1. Perseverance of the Saints
When, battling his own depravity, a hostile, hungover home crowd, and NFL officiating’s bias against completions, Drew Brees orchestrates a fourth quarter comeback to ensure a New Orleans victory. Subscribers to the doctrine understand that though the Saints were trailing at the 2-minute warning, they were never really going to lose.
2. Infralapsarian Reprobation
When the praise team leader sings a version of the song slightly different than the one on the projection screen but you just go with it.
3. Unconditional Election
In the city of Chicago, both voters and elected officials benefit from Unconditional Election. Voters are permitted to vote in a political election regardless of age, felony convictions, or having already voted that day. And political officials, once elected, are not beholden to the mandate of the voters or any of the promises made during the campaign.
4. Penal Substitution
When, in order to passive-aggressively highlight your tardiness, your grandparents don’t save room in the back of church and force you to shamefully slink to the front pew.
5. Limited Atonement
When your morning coffee is sufficient in waking you up but not efficient in keeping you awake through the post-offertory prayer.
6. Common Grace
The impulse that compels congregants to save some of the cheesy potatoes for people the end of the line at the church potluck.*
*known in some congregations as a potprovidence
7. Monergism
The sound the congregation makes while not singing along with the praise team leader.
8. The Priesthood of All Believers
The understanding that all Calvinists can make an award-winning casserole (read: cheesy potatoes) at a moment’s notice.
9. Double Imputation
The double shot of guilt you feel when you pass the offering plate not once, but twice without contributing. Double Imputation also refers to the process of going through the prescribed small-talk litany with the same people after the morning and evening services.
10. Irresistible Grace
When, understanding that you have done nothing to earn it, you take the last scoop of cheesy potatoes at the church potluck, disappointing the end of the line so much that some of them abandon the doctrine of Common Grace.
11. Total Depravity
What professional football, Chicago politics, and church potlucks have in common.
Andrew Knot (’11) lives and writes in Cologne, Germany.
