That’s right. Lamentably, the Calvinist resurgence has made such an impact that Time Magazine has noticed it and diagnosed its influence to be even greater than we might have thought in its cover story for the March 23, 2009 issue: 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now. Time has named “The New Calvinism” as number 3 of 10 ideas changing the world right now: see “The New Calvinism” as number 3 here. (See the end of this post for the full list of 10.) Surely Calvinists are still very much in the minority among evangelicals. And actually, I have thought that the resurgence is beginning to level off a little, and have been encouraged at the Arminian remonstrance rising up yet again as is typical throughout history when Calvinism comes along to challenge the most natural reading of the Bible by believers (for example, see Kevin Jackson’s post on the current Arminian Web Presence, which has probably increased even since Kevin’s post of less than a year ago).
In any case, Justin Taylor, whose Reformed blog was mentioned in the article as one of “cyber-Christendom’s hottest links”, has found a Time Magazine article from 1947 entitled “Calvinist Comeback” drawing attention to a Calvinist resurgence from back then. I find that encouraging. Just as Calvimism might have resurged back in the late 40’s and the 50’s, and fell out of favor, so may the current resurgence die away into what we believe to be the Bible’s view–Arminianism, which shares what the Calvinist scholar (Clarence Bouma) quoted in the old Time article calls “the Pauline-Augustinian-Calvinistic view of human nature” (i.e., Total Depravity), but avoids its unbiblical points in favor of the biblical view. Arminians can, however, join Bouma in saying that “modern man . . . must repent from his idolatry, which is his greatest and root sin. His idolatry, in that he has made a God of himself and made a problem of the living God of the Scriptures.”
As for the full list of 10 ideas changing the world right now according to Time, here it is:
1. Jobs Are the New Assets
2. Recycling the Suburbs
3. The New Calvinism
4. Reinstating The Interstate
5. Amortality
6. Africa: Open for Business
7. The Rent-a-Country
8. Biobanks
9. Survival Stores
10. Ecological Intelligence
