The Soteriology of Leighton Flowers

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

Claiming to be a former Calvinist, Leighton Flowers argues that Calvinists posit a God who “mak[es] vessels undeserving from birth so as to condemn them to display His glory.”[i] Calvinists, he continues, perceive God as being in “meticulous control over everything vessels do” to the extent that the vessels themselves no longer possess any personal responsibility as freewill is nonexistent.[ii] This view, he argues, arises from the according of primacy to God’s sovereignty among His other characteristics instead of reserving that hallowed position for God’s mercy which “is motivated by His genuine self-sacrificial love for all.”[iii] In this article, Flowers’ views of Calvinism in relation to the aforementioned statements will be assessed.

Calvinists affirm that God’s sovereignty and mercy are both divinely revealed attributes of God that work in tandem to the extent that any proper biblical theology must allow for both. As the Sovereign Lord, God exerts His authority over all creation to the extent that nothing happens that is beyond His control. Flowers, it seems, affirms an alternative view of God’s sovereignty where “Sovereignty is a temporal characteristic, not an eternal one.”[iv] This deflation of God’s sovereignty allows him to assert the existence of a libertarian free will whereby people can make autonomous choices outside of divine control.[v] To arrive at this understanding, Flowers points to God’s omnipotence as the controlling characteristic of God and suggests that God’s sovereignty is merely a temporal “expression of [His] power.”[vi]

By restraining God’s sovereignty, Flowers is then able to offer a view of God whereby He can lay aside His sovereignty in areas such as those which would be subject to human freewill while preserving His eternal, omnipotent nature (i.e., God can continue to be God even in the absence of retaining His sovereignty).[vii] Should the Calvinist (i.e., the straw Calvinist who exists only in Flowers mind) object, Flowers believes himself to be just by charging him/her with committing the theological error of “den[ying] the eternal attribute of omnipotence, by presuming the all-powerful One has no alternative to meticulous deterministic rule over His creation.”[viii]

While downgrading God’s sovereignty, Flowers is willing to perceive God’s love as being an eternal attribute.[ix] For this reason, he rejects the Calvinistic doctrine of election which teaches that God effectually chooses those whom He saves before creation ever existed.[x] For Flowers, love, as defined in Scripture, is self-sacrificial.[xi] Drawing from both Christ’s commands and example, Flowers sees Christ’s self-sacrificial love as the all-encompassing quality which defines God’s love.[xii] This love of God, Flowers continues, remains even for “those who turn from His provision and grace.”[xiii]

In response to Flowers, Calvinists would argue that his understanding of God’s sovereignty, and Calvinistic theology regarding it, is inaccurate. For Flowers, God’s power is somehow operable apart from His divine will and therefore exists eternally in some way beyond His control. In contrast, Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, defines God’s omnipotence as His ability to do what He sovereignly wills.[xiv] The reason that such a definition is necessary is due to the restraints of God’s will which are placed upon any expressions of His power so as to avoid any violation of His character. For example, Scripture reveals that God’s will never allow His character to be impugned with lies (Heb 6:18; Titus 1:2). Moreover, God’s power is constrained by his unchangeable character to such an extent that evil is impossible for Him (2 Tim 2:13; James 1:13).

As the sovereign King, God orders and controls all things in accordance with His eternal purposes. As Paul says in Ephesians 1:11: God “works all things after the counsel of His will.”[xv] Despite this seemingly clear affirmation of the totality of God’s sovereign control, Flowers, in a misguided effort to protect God’s holiness in the face of evil, prefers to envision God’s work as reactive to human will (at least to the extent that libertarian freewill remains intact). For him, God somehow responds to human sinful malfeasance by “redeem[ing] occurrences of evil for a good purpose in the lives of those who love Him.”[xvi]

For Flowers, God’s holiness precludes His association with human evil in any way. This contention gives necessary rise to his affirmation of the human possession of a libertarian free will which exists beyond the constraints of God’s sovereignty to the extent that God’s holiness could never be marred by any freewill decision of His creature. While he retains a firm position on God’s omniscience (albeit in an absence of sovereignty), he holds “that mankind has the moral ability to refrain or not refrain from a morally accountable action.”[xvii]

Despite Flowers’ apparently good intentions, Scripture portrays God as being somehow, despite His holiness, in sovereign control of all human activity, even that which is sinful (see comments about common grace in the content that follows). Joseph, for instance, credits God with the sinful behavior of his brothers all the while affirming that God’s intent was purely good (Gen 45:8; 50:20). The writer of Proverbs puts it this way, “The mind of man plans his way, [b]ut the Lord directs his steps” (16:9). To this, he adds, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (21:1). God’s control is such that Jesus even claims that He determines the timing of the death of sparrows (Matt 10:29). This control even manifests itself over the sinful agents in Christ’s death including “Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel” (Acts 4:27-28).

