Friday, March 20, 2009

The New Calvinism in TIME magazine


Calvinism's back and is listed as number 3 in Time Magazine March 23 2009's 10 ideas changing the world right now.

Illustration by Lorenzo Petrantoni for TIME; Calvin: Popperfoto / Getty

If you really want to follow the development of conservative Christianity, track its musical hits. In the early 1900s you might have heard "The Old Rugged Cross," a celebration of the atonement. By the 1980s you could have shared the Jesus-is-my-buddy intimacy of "Shine, Jesus, Shine." And today, more and more top songs feature a God who is very big, while we are...well, hark the David Crowder Band: "I am full of earth/ You are heaven's worth/ I am stained with dirt/ Prone to depravity."

Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

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6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder what the different between the Old and New Calvinism.

9:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think Mark from the Resurgence blog makes 4 distinctions between the Old and New Calvinism:

http://theresurgence.com/new_calvinism

Regards

11:50 AM  
Blogger Alex Tang said...

Hi John and Eugene,

Thanks Eugene for the link. It is most useful.

2:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you Eugene, for the link...
I think i'm a New Calvinist

11:31 PM  
Blogger Alex Tang said...

Hi John,

Good for you.

12:16 AM  
Anonymous John said...

As i think again the "New Calvinism", TIME has in
mind, mostly, the Reformed movement within the Southern Baptist Convention. Not all New Calvinism are cessationist

it a blanket statement to say that all cessationist do not have the presence of the Holy Spirit with them. (ie Jonathan Edwards)

Therefore, I do not agree with Mark Driscoll with the categorizations...

7:52 PM  

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