Refuting Leighton Flowers’s Delusions

Introduction.  Leighton Flowers is a Baptist theologian and alleged former Calvinist who now advocates a system he calls “Provisionism” (or “Provisionalism”) .  In his numerous videos and writings (notably his book The Potter’s Promise), Flowers argues that God’s love is universal and that human beings – despite sin – possess an innate capacity to accept or reject the gospel.  According to Flowers, Christ’s atonement was made “for all humanity,” and God merely “provides” salvation to those who freely respond .  He portrays classical Calvinism as a rigid “theistic determinism” that makes men “automatons in the Puppet-Master’s hand” , an accusation that smears Reformed theology as unchristian.

From a confessional Reformed standpoint, however, Flowers’s system is gravely mistaken.  Scripture and the historic Reformed confessions teach that after the Fall all men are spiritually dead and utterly unable to choose God on their own .  They teach that salvation from first to last is an act of God’s sovereign grace (Eph. 2:8–9; Phil. 2:13) .  Flowers’s delusional doctrine – which elevates human ability and denies effectual grace – is essentially a revival of the old Pelagian/Semi-Pelagian error, and it logically collapses under scrutiny .  Below we will expose in detail the theological and logical failures of Provisionism, citing Scripture, the Westminster Confession, and classic Reformed sources.

Divine Sovereignty vs. “Free Will”

At the heart of this debate is the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human will.  Reformed (monergistic) theology has always taught that God alone initiates and completes salvation.  He ordains (election) and changes the heart before anyone can believe (Regeneration).  God’s providence “ordains whatsoever comes to pass” (WCF 3.1) and He works in believers “both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13) without violating true freedom .  Free will in Reformed theology means simply that humans act according to their nature.  Before the Fall, Adam’s nature was good; after the Fall, our nature is wholly depraved.  Thus, fallen people will what their sinful hearts truly desire, but what they desire is sin and rebellion, not God (Rom. 8:7–8).  No Reformed writer ever taught that people are automatons; rather, they emphasize that God makes men “free to will and do” good only by first freeing them from sin (WCF 9.3–4) .

Flowers intentionally caricatures Reformed monergism as fatalism.  For example, he acrimoniously charges that Calvinists view God as a “Puppet-Master” controlling every move, leaving human beings only the illusion of freedom .  This straw-man fails to grasp the Reformed nuance: God does not coerce fallen wills, but He sovereignly changes the will.  God is not a “creature” competing with man, as Flowers implies; in truth, human beings act with real (though utterly corrupted) volition even as God’s decree is absolutely certain .  The Reformed confessions squarely affirm both: God’s complete sovereignty and man’s real responsibility.  God’s sovereignty is taught throughout Scripture (e.g. “The LORD reigns” – Psalm 97:1; Isaiah 46:10; Ephesians 1:11), and yet Scripture also insists that men willfully rebel (Jer. 17:9; Eph. 2:1–3) and will be judged for it.

Flowers’s attempt to pit God’s love against His sovereignty is logically flawed.  He reasons: “God is love; therefore God must save all; therefore human freedom must be preserved”.  But this oversimplification abstracts God’s attributes from His full nature.  God is love, but He is also just (Rom. 3:26) and sovereign King.  The Calvinist holds that God truly loves the elect and provided real salvation for them (John 17:9, 10:15).  God’s love is not sentimental but rooted in His immutable will and purposes.  Flowers’s chain of logic “flatten[s] God’s love” into a humanitarian principle disconnected from His righteous will.  Even more telling is his own admission that his logic yields absurdities: if “salvation must be provided for all” and human choice protected, then even fallen angels would be candidates for salvation.  Scripture forbids this: Jude 1:6 declares that the angels who sinned have been “kept in everlasting chains” (no offer given).  In Flower’s scheme, God’s salvific will would have to apply equally to demons, which the Bible plainly rejects .

In short, Provisionism makes human “freedom” the highest good, rather than God’s glory and will.  But Isaiah 42:8 denies that possibility: “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other.”  When Flowers insists on a framework that centers on human initiative, he is in effect making human will the measure of God’s action.  This is precisely what the Puritan divines condemned in semi-Pelagian and Arminian schemes.  The Westminster Confession declares that the human will is bound by sin and cannot convert itself .  It reserves all glory to God for enabling that conversion: “When God converts a sinner… by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good” (WCF 9.4) .  By contrast, Flowers teaches that fallen humans have “natural ability” to respond apart from any divine change .  This directly contradicts Scripture.  Christ Himself taught, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn. 6:44) – a truth echoing Paul’s “not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8–9) and “we have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Cor. 4:7).  Thus Reformed theology affirms a compatibilism: God’s decree accomplishes all things, yet He does so in such a way that men act freely in accord with their nature.  Flowers’s view subverts this harmony and substitutes a crude libertarian notion that the fall left us with an innate power to initiate salvation.

