Category Archives: Leighton Flowers

Is Leighton Flowers a Pelagian? The Answer Might Be Concerning

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What did the infamous, Pelagius, teach about human agency, within the broader category of anthropology? This is a question that has seemingly plagued the church throughout her history. We have Augustine/Pelagius; Luther/Erasmus; Calvin/Pighius; The Council of Dort/Remonstrants so on and so forth. This struggle will not go away. I have, once again, been provoked to enter this fray myself; not because I think this binary is a useful one, but because it continues to ensnare others within the broader Christian body. The provocateur for me has been popular-level podcaster and youtuber, Leighton Flowers. I have engaged with him before through a few blog posts, you can read up on those here. Without rehashing the nitty-gritty of Flowers’ approach (which he calls Provisionism), what is at greatest rub with his whole proposed system reduces down to the question that Pelagius has come to be known for (indeed, Pelagius, has come to be known as the heresiarch of the church because of this). Flowers just did a podcast where this issue takes centerstage (i.e. the human agent’s moral capacity to know or not know God); I responded, here, via a podcast of my own. For the remainder of this post we will attempt to offer a precis of Pelagius’ view on human freewill, and compare that to what Leighton Flowers presents. What should stand out by the end of this post, is that to Flowers’ protestations, his position fits with Pelagius’ perspective much more than he would like. It will be concluded that Flowers’ position isn’t simply equivocally related to Pelagius’, but instead, that Flowers operates with a form of the Pelagian position, that in the history has come to be called semi-Pelagianism.

In order to make a genuine attempt at representing Flowers’ view accurately I will quote directly from the statement of faith he has posted at his website. The statement of faith is said to be representative of the majority of Southern Baptists; Flowers is, by self-confession, within this ‘majority.’ I will quote a large section of the statement (for context), since it has to do with the very question under consideration:

ARTICLE ONE: THE GOSPEL

We affirm that the Gospel is the good news that God has made a way of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for any person. This is in keeping with God’s desire for every person to be saved.

We deny that only a select few are capable of responding to the Gospel while the rest are predestined to an eternity in hell.

Genesis 3:15; Psalm 2:1-12; Ezekiel 18:23, 32; Luke 19.10; Luke 24:45-49; John 1:1-18, 3:16; Romans 1:1-6, 5:8; 8:34; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Galatians 4:4-7; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Timothy 2:3-4; Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-16; 2 Peter 3:9

ARTICLE TWO: THE SINFULNESS OF MAN

We affirm that, because of the fall of Adam, every person inherits a nature and environment inclined toward sin and that every person who is capable of moral action will sin. Each person’s sin alone brings the wrath of a holy God, broken fellowship with Him, ever-worsening selfishness and destructiveness, death, and condemnation to an eternity in hell.

We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty (?) before he has personally sinned. While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, we deny that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel.

Genesis 3:15-24; 6:5; Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 6:5, 7:15-16;53:6;Jeremiah 17:5,9, 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18:19-20; Romans 1:18-32; 3:9-18, 5:12, 6:23; 7:9; Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 6:9-10;15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 9:27-28; Revelation 20:11-15

ARTICLE THREE: THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST

We affirm that the penal substitution of Christ is the only available and effective sacrifice for the sins of every person.

We deny that this atonement results in salvation without a person’s free response of repentance and faith. We deny that God imposes or withholds this atonement without respect to an act of the person’s free will. We deny that Christ died only for the sins of those who will be saved.

Psalm 22:1-31; Isaiah 53:1-12; John 12:32, 14:6; Acts 10:39-43; Acts 16:30-32; Romans 3:21-26; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10-14; Philippians 2:5-11; Col. 1:13-20; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 9:12-15, 24-28; 10:1-18; I John 1:7; 2:2

ARTICLE FOUR: THE GRACE OF GOD

We affirm that grace is God’s generous decision to provide salvation for any person by taking all of the initiative in providing atonement, in freely offering the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in uniting the believer to Christ through the Holy Spirit by faith.

We deny that grace negates the necessity of a free response of faith or that it cannot be resisted. We deny that the response of faith is in any way a meritorious work that earns salvation.

Ezra 9:8; Proverbs 3:34; Zechariah 12:10; Matthew 19:16-30, 23:37; Luke 10:1-12; Acts 15:11; 20:24; Romans 3:24, 27-28; 5:6, 8, 15-21; Galatians 1:6; 2:21; 5; Ephesians 2:8-10; Philippians 3:2-9; Colossians 2:13-17; Hebrews 4:16; 9:28; 1 John 4:19

ARTICLE FIVE: THE REGENERATION OF THE SINNER

We affirm that any person who responds to the Gospel with repentance and faith is born again through the power of the Holy Spirit. He is a new creation in Christ and enters, at the moment he believes, into eternal life.

We deny that any person is regenerated prior to or apart from hearing and responding to the Gospel.

Luke 15:24; John 3:3; 7:37-39; 10:10; 16:7-14; Acts 2:37-39; Romans 6:4-11; 10:14; 1 Corinthians 15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; 6:15; Colossians 2:13; 1 Peter 3:18

ARTICLE SIX: THE ELECTION TO SALVATION

We affirm that, in reference to salvation, election speaks of God’s eternal, gracious, and certain plan in Christ to have a people who are His by repentance and faith.

We deny that election means that, from eternity, God predestined certain people for salvation and others for condemnation.

Genesis 1:26-28; 12:1-3; Exodus 19:6;Jeremiah 31:31-33; Matthew 24:31; 25:34; John 6:70; 15:16; Romans 8:29-30, 33;9:6-8; 11:7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-2; Ephesians 1:4-6; 2:11-22; 3:1-11; 4:4-13; 1 Timothy 2:3-4; 1 Peter 1:1-2; 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Peter 3:9; Revelation 7:9-10

ARTICLE SEVEN: THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

We affirm God’s eternal knowledge of and sovereignty over every person’s salvation or condemnation.

