I need to, once again, call out Leighton Flowers. I just joined his Facebook group (for about a day), and I was reminded once again of just how dangerous and irresponsible Flowers’ work is. He is making disciples who are twice the sons and daughters of misunderstanding as he is. What I mean is this: if someone is going to make it their life’s work (as I somewhat have as well) to critique Calvinism, then they ought at least to attempt to do their homework; Leighton hasn’t! And at this point, I fear, Flowers has become a victim of his own relative YouTube fame. And the phenomenon, I think, that his “fame” is fueled by is the vacuum that has been created by the disillusionment the masses have had as they’ve come to terms with the novelty they once understood to be the Young, Restless, and Reformed. What I’m saying is that there is, I take it, a serious demand that has been created by folks evacuating the halls of the YRR movement; the coolness and novelty of craft beers, cigars, big beards, and man-buns has worn off, and many of these folks are looking for something else as an alternative to the Reformed theology they thought they were into. Based on my experience with multitudes of these people, most of them really never understood Reformed theology to begin with. What they came to understand of it, over time, was not palatable with their evangelical sensibilities; so now they are jumping ship in droves. Someone like Flowers is there waiting for them with open arms.

My concern with what Flowers is doing is this: he has so reduced Reformed theology to what he calls theistic determinism and fivepointism, that his followers are not being educated to think with any sort of nuance when it comes to considering the broader and more historical tenets of the Reformed faith. For example: I just had one guy, in the Soteriology101 group on FB, tell me that all Reformed theology can be reduced to fivepointism and theistic determinism. I asked him to distinguish what we identify as Evangelical Calvinism and Federal theology; I actually de-joined said group before I got his response. But there were plenty of others voicing this same sort of reductionistic thinking when it comes to Reformed theology. Am I a critic of what I call classical Calvinism? Yes. But even as a critic it’s possible to identify nuance within Westminster Calvinism; and then the other iterations of Reformed theology across the historical spectrum. Ultimately, I think the work that Flowers is doing represents really sloppy and quick “scholarship” that is setting up many of his followers to be just as disillusioned as they were with YRR “theology.” There is absolutely no historical or even ideational depth to what Flowers is doing as he incessantly offers critique of Calvinism on his YouTube/Podcast program. Unfortunately, his subscribers continue to grow exponentially.

How would I classify Flowers’ soteriology? He calls it “Provisionism.” But what he is offering is nothing new or novel. He is riffing on what his Southern Baptist Convention has called Traditionalism. Someone like the late Zane Hodges has called it Free Grace soteriology. Others in the baptistic halls, like I grew up in, have simply called it: biblicism. But Flowers does have a unique spin on his: he rejects so-called ‘total inability,’ with reference to human agency in the appropriation of salvation, which is corollary of his rejection of Augustinian-shaped ‘total depravity.’ In the history this leaves him on the shores of Cassianite-like semi-Pelagianism (which he hates being called that, but in the history of ideas there is no way around it). Flowers’ spin takes ‘biblicism’ to a whole other level of distortion when it comes to thinking theological soteriology.

Indeed, Flowers actually offers an anti-theological mode for his followers to inhabit. This probably helps to explain why he has so much popularity with the populace he has among his low churched evangelical audience. He claims to only be giving people the pure unadulterated biblical truth. He downgrades the significance of systematic theology, and the Christian Dogmatic tradition, while out of the other side of his mouth giving people his personal systematic and dogmatic reflection (interpretation) on the Bible. He engages in the sort of solo scripturaism that other folks he is critical of do: i.e. folks like John MacArthur (and his Macites), James White et al. All of these folks share this sort of antagonism toward the idea that interpretive tradition ought to be taken seriously; because we all have it! But Flowers’ followers are not being educated on this sort of critical reality, and as such, just like the Macites and Whiteians believe, they are simply engaging with what Holy Scripture says; not some man’s “systematic.” Oh no, Flowers, MacArthur, White and others in this genre don’t have a “systematic” (this is another quirkism that Flowers uses often, i.e. the language of “systematic”), they just give you the biblical truth (in the purest way possible). Which is why the whole “debate” between these folks is an utter act of futility. They are doomed to simply trading proof-texts, and proof-exegesis, back and forth between each other; and that’s exactly what happens, particularly between Flowers and White.

Anyway, my hope is that many of Flowers’ followers will see through the facile pabulum he is offering them, and move onto to deeper and theological theology reflections that have been grounded in genuine catholic reflection. I’m not hopeful though. Flowers offers a pseudo-sort of theological refuge for many of the uninformed, and so I think his tribe, unfortunately, will continue to increase. Kyrie eleison.