Category Archives: Provisionalism

On a James Whitean and Leighton Flowersian Naked Reading of the Bible

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Thumbnail created originally by Leighton Flowers (Caleb)

I was listening to James White live today on his Dividing Line vlogcast, and what he reinforces over and over is that he is what some are calling a ‘biblicist,’ or what I would identify as a solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura proponent, as far as the way that he approaches Scripture. In this way, James White and his archnemeses, Leighton Flowers, ironically affirm the same bibliology and its attending hermeneutic. It is both modern, postEnlightenment, and Lockean (i.e., tabula rasa) in orientation. That is, it sees Scripture and its reception in a historicist frame of reference. This frame leaves the history of interpretation (i.e., creeds, confessions, catechisms etc.) in the dust, in regard to how White and Flowers receive Scripture. This ironically lends itself to a modernist-naturalist appropriation of and engagement with Holy Scripture, insofar that the Bible, in such a frame, seems to be a ‘white-slate’ wherein the interpreter has some type of objectivist angle into its exegesis.

The aforementioned is problematic for a variety of reasons. One prominent reason is that it ends up working from a petitio principii (circular reasoning). That is to say, it presumes: 1) My interpretation just is the objective reading of the Bible, 2) my interpretation of the Bible is a five-point Calvinist reading of the Bible, 3) therefore the objective reading of the Bible just is a five-point Calvinist reading (or just replace five-point Calvinist with Provisionist reading in Flowers’ case). What this approach fails to appreciate, for one, is that nobody approaches Scripture as a presuppositionless blank-slate; human agents are subjects, and as such we bring a variety of preunderstandings and unchecked a priori commitments to theological paradigms as we read Scripture. We could call this the “hermeneutical dilemma.” Neither James White nor his compadre, Leighton Flowers, acknowledge this. And thus, all that they are left to do in their respective debates and correspondences is to sling Scripture right past each other; never critically identifying or checking their theological a prioris at the frontend of their respective readings of Scripture.

But like I was noting, James White, today, as he was talking, in this case about Catholicism, made an absolute distinction between reading Scripture and the history of interpretation of Scripture; as if they inhabit two distinct silos. But they don’t inhabit two distinct silos, instead the history and the biblical exegesis are mutually implicating realities; insofar that human agents are subjectively reading and receiving the text of Holy Scripture. Until White and Flowers can admit this, and until all of their acolytes can come to grasp this, this whole “debate” between them, on five-point Calvinism versus Provisionism, will remain a futile endeavor. Unfortunately, they have many followers, respectively, who they are doing a disservice to. They are teaching young and biologically old, in some cases, Christian hearts and minds to read Scripture rationalistically rather than confessionally (and thus Christologically and Trinitarianly).

In closing, let me refer us to Matthew Levering’s sketch on the Whitean and Flowersian reading of Scripture (viz., what he writes indirectly critiques the Whitean-Flowersian combine of biblical interpretation); as far as its intellectual development and background go. Here Levering also offers an alternative approach that is participatorily grounded in a genuinely christologically and trinitarianly conditioned reading of Holy Scripture.

What happens, then, when Scripture is seen primarily as a linear-historical record of dates and places rather than as a providentially governed (revelatory) conversation with God in which the reader, within the doctrinal and sacramental matrix of the Church, is situated? John Webster points to the disjunction that appears between “history” and “theology” and remarks on the “complex legacy of dualism and nominalism in Western Christian theology, through which the sensible and intelligible relams, history and eternity, were thrust away from each other, and creaturely forms (language, action, institutions) denied any capacity to indicate the presence and activity of the transcendent God.” Similary, Lamb contrasts the signs or concepts that can be grasped by modern exegetical methods with the moral and intellectual virtues that are required for a true participatory knowledge and love the realities expressed by the signs or concepts. Lacking the framework of participatory knowledge and love, biblical exegesis is reduced to what Lamb calls “a ‘comparative textology’ à la Spinoza.” Only participatory knowledge and love, which both ground and flow from the reading practices of the Church, can really attain the biblical realities. As Joseph Ratzinger thus observes, the meaning of Scripture is constituted when

the human word and God’s word work together in the singularity of historical events and the eternity of the everlasting Word which is contemporary in every age. The biblical word comes from a real past. It comes not only from the past, however, but at the same time from the eternity of God and it leads us into God’s eternity, but again along the way through time, to which the past, the present and the future belong.

