What's With All This Negative Energy Towards Calvinism? - Day 2

I have an intuition.  In fact, one might easily call it a hunch.  We are commonly informed today that Calvinists distort scripture.  We are told that passages which speak of Christ dying for 'all', or 'the world', are edited by Calvinists to mean, 'the elect'.  And while I can't comment on individual verses in a relatively short blog post, I would like to suggest that perhaps it is not in fact the Calvinists who twist scripture, but their opponents. 

In order for Christ to have died an atoning death in which he paid for the sins of all men, one of two statements must be true.  Either:

- Christ paid for the sins of all completely, but the unbelieving pay for those same sins again.

or

- Christ died for the sins of all potentially, but this atonement is only applied to our account following belief in Christ.

The first seems at best unlikely, and as far as I know, few, if any, hold to it.  The second, however, requires that we make certain assumptions regarding the atonement which are not clear in scripture.  They only follow as a result of the theology of a general atonement. 

Passages on Christ's atonement are certainly not easy to interpret, yet, if one does a word study, say, in the writings of John, on the uses of the word, 'world', one discovers some interesting usages of it.  For instance, in John 3:17,

"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

also, in 1 John 4:14,
 
"And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world."
 
I'm curious: How could Jesus be the Savior of the world if all the world is not saved?  We may argue all we want as to whether or not Jesus paid for their sins, but at the end of the day, the world has not be saved, because people are going to be eternally punished in hell. (2 Thess. 1:8-9).  I challenge you to do a word study on that Greek word and try to tell me that the word always means all people to ever live. 
 
The only possible alternative is to say that Christ was thwarted in his plan.  That is a serious charge to make, and one would be well to consider carefully before making that kind of statement.
 
A further question:  'Cui bono'?  It's a legal term that is latin for, 'To whose benefit?'  To whom does a universal unsaving atonement benefit?  If we consider over it, that kind of atonement has no value to God or man and seems to fly in the face of passages such as John 6:37 and John 10:26-29. 
 
Essentially, as far as I can see, doing my best to understand the position, a view favoring a general atonement requires two understandings of the text: 

First, that kosmos is not a general term that can refer to people out of all nations (Rev. 5:9) but refers to all individual people to ever live,

And second, that atonement for sins is applied upon faith in Christ Jesus.  The only place I know of that seems to speak of Christ dying for an unbeliever is in 2 Peter 2:1,
 
"But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction."
 
The text seems to say that although their ransom had been 'bought', they were facing destruction.  I can only interpret it to mean that it speaks of Christ having bought them in the same sense as Jesus refers to unfruitful branches on the vine being taken away in John 15.  In both cases, the people in question are those who have made a profession of faith but have turned away from Christ.  Just as in John 15 where the branches appeared to have been part of Christ yet showed by their lack of fruit that they had no real connection to him at all, so also in 2 Peter 2:1, they claimed to have been bought by Christ, yet now they denied His name.  I think in relation to the full revelation concerning Christ's atonement, that is not an unreasonable explanation. 
 
I have yet to hear a meaningful response to the passages in John 10 where Jesus speaks of His flock and His sheep whom His Father gave Him and for whom He laid down His life (not to mention Eph. 5:25-26 where it speaks of Christ dying for the church).  It is disheartening to hear so many reject the idea of a particular redemption as an unbiblical idea built strictly on logic.  I have yet to hear someone admit that the case for general atonement has any holes in it or that there is a biblical case for particular redemption. 
 
I don't explain all verses that are used in favor of a general atonement in the same way.  But I have yet to find one that does not have an alternate interpretation to the general atonement view that makes perfect sense.  I would further submit that many of the verses used in favor of their view, if read objectively, do not plainly and straightforwardly advance their view, but point rather to universalism.  We are told that we can't reexplain texts to fit our theology, yet do they really believe that they are not guilty of what they accuse us of?
 
Apologies for the apparent harshness of this post.  I am trying to be reasonable, but in particular on this post, it struck me that the advocates of the opposite view are less than reasonable themselves.  My purpose here was primarily to point out holes in their view in order to stress the importance of reading all scripture carefully so that we are able to rightly divide the word of truth.  I was also partially attempting to defend my viewpoint as one not divined by logic, but from the Bible. 
 
Possibly to be continued.  (The possibly would most likely be on a less doctrinal level and more on a practical level relating to something I read online this morning.  Whether I post about it or not will be determined later).