Volume 34, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2014
Michael R. Turner
Pages 123-140
Retrieving the Moral Significance of Deserving for Protestant Ethics
Calvin's Commentaries on Personal Desert in Economic Exchange
Whether modern Protestant thinkers claim a direct inheritance to specific Reformers or not, they stand within a tradition that reveres grace as the preeminent moral standard, often at the expense of considerations of merit or desert. John Milbank and Kathryn Tanner exemplify such stances in their theological visions of economic exchange. I critique their positions by retrieving from John Calvin a more nuanced understanding of his outlook on deservingness, especially as it pertains to economic justice, and then suggest a concept of desert that works concomitantly with grace to overcome the frequent rejection or neglect of the standard in Protestant ethics.