# Ramean Logic?



## RamistThomist

This is specifically for webmaster, although anybody else may answer.

Matt,
I was reading this link, http://www.apuritansmind.com/Apologetics/Apologetics.htm, and I noticed that you used the phrase &quot;Ramean (sp?) logic;&quot; What does that mean? I know that I show my ignorance in asking this question. I did a google search and didn't get much help. 

Thanks,

Jacob


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## panicbird

It was a didactic tool used by many Puritans. Basically, it divided up each subject as far as it could be divided. A good example is William Ames' [i:cd9c60b899]Marrow of Theology[/i:cd9c60b899]. The webmaster has a chart taken from it here.

Check out this page for a little more. Go about two-thirds of the way down the page and there is a good section on Ramist logic.

Hope this helps.

Lon


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## SmokingFlax

Well...I'm not webmaster and I'm not EXACTLY sure what ramean logic is but my strong feeling is that it refers to Peter Ramus (1515-1572) who was an influential philosopher and logician whose system of dialectic and logic was apparently used more by the reformers and puritans than the Roman reliance on Aristotle's system.

I found out a little about him in introduction of the Baker Books edition of William Ames' Marrow of Theology where (author/transcriber) John Dykstra Eusden has a nice section of historical currents during Ames's day.


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## RamistThomist

Thanks to both of you; that helps a little. I would like other resources (historical perhaps?). The chart took me a few minutes but I think I get it, maybe.


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## C. Matthew McMahon

They are right....

That was what the Puritans are known for - getting things down as far as they can go. When one read's Owen's Death of Death, you would think he exhausted the subject.


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## VirginiaHuguenot

Peter Ramus was a French Huguenot educational reformer who was among the victims of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. 

J.I. Packer, _A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life_:



> p. 73: The claim of Peter Ramus, a sixteenth-century French Protestant educationist, that dichotomising analysis was the best way to understand any subject, led many Puritans to 'divide' texts and spell out themes that way in the pulpit, in the belief that this would make everything clear and memorable.
> 
> p. 285: Peter Ramus, a Huguenot academic killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, had formulated an educational theory in which analysis becomes the key to understanding, and the Puritans took his point at least to the extent of making sure that the layout and structure of their messages was as clear and logical as possible.


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## Peter

I just learned of Remus a short while ago


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## Archlute

Watch out, all of you here, or you'll have Dr. Clark on the offensive in no time! 

I completed a term paper for him arguing for Pete's significant influence on the Assembly's preaching standards as outlined in the WDPW via the conduit of William Perkins at Cambridge, and I received some serious hits along the way (through no fault of my own, I should add). 

The consolation note read, "Sorry, Adam, but you've just stepped on a theological landmine, and are victim of a case of theological food poisoning by ingesting significant amounts of bad secondary lit."

In particular - avoid positing the common refrain that there is a hostile "bifurcation" between Aristotle's logic and the system of Petrus Ramus.

That being said, I am still convinced that Ramus' thought had a direct influence on the preaching of the Assembly due to the influence of Perkins, even if my esteemed prof considers that to be an unproven geneological fallacy.

I'm sure that Dr. Clark will be here is short order to shed some light upon the issue. Of course, in considering the shedding of light upon an issue we must consider two things, first, the source of emmission, and, second, the object upon which the light is emmitted; of the objects illumined we will then consider the division between the illumination of the objects of truth and the objects of error, and the two primary ways in which that light effects them both...


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## crhoades

> _Originally posted by Archlute_
> I'm sure that Dr. Clark will be here is short order to shed some light upon the issue. Of course, in considering the shedding of light upon an issue we must consider two things, first, the source of emmission, and, second, the object upon which the light is emmitted; of the objects illumined we will then consider the division between the illumination of the objects of truth and the objects of error, and the two primary ways in which that light effects them both...




William Ames - Technometry

Not sure if this is considered bad secondary lit. but this contains a translation of Ames work as well as research about it. It discusses it in the context of Ramean thought. 