While Scripture accords God’s ultimate control even over the evil actions of His subjects, it nevertheless places personal, moral responsibility for all choices, evil or not, upon them. This, of course, would include their responses to the gospel. In the Bible, people are called upon to respond to the gospel by repenting of sin (Matt 3:2; 4:17; Mark 6:12; Luke 5:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20; 2 Peter 3:9) and placing their faith in Christ (Mark 1:15; Luke 8:12; John 1:12; 3:15–18; 4:39, 53; 5:24; 6:29, 35, 40, 47; 7:38; 9:35–38; 11:25–26; Acts 16:31; Rom 1:16; 10:9–10; 1 Cor 1:21; Gal 3:22; Eph 1:13; 1 Tim 1:16; 1 John 3:23; 5:1, 13). Each person’s response to the gospel is shown to be his/her responsibility to do both, and should they fail to respond in repentance and faith, God in His Word condemns them to eternal damnation (Matt 11:20–21; 12:41; John 3:36; 12:36–40; 2 Thess 2:12; Jude 5; Rev 9:20–21; 16:9, 11).

To resolve the apparent disjunction between God’s full sovereignty and humanity’s moral accountability for their decisions, Calvinists typically propose what is known as compatibilism. Compatibilism holds that the whole person, including the flesh, mind, desires, and emotions, is under complete bondage to sin in such a way that no one has the capacity in and of themselves to respond rightly to the gospel proclamation. According to Scripture, all people since the fall of Adam and Eve are conceived in sin (Ps 51:5), born into a state of spiritual deadness (Eph 2:1), utterly hopeless in and of themselves as they are born into a state without God (Eph 2:12), “alienated and hostile in mind” (Col. 1:21), lovers of inequity (Jer 14:10; cf. Col 1:21), enemies of God (Rom. 5:10), hostile to God (Rom 8:7), completely incapable of pleasing God (Rom 8:8), “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (Eph 4:18), foolish in their thoughts (Rom 1:21), hardened in their hearts (John 12:40), and enslaved by sin (John 12:34). Given their fallen state, people are born trapped into a state where no hope for salvation exists within themselves.

Given this predicament, it holds that God Himself must do a regenerative (saving) work within the believer whereby they are enabled to respond to the proclamation. This saving work, they maintain, directly affects and changes the desires of a person in such a way that they desire the truth which the gospel offers. Furthermore, this work also includes the supernatural enabling of person to respond by God’s apportioning the gifts of repentance and faith to those who are being saved. To put this simply, compatibilism teaches, for those being converted, God changes the heart so that the will is empowered (made free) and enabled to respond via repentance and faith.

While the wills of the unregenerate remain enslaved due to the sinful passions of their flesh under the framework proposed by compatibilists, Flowers argues that humanity’s free will operates outside of such control. He soundly rejects the assertion (albeit wrongly understood) that the sinful desires (and indeed any other desire) of humanity are “ultimately determined by God.”[xviii] Compatibilists, however, do not credit God with any control (in the sense that God does not will sin into being) in regard to the formation and implementation of such desires. That being said, they do offer a way whereby God can control or restrain evil in what is sometimes referred to as common grace.

One prominent and contemporary Calvinist (who Flowers frequently quotes at other times), defines common grace as “a term theologians use to describe the goodness of God to all mankind universally. Common grace restrains sin and the effects of sin on the human race. Common grace is what keeps humanity from descending into the morass of evil that we would see if the full expression of our fallen nature were allowed to have free reign.”[xix]

To explain the issue related to how humans can bear full responsibility for their sin even while God remains sovereignly in control over their decisions, Calvinists like MacArthur see God as taking a restraining role in regard to sin as opposed to an active role. In this view, humanity and God’s creation could have been plunged fully into the utmost depths of sinful depravity the moment Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, but instead of allowing this to occur, God applied His common grace to humanity and His creation so they would be divinely enabled and prevented from descending any further into depravity than God Himself allowed for. In other words, God is not proactive in humanity’s sinful choices and therefore not sovereignly responsible. Rather, He retains His sovereign control by proactively acting against sin and in favor of righteousness by graciously preventing humanity from becoming as sinful as they otherwise would be apart from His efforts.