We deny that God’s sovereignty and knowledge require Him to cause a person’s acceptance or rejection of faith in Christ.

Genesis 1:1; 6:5-8; 18:16-33; 22; 2 Samuel 24:13-14; 1 Chronicles 29:10-20; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Joel 2:32; Psalm 23; 51:4; 139:1-6; Proverbs 15:3; John 6:44; Romans 11:3; Titus 3:3-7; James 1:13-15; Hebrews 11:6, 12:28; 1 Peter 1:17

ARTICLE EIGHT: THE FREE WILL OF MAN

We affirm that God, as an expression of His sovereignty, endows each person with actual free will (the ability to choose between two options), which must be exercised in accepting or rejecting God’s gracious call to salvation by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.

We deny that the decision of faith is an act of God rather than a response of the person. We deny that there is an “effectual call” for certain people that is different from a “general call” to any person who hears and understands the Gospel.

Genesis 1:26-28; Numbers 21:8-9; Deuteronomy 30:19; Joshua 24:15; 1 Samuel 8:1-22; 2 Samuel 24:13-14; Esther 3:12-14; Matthew 7:13-14; 11:20-24; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 9:23-24; 13:34; 15:17-20; Romans 10:9-10; Titus 2:12; Revelation 22:17[1]

Keep the aforementioned in mind. Now we will turn to a reading of Pelagius’ understanding of human nature, and freewill. I will refer to my friend’s, Nick Needham’s synopsizing of that:

Unfortunately for Pelagius, his ardent zeal for holy living was wedded to a rather unorthodox theology. Although his doctrine of God was Catholic enough (he believed in the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity), his beliefs about human nature sparked off a storm of controversy which ended in his condemnation for heresy. Pelagius held that all human beings were born into the world as sinless as Adam was before he fell, the apostasy of Adam had not corrupted humanity’s nature, but had merely set a fatally bad example, which most of Adam’s sons and daughters had freely followed. However, there were some people (according to Pelagius) who had managed to remain sinless throughout their lives by proper use of their free-will, e.g. some of the Old Testament saints like Daniel. In fact, anyone could become sinlessly perfect if only he tried hard enough. Pelagius admitted, of course, that human beings needed God’s grace in order to be good, but he had his own peculiar definition of grace. For Pelagius “grace” really meant two things: (i) God’s gift of natural free-will to all human beings; (ii) God’s gift of the moral law and the example of Christ, which revealed perfectly how people should live, and supplied strong incentives in the form of eternal rewards and punishments. Pelagius’s theology therefore made the fruits of human goodness grow almost entirely out of human free-will and effort; entry into heaven, in the Pelagian scheme, became a just reward for living a good life on earth, rather than an undeserved gift purchased for helpless sinners by the blood of an all-sufficient Saviour.[2]

Based on Needham’s description (which is a good one, the common one you will come across in any sound patristic theology book) of Pelagius’s doctrine, we can see some similarities and dissimilarities between what Flowers and the Baptists affirm, and what Pelagius ostensibly affirms. It is the Deny section of Article 2 from the statement above where we find the greatest similarity between Pelagius and Flowers. To reiterate that section it says: “We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty (?) before he has personally sinned. While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, we deny that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel.” In comparison, Pelagius’s position, according to Needham is this: “Pelagius held that all human beings were born into the world as sinless as Adam was before he fell, the apostasy of Adam had not corrupted humanity’s nature . . . Pelagius admitted, of course, that human beings needed God’s grace in order to be good, but he had his own peculiar definition of grace. For Pelagius “grace” really meant two things: (i) God’s gift of natural free-will to all human beings. . . .” I selected the aspects of the respective anthropologies that I think present the greatest similarities between Flowers and Pelagius. While there is not a one-to-one correlation, there is a correlation between the way Flowers believes humanity ‘retained’ a person’s free will, post-fall, and the way Pelagius maintained that human beings were born with an ‘uncorrupted human nature’ as that refers to ‘freewill.’ And as Needham points, out, for Pelagius grace is what fortifies this ‘uncorrupted’ or ‘retained’ (that’s Leighton’s language in his podcasts when attempting to explain his perspective even further) freedom of the will within the human agent. There are some obvious distinctions between Flowers/Baptists and Pelagius, such as Pelagius’s sort of naturalist full-blown moralist soteriology, and the way that Flowers attempts to soften that within a more classical soteriological framework. But what is of concern is the way they share a highly similar theological anthropology, in regard to humanity’s capacity of freewill vis-à-vis salvation. This is the locus classicus that led the early church to identify Pelagius’s teaching as heretical.

There is so much more that can be said. I haven’t even started critiquing Flowers’ position from my own theological program; that will have to wait for another day (if that day ever comes). We haven’t even applied concepts like created grace, a Thomist-Intellectualist anthropology, or considered concepts like operative and cooperative grace when it comes to Flowers’ approach. But I wanted to at least attempt to show how there is a serious and substantial connection between what these Southern Baptists and Flowers teach when compared to what Pelagius taught in regard to the retention of the so called human freewill post-fall. Earlier in my post I noted that I would place Flowers’ position, when considered from the historical valence, into the semi-Pelagian category. I would do this just at the point where we see Flowers/Baptists attempting to dress their soteriological understanding within classical and even orthodox categories, at least linguistically. But when we dress that down, we still end up with this underlying and nagging understanding of a retained ‘freewill’, post-fall, that Pelagius himself taught and was anathematized for. Even in the Deny we paid attention to, the statement says that ultimately the choice is the person’s, as that is understood from what already was affirmed in regard to the retention of human freewill, even if the idea of Pneumatic wooing is referenced. This is what Flowers&company cannot get past. At bottom they affirm that internal to the human agent, it is within the human agent’s power to ‘respond’ or not to the wooing of the Holy Spirit’s prompting. If the person responds in the affirmative to the wooing, Flowers will say this was because of God’s grace; if they reject this wooing, he will say it was because it was in their prerogative to do so because of their freewill. Either way, the response isn’t motivated by grace or no-grace, it is funded by the human agent’s inherent capacity of freewill to either reach out and take hold of God’s grace or not (which if you have read any John Cassian you will also recognize this in him, and his understanding of ‘grace as a hook’). This doesn’t even fit into what Aquinas et al. would refer to as cooperative grace. Grace in Flowers’ et al. approach is always external to the human agent, and this is why Flowers’ soteriological position can rightly be labeled Pelagian. As I reflect on this now, even, the ‘semi’ might not well be applicable at all to his position.

