A Critique of Provisionism: A Response to Leighton Flowers’s “The Potter’s Promise”

A Critique of Provisionism

A Response to Leighton Flowers’s The Potter’s Promise

Matthew Cserhati

A Critique of Provisionism

A Response to Leighton Flowers’s The Potter’s Promise

Copyright © 2024 Matthew Cserhati. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphasis in quotations were added by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Character of God and Man

Chapter 2: Choices and Free Will

Chapter 3: The Potter’s Freedom

Chapter 4: The Potter’s Promise

Chapter 5: The Potter’s Word

Appendix 1: Response to Counterarguments

Summary

Appendix 2: What Does the Bible Say?

References

Introduction

Dr. Leighton Flowers is the director of Evangelism and Apologetics for Texas Baptists, and leads the Soteriology 101 ministry, dedicated to opposing Calvinism. His YouTube channel has 73,900 subscribers and 941 videos. The channel’s description says, Former Calvinistic professor explains why Calvinism is not Biblical, raising this question: if it wants to refute Calvinism, what does it offer instead? He came out with a book titled The Potter’s Promise: A Biblical defense of Traditional Soteriology, published by Trinity Academic Press. The book is obviously a critique of a referenced book by the well-known Calvinist apologist James White, with the title The Potter’s Freedom.

Leighton Flowers’s ministry has gained traction recently and is reaching many people. Thus, it would be worth addressing his criticisms of Calvinism, which we wish to undertake in the present book. This is all the more important, since with his book and his ministry, Flowers is leading many people away from orthodox Christianity, with his own departure from Calvinism setting an example.

Who Is Really the Traditionalist?

Leighton Flowers calls his brand of soteriology traditionalism. Traditionalism, from Flowers’s point of view, teaches that Christ loves every single person so much that he died for them all, and that God predestines every individual who is marked in Christ through faith to be saved. According to this view, it is each person’s responsibility to humble themselves and trust Christ in faith.¹ With this, however, Flowers affirms the standard Arminian creed that man must choose Christ by practicing faith towards God’s promises of salvation to all men. However, this leads him to all of the historical errors that have been spawned by Arminianism.

The name traditionalist may throw the reader off, as Flowers uses this term in contradistinction with the Calvinist system of soteriology. The traditionalist view is not connected in any way to the traditional view of soteriology that the mainline church has always proclaimed.

The Holy Spirit actively teaches the church throughout the ages, ever since the garden of Eden. Jesus says this: However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth (John 16:13). This means that the Holy Spirit has revealed divine truth to the early church, starting at Pentecost all the way until the modern day. His teaching is uniform all throughout history. God never lies and neither does he change (Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17). Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). Paul also writes, Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. (2 Thess 2:15). Tradition in this sense is not the same as Roman Catholic tradition. It is simply the truth that has been handed down to us throughout the centuries, whether in written or spoken form.

Election is one of the Bible’s most pervasive teachings. It is impossible to avoid. Even Pentecostals and Roman Catholics, such as Thomas Aquinas have recognized it. No matter what kind of theology a believer may have, he will have to come to grips with God’s sovereignty and elective purposes. It would make sense that the early church was capable of discerning the truth in such an important doctrine such as election. In the Old Testament Israel was God’s chosen people. This means that God has exclusively chosen only the nation of Israel with respect to salvation. No other nation was chosen on Earth. It was only starting in New Testament times that the different nations also shared in the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ. This sole argument would end the discussion on election. However, there are other issues raised in The Potter’s Promise that must be discussed.

As such, who are we to bar God from choosing his own people in New Testament times, following the continuity of the Old and New Covenants? Flowers claims that the Calvinistic interpretations of Paul’s writings do not appear until the fifth century with Augustine, and that the church fathers exclusively taught libertarian free will.² This is false. In the New Testament, Paul wrote what Jesus taught, and later on, others such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Minutius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Novatianus, Athanasius, Hilarius Pictaviensis, Basil the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregorius Nazianzenus, Hilarius Diaconus, Ambrose, and Augustine all taught predestination from the first to the fifth centuries, all in close proximity to the time of Christ.³

The proponents of free will bring Clement of Rome⁴ as an example of someone who espoused libertarian, autonomous free will.⁵ However, just several church fathers have been known to change their opinions from time to time, such as Origen and Tertullian.⁶ In AD 96, Clement of Rome (allegedly its first bishop) wrote the following in a letter to the Corinthian church: "Therefore He, being desirous that all his beloved ones should partake of repentance, confirmed it by his almighty will."⁷