To support the concept of common grace, the Calvinists find ample evidence from Scripture. To begin with, after confronting Adam and Eve in regard to their sin and then cursing them, the creation, and the devil, God clothed them before sending them into a life of suffering which in and of itself is a means of common grace (Gen 3:20-24; Lam 3:22). When David became angry and desired revenge against Nabal, God restrained him (1 Sam 25:14, 26). David even acknowledges God’s common grace by saying these words concerning his intended actions toward Nabal: “the Lord God of Israel lives…has restrained me from harming…Nabal” (1 Sam 25:34).

Beyond these narrative-based depictions of God’s common grace, Paul teaches that God has endowed humanity with a conscience that resists evil by affirming God’s counsel on right and wrong (Rom 2:15). Furthermore, He sovereignly appoints the governments that oversee human society (Rom 13:1–5). Along with His provision of a conscience and governmental controls, God graciously provides many kindnesses to both the redeemed and unredeemed (Matt 5:45).

Just as God restrains evil, He also has the capacity to release it by judicially hardening the hearts of those who continually give themselves over to sin. This hardening occurs as God allows them to pursue the sin that they love. In other words, they are hardened because they harden themselves by choosing to sin, and God neglects to further prevent the hardening from occurring to whatever degree He wishes by simply no longer affording to them the same degree of common grace (Ex 4:21; Josh 11:20; Is 63:17). As the Psalmist declares, God “gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, [t]o walk in their own devices” (Ps 81:11-12). Likewise, Paul writes, “God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper” (Rom 1:28).

Flowers’ understanding of judicial hardening is slightly different than that already proposed. For him, God certainly allows people to harden themselves as was suggested, but he also “ensures that no revelation is clear enough to convince [a person] to repent prior to the sovereign redemptive purpose being served by his free acts of rebellion.”[xx] While Flowers remains careful to avoid charging God with sin, he does see God taking on a more proactive role in making sure the sinner, if He so chooses, remains in their sin especially if that accomplishes the ultimate fruition of His promises. His understanding of this aspect of judicial hardening, however, seems to violate the libertarian free will that he resolutely espouses because such a will should never be prevailed against in such a way that it loses its libertarian freedom to choose between or bad apart from any divinely imposed constraints (if one supports Flowers view of the human will of course).

In his defense of his views on this aspect of judicial hardening, Flowers resolutely upholds that God’s possession of foreknowledge in regard to a sinful act “does not in any way imply such knowledge causes, determines or necessitates the desire of the sinner to sin.”[xxi] Under Flowers’ system, libertarian free will must be preserved, and this in turn relegates God’s sovereign control to little more than foreknowledge. Even worse, God is forced, under Flowers’ system, to use his foreknowledge of sin coupled with any necessary manipulation of the sinner’s desires so as to accomplish his goal.

Instead of God reacting against the sinful choices of humanity simply based upon divinely revealed personal aspects of His nature, such as His holiness and righteousness, God, as He is conceived by Flowers, responds to evil based on how such efforts will work to establish His promise. As Flower states, “At times throughout Israel’s history God shows mercy to calloused Israelites in order to fulfill His promise (Ex. 32-33), and at times He hardens them for the same purpose (Rom. 9-11).”[xxii] Again he writes, “In order to fulfill His promise and deliver His Word, God will show mercy to the unfaithful when necessary and He will harden the unfaithful when necessary.”[xxiii]

To further explain his views on judicial hardening as the means by which God retains control of humanity despite their libertarian free wills, Flowers adds, “Judicial hardening is simply hiding or confusing the revelation of truth that could otherwise lead to repentance, like when Jesus spoke using riddles (Mark 4:11-12; Rom 11:8).”[xxiv] Apparently, Flowers sees no problem with the idea that God would confuse His own truth. While Scripture certainly affirms that God can and will “send a deluding influence,” it never charges God with the confusion of His Word (2 Thess 2:11).

