Technometria

Puritans, well aware that they served a God, also created a precise theology; nothing seemed to them so disastrous as a haphazard theology. Behind the great rows of Puritan treatises of theology, sermons, and other useful books on religion lay a pattern of theology which guided the scholars on their way. To know exactly what theology is and what it is not was the beginning of good theology. All knowledge, emanating as it did from the mind of God, arranged itself into a cosmic pattern of the arts. Within this scheme theology, the chief of the arts, had its assigned place, as did the arts of logic, rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, and physics. How does one become expert in the nature and use of each and every art? One answer: It is first necessary to become acquainted with Technometria. To XVIIth-century English Puritans, technometria, known also as technologia, was the science of defining and delineating the arts according to their nature and use.2 Technometria infiltrated into Puritan theology through the writings of Peter Ramus. From Ramus the doctrine passed into the writings of Alexander Richardson and William Ames among the English Puritans and to Johann Heinrich Alsted, the encyclopedist of the Continent.3 The science of technometria proved to be especially attractive to the Puritans of New England. As it was explicitly spelled out there, and as it otherwise implicitly and subtly influenced the Puritan conception of theology, technometria offers an insight into the nature of Puritan theological thought. One of the most diligent English practitioners of technometria was William Ames, both a Puritan and a Ramist, and the writer of Medulla theologiae, a classic of XVIIth-century Puritan theology.4 Ames in his writings provided a comprehensive picture of Puritan religion through technometria, systematic theology, and cases of conscience. Taken together, they show the sweep of Puritan theology. Everything must be in its place. Technometria begins with the conviction that knowledge is one. God, Alpha and Omega, creates all things and

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  Open Access•Lynne Courter Boughton•Church History•1987

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