Problem is, hyper-Clavinists generally don't make a discernible distinction.
I guess the idea is that many (all?) are called but few are chosen, so to speak. That always seemed kinda backwards to me, but I'm getting used to and even comfortable with that as time passes. The LORD and I have this understanding/inside joke, if you will, that "I don't know jack." It helps me to be still and know that... You get the picture, of course.
An old preacher I really admired by the name of E.E. Cleveland used to say "We-e-ell, you know how the LORD is" whenever He would manifest His awesome power/wisdom in a special way.
My newly embraced, old-age curmudgeony is making it increasingly difficult for me to even entertain the usual arguments for odds-based atonement. I see the broad/many/narrow/few illustration more as representing the nature of wrothful children and the difficulty of parting with our cherished views. I don't know what could have ever possessed someone to see this as an "us-and-them" model except as they have never struggled with human nature and therefore simply "don't get it."
The whole idea that Christ was one of the "us" before Bethlehem and then cast His lot with the "them" (us-us) seems to up-end the whole notion of elitism, doesn't it?
I confess I'm quite literally losing my patience for people who state their soteriological cases in a dismissive, unyielding way. I'm not happy about it, but there it is. I especially have a problem with millennials and Gen-Xers who feel no need to show even the slightest bit of regard for their elders.
When I listen to someone older than myself offer some wisdom, I'm grateful enough for their going to the trouble of the gesture to be gracious in return unless, of course, they go out of their way to engage in some undignified rhetoric that contributes more to a problem than a solution.
But I've said too much.
:)
