ferdinand Tonnies' work on Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: the kind of human relationship which develops on this formation is always a "society" (Gesellschaft), an "associative social relationship" (Vergesellschaftung), a "civilization" which sheds its "humani- ty." It is always exchange, market, goal-oriented associations, instead of personal brotherliness. It is always this as opposed to the other kind-that community" of acosmic love on a pure foundation of "brotherhood." The

communism of primitive Christianity and its derivative have empirically the most varied motives, but motives which always (as in primitive Christianity) connect up to the old tradition of the primordial relationship of brotherhood in which the community of eating and drinking together founded a family-like community. The banning of usury (interest) for Christians, even in the time of Clement of Alexandria, was motivated by the old principle that one did not haggle among brothers or employ domanial rights, and usury (interest) is a domanial right. One did not take advantage among brothers, but practised brotherhood.8 Conceding everything that Simmel says on the meaning of the religious attitude, still one must, from the point of view of sociology, constantly put the psychological question, and indeed

8Cf. B. Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, 2nd ed., enlarged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Phoenix Books, 1969).




it has been raised by all sides, even the most extreme, and therefore, from the religious standpoint, perhaps the highest, forms of mysticism, namely: How, through what medium, does the individual become certain of his relationship to the eternal?

Professor Simmel: Reason! Professor Max Weber: That is entirely correct. Certainly, without doubt, it

is merely a cognitive ground (Erkenntnisgrund), not a real ground (Real- grund) for bliss.



georg simmel - max weber on church, sect, and mysticism (1910)

Documents

sociology of religion

jstor terms

jstor archive

conditionsmax weber

department of sociology

terms conditions of

max webersource