Calvinism in Time Magazine

So…Time Magazine says that “The New Calvinism” is #3 in a list of 10 ideas that are changing the world.  Click here.

I am ambivalent. I have reformed credentials (to some) and believe that when it comes to systematic theology, reformed theology satisfies the mind and gives assurance. I’m there. Yet I have found it to lack a significant strain of pietism that would keep it rooted in love, openness and vulnerability.  John Piper comes closest to the balance in my mind.

I went to Westminster Seminary and found it to have much in common with my fundamentalist background (as well as much that wasn’t). There was a rigidity and battle-ready spirit that constantly erupted in squabbles and foxhole mindsets. Battles over baptism could be lifted to the level of the Gospel itself. Roman Catholicism and Arminianism were more problematic than grappling with secular culture and the move away from confidence that there could be Truth (capital “T”).

I am not sure how avoidable this is when the search for systemization is so intense. And, quite frankly, I am glad that some are willing to engage this battle. Where would evangelicalism be without these soldiers? (Actually, where evangelicalism has landed is another discussion).

The pietistic strain of my Christian and Missionary Alliance background is too strong for me feel very comfortable with the “ain’t it grand that we are right” feeling I get from the Reformed community. I could never really find a home there.

Evangelicalism will not die

I have already posted that iMonk is right in his prediction that evangelicalism as we have known it is a changing thing. The old paradigm will collapse. But that is different than evangelicalism dying. Mark Galli makes this point at his blog.

Evangelicalism is a word that describes a phenomenon that transcends time and place. British historian David Bebbington talks about it in terms of certain theological emphases and behaviors (crucicentrism, conversionism, biblicism, and activism). I think of it more as a religious mood. It is a spiritual sensibility that includes pessimism about human nature, a longing to be converted from the worst of our selves, mystical moments when Jesus Christ is experienced, a conviction that nothing can be redeemed without suffering and that resurrection is ultimate reality, and a passion to make a difference in the world.

In this sense, the history of the Christian faith is littered with evangelicals, from the apostle Paul to Antony of the Desert, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Avila, from the monastic movement to camp meetings, from Beth Moore to Mimi Haddad, from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to Evangelicals for Social Action.

Evangelicalism as such will no more collapse than will the ubiquity of sin and the longing for salvation.

To be sure, those of use who identify deeply with American evangelicalism will no doubt be grieved by its death, as least as a subculture — just as we grieve the extinction of other unique subcultures. But we’re not in the evangelical preservation society, and I certainly won’t join a group that says we need to reform the evangelical movement or else we’ll die.

What I will do, to my dying day, is work with anyone who knows he was lost but now is found, whose Bible is worn because she repeatedly looks there for God to speak, who finds the Cross the most meaningful of symbols, for whom the Resurrection is not just a doctrine but a power, and who wants nothing more than to find new and creative ways to share the evangel of Jesus in word and deed. I’ll work with these people no matter what scholars decide to call them.

For now they are called evangelicals, and I suspect that in one form or another, they’ll be around for some time.

I agree. (Except that I am wondering how Teresa of Avila got on that list – I did special study on her in seminary and it would be a real stretch to include her in any definition of the word “evangelical.”). Evangelicalism will simply take another form in another time. But it will be there because the Gospel, just simply, is. Christians from many different denominations and traditions will always come together around those core truths, finding more in common with those who believe them than they do with those in their own denominations who do not.

So when iMonk writes that Evangelicalism will soon collapse, he is simply asserting that Evangelicalism in its present form, as we have known it, will morph. That’s neither bad nor good. It is what happens in history. But the Gospel endures.

Obama as “warm up” for AntiChrist-a growth industry among some

This kind of thing is outrageous. Jenkins and LaHaye are at it again. Click here for the article. Line this up with the recent prognostications of David Wilkerson and there is no wonder Bible-believing evangelicalism gets the black eye. I grew up in the South where this kind of thing is serious, and even when it is not spoken aloud in the church, it’s whispered in the hallways. Cataclysmic premillenialism is its default position. Premillenialism, amillenialism and even postmillenialism have all had decent runs in the church and our church heroes can fall in either of the three camps. But it’s cataclysmic premillenialism which is rooted in the evangelical psyche.

I have been reading George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards. Marsden often comments on how much attention Edwards paid to “end of the world” scenarios by searching the papers and attempting to correlate the events of his time with the second coming, believing that Christ would come back by the middle of the 19th century. Edwards did this as a postmillenialist!!!

NT Wright’s Surprised by Hopeis the antidote. I get Piper’s concern about Wright’s teachings on justification (but something I have to look more into) but I have not read yet that Piper has any essential disagreement with Wright’s view of heaven and new creation. Wright’s essential thesis is that though we will have a new heaven and a new earth, the work we do now in earth renewal in participative in that new creation. Nothing is wasted. No work in done in vain. He is arguing against that view which says that since it will all be burned away, the only thing to do is rescue people and the only real work is evangelism, strictly defined. Wright retorts that the new body we will receive is not an argument for trashing the body we now have. In fact, it goes the opposite way. Because it is this body that will be new, we are not to live an immoral, wasteful life. We are to yield all of our members to righteousness. So, too, should Christians work in earth renewal – the arts, ecology, justice in economic systems, etc. This not only makes sense of the biblical data, but it also satisfies my spirit. There has always been something about cataclysmic premillenialism which has left me empty. I have always had a respect for brothers and sisters who teach it and believe it sincerely, because they do so out of love for Christ. They seek only to be faithful. But I believe the soul demands more, and it is that more that the Bible actually provides.