Much to consider. I will leave us with this: good intentions, which Flowers has, a high-piety, which Flowers has, never covers up for bad theology. What Flowers and this set of Southern Baptists are offering is bad theology, and unscriptural at every turn; at least when it comes to thinking about how ‘freedom’ is understood in Scripture’s witness to Jesus Christ.

 

[1] A Statement of the Traditional Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation, accessed 05-17-2020. I have italicized and emboldened all of Article 2; this is where the comparison between Pelagius and Leighton Flowers, and his like-minded Southern Baptists is most acute.

[2] Nick Needham, 2000 Years Of Christ’s Power: Volume 1: The Age Of The Early Church Fathers (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publication, 2016), 276.

Johann von Staupitz as Proto-Evangelical Calvinist in Constructive Critique of the Calvinists, Arminians, and Provisionists

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Theories of salvation remain a contentious thing; particularly among us Protestants. We have such an array of theories that it becomes a task in and of itself to simply index them. But for our purposes, I want to focus on a particular thread as that is given to us in a Catholic and medieval development. I want to use this sketch and appeal to the past to help interrogate certain contemporary Protestant doctrines of salvation that we are currently living with. We will use David Steinmetz’s sketch of medieval nominalism in the soteriology of Luther’s mentor, Johann von Stuapitz. And from this sketch we will contrast one strand of nominalist soteriology with Staupitz’s own unique offering. What emerges from these sketches, I submit, is a helpful roadmap for better understanding the why and the what of contemporary theories of salvation such as we find in Calvinism, Arminianism, and what has been called Traditionalism (or ‘Provisionism’ a la Leighton Flowers—Flowers’ own position is really just a sub-set or nuanced version of classical Arminianism as that has been tweaked in an even more ‘semi-Augustinian’ or ‘semi-Pelagian’ direction than what we find in Arminianism or even Nominalism proper).

As is my normal blogging mode, let me offer a long quote and then we will use that quote as a material font for populating the sort of constructive critique I want to make of Calvinism, Arminianism, and Provisionism. I will juxtapose these other traditions with our Evangelical Calvinist soteriology, as that is grounded in a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ or the Patristic Homooousion. As we engage with Steinmetz’s sketch of Staupitz, what we will find is an interesting emphasis on what Calvin later came to identify as the Duplex Gratia (‘double grace’ of salvation) within a broader doctrine of unio cum Christo (‘union with Christ). This focus on union with Christ also, not uncoincidentally, plays a heavy role in Luther’s soteriology, along with TF Torrance’s and Barth’s after them. You will see, through Steinmetz’s work, how these themes begin to become contrasted and set into relief, one from the other. Steinmetz writes:

Staupitz’s stress on the initiative of God in predestination led him to redefine the doctrine of justification. The entire scholastic tradition, and not simply the nominalists, defined justifying grace as the grace that makes sinners pleasing to God. This definition seemed to Staupitz to mirror inadequately the nature of God’s act. It is not justification but predestination that makes sinners pleasing to God. The function of grace given in justification is to make God pleasing to sinners. Justification is simply the fruition in time of a sovereign decree of election made before time. When God chose the elect, God placed Jesus Christ under obligation to give justification to them through his work as mediator. The function of the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ is, therefore, not to make men and women dear to God, but rather to make God dear to them. The elect are the beneficiaries of a covenant initiated and fulfilled by God in Jesus Christ.[1]

Compare Staupitz’s understanding of salvation, with its emphasis on predestination and a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ with Barth’s:

This all rests on the fact that from the very first He participates in the divine election; that that election is also His election; that it is He Himself who posits this beginning of all things; that it is He Himself who executes the decision which issues in the establishment of the covenant between God and man; that He too, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the electing God. If this is not the case, then in respect of the election, in respect of this primal and basic decision of God, we shall have to pass by Jesus Christ, asking of God the Father, or perhaps of the Holy Spirit, how there can be any disclosure of this decision at all. For where can it ever be disclosed to us except where it is executed? The result will be, of course, that we shall be driven to speculating about a decretum absolutum instead of grasping and affirming in God’s electing the manifest grace of God. And that means that we shall not know into whose hands we are committing ourselves when we believe in the divine predestination. So much depends upon our acknowledgement of the Son, of the Son of God, as the Subject of this predestination, because it is only in the Son that it is revealed to us as the predestination of God, and therefore of the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it is only as we believe in the Son that we can also believe in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the one divine election.[2]

We can sense some parallels, and see some antecedents of emphasis between Barth and Steinmetz’s Staupitz. What it most significant to me is the emphasis placed on a doctrine of predestination. Because of Staupitz’s situadedness he would not have had the intensive Christological edge that Barth brings to these things. But Staupitz does have the sort of ‘from above’ unilateral focus on salvation that kicks against any form of quid pro quo covenantalism as we find that in various forms in classical Calvinism, Arminianism, and Provisionism. We see Staupitz move away from the dualistic potentia God of the nominalists proper, and towards an understanding of salvation that focuses solely on God’s Word of grace and hope. Luther couldn’t help but pick this emphasis up, and Barth following could not as well.

