TIME names "New Calvinism" 3rd Most Powerful Idea Changing the World

TIME Magazine ^ | March 12, 2009 | David Van Biema

[CondoleezzaProtege]

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.

Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.

No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.

[kosta50]

God is Spirit

Because the Bible says so?

[P-Marlowe]

You just descirbed religion.

This is the Religion Forum. Why are you here?

[kosta50]

Are you saying that you wonder why He didn’t show Himself to the opposition?

Yes. Why not convince them and preach the Gospel to them too if he expects you to do so?

[P-Marlowe]

Because the Bible says so?

And you claim you are not here to sow seeds of doubt?

[the_conscience]

Which ones?

[the_conscience]

redo: Which of the definitions listed are taught in the Bible?

[P-Marlowe]

All of them.

Is the future fixed? Can you do anything which God has not foreordained from before the creation?

Has not God declared the end from the beginning?

Which one of us is the Calvinist here?

[P-Marlowe]

You tell me.

[the_conscience]

All of them? Is God just a force? Does he just allow to unfold what he knows will unfold without any ability to change these foreseen events?

[xzins]

It really sounds like you are above you paygrade. Please cocnentrate on what I ask not speculate what I am.

No, not in this instance, nor will I stop speculating.

The nature of your responses invites speculation. You insist on your place with the Orthodox Church, yet you disavow any of the beliefs of orthodox Christianity, and instead present yourself as a thorough-going materialist.

On the RELIGION FORUM what would be unusual would be if this did not invite speculation. So, I think you post here because you like the debate to some degree, but also because you like the attention.

[Quix]

Again, all we have is a Bible story written decades later, in retrospect.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . Oh? According to what tangible pseudo-super-rationalist 'PROOF?'

IIRC, At least one of the narratives about the events was written quite close to the events.

However, the point stands again . . . pseudo-super-rationalists cannot live by their own criteria and standards. They can't do it in their personal lives and they can't do it even here in this philosophical discourse.

When the historical record is convenient, the purportedly hyper-consistent, hyper-rational, hyper-tangible-pseudo-scientific-evidence, pseudo-super-rationalist is happy to cite the historical record as allowable evidence.

When the historical record is INconvenient, all bets are off; the record is not 'tangible' enough; the record is not pseudo-scientifically-verifiable ENOUGH; the record is just too obnoxiously in the way so it must be tossed.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhh

IMPRESSIVE SCIENTIFIC LOGIC, that!

[Quix]

LOL. INDEED.

I suspect that IF God had indulged such a person . . .

they’d have likely recanted that it was inadmissable because He didn’t give them ONLY the blue M & M’s He should have known they REALLY wanted.

Scripture is quite interesting in this ball park.

God is quite hostile to Pharisaical ‘putting Him to the test.’

Yet He says to HIS OWN KIDS—”PROVE ME [e.g. with tithes and offerings], IF I WILL NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS OF HEAVEN . . . “

[Quix]

UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR!

REQUIRING pseudo-super-rationalists

to live by their own criteria and standards is just

BY DEFINITION

UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR!

Next thing ya know, ya’ll’ll be expecting them to be

—logical,
—consistent,
—rational,
—linear,
—authentically ‘scientific,’
—honest with themselves & the world,
—tangibly, overtly, obviously, reliably, authenticatedly-back-to-Adam-or-at-least-Noah PRESENT,

GAZOOKS! What kind of UNAlice’s Rabbit Hole would THAT be!

What a horror for the poor blokes & blokesses.

/sar

[Quix]

So you're now arguing both for and against a stone?

NO! NO! NO! You MUST misunderstand.

A horse is a horse of course of course

Errrrr . . . a stone is a stone is a stone of course

EXCEPT when the rock collector and rock thrower is a pseudo-super-rationalist . . .

In which case we have quantumm tumm tumm silliness pseudo-stones--in which case . . .

one second it's a sandstone pebble.

The next second, it's a cup of grandma's jello [the kind she persistently left the sugar out of] . . .

The next second, it's the rock of Gibralter . . .

The next second, it's a pile of sawdust . . .

The next second, it's a granite cube . . .

The next second, it's a ball of string soaked in whale snot . . .

What a way to run a universe.

Ain't pseudo-super-rationalism wonderful?

/s

[Quix]

What if the disciplines here

are to make it ‘safe for Creation’

for us to have MORE free-will in Heaven?

. . . just an interesting musing . . .

[Quix]

Please stop analyzing me and making this about me and see if you can just answer my questions instead.

[We take you momentarily to the inner sanctum of the mental spaces of the TYPICAL, generic pseudo-super-rationalist--a new feat in the impossibly difficult scientific reporting of Quix]

OF COURSE . . . y'all have to answer MY questions according to MY criteria . . . strictly according to MY context . . .

MOST SUPER STRICTLY according to MY convoluted Gordian Knotted pseudo-logic pretending to be linear . . .

HYPER STRICTLY according to MY constructions on fantasized reality . . .

VERY STRICTLY according to MY comfort zone . . .

DEFINITELY STRICTLY according to MY sensibilities . . .

HYPER-STRICTLY according to MY allowable examples in evidence . . .

VERY STRICTLY according to MY silly proof-text phrases . . .

ULTRA STRICTLY according to MY hypocritical contradictions . . .

HYPER HYPER-STRICTLY according to MY definitions, MY daffynitions and MY dictionary . . .

SUPER STRICTLY according to MY super convoluted, MY super redundant, MY super dull lines of pontificating explications . . .

VERY STRICTLY according to MY game rules . . .

HYPER STRICTLY according to MY RIGID RULES for tolerable counter-points . . .

. . .

. . .

KEEPING IN MIND . . . EVERY MICROSECOND, ALL THE SAME, THAT IT MUST !!!!!!!!!!!!NOT!!!!!!!!!!! BE ABOUT ME at all.

Of course.

[Quix]

Naw . . .

the pathetic . . .

is what purports to be

logical,

scientific,

linear,

provable,

reasonable,

etc.

is a farce.

[Quix]

Ahhhhh . . .

yes . . . good one . . .

the self-contradictory religion of the

pseudo-super-rationalist.

[Quix]

Why not convince them and preach the Gospel to them too if he expects you to do so?

Noah, how long can you tread water?

Kosta can have his reasons

yet

ALMIGHTY GOD, by Kosta's daffynitions,

canNOT!

Great 'scientific' consistency, there.

Haven't you been overseas . . . even in the Orient?

How long would a protester have lived in the court of Gengis Khan insisting that Gengis Khan HAD to take a particular attitude, stance, policy?

OBVIOUSLY God has found it HIS WISDOM AND PERFECTION to do it differently. . . . to avoid bothering about kowtowing to pharisees and their sensibilities and !!!!DEMANDS!!!!!

I realize that pseudo-super-rationalists routinely construe themselves as well ABOVE ALMIGHTY GOD'S paygrade in judging such things . . . however, I still don't recommend it.

[Quix]

On the RELIGION FORUM what would be unusual would be if this did not invite speculation. So, I think you post here because you like the debate to some degree, but also because you like the attention.

#############

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

someone with a very gifted habit of seizing the brass ring . . .

Though, personally, while I think there is an attention seeking factor for many pseudo-super-rationalists . . .

I think most just enjoy poking spiritual folks with as sharp a stick as they can devise as a way of getting back at ALMIGHTY GOD for not running the multi-verse according to THEIR criteria, preferences and sensibilities . . . or perhaps for not putting THEIR exaltedness IN CHARGE of at least this Galactic Cluster.

Of course . . . all the while not realizing that their sharp stick is about as sharp as a billiard ball.