This Christological theology of history, which depends on a metaphysics of participation inscribed in creation, provides the necessary frame for apprehending the true meaning of biblical texts.

In short, for the patristic-medieval tradition and for those attuned to it today, history (inclusive of the work of historiography) is an individual and communal conversation with the triune God who creates and redeems history—and the Bible situates us in history thus understood. (Levering, 23)

An Athanasian Reformed Reading of John 6:44-45: On Unconditional Election and the Effectual Call

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There was a debate, very recently, between Dr. James White and Dr. Leighton Flowers with reference to John 6:44-45. The theological locus under disputation was on the Calvinist doctrines of unconditional election and the effectual call. White argued the positive position, i.e., affirming unconditional election and the effectual call; whilst Flowers argued the negative, i.e., denying unconditional election and the effectual call. For the purposes of this post, I am just going to assume the reader understands the entailments of said doctrines, and cut right to the chase in offering the Athanasian Reformed (AR) (Evangelical Calvinist) reading of John 6:44-45. I believe it is the better more theologically acute way one must exegete John 6:44-45, among many other passages, in light of Christological orthodoxy. In other words, I will suggest (not argue here) that everyone reads the text of Scripture through theological lenses; and since that’s the case, it is best to exegete Scripture from good theological premises, rather than bad ones. I would simply assert here that both White and Flowers, respectively, offer a reading of John 6 that are based on bad theological premises.

Here is the passage in the English translation (NASB95):

44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.

White argues that all who are drawn of God will necessarily come to God (so, what he takes to be a prima facie argument for unconditional election vis-à-vis the effectual call). Flowers argues that the drawn ones who come to God are those who have not only heard, but have actively learned from the Father, and through this, said drawn ones freely choose to come to God based on their innate human freedom to do so (he believes the capacity comes, situationally, as people hear the call and learn from God of His way for them; but this based on an ontic capacity built into the human agent to accept or reject the call of God). So, in nuce, we can see how White clearly is thinking from the typical Calvinist emphasis on God’s sovereignty, and how Flowers, respectively, ends up emphasizing the human agents’ intact libertarian freewill to say yes or no to God’s offer of salvation.

The Athanasian Reformed alternative sees the eternal Son of God, as both the electing God and elected (archetypal) human for all of humanity. So, we can affirm unconditional election and the effectual call, but only under radically reified terms. So, for the AR, we maintain that what does the necessary work here, theologically, is a robust affirmation of a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ (which is really just the Chalcedonian and Nicene understanding of the homoousious; i.e., that Jesus is both fully God and fully human in His singular person as the Christ). In this sense, the eternal Logos is both ‘unconditionally elect’ and ‘effectually called’ insofar that He freely chooses to become us that we might become Him by the grace of adoption (think of II Cor. 8:9 and the mirifica commutatio ‘wonderful exchange’). In this frame, Christ, God’s personal grace for the world, from within the triune Life, as the mediator between God and humanity, as our High Priest, enters into the sinful reprobate status all of humanity is born into; putting it to death at the cross; and rising anew as God’s humanity for the world, the second and greater Adam, the ‘firstborn from the dead,’ God’s ‘firstfruits,’ whereby humanity, in Christ’s humanity, the only genuine humanity coram Deo (before God) has been truly humanized in and from the humanizing humanity of Jesus Christ. As He, in His vicarious humanity said Yes to the Father for us, we by a correspondence of His faith, by the same Spirit’s breath now have the freedom of God to say yes and amen to God, acknowledging all that God has provided for us in His salvation for all of humanity (which is first His humanity for us).