For Barth and Torrance (latterly), the logic of reformational thinking, whether that be thought back from someone like Staupitz, or more radically from Luther and Calvin, is a Logic of Grace; as TF Torrance calls it. This logic is not the starting point for the Augustinian forms of salvation that we find in classic Calvinism, Arminianism, or Provisionism. Instead we get a focus on ‘justification’ as the starting point for thinking salvation, which in itself thinks in terms of an abstractly elected human with the focus on the human’s responsibility to respond to God. This might sound like strange fire to some, particularly classical Calvinists. But if we read the Federal theologians of Calvinist heritage, what we find is a ‘two-winged’ conception of the Covenant where the unconditionally elect person is burdened with task of keeping their end of the covenant. Indeed, in the Federal scheme, this person has been predestined to keep on keeping on in the faith, but they are burdened with this need to persevere in the salvation they have been granted. This need to persevere is set within a juridical framework (i.e. Covenant of Works and the Divine Pactum), such that the focus becomes one wherein the elect is to a live a life that seeks to avoid the judgment and instead find justification and vindication at the second advent of Jesus Christ.

In contrast to this focus, once again, we find that Staupitz that is more aligned with Barth’s and Torrance’s theologies, or Luther’s and Calvin’s. Steinmetz writes again:

Staupitz, on the other hand, had very little to say about the work of Christ as judge. The work of hope was expanded for him from the past into the present. He did not think simply in terms of the first advent of Christ in the flesh (which for Biel was the basis of the work of hope) or the final advent of Christ in glory (which for Biel was the culmination of the work of justice). Rather, he laid heavy emphasis in his theology on the advent of Christ in grace. Grace is not an impersonal power or habit of love, though in his early thought he could speak of it in these terms. Grace should be defined instead as the personal presence of the risen Christ and justification as an intimate marriage between Christ and the Christian. Life in the present is live out of the boundless resources of the indwelling Christ, who provides at every moment all the Christian needs in order to persevere. Because in his union with Christ the Christian has access to all the unlimited resources of grace, Staupitz could not be anxious about the impending judgment of God. His certitude was grounded in the love of God, a reality that is not subject to change and fluctuation.[3]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not attempting to suggest that Staupitz was a proto-Barthian; but I am suggesting that in the history there were prominent threads and strands of soteriological bounty that stand in stark contradistinction to what later came to be known as a Protestant Reformed orthodoxy; or what Richard Muller calls Christian Aristotelianism. Staupitz fits within a Christological formed nominalist theology that we find quite present in the emphases of Luther&company. We might want to read this emphasis as Stauptiz against the Calvinists, just as we have Calvin against the Calvinists (Muller’s critique notwithstanding).

The Evangelical Calvinist thread is always the thread that emphasizes God’s Grace, his ‘Logic of Grace’ in Jesus Christ. We see this thread in medieval times, as much as we see it in the modern times of Barth and Torrance. It is a thread that the contemporary offerings don’t grasp, and thus they fail to offer a radically and Christologically formed understanding of salvation for the Church. The Arminians and Provisionists fall prey to the critique of a bottom-up juridical understanding of salvation just as much as the Calvinists do. Unlike Evangelical Calvinism, and like Calvinism proper, Arminians and Provisionists start their respective soteriologies in the person needing the saving, rather than in the God doing the saving. This is not to say that they reject the idea that salvation is of God, instead mine is a methodological observation. They think of the ‘elect’ or the ‘justified’ in abstraction from the choice of God to be for us rather than against us. In other words, they continue to emphasize the judgment of God on individual sinners, rather than the cosmic life of God in Christ for the world as the basis for their understanding of salvation. So, they have a vision of God, unlike Staupitz et al. that starts with a Judgment-God rather than Father-God who is eternal Love.

I have so much more to say, but this will have to suffice for now. There is a lot of assertion in this post about classical Calvinists and Arminians, but if you scour my blog you will find posts on Calvinism and Arminianism (the latter implicates so called Provisionism) that help take my assertions out of the realm of assertion, and into the realm of critical and substantial statement.

 

[1] David C. Steinmetz, Reformers In The Wings: From Geiler von Kaysersberg to Theodore Beza: Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19.

[2] Barth, CD II/2:111.

[3] Steinmetz, Reformers In The Wings, 20.

‘Theological Theology’ as a Biblical Hermeneutic: Calling Leighton Flowers and the Calvinists to Think Soteriology from Christology

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As Protestants we all want our interpretations of Holy Scripture to be the “right ones”; at least we want to be able to operate with the conviction that what we believe Scripture teaches is in fact what it is teaching. I continue to follow along with Leighton Flowers and his proposed soteriological view known as Provisionism (which is his riff on the Southern Baptist so called Traditionalism). In fact I just
listened to a four hour response he gave to some of his critics and fellow podcasters, one of whom included Chris Date. There are certain things that resonate with me in regard to Flowers’ desired conclusion. In other words, he wants to work, de jure, from revelation as his authoritative source for working out his theological conclusions. We don’t share the same theory of revelation, which has some considerable implications in regard to how we approach Scripture and its interpretation; but we have a shared desire to avoid over reliance on metaphysical speculation when it comes to the way we in fact arrive at our respective soteriological conclusions.