Total Depravity and Original Sin

A core Reformed doctrine is total depravity: every part of man—reason, emotions, will—is corrupted by sin.  The Fall so affected us that “through the offense of one [Adam] judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Rom. 5:18–19).  Consequently, the Westminster Confession teaches that after Adam’s sin, his progeny “became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body” .  Likewise, WCF 9.3 says that “by [the] fall into sin, [man] hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good” .  In short, fallen man naturally desires only evil (Rom. 8:7–8) and “apart from Christ” is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) .

Flowers flatly denies this classic teaching.  He disparages “original sin” as an “Augustinian invention” and argues that after the Fall man’s mind and will still retain a broad capacity (an “affective-intellectualist capaciousness” ) to choose Christ.  On his view, people simply need information (the preached gospel) and they can choose to accept it of their own strength .  This is a dramatic inversion of Scripture.  The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9) and that “the natural person… does not accept the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14).  Paul warns that fallen man is “dead in trespasses,” “hostile to God,” and “cannot submit to God’s law” (Rom. 8:7–8) .  If people truly can initiate their salvation, then passages like “apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5) would be void of meaning .  The Church of all ages has repudiated such an interpretation.  The Council of Orange (529 AD) anathematized anyone who claims that “we can form any right… choice… for salvation by our own natural powers” .  By adopting exactly that claim, Flowers’s Provisionism walks straight into a semi-Pelagian mire.  As a commentator notes, “By teaching that faith… comes from our own ability… without any prior work of grace, Flowers promotes a view that undermines… human depravity and the necessity of God’s sovereign grace in salvation” .

In practice this means Flowers diminishes the necessity of regeneration.  Reformed theology insists that God must first give sinners a new nature before they can truly believe (Ezek. 36:26–27).  Yet Flowers treats “grace” as merely making the gospel known, not as changing the heart.  He plainly denies that the Spirit must enable faith: “he denies that this grace does anything to change one’s nature or enable the will to respond” .  Instead, the individual is left “to respond using their own inherent abilities” .  Such a view makes repentance and faith achievements of fallen humanity.  It reverses the clear witness of Scripture: Ephesians 2:1–5 teaches that we are quickened “together with Christ… by grace you have been saved” – not by our own willpower.  Paul says that God “works in us to will and to do” (Phil. 2:13).  To deny that active grace is a fundamental error.

Christ’s Atonement and Election

Provisionism champions a universal atonement: it holds that “Christ’s vicarious sacrifice provides a way for anyone to be saved” (thus “whosoever will” may come) .  A classic Calvinist will assent that Christ’s death suffices for all, but secures salvation only for the elect.  The Reformed dictum is “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect.”  Flowers rejects this limitation.  He claims Christ died intentionally for everyone (citing 1 Jn 2:2, Rom. 10:11–13, etc.) .  This “unlimited atonement” idea by itself is not outside Christian orthodoxy; however, Provisionism couples it with the belief that all actually have equal opportunity to be saved by their own decision.  That combination is problematic.  If Christ truly died to save every individual, why are not all saved?  Flowers would answer: because some refuse.  But this just circles back to his premise: that fallen men are free to refuse or accept.

Reformed theology points out the inconsistency.  For one thing, if salvation is “provided” only conditionally on human choice, then the security of the elect is undermined.  As some critics note, Provisionism often lurches into a form of once-saved-always-saved teaching, since repentance from sin becomes “more or less optional” if all depends on prior decision .  (Flowers himself has at times taught eternal security, meaning God guarantees perseverance for true believers.)  Moreover, the scriptural evidence supports a definite atonement: Jesus prayed for “those whom you have given me” (Jn. 17:9,11), indicating a particular scope; Paul speaks of the elect being redeemed (Eph. 1:7, 4:30).  To demand actual reconciliation for every human being by their own act forces Scripture to deny election, calling election into question.  Flowers tries to dodge this by speaking only of corporate election or God’s general goodwill, but the Reformed response is that both the corporate covenant people and the individuals within are chosen (cf. Rom. 9, 11).  Romans 9 warns against boasting in human will: “it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

A telling theological implication of Flowers’s view is highlighted by critics: if God’s mercy and provision truly extend to all rational creatures, fallen angels too would seem to qualify.  Yet Scripture explicitly excludes the fallen angels from any offer of salvation (Jude 1:6) .  Reformed theology sees this as revealing that God does not will every rational will to be saved in the same way He wills Christ’s victory and His elect’s salvation.  There are degrees of application of God’s intentions, and the covenant promises are given specifically to those in Christ.  Flowers cannot coherently account for why Adam’s sin is different from Eve’s or his children’s sin, or why infants who die are said to be “saved” in some Protestant traditions.  He even suggests infants who die are innocent .  But infants, being born spiritually dead like everyone else, have no reason to be exempt unless one insists on a subjective notion of “accountability age.”  Reformed confessions do not teach such exceptions; they hold that all are in Adam.  Provisionism’s solution here is ad hoc.