So, for the AR, total depravity/total inability, to use those terms, is indeed a real problem for a humanity incurved upon itself (homo incurvatus in se). But what is different for AR is that on the one hand grace isn’t an abstract quality given to the elect, like created grace is, as maintained by the classical Calvinists (like White); on the other hand, grace, and being unilaterally placed into God’s grace is a necessity if fallen humanity is going to have the capacity to indeed seek God and receive His salvation for them. Further, contra the Arminian, or Flowers’ so-called provisionism, fallen humanity, again, is in need of God’s unilateral movement of placing us into His re-created and elect life in Christ, if in fact we are going to be able to speak of a genuine human freedom. So, against the Provisionists, AR maintains that in order to be truly human before God, that is to have genuine human freedom for God, that that must first be provided for all of humanity in and through God’s disruptive gracious humanity as that penetrates our dead humanity, giving us a new and real human life in His.

Hence, God’s unconditional election is inclusive of all of humanity, since the only humanity to be assumed in the incarnation was the fallen humanity. Jesus was “effectually called” (and I put that in quotes because AR does not affirm the Aristotelian causal theory that classical Calvinists do), freely coming for us, taking all of humanity with Him, as the second Adam, to the right hand of the Father. Why all of humanity does not finally affirm God’s election for us in Christ, seeing that all of the conditions for salvation have already been fully actualized in God’s humanity for the world, remains an aspect of the surd-like and inscrutable mystery of sin. All are elect in Christ, but not all finally come. We know why people do come, but sin keeps us in the dark in regard to why some don’t ultimately repent and acknowledge what God has already done, provided, and actualized for them in the real humanity of Christ.

In closing, with reference to John 6 and its grammar: verse 44 says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Here, the doubly consubstantial life of Jesus, who is both the eternal Son, who is fully God, and who is also fully human, is theologically present in this clause. That is to say, in the analogy of the incarnation, the ‘Me’ and the ‘Father’ (insofar as the person and works of God are indivisible) are in reference to God’s life, and at the same time, in reference to God’s life of salvation actualized for the world in the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. Theologically the “draws him,” with reference to the ‘him,’ remains in the singular, insofar that the [hu]man who was first drawn of God, was God’s particular humanity for the world in Jesus Christ. He will indeed be “raised up on the last day” whereby every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; and all of humanity, all of those who have repented, out of Christ’s repentance for us, will be exalted in consummate form with Him as the new creations we have become as participants in Christ’s new and resurrected humanity for us.

In a canonical way it is fitting then to close this post with reference to another Apostle, Paul:

May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin. -Romans 6:1-7

What we have been referring to as election and the vicarious humanity of Christ also finds biblical reference to Paul’s theological motif of ‘in Christ’ theology. It is really a doctrine of union with Christ that we are concerned with, and what is the entailment of a proper doctrine of pre-destination and election; insofar that what salvation involves first involves God’s choice to be for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And this free election of God’s becomes what we grammatically call the hypostatic union wherein God and humanity are united as God becomes humanity that we might become partakers of the divine nature in and through the person of Jesus Christ. But you see then how this involves a doctrine of unio cum Christo (union with Christ).

A Response to Eric of Provisionist Perspective: A Correction on the History

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I wasn’t going to engage with Provisionism anymore, but through a google search I randomly came across a guy named, Eric, a Provisionist (of Leighton Flowers ilk) who has a podcast (with another friend) that seeks to promote provisionism as well. In this podcast he worked through a post of mine where I attempt to draw some corollaries between Flowers’ so-called Provisionism, and Pelagianism. You can listen to Eric’s response (if you like) to me: here. The following is a series of tweet responses I made to Eric on his Twitter account where he shared the link to this podcast of his (which aired way back on 11-25-2020). I didn’t really want post any further on provisionism because it gives its proponents more credit than they deserve. If you listen to Eric’s response to me, where he attempts to besmirch my credibility, you’ll see that he relies on a google search (that ultimately fails his cause) in his attempt to incrediblize me (and Professor Nick Needham). So, I’ll share the following as an initial burst, then later I’ll come back someday and do a post on the Second Councils of Orange, Ephesus, and Carthage; insofar as that directly relates to Eric’s misunderstanding of the history (and theology).