But what I find ironic about Leighton, and this isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to him, is that in his speed to defeat the Calvinist theological framework he continues to work from the same sort of soteriological and Augustinian premises that he derides as foolishness. In other words, even though Leighton seems to think that he is offering a more accurate and more biblically reliant doctrine of salvation, it has become clear to me that he is working from the same sort of soteriologically-driven-from-below starting point for thinking salvation as his Calvinst counterparts. It isn’t that he isn’t thinking less “systematically” and theologically than his Calvinist opponents, it is just that he has shifted the ‘systematic’ (his word) from thinking salvation from Augustinian premises—particularly when that comes to thinking about anthropology and ‘freewill’—and instead works from Pelagian premises. This might seem like a violation of a theological Godwin’s Rule by bringing up Pelagius, but I do so because Flowers et al make this move as they attempt to recoup Pelagius’s understanding of freewill over against Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. In this vein, Flowers contends that the Bible itself never teaches that humanity lives in what Luther calls ‘The Bondage of the Will.’ Flowers argues that this reading of Scripture can be attributed to Augustine’s titanic influence on the Western Church’s reading of Scripture in the main. As such, according to Flowers, we ought to throw off the shackles of the Augustinian prison, and freely choose, at the least, to follow the trajectory that Pelagius has given us in regard to understanding the ‘neutrality’ of the human will coram Deo.

To bring this full circle: It is important, in my view, for Flowers and all of us to recognize the power that theological assumptions have upon the way we arrive at our theological and soteriological conclusions. I think Flowers does recognize this, which is why he hopes to defeat the impact of the tradition Augustine has provided for, and replace that with a trajectory, at least with reference to thinking a theological anthropology, with Pelagius’ voice. And yet Flowers seems to slip back and forth between recognizing the role that theological exegesis has on the way he receives and reads Scripture, and then he seems to argue that he is just attempting to offer a ‘pure’ reading of the New Testament text in particular.

But this is the point I want to counter with: We all are ‘enslaved,’ as it were, to a Traditioned reading of the text of Holy Scripture. In other words, none of us read it in a vacuum. That said, Scripture itself does indeed offer up its own categories and emphases. So, the theological lenses we read Scripture through need to dialectically and spirally be understood as lenses that have taken shape as they are formed under the pressures of revelation, and encounter with the living Lord that revelation in fact is. What I am saying is that while we read Scripture theologically, indeed, we are doing so in a dialogical sense; in a sense that Scripture’s teaching, and its witness to its reality in Jesus Christ become mutually informing things. This should chasten Flowers’ et als constant appeal to a more plain teaching of Scripture in regard to soteriological and other loci. His opponents might be reading Scripture from a ‘systematic,’ but no more or less than is Leighton. The question is: Whose systematic is more closely proximate to Scripture’s reality in Christ? And this question, in itself is a highly theological question; but this shouldn’t be surprising since our reception of Scripture, as Protestants, is based on a highly charged theological confession that Scripture is God’s Word where the viva vox Dei (living voice of God) can be encountered through the mediating humanity of Jesus Christ. These things, these hermeneutical realities need to be better attended to by Flowers and his Calvinist interlocutors. In an absence of this sort of attendance I do not believe a fruitful discussion between the parties can inhere. Without a critical understanding and delineation of what Scripture is, without a robust doctrine of Scripture in the forefront, Flowers’ and the Calvinist’s arguments, respectively, will only keep sliding right past each other. I place this emphasis on a doctrine of Scripture because it takes us back to the more fundamental question of hermeneutic and where that comes from for the Protestant reader of Scripture. This lacuna continues to plague the internecine discussions that take place between evangelical thinkers.

There is a better way. The better way is to follow the lead of someone like John Webster. He understood the importance of doing ‘theological theology’; meaning, he understood that there is a theological taxis or order to Christian thought. As such, if we fail to attend, in an intentional way, to this ordered way of thinking—thinking that starts with Theology Proper, subsequently leading to other loci like a doctrine of creation, doctrine of Scripture so on and so forth—we will have very thin hermeneutical frameworks that actually keep us from penetrating the depth dimension of the text of Scripture. If this remains the case, then the inner-theological-reality that allows Scripture to teach what it does will never really be engaged with. Jesus believed (cf. Jn 5.39) that He is the inner-reality of Scripture, as such, I suggest to Leighton et al. that Christology, not soteriology ought to be the starting point in regard to our broader biblical hermeneutic. If we think our thoughts from Jesus as regulator of the text’s reality we will end up with different questions than those being debated by those committed to an Augustinian/Pelagian frame such as the Calvinists and Leighton are. They can choose to recognize this or not. If they don’t recognize this then their discussions will continue to traffic in the status quo of evangelical conservative theological banter with no real hope for advancing deeper into the once for all faith delivered to the saints.

The Biblical Doctrine of Election: And Some “Flowery” Engagement

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I want to share some quotes from Karl Barth and Tom Greggs. All of these quotes either come from the body or footnotes of my personal chapter for our latest Evangelical Calvinism book (2017). I was prompted to this as I continue to listen to Leighton Flowers. This post, though, will not engage with Flowers directly, but insofar as I offer up an alternative version of Reformed ‘election’ and ‘reprobation’ that he is not targeting, I think he ought to take notice. When Jesus is understood as the genuine center of all theological thought a whole new world opens up in regard to the theological and thus biblical horizons possible for Christian edification. I agree with Flowers that classical Calvinism gives us a rubbish understanding of Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ; I just think contra Flowers that there is a much better and theological way to understand the implications of the Incarnation of God in Christ and how that gets cashed out in the way we ultimately understand who God is. Let’s hear from Barth and Greggs on the doctrine of election, and then close with some further reflection.

