The men’s prayer breakfast at Trinity Pres. is reading and discussing The Man God Mastered, a biography of Jean Calvin, by Jean Cadier. Previously, we’d been studying a biography of Luther, and I believe that next we’ll be studying a biography of Knox - a rather limited list of Reformers, but immensely helpful nonetheless. It’s so much easier to understand the doctrines that have shaped the Reformed church when one can understand the situation from which they arose. Being able to look at the letters of men has always been of great benefit to me as well - I guess that I don’t pick up on themes in literature as well as I ought (this is probably because I am usually a skimmer), so being able to read apologies by the authors is quite nice. At any rate, though this particular biography is somewhat lost in translation - a number of sources are purposefully left out, the translator tried to soften the scholarly feel of the book, etc. - I highly recommend reading biographies of men like Calvin and Luther.

On a side note, another biography that I found worthwhile was The Education of James Madison, which I mentioned a couple years ago here. Does anyone have a biography that they’ve read which really chanegd their opinion of an historical figure or changed their point of view on a subject - not as easy as that gun on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.