Ha, I just saw this (and listened). Eric it would have been better if you had maybe contacted me first, that would’ve helped your credibility. You misrepresented what I said was condemned: I had already qualified that prior—it wasn’t freewill, per se, but its abstract form. And what both Needham and I are referring to is the SYSTEM that came to be known as Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism on a continuum. So, you assert I don’t understand the history, when Pelagius, the man, isn’t the history I’m most concerned with. Also, I know you all rely heavily on Ken Wilson, and he is not uncontroversial in the realm of this research. But the basic thrust of my argument in the post u engage with would be that Provisionists operate within the spirit and maybe not the letter of the system of Pelagianism. Further: I am NOT a Five Point Calvinist (I’m not even 4 point). In fact I am known online and through our books as a heavy critic of 5 pointism and then more broadly classical Covenant Theology. You just presume I’m part of the classical Calvinist machine when in fact I’m a known critic of it through our books and my blogging. Also, and again, the point about freewill isn’t even the point, per se, it is the anthropology within which it is framed that is of issue. I didn’t have time to get into developing that in the post though. But I assure you that I understand the history, as does Nick Needham who is a PhD maker in Scotland in the area of historical theology. You concluded w/ a false dilemma: you said either I’m “ignorant” of the history, or that I’m intentionally misleading. What if neither of those are the case, and in fact I actually believe that LF and provisionists in general fit within the spirit (maybe not the letter—that’s debatable) of the SYSTEM that came to be known as Pelagianism/ -semi (whether Pelagius held to it or not isnt the ultimate point. I think much of your misreading and thus misrepresentation of me could have been avoided if you had first contacted me about my bloggy blogpost first). Finally, I found it interesting that at your closing remarks you described what I said Pelagianism was (ie external grace etc) and then what LF says, and it sounded like word for word almost. I could tell you caught that yourself, but then just moved on. That was a good slip. Would have been cool if you had contacted me when you did this, then I could have responded when it was fresh to the audience. Oh, and one more point: I used Pelagius, the man, in the post because his thinking on the neutrality of the human will (salvifically construed) isn’t an unrelated point of departure as we get into its historical development as that came to be known as: Pelagianism. In the history, and the near history, John Cassian took up what came to be known as Pelagianism and developed it further. I will be writing a response blog post to your response to me here. I’ll do that later today and come back and link. And one more thing: when I said Pelagius was condemned, he was!! I was referring to the 2nd Council of Orange, Carthage, and Ephesus. You ought to google search a little more thoroughly.

A Rant on Leighton Flowers’ Rationalist Attempt at Theologizing: And a Correction by Thomas Torrance’s Stratified Knowledge of God