Did you use it for your paper? If so, thoughts? If not...well you should have.


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## MW

See "A Narrative of the Life and Death of Doctor Gouge," prefixed to his commentary on Hebrews, for this Westminster divine's devotedness to Ramist methodology. The Westminster divines as a generality appear to have followed the older Puritans' adoption of Ramist dialecticism, and this can be seen at various points in the Standards. The classic example is the division in the Shorter Catechism of faith and duty.


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## VirginiaHuguenot

Frank Pierrepont Graves, _Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century_ (1912)


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## Poimen

I found an interesting statement in CJPM, page 120, footnote 125 (in Bryan Estelle's essay entitled "The Covenant of Works in Moses and Paul") 



> The phrase <qal vachomer> (lit. light and heavy) was common in rabbinic literature as a rule for interpretation of Scripture. For example, it is the first of Hillel's rules for the interpretation of Scripture. It sets up a parallelism, or actually an antiparallelism, between things being compared.



Is this proto-Ramism? Or am I simply being anachronistic?


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## VirginiaHuguenot

Has anyone read _Ramism in William Perkins' Theology_ by Donald McKim? Thoughts?


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## VirginiaHuguenot

Or John Rechtien, "The Ramist Style of John Udall: Audience and Pictorial Logic in Puritan Sermon and Controversy," _Oral Tradition_ 2 (1987): 188-213?


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## VirginiaHuguenot

Or _The Influence of Petrus Ramus_?


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## tewilder

SmokingFlax said:


> Well...I'm not webmaster and I'm not EXACTLY sure what ramean logic is but my strong feeling is that it refers to Peter Ramus (1515-1572) who was an influential philosopher and logician whose system of dialectic and logic was apparently used more by the reformers and puritans than the Roman reliance on Aristotle's system.
> 
> I found out a little about him in introduction of the Baker Books edition of William Ames' Marrow of Theology where (author/transcriber) John Dykstra Eusden has a nice section of historical currents during Ames's day.



What I would like to know what this "Aristotle's system" is that everyone compares Ramus to. It is this the bastardised Enlightenment logic, and usually is called Aristotelian or "traditional", or is it the much more substantial late medieval logic that Ramus would have known?


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## Poimen

Would anyone yet like to answer my questions?

I think if this the quotation I provided is true it may be helpful to undermine the 'Greek/Hebrew' dichotomy that we hear from many circles (which is ironic because in and of itself, it is a form of Ramism!).


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## greenbaggins

*Ramean logic*

I'll answer your question, Daniel. I don't think the two are related. The rabbinic interpretive canon _vachomer_ had to do with this construct, "if a was true, how much more was b true." Ramean logic, on the other hand, had much more to do with dividing up subjects into their smallest possible constituency. The idea was that division of subject equaled understanding. It was something of an atomistic approach, I would say, although it proved a helpful supplement to the scholastic theologians. Polanus and Ames were Ramist in their approach. Debate still exists as to whether or not Ramism is rationalistic or not. If you don't have Richard Muller's four-volume set Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, get it this instant.


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## Poimen

greenbaggins said:


> I'll answer your question, Daniel. I don't think the two are related. The rabbinic interpretive canon _vachomer_ had to do with this construct, "if a was true, how much more was b true." Ramean logic, on the other hand, had much more to do with dividing up subjects into their smallest possible constituency. The idea was that division of subject equaled understanding. It was something of an atomistic approach, I would say, although it proved a helpful supplement to the scholastic theologians. Polanus and Ames were Ramist in their approach. Debate still exists as to whether or not Ramism is rationalistic or not. If you don't have Richard Muller's four-volume set Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, get it this instant.



Thanks for the assistance. BTW, I do have Muller but I am far from getting to it at this point (with all my other reading projects). 

I guess the correlation that I was seeing (seeking) was in relation to the fact that Ramean logic was 'dialectic' (or so I thought). If so, then there would be a connection. But, as you mention, it is probably not strong enough to make an helpful or informed argument.


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