Karl Barth writes,

This all rests on the fact that from the very first He participates in the divine election; that that election is also His election; that it is He Himself who posits this beginning of all things; that it is He Himself who executes the decision which issues in the establishment of the covenant between God and man; that He too, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the electing God. If this is not the case, then in respect of the election, in respect of this primal and basic decision of God, we shall have to pass by Jesus Christ, asking of God the Father, or perhaps of the Holy Spirit, how there can be any disclosure of this decision at all. For where can it ever be disclosed to us except where it is executed? The result will be, of course, that we shall be driven to speculating about a decretum absolutum instead of grasping and affirming in God’s electing the manifest grace of God. And that means that we shall not know into whose hands we are committing ourselves when we believe in the divine predestination. So much depends upon our acknowledgement of the Son, of the Son of God, as the Subject of this predestination, because it is only in the Son that it is revealed to us as the predestination of God, and therefore of the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it is only as we believe in the Son that we can also believe in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the one divine election.[1]

And Tom Greggs offers commentary on the sort of sentiment we just witnessed in Barth’s reformulation of election, as a Christ concentrated conception:

There is no room for a prior decision of God to create, or elect and condemn before the decision to elect Jesus Christ (no decretum absolutum); instead, Jesus Christ is Himself the ultimate decretum absolutum.[2]

Further:

Election’s nature is . . . Gospel. The dialectic evident in Romans remains and can be seen between electing God and elected human in its most extreme form in terms of election and rejection. Humanity continues to need to be rescued by God in its rejection of Him. What is new is that this dialectic is now considered in a wholly Christological way which brings together the Yes and No of God in the simultaneity of the elected and rejected Christ. It is He who demonstrates salvation as its originator and archetype. It is, therefore, in the humanity of the elected Christ that one needs to consider the destiny of human nature.[3]

Maybe you can infer how I would use these quotes in the chapter I wrote on assurance of salvation. But the most important point I want to highlight, currently, is that in the Barthian reformulation of election the focus is no longer on individual/abstract people scurrying around on the earth, but instead upon the ground of all humanity as that is realized in the archetypal and elect humanity of Jesus Christ. There is a universalizing underneath in the doctrine of election in Barth’s theology, with the result that our focus is not on ourselves, as if we have some sort of inherent value or worth in se; but instead the realization is always present that we find our life and being in extra nos or outside of us, only as that extra enters into us by the gift of God in the grace who is the Christ.

The shift that happens, juxtaposed with a classical double predestinarian view, is that election first and foremost is about a doctrine of God; but a doctrine of God that can never be thought of apart from or abstracted out of His choice to not be God without us. In other words, in this reified doctrine our knowledge of God and selves is contingent always already upon God’s choice to be with us and for us in Christ. This transforms the way we think humanity, for one thing. In other words, we are unable to think about what genuine humanity is without first thinking about humanity in union with God in the Son’s union with us in the vicarious humanity of Christ.

One immediate consequence of this is that the way we think people is no longer from a class structure, or from the psychological vantage point that God loves some and not others (as the classical notion of election/reprobation leaves us with). As such, we are genuinely free to look out at others and recognize a humanity, in full, that God loves; a humanity, no matter how wretched (maybe as we think of ourselves) that is valuable precisely at the point that Jesus is the Yes and not the No for them and us. This is not to suggest that a blind eye is given to the sub-humanity that people continue to live in—because we love the darkness rather than the light—but it is to alert us to the fact, in the Barthian reification, that all people have inherent value, just because God first loved us that we might love Him. It is to recognize that even if people choose to reject the election freely offered to them in Christ, that because that election is not contingent upon their choice, but God’s, they live in suspension from the imago Dei who is the imago Christi (cf. Col. 1.15), and as such continue to have inherent value, and even capacity to say yes to God in correspondence to Jesus’s Yes for them. Here, we can agree with the evangelist that ‘God so loved the world, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.’

With the above noted I think we ought to repent and understand the doctrine of election from Barth’s lights (if we haven’t already). You’ll notice a heavy emphasis on the conciliar nature of Barth’s theologizing. In other words, he isn’t resisting the ecumenical councils of the Church; nein, he is taking them with all seriousness, particularly the Nicene-Constantinopolitan-Chalcedon councils with their respective focuses on Theology Proper and Christology. Herein, for Barth, is the gateway for understanding all things theological. Folks who don’t accept this sort of prolegomenological foray of Barth’s, the one that slavishly restricts its knowledge of God to God’s Self-revelation in Christ, will of course find Barth’s conclusions on election, and everything else, amiss. But I wonder how it is possible to not follow Barth, just at a material level (which of course cannot be separated from the formal). Barth, I think, is following the Evangelist par excellence, John. John, in his Gospel, is the one who has made clear that Christ thought of Himself as the center of the whole cosmos, which includes the canon of Scripture. John is the one who has told is that Jesus alone dwells in the bosom of the Father and has come to exegete Him for us. You can’t get more biblical than this pathway. I think Barth has found something that is central to the reality of the Gospel, as that it is funded most acutely by the Gospel of John.

But I digress, a bit. I commend to you, once again, Barth’s reformulated doctrine of election. No matter what alternative someone commits themselves to, in regard to a doctrine of election, they are all dripping in deep theological commitments. I know Leighton Flowers like to present his approach as a prima facie or ‘straightforward’ “just the text man” sort of way. But the reality is that even Flowers’ approach is just as much a species of theological exegesis as anyone else’s. This is why I am so focused on making sure that we are aware of this, and as a result we seek to work from the best Christian Dogmatic as possible. Barth, in my view, offers the best theological exegetical approach when it comes to a doctrine of election. And if you understand how interlinked this doctrine is with all of Barth’s theological project, you’ll understand why appreciation of him won’t just stop with election; it can’t.

 

[1] Barth, CD II/2:110.

[2] Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation, 25.