Ignatius was a bishop who was martyred in Rome. Before his death, he wrote letters to several churches, such as the one at Ephesus, in AD 110. He appears to have mixed views on election. For example, he writes, Predestined before the ages for lasting and unchangeable glory forever, united and elect through genuine suffering by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God, yet in the same letter, he also encourages the Ephesians to pray for nonbelievers, that they may find God, for there is in them hope for repentance.⁸ Also, to the Magnesian church, he writes that life in Christ is not in us unless we voluntarily choose to die into his suffering.⁹

Polycarp was a contemporary of Ignatius, who wrote a letter to the Philippians in AD 110. In it he writes the following: "Knowing that by grace you have been saved, not because of works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ" (1:3).¹⁰ Polycarp is seemingly quoting Eph 2:8–10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." It is interesting to note here that verse 10 implies election, since God even foreordains our very works that we may walk in them; for this very work believers had been created since the beginning of time.

On the other hand, Polycarp did write other things that may seem to support free will in the same letter: But the one who raised him from the dead will raise us also, if we do his will and follow his commandments and love the things he loved, while avoiding every kind of unrighteousness (2:2).¹¹ Also: If we please him in this present world, we will receive the world to come as well, inasmuch as he promised that he will raise us from the dead and that if we prove to be citizens worthy of him, we will also reign with him—if, that is, we continue to believe (5:2).¹²

Other Arminians, such as Ken Wilson, claims that other Christin writings espoused free will. For example, the Epistle of Barnabas (written from AD 100–120) says, Divine foreknowledge of human choices allowed the Jews to make choices and remain within God’s plan, resulting in their own self-determination (3:6).¹³ However, when we look at the broader context, we read this: "So for this reason, brothers, he is very patient, when he foresaw how the people he had prepared in his Beloved would believe in all purity, revealed everything to us in advance" (6:3).¹⁴ The fact is here that while it is true that God foresaw faith in some people, the reason these people believed is that they were prepared by God to have faith.

In other parts of the letter, the author also writes that give very careful attention to our salvation, lest the evil one should cause some error to slip into our midst and thereby hurl us away from our life (2:10).¹⁵ He also writes the following: If any desire to make their way to the designated place, let them be diligent with respect to their works (19:1), and also seeking out what the Lord seeks from you and then doing it, in order that you may be found in the day of judgment. (21:6).¹⁶ From these last three references it may appear that the author puts a heavy emphasis on good works, even possibly to the point that a believer may lose his salvation, although this does not necessarily follow from his words.

Another example is when Wilson writes that in the Letter to Diognetus that free will is implied in his capacity to become a ‘new man’ (10:1–11:8).¹⁷ Upon reading the actual source, this does not become apparent. However, the anonymous author of the letter also wrote this: "If you do not grieve this grace, you will understand what the Word has to say, through whomever he chooses, whenever he wishes" (11:7).¹⁸ What this means is that the Word (Jesus) gives to us the words that we say to God in repentance and faith.

What should we make of these seemingly contradictory statements from these early church fathers, such as Ignatius, Polycarp, and the authors of the letters to Barnabas and Diognetus? Are they confused in their theology? Or are they flip-flopping like Origen or Tertullian? Instead, it could be that these early church fathers believed in a form of early concurrence, the Calvinist doctrine that upholds man’s free will but also affirms God’s electing people to salvation. Concurrence is reflected in Prov 16:1, which says, The preparations of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Concurrence will be covered in more detail in later parts of this book.

Justin Martyr described how salvation was prepared before prepared by the Father.¹⁹ Irenaeus of Lyons wrote in AD 180, that God foreknew who would despise, and sun the light, and blind themselves yet more and more; because he determined to leave them to themselves, to their native blindness, darkness, and ignorance, with they love; and accordingly prepared regions of darkness, as a proper punishment for them.²⁰

Later, as Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism gained ground, double predestination was defended by the martyr Gottschalk of Orbais in Germany in the ninth century. He rejected predestination based on God’s mere foreknowledge, since this would make God’s elective decrees contingent on man’s will.²¹ Gottschalk was the facilitator of a great debate about predestination in parts of Europe in the 840–50s, and even convinced several leading theologians of his time.²² He wrote several works on predestination, including a shorter and a longer confession. For example, in his work On Predestination, Gottschalk writes:

God, who does not know how to err nor can err, be deceived or deceive, never had to, has to, or will have to do anything—God forbid!—except how he once, simultaneously, and eternally has immutably arranged to carry out his foreknown, predestined, already fixed, already prepared, already determined, and already preordained gratuitous benefit of his grace over the elect and the just judgment of his justice over the reprobate, always according to the counsel of his will (Eph

1

:

11

), showing mercy to whomever he wills with great goodness, and hardening, abandoning, and consequently condemning whomever he wills with no injustice, but certainly with high fairness, as befits a just judge, bestowing grace on the elect and rendering justice, judgment, and punishment to the reprobate.²³

Before the Reformation and afterwards, predestination was rediscovered by theologians such as Wycliffe of England, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and propounded by later numerous theologians such as John Owens and the overwhelming majority of the Puritans. The acronym TULIP, which summarizes the five points of Calvinism, were merely refutations of remonstrant theology at the Council of Dordt. Remonstrant, Arminian theology itself was a reaction to Calvinist theology after it has taken hold in several European countries a time after the Reformation. Later Calvinist theologians include Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, Herman Bavinck, Louis Berkhof, and in modern times R. C. Sproul and James White. Today, the Presbyterian and Reformed denominations are Calvinist. Other Protestant denominations, such as Baptists, Anglicans, and even Methodists have their Calvinist branches. It is worth noting that even Thomas Aquinas, who was the medieval architect of Romanist theology, believed in a form of predestination. For example, Aquinas describes the doctrine of predestination in eight articles in his well-known work Summa Theologica:

It is fitting that God should predestine men. For all things are subject to His providence, as was shown above (Question

22

, Answer

2

). Now it belongs to providence to direct things towards their end, as was also said (Question

22

, Answers

1

,

2

). The end towards which created things are directed by God is twofold; one which exceeds all proportion and faculty of created nature; and this end is life eternal, that consists in seeing God which is above the nature of every creature, as shown above (Question

12

, Answer

4

). The other end, however, is proportionate to created nature, to which end created being can attain according to the power of its nature. Now if a thing cannot attain to something by the power of its nature, it must be directed thereto by another; thus, an arrow is directed by the archer towards a mark. Hence, properly speaking, a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed, as it were, by God. The reason of that direction pre-exists in God; as in Him is the type of the order of all things towards an end, which we proved above to be providence. Now the type in the mind of the doer of something to be done, is a kind of pre-existence in him of the thing to be done. Hence the type of the aforesaid direction of a rational creature towards the end of life eternal is called predestination. For to destine, is to direct or send. Thus it is clear that predestination, as regards its objects, is a part of providence.²⁴

It is interesting to note that the farther back in time we go, the more receptive the Roman Catholic church was towards predestination. Apparently, Flowers is moving in the same theological direction as Rome is today, away from predestination. Thomas Aquinas is more Calvinist than Flowers! This means that Calvinism is not a fringe ideology, but a serious system of theology that Christian theologians must grapple with.

This means that the term Calvinist soteriology is also somewhat inaccurate, since Calvin himself was not the only one who came up with the doctrine of election but followed a long list of Christian theologians in propounding this doctrine of the faith. Furthermore, Calvin was not the only Reformer during the sixteenth century who was rediscovering the doctrines of grace. Others, such as Luther, Zwingli, von Hutten, and Beza, came to similar conclusions around the same time, showing that they were all guided by the Holy Spirit. We could even rename Calvinism Huttenism. It is only a name, just like Arminianism, Wesleyanism, or Pelagianism. The person who the doctrine is attached to is not important; only the doctrine is. It would make more sense to call Calvinism traditional soteriology! But in the rest of this book, we will stick to the name Calvinist theology because of widespread convention.

It also follows that any kind of teaching that stands in opposition to this cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1) is very likely to be false, according to the saying if it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new. When the Holy Spirit works in the church, most of God’s people end up believing the same set of doctrines. Since Arminian freewill theology ultimately has its roots in Pelagianism of the fifth century, it follows that freewill theology is a theological innovation, not taught by Christ and the apostles or in the early church. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Carthage in 418, the condemnation later being ratified in the ecumenical council