Biblical and Logical Errors

Beyond doctrinal divergence, Flowers often commits blatant exegetical fallacies.  Critics accurately observe that he frequently skims Scripture or reinterprets verses with his presuppositions.  For example, he often disputes Romans 9 (election) by claiming Paul is not discussing God’s monergism vs. synergism , though many Reformed commentators (Calvin, Hodge, Hodge, etc.) show Paul is illustrating God’s sovereign freedom in election.  John 3:16 is twisted to mean “whosoever will” in a temporal sense, ignoring “believes in him” and “so loved the world” context.  Flowers’s methodology can be summed up by his four-step syllogism: “God is love; therefore He loves all; therefore He provides salvation for all; therefore He respects human choice.”  This inference chain, as one analyst points out, “abstracts the concept of God’s love from the broader context of His nature”.  True Christian theology never treats one attribute of God in isolation; God is love and justice and holiness and omnipotence.  Each must be held in tension by Scripture and confession.

Flowers’s flawed arguments also suffer from inconsistency.  He sometimes denies strict Calvinist determinism but elsewhere seems to admit that all blessings (e.g. faith) are “gift of God” .  He employs the term “grace” in multiple senses: sometimes meaning mere opportunity, sometimes sufficient motive, but never effectual renovation.  In any given debate, he might glibly say “I’m a monergist” meaning “God’s plan is assured,” while simultaneously saying “I’m a synergist” meaning “you must freely cooperate.”  This conceptual confusion is self-refuting.  As the Reformed critique notes, Provisionism’s architecture is a “buffet” of Arminian-style elements grafted onto a veneer of Reformed terms .

Moreover, Flowers, is obviously obsessed with “debunking Calvinism” at all costs .  This troubled mindset leads to setting up straw men (attributing to Calvinists what they do not teach) and then triumphantly “refuting” them.  A frank example: he once claimed Calvinists view God as the “originiator of sin” and humanity as incapable of true repentance.  No historic Calvinist holds such an absurdity.  Yet Flowers treats this caricature as if it were the official Calvinist doctrine .  In response, we insist that traditional Calvinism fully affirms the reality of sin, human guilt, and the earnest offer of the gospel (e.g. WCF 10.1–4 on gospel offer).  Calvinists proclaim, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31) even as they also preach “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5) .  Both aspects belong in a biblically balanced soteriology.  By persistently excising God’s effectual initiative, Flowers ends up undermining the gospel itself.

Conclusion

From a historic Reformed perspective, Flowers’s Provisionism must be rejected as unbiblical and logically inconsistent.  It denies the orthodox teaching that all aspects of salvation are of grace alone (sola gratia) and that man in his fallen state is completely unable to contribute to it .  It subordinates divine sovereignty to a sentimental humanism and misuses Scripture to defend an essentially Pelagian anthropology.  Scripture, the Westminster Standards, and the consensus of the Church—including ancient councils—confess that God must enable sinners to believe.  His teaching that people can make the “first move” toward God by nature alone has long been condemned as a grave error .

It is therefore a “necessary truth” (to borrow Calvin’s phrase) that the sinner’s heart remains “dead in sin” until God makes it “alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:1,5).  Once God has prepared a person by grace, then and only then can the person truly believe and repent (Ez. 36:26–27; 2 Cor. 3:5–6 ).  All biblical instances of faith trace back to God’s initiative (cf. Acts 16:14; Phil. 1:29 ).

In the spirit of the Reformers and the Puritans, we urge Christ’s sheep to beware of the claims of Provisionism.  As Augustine declared regarding Pelagius, so we must say of Flowers: his doctrine is “a serpent with venomous bite,” a cunning enemy of the gospel of grace .  Let us therefore rest confidently on the biblical and confessional witness that God’s “grace is given not by the law of man’s cooperation but by the free mercy of God” (Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 99), and in that assurance continue to proclaim salvation by faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

References

• Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), Ch. 6 (“Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof”) , and Ch. 9 (“Of Free Will”) .

• Monergism.com, Leighton Flowers (critique article on Flowers’s theology) .

• Monergism.com, Understanding Provisionism: A Theological Perspective .

• Monergism.com, A Reformed Critique of Provisionism and Leighton Flowers’ The Potter’s Promise .

• Bobby Grow, “The Augustinian-Dualism of Leighton Flowers’ Provisionism,” Athanasian Reformed (blog) .

• Council of Orange (529 AD), Canon 7 (quoted in Monergism.com: “If anyone affirms that we can form any right… choice… as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved… without the illumination… of the Holy Spirit, he is led astray by a heretical spirit” ).

• Scripture passages cited:  John 6:44; John 15:5; Romans 5:8, 8:7–8, 9:16; Ephesians 2:1–5, 2:8–9; Philippians 2:13, 1:29; Ezekiel 36:26–27; Jeremiah 17:9; Jude 1:6 (via Monergism commentary).