 

A Mini-Sketch of Pelagius and His Teaching in Continued Response to Leighton Flowers and His Soteriological ‘Traditionalism’

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I continue to listen to Leighton Flower’s podcasts on the way home from and to work. As he acknowledges, he is not an “academic,” per se, but a popularizer of various academic themes within the sphere he is associated. Nonetheless, he is constantly engaging with so called “academic theology,” and has various guests on his podcasts who are. The one that stands out most to me, thus far, is his interview of Augustine scholar, Ken Wilson. What was most striking to me about this interview is that both Wilson and Flowers attempt to invert the usual and historic understanding of Pelagius and Augustine; they denigrate Augustine as the heretic and elevate Pelagius as the champion of how we ought to understand ‘freewill’ vis-Ă -vis salvific appropriation. This is rather striking, for obvious reasons, but also concerning because this message is being advocated for among the popular; a group of folks who don’t have critical resource (or time) to see if what Wilson and Flowers are proposing be so. In an effort to provide some sort of online counter I wanted to provide a small sketch of Pelagius, and the implications of his teaching. My contention, along with the church catholic’s, is that when Pelagius’s teachings are placed up against the Scriptural teaching, particularly the New Testament’s teaching (cf. Rom 3 etc), that it flounders just at the point Wilson, Flowers et al claim that it achieves the proper balance for how we ought to understand humanity’s capacity to choose God rather than self. There is a reason ‘no one seeks after God,’ it is because we ‘love the darkness rather than the light’ (cf. Jn 3.17ff). Pelagius’s teaching operates out of a notion of ‘pure nature’ that is funded by the idea that creation itself has an absolute and ontological orientation of its own, such that it remains impermeable to anything other than its own self-determination; ironically, we might identify this orientation, of the self-determined self, as the definition of a Genesis 3 understanding of sin. This is why Pelagius’s teaching has rightly been identified as heretical; i.e. because his teaching on the nature of humanity is grounded, narrativally, in an understanding of humanity that finds its antecedents in the very conception of humanity’s ability ‘to choose’ that God unilaterally came to put to death in the cross and humanity of Jesus Christ.

With the above noted, here is a short sketch on Pelagius and his theology that I offered a couple of years ago here at the blog.

We often hear of Pelagianism, or of Pelagius himself. We know it is a heresy which Augustine in the 5th century combated; but we don’t often hear exactly what Pelagianism entails. I thought in an effort to remedy this type of lacuna, at least for those who don’t know, that I would share something from JND Kelly on Pelagius, and in brief, what the main aspect of his troubling teaching entails.

Kelly writes:

Pelagius was primarily a moralist, concerned for right conduct and shocked by what he considered demoralizingly pessimistic views of what could be expected of human nature. The assumption that man could not help sinning seemed to him an insult to his Creator. Augustine’s prayer, ‘Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt’ (da quod iubes et iube quod vis), particularly distressed him, for it seemed to suggest that men were puppets wholly determined by the movements of divine grace. In reaction to this the keystone of his whole system is the idea of unconditional free will and responsibility. In creating man God did not subject him, like other creatures, to the law of nature, but gave him the unique privilege of being able to accomplish the divine will by his own choice. He set life and death before him, bidding him choose life (Deut. 30, 19), but leaving the final decision to his free will. Thus it depends on the man himself whether he acts rightly or wrongly: the possibility of freely choosing the good entails the possibility of choosing evil. There are, he argues, three features in action—the power (posse), the will (velle), and the realization (esse). The first of these comes exclusively from God, but the other two belong to us; hence, according as we act, we merit praise or blame. It would be wrong to infer, however, that he regarded this autonomy as somehow withdrawing man from the purview of God’s sovereignty. Whatever his followers may have said, Pelagius himself made no such claim. On the contrary, along with his belief in free will he has the conception of a divine law proclaiming to men what they ought to do and setting the prospect of supernatural rewards and pains before them. If a man enjoys the freedom of choice, it is by the express bounty of his Creator, and he ought to use it for the ends which He prescribes.[1]

Augustine famously opposed this with his development not only of sin as privatio (privation), but also concupiscence (self-love). But beyond that, if you have ever wondered about Pelagius, or more pointedly about his teaching which has become known as Pelagianism, then this should at least give you a good start. If you want to see what Kelly says further about Pelagius I recommend you pick up his excellent book where he covers this, among other important developments in the early period of the church.

I think all Christians, whether classical Calvinist, classical Arminian, Evangelical Calvinist, Barthian, Lutheran, or what have you share common ground in their opposition towards Pelagianism. Sometimes it requires heresy in order for orthodoxy to be sharpened and articulated in such a way that it provides a fruitful way forward for the church. In this case what Augustine offered against Pelagius served as the basis for what many Christians, even today, think of Pelagianism, and more importantly, how Christians conceive of grace (of course we’ve had other developments since Augustine and Pelagius as well).

For my two cents, I think when attempting to offer an alternative model to classical Calvinism and Arminianism it is best to avoid associating your alternative, even grounding some of its key themes, in the theology of a known and worldwide heretic. This approach may work well when presented to folks who don’t have critical access to the history of ideas and their development, but that’s really as far as it will go; other than idiosyncratic appropriation in and among a small number of a scholarly caste of people. It is true that credentials, one way or the other, do not establish the veracity of ideas, but ultimately that is not my appeal here. My appeal to the “theologians” in the church catholic is to note that Pelagius is a known heretic precisely because his teaching correlates with what Scripture identifies as something we need to be saved from (i.e. ourselves and our enslavement to only and always freely choose us rather than God).

[1] JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. Revised Edition (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 356-57.

Contra Mundum: A Riposte to Leighton Flowers’ ‘Provisionism’, the Classical Calvinists and Arminians, and the Rest of the ‘Latins’: Human Agency in Salvation

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In the predominately Calvinist world many Christian people, especially conservatives, inhabit online, this post might not have much interface with you. Indeed, what we will be considering might be more demographically relevant than it is conceptually. My guess is that Millennial and younger generations will not really see this as very pertinent to their Christianity. I mean most, Millennial and under, have simply been given a theological entrée, that if they are theologically astute and ‘serious,’ if they are conservative and evangelical, has been flavored with TULIP petals and Dutch chocolates; not to mention Latin cigars and German beer. But be that as it may, I wanted to touch on something I just said I would; I want to engage further with the ‘traditionalism,’ or what Leighton Flowers calls ‘Provisionism,’ when it comes to things salvific. You see, what Leighton is re-iterating for his Southern Baptist tribespeople, and anyone else who will listen, is something I grew up with myself (as a Conservative Baptist pastor’s kid); only we called it “Biblicism.” Let me offer something of a sketch of Flowers’ offering, at least one part of it, the part that has to do with his view of human agency in the appropriation of salvation; and then after I will offer the Evangelical Calvinist alternative.

