I am going to attempt to write more posts on and in critique of classical Calvinism (once again). But I am planning on writing posts that are aimed at non-specialist Christians, and yet who are thoughtful about such things. In other words, I am going to attempt to write posts that are accessible to a broader cross-section of Protestant Christians. This means that I will be entering the fray—with trembling—of what is currently underway among the more populace audience of Calvinists. But I am not going to limit my posts to addressing Five Point Calvinism; I also will be addressing what Leighton Flowers is promoting as Provisionalism or what he calls Traditionalism. Flowers, as far as I can tell, is gaining quite a following via his YouTube videos, and his podcast which he calls Soteriology 101. He is attempting to offer an alternative to Five Point Calvinism, and Arminianism; an ostensible via media between these two classical poles. It isn’t much different, from what I gather, from Zane Hodges’ Free Grace soteriology which Hodges articulated in his book Absolutely Free; which by the way was a counter proposal to John MacArthur’s Lordship Salvation which he presents in his book: The Gospel According to Jesus (and latterly, The Gospel According to the Apostles). Flowers seems to be latching onto Hodges’ approach, even if he isn’t following him in every step; in other words, if you listen to Flowers he sounds much more Calvinistic than what we get in Hodges. That said the premises in regard to ‘free-will’ and libertarian free agency, with reference to ‘human responsibility’ in the appropriation of salvation, is ostensibly univocal between Hodges and Flowers.

I am not going to offer a critique of anyone in this post, other than to say that I know Evangelical Calvinism, as we are presenting it in our books and at this blog, offers a genuine alternative that does not traffic in the same sorts of dualistic categories that we get in classical Calvinism, classical Arminianism, Lordship Salvation, Free Grace, or ‘Provisionalism.’ This is the irony of Flowers’ project: he seems to think that he is categorically avoiding the sort of substance metaphysics that his interlocutors fall prey to (according to him), and yet he is just the same making appeal to them; albeit his offering is a re-route or re-application of those categories when we think about a theological-anthropology and how that implicates soteriology. I can only speak in generalities currently, but my aim is to get into some of this with more detail; and then offer the Evangelical Calvinist alternative that Flowers seems to be unaware of (indeed many are still regrettably unaware of what we are presenting with Evangelical Calvinism). Stay tuned.