Abstract

The Following will make certain assumptions, both as a way of foregoing trivial and sterile polemics and to avoid retracing previously ground, I will assume that the reader knows that Pellicani, despite his allegations to the contrary, does indeed employ Luther's philippic against the acquisitive spirit as well as Calvin's denunciation of ambition and greed as support for his own attack on The Protestant Ethic. Most important, I will assume that the reader is capable of making an elementary logical distinction: The claim that a thesis cannot be refuted by certain means should not be confused with the claim that this thesis is true, nor should the objection that a critic's arguments fail to dispose of an author's thesis be conflated with the contention that the author's own arguments establish this thesis.