What will make some of this difficult, in regard to presenting Flowers’ views, is that most of them are articulated via podcasts, and interviews he’s done with guests (he has written some books, so maybe someday I’ll read and engage with those as well); so we will have to rely on my recall and ability to accurately re-present (via paraphrase) what was communicated in said podcast. Let me focus on a podcast that Flowers recently did (they are videoed on YouTube as well) with Augustine expert, Ken Wilson. In this podcast the basic thesis was this: It wasn’t until Augustine entered the picture that Christian theology/soteriology received its deterministic shape. Wilson’s argument is that Augustine is at fault for introducing the notion that later Martin Luther would call (in response to Erasmus) The Bondage of the Will. That is, that original sin entered the picture, and as a result all of humanity became guilty and noetically and volitionally impotent to respond to God’s free offer of salvation. The argument went further, per Wilson (with Flowers’ approval): Wilson argues that because Augustine was really more of a rhetorician and apologist, even a popular one, that his teachings, especially his later teachings gained the traction that they did. In the process, as Wilson contends, Pelagius’ ideas on human freedom for or against God were besmirched, and as such Pelagius became a ‘boogeyman’ and the arch-heresiarch of the Church catholic (and Catholic). Wilson, and Flowers following, seek to re-boot Pelagius’ view on human freedom, and apparently his understanding on the ‘naturalized’ will as orthodox; thus, displacing Augustine’s view, and placing it in the heretical bin of history instead.

The claim is also made that prior to Augustine, the Eastern church, and the church in the first three hundred years, in general, operated in the mold of Pelagius’ viewpoint when it came to human free agency. That it was Augustine’s introduction of Manichean-Gnostic-Platonist inspired conceptual matter into Christian teaching that has set the Western church on the trajectory it took ever since his synthesis of such things. I think though, it is very important to note that the early church, pre-Augustine, really did not operate with the notion of libertarian freedom that Wilson, Flowers and others in this community are asserting. For one thing, this would be philosophically anachronistic, but more importantly what we find in folks like Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria is a heavy emphasis on a Christologically based notion of human freedom for and thus from God. In other words, Athanasius offered a view that bases human freedom on the freedom God has offered us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (see his book On the Incarnation). Cyril of Alexandria, similarly, sees human freedom for God in salvation, grounded in a thick understanding on participation with God through union with Christ; again, emphasizing our participation in and from the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (see Donald Fairbairn’s work on Cyril in particular). Not to mention, John Calvin himself, known as the ‘theologian of the Spirit,’ places weighted emphasis on salvation only being found in Christ alone and our being united to Christ by the Spirit (think of his so called duplex gratia or double grace soteriology, and emphasis on union with Christ unio cum Christo). All of this is in agreement with the Apostle Paul’s teaching and understanding of human freedom for God (see Rom 6–8 and II Cor 8.9). Indeed, Paul’s teaching on the vicarious humanity of Christ, and thus human freedom for God in Christ, is most evident in a passage like Gal 2.20; as we translate that (as we should) with the subjective (V the objective) genitive. If we translate this passage thusly it reads (as the KJV correctly does):

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (KJV)

ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός: ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ. (GNT)

I have emboldened the language that serves our purposes; i.e. ‘the faith of the Son of God.’ We don’t trust God from our own resources; there is no ‘created grace’ that we are given to believe from in abstraction from Christ’s priestly and mediatorial trust for us. For the Apostle Paul, and much of the early church (pre-Augustine, and even post-Augustine in spite of Augustine and his Latin theology) freedom for God has a decidedly Christ concentrated grounding to it; such that when freedom is used in the New Testament it always already has reference to what Christ has accomplished for us as our High Priest, and the Greater Adam (think first and second Adam motif cf. Rom 5). In other words, the Wilson/Flowers thesis, in regard to human freedom for or against God in the early Church, and more importantly as found in the New Testament witness isn’t correlative with the actual reality. For the Apostle Paul we never think of humanity apart from Christ’s resurrected humanity, and our union with His humanity by grace (see Rom 6).

Ironically, Wilson, Flowers et al. continue to operate with the same sort of dualistic and abstract conception of humanity that they claim the Calvinists and Augustine himself did (which they do). They are right to find certain problems in Augustine’s understanding of salvation. They are wrong to offer up Pelagius as a shining star for understanding human freedom (he is the heretic that he has been rightly labeled as). And they are wrong to think there is some notion of libertarian free agency that has some sort of free-standing ontological status of its own; a status that can be de-linked and gifted to humanity’s ‘accidents’ as a means by which the mass of humanity can either say yes or no to God by a capacity they have sovereignly been given by God—we might call it, in reminiscence of Pelagius’s understanding: a ‘naturalized grace.’ Next post I will push further into the irony of Wilson’s and Flower’s usage of Augustine’s soteriological or abstract conception of humanity (labelled by TF Torrance as ‘The Latin Heresy’), and how they deploy that just as readily as Augustine did.

P.S. Make sure you click on all the hyper-links I have strewn throughout this post. They will lead you to pertinent posts that help to develop and establish my thesis further.

 

Engaging With Leighton Flowers’ ‘Provisionalism’ Along With Critique of Classical Calvinism

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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.