Prosthesis blog pursues science, technology, & neo-Calvinist worldview: a bracing mix!

The Blogger blogger who puts out Prosthesis has an entry for today that spans a bunch of centuries on the so-called War between Science and Religion, a phoney setup if there ever was one. But in the course of doing so, Prosthesis exhibits a model of research on the Internet which could serve as a valuable lesson in any nonexpert's quest for mastery of these techniques. Bringing together science, religion (particularly the Christian religion in its Calvinist variety of Protestantism), and technology in one feat, should I say feature, while stunning, made me suddenly thirsty for some reference to historian and Calvin biographer, William J. Bouwsma'sJohn Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (reprint edition 1989). This the book most likely to solve Prothesis' research question. Bouwsma concentrates on Calvin as a Humanist, not of course in the philosophical sense of a devotee of the Enlightenment and committed to the Nature/Freedom tension of ultimate values inherent in most of Western philosophy after the Renaissance and Reformation. Rather, Bouwsma considers Calvin as one of the premiere scholars of his time, conversant with literature in several languages, with Stoic and other philosophies, and interested in all realms of life wherever God has granted humans fine gifts of mind and culture. In this, during his own day, Calvin joins and perhaps supercedes both Luther and Erasmus.

Now, if you're more narrowly theological, I guess you could make do with Alister E. McGrath's more recentA Life of John Calvin: A Study in Shaping Western Culture(200?) - it's a pet peeve of mine that Amazon.com doesn't make the original date of publication, or even of reprint editions, immediately and conveniently accessible. This concealment of highly pertinent information is a bad business practice, and an insult to consumers involved in the commerce in books. - Owlb