Thursday, February 3, 2011

Reviews of Calvin and Culture

Back in September, we posted a book notice about Calvin and Culture, a new volume that is relevant to nearly every Reformed academic. We found a number of people willing to write brief reviews of many of the chapters, and today we begin rolling these reviews out, leaving some time after each one as an opportunity for discussion. Some of our contributors submitted their summaries and critiques some time ago, and others have provided their evaluations with very short notice upon our invitation, and we heartily thank all of our reviewers.

We plan to post the reviews following the sequence of the chapters. As will become clear in the brief summaries and reflections offered by our contributors, few historical figures have matched Calvin’s impact in terms of breadth and longevity. We expect you will agree that the legacy of Calvin in the academic disciplines is strong and worthy of our continued examination, participation, and advancement.

As you can see from the chapters listed at our book notice, several fields of academic study were not included, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics/language, theology. Certainly much has already been written on Calvin’s theology, but if you have any ideas on Calvin’s impact in these other areas, your contribution would be very welcome!

We hope you, our readers, will value and interact with each of these reviews. Part of the calling of the Reformed academic is to be aware of issues in other disciplines instead of being only narrowly focussed on his or her own particular area of teaching and research, and cross-fertilization of ideas is rewardingly fruitful and helps avoid reductionism.

No comments: