“This bundle originated out of anti-Calvinist polemics...”
I was raised in a Calvinist tradition, and during my exploration of the denomination’s history, it really seemed to me like there was a relationship between the rise of Calvinism (specifically Dutch Calvinism) and various proto-TESCREAL concepts like capitalism.
“it really seemed to me like there was a relationship between the rise of Calvinism (specifically Dutch Calvinism) and various proto-TESCREAL concepts like capitalism”
Ho boy is there ever!. This rabbit hole goes so, so much deeper than most people realize, in a way that tends to get missed because the primary missing link between the two—post-Restoration English Nonconformity—has mostly gone forgotten in popular history.
As just a teaser, for instance—Bayes’ Theorem was co-authored by two Nonconformist clergymen, Thomas Bayes and Richard Price. The latter became interested in it in part because he thought it proved the existence of God, which for him also implied that human progress was the unfolding of divine providence on earth building into the Second Coming. He gave sermons along these lines in favor of the American and French Revolutions, and the latter of those was the specific event that Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in response to: he is the “Dr. Richard Price” addressed in that essay.
I like the idea!
“This bundle originated out of anti-Calvinist polemics...”
I was raised in a Calvinist tradition, and during my exploration of the denomination’s history, it really seemed to me like there was a relationship between the rise of Calvinism (specifically Dutch Calvinism) and various proto-TESCREAL concepts like capitalism.
“it really seemed to me like there was a relationship between the rise of Calvinism (specifically Dutch Calvinism) and various proto-TESCREAL concepts like capitalism”
This one of the most famous (though contested) claims in the entire history of sociology/intellectual history/economic history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
Ho boy is there ever!. This rabbit hole goes so, so much deeper than most people realize, in a way that tends to get missed because the primary missing link between the two—post-Restoration English Nonconformity—has mostly gone forgotten in popular history.
As just a teaser, for instance—Bayes’ Theorem was co-authored by two Nonconformist clergymen, Thomas Bayes and Richard Price. The latter became interested in it in part because he thought it proved the existence of God, which for him also implied that human progress was the unfolding of divine providence on earth building into the Second Coming. He gave sermons along these lines in favor of the American and French Revolutions, and the latter of those was the specific event that Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in response to: he is the “Dr. Richard Price” addressed in that essay.