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Faustus Socinus

As I drive home from work I continue to listen to this guy, Leighton Flowers; I’m not sure why—I must be something of a theological rubberneck. He continues to push his soteriological framework which he calls: Provisionism. I’d simply call it Calminianism; the lowchurch, baptistic attempt to draw strands from what they take to be fulgent from both Five Point Calvinism and Arminianism. What he is communicating is not something evangelicals like me haven’t grown up with their whole lives; we have! The problem I have with Leighton, ultimately, is that he is teaching young minds how to be rationalist in their approach to Scripture and theology. He appeals to a solo Scriptura mode, denouncing theological exegesis every chance he gets. He thinks, through a series of anecdotes, based in pure rationalism, rather than theological theology, that he has put classical Calvinism to death. I’m all for placing classical Calvinism in its proper place; I think classical Calvinism represents a mode of theological development that ought to be ultimately repudiated; but at the same time it did, in its time, under the material available, forward a theological grammar that can be helpful for the rest of Christendom to glean from and deploy in its attempt to come to the unity of the Faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Unfortunately, Flowers, as I noted, does his thinking from a Lockean-like universe wherein rationality, his, is of a premium; and he fails to recognize that Christian theology, that is genuinely Christian, does it thinking from confessional norms grounded and conditioned in and by the triune life of the living God. In other words, Flowers would be well-advised, and anyone who attempts to do ‘theology’ like him, to do their thinking from the homoousial reality of God’s consubstantial life with us in the Theanthropos, Godman, Jesus Christ. Thomas Torrance offers a better way for Flowers to think, it is what TFT identifies as a ‘stratified knowledge of God.’ Ben Myers offers a helpful and precise sketch of what this entails for Torrance:

Thomas F. Torrance’s model of the stratification of knowledge is one of his most striking and original contributions to theological method. Torrance’s model offers an account of the way formal theological knowledge emerges from our intutive and pre-conceptual grasp of God’s reality as it is manifest in Jesus Christ. It presents a vision of theological progression, in which our knowledge moves towards an ever more refined and more unified conceptualisation of the reality of God, while remaining closely coordinated with the concrete level of personal and experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. According to this model, our thought rises to higher levels of theological conceptualisation only as we penetrate more deeply into the reality of Jesus Christ. From the ground level of personal experience to the highest level of theological reflection, Jesus Christ thus remains central. Through a sustained concentration on him and on his homoousial union with God, we are able to achieve a formal account of the underlying trinitarian relations immanent in God’s own eternal being, which constitute the ultimate grammar of all theological discourse.[1]

If Flowers were to follow this method of theological reflection he could avoid his rationalist approach to all things ‘theological.’ I keep putting theological in quotes, when referring to Flowers, because I don’t take what he is doing to be actual Christian theology. In order for Christian theology to be genuinely Christian it must be principially and intensively grounded in and from Jesus Christ who is the evangel of God for us. As Torrance rightly understood the Gospel isn’t a concept, but a person; and the Christian can only think God’s thoughts, from a center in God, as they do so in participation with God in the mediatorial and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

Folks like Flowers fail at doing Christian theology precisely at the point that they don’t start in God’s confession that He is for us in Jesus Christ. Flowers fails at doing Christian theology because he fails to recognize that there is such a thing as a theological ontology—God’s triune life—that comes prior to a genuinely Christian theological epistemology; i.e. there is an order of being that is antecedent to a prior of knowing. To realize this allows the Christian to start their thinking in what Anselm famously identified as fides quarens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). Note the emphasis on faith. A proper conception of Christian faith cannot start its thinking, but from the ‘faith of Christ’ (pistis Christou). As Calvin realized, biblically speaking, faith is knowledge of God. And according to Scripture Jesus is God’s knowledge, God’s wisdom, God’s Self-exgesis for us (cf. Jn 1.18; I Cor 1.30). It is as we are in union with Christ (unio cum Christo), that real knowledge of the triune God can obtain; outwith this union, and the realization that this is the only place wherein genuine knowledge of the living God is realized, all one can do is what Flowers does—i.e. turn-to-the-subject, and rationalize an ostensible theological framework that has its grounding in an abstract conception of humanity that is mondic-like in its day to day existence (in other words, it starts with itself and thinks its way towards God from its own inherent intellectual and spiritual resources—God-given as Flowers is wont to emphasize).

Flowers can signify a multitude of various theological traditions out there; ones that equally claim to engage in Christian theology, when in fact all they are doing are self-projecting themselves onto what they perceive to be the God of the Bible. <rant over>

[1] Benjamin Myers, “The Stratification of knowledge in the thought of T. F. Torrance,” SJT 61 (1): 1-15 (2008).

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.