Elder Eric of Tominthebox News Network reports the following:

Asbury Theological Seminary has published a statement that it hopes will assist evangelical churches fend off the increasing threat posed by Calvinism. Asbury, which according to its website “is rooted in the Wesleyan-Arminian theological tradition,” firmly stands against Reformed Theology. In order to stress this point, the faculty recently published a small pamphlet entitled, “72 Bible Verses that Simply Can’t Mean What They Say.”

The report goes on to list these 72 verses.

Not sure whether to believe this one? I’m sure I don’t.

But I can offer the following scoop:

In response to the statement from Asbury Theological Seminary, a spokesman for Tominthebox Reformed Calvinist Theological Seminary issued the following statement:

We are very concerned that our brethren in the Wesleyan-Arminian theological tradition have issued such a long list of “Bible Verses that Simply Can’t Mean What They Say”. We do not accept that any of these verses don’t mean what they say.

But we agree that there are some Bible verses which simply can’t mean what they say. We are currently working on a full list of these verses, but for the moment we will offer just one such verse as a sample:

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Clearly this verse cannot mean what it says, for as good Reformed Calvinists we know that God only loves the elect and that eternal life is only offered to these same elect people.

For some reason Elder Eric dissociated himself from these comments, but as I pointed out elsewhere Calvin himself would not have accepted his arguments.

Meanwhile Doug Chaplin has this irreverent thought (his words) about the following verse, John 3:17:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world — he’s going to have a church to do that.

Doug linked to a post The Day I Became a Calvinist at Parchment and Pen which he seemed puzzled by. I read it and decided that it was a rather convincing spoof, a reworking of a testimony of how someone became a Christian into a story of becoming a Calvinist. Among the clear signals of it being a spoof are the introduction, illustrated by the picture “The Scream”:

There are a few things that people never forget. The details of certain tragedies and trials stay by your side and the vivid details remind you of their significance.

This is followed by examples: 9/11, the death of a sister … and the day the author became a Calvinist, presented in the context as the greatest tragedy and trial in his life!

Not recognising the name of the author, C. Michael Patton, I judged that he was a non-believer or a rather liberal Christian who wanted to mock both Calvinism and testimonies of conversion.

It was only when I started to skim through the comments (over 150 in three days) that I realised that people were taking this seriously. Had the commenters not spotted that this was a spoof? Then Patton himself joined in. Was he just keeping up the joke? I still wasn’t quite sure until I posted my first comment asking explicitly if this was a spoof, to which Patton replied:

Peter, I am not sure what you mean. Maybe it was a bad post, but it was meant to be “a day in the life” type post. The scream is illustrative of how many people handle unconditional election.

Well, I get the last part, for hearing too much about that doctrine makes me want to scream. But I don’t see how Patton, as confirmed his further comments, fails to recognise how good a spoof this is. After all, it’s not that he doesn’t have a sense of humour, for he appreciates Tominthebox News Network.

If you are not a Calvinist, do read it as a spoof.

If you are a Calvinist, please explain to me why becoming one can be listed as a tragedy and a trial.

For my own take on these issues, see my previous post.