To arrive at his view of judicial hardening, Flowers seems to draw from what he terms the “messianic secret”. According to him, Jesus’s secrecy, which lay behind His purposes for teaching in parables, was done with the exact same intention behind God’s judicial hardening. In other words, Christ’s goal was to accomplish the fulfillment of God’s promise. As Flowers contends, when Christ employed His “messianic secret,” He was not trying to permanently prevent people from accepting the gospel; rather, this was His “strategy…to accomplish redemption on Calvary so that all may be saved through faith in Him after His plan was fulfilled.”[xxv]

To correctly discern Christ’s purpose for speaking in ways that concealed his message, perhaps it is best to directly consider His own words: “To [the chosen disciples in his company] has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven” (Mark 4:11-12). In this passage, Jesus seems to be drawing a distinction between those who are inside and those who are outside of the Kingdom of God. Those who remain outside the Kingdom are prevented from understanding the truth according to v.12.

In an attempt to buttress his position, Flowers contends that those outside the Kingdom God, as mentioned by Jesus in v.12, are limited to the Jews of Jesus’ day. His imposition of this limitation, however, places undue constraints upon the text because Christ uses no such qualifier to restrict the identities of those outside the Kingdom of God to the Jews; therefore, Christ’s reference should be allowed to be more inclusive of anyone be they Jew or Gentile at any given period of history.

In the context of Mark 4:11-12, it should be abundantly clear to Flowers that Christ Himself chose His disciples, just as He chose to reveal to them the secrets of the Kingdom while choosing not to do in regard to others. Access to this secret knowledge, or what Flowers calls the Messianic secret, is therefore under the total control of Christ at all times irrespective of a human response. Despite the demands of Flowers’ theology which posits an essential and necessary role for human libertarian free will, these verses together with their context make no mention of such (explicit or otherwise).

In regard to Flowers’ accusation of Christ’s “hiding or confusing the revelation of truth” based on Mark 4:11-12, it would seem that Flowers preferred to eisegete his own theology into the passage and failed to perform sound exegesis.[xxvi] To better understand Christ’s meaning in Mark 4:11-12, one should consider the source from which He quotes, Isaiah 6:9-10. In this passage, Isaiah is told to deliver God’s message despite the fact that those who would receive would fail to understand it. Their failure to discern God’s Word was not the purpose of God’s message through Isaiah, but it was the result of its being given. This understanding of Isaiah 6:9-10 speaks to the fallen disposition of the hearer as opposed to any deliberate act to conceal the meaning on the part of the proclaimer.  With this in view, the Greek word translated as “so that” in v.12 could be better rendered as “as a result,” and such a rendering is widely acceptable. Like Isaiah’s message, Jesus’ message would be ill-received by His audience because His message could only be understood by those chosen, like the prophet Isaiah and Christ’s disciples.

This does not mean, according to William L. Lane (in his comments on Mark 4:11-12 and Isaiah 6:9-10), “that ‘those outside’ are denied the possibility of belief. It indicates that they are excluded from the opportunity of being further instructed in the secret of the Kingdom so long as unbelief continues.”[xxvii] According Paul, all people are guilty of responding to God’s general revelation of Himself through creation with unbelief, and this unbelief robs them of any ability to correctly discern the truth (Rom 1:18-23). It is precisely because of this state (see paragraph 10) that Christ’s disciples had to have been effectually chosen by Christ and divinely enabled to correctly discern His message.

In conclusion, whereas Flowers postulates a God who is less than fully sovereign, Calvinists prefer to preserve God’s full sovereignty alongside humanity’s full accountability to God for their moral choices. God remains blameless for evil choices of His creatures even while He sovereignly controls with His restraining activities collectively known as His common grace. While unregenerate humans will continue to sin as they remained enshrined in a state of spiritual deadness apart from God’s effectual call, God’s eternal attribute of love remains unmaligned even when He refuses to offer redemption to individuals because His love is constrained by His divine will. By failing to uphold these essential tenets derived from sound exegesis and promoted faithfully among Calvinists, Flowers has impugned God’s sovereignty by removing its constrictions upon His love and thereby de-elevating Him to the position of servanthood whereby He serves the whims of His freewill libertarian creation.

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[i]Leighton Flowers, The Potter’s Promise: A Biblical Defense of Traditional Soteriology (Coppell, TX: Trinity, 2017), 14.

[ii]Ibid., 15.

[iii]Ibid., 15-16.

[iv]Ibid., 37.

[v]Ibid., 35-36.

[vi]Ibid.

[vii]Ibid.

[viii]Ibid.

[ix]Ibid., 26-27.

[x]Ibid., 21.

[xi]Ibid., 22.

[xii]Ibid., 23.

[xiii]Ibid.

[xiv]Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1994), 216.

[xv]All Scripture references are taken from NASB1995.

[xvi]Flowers, The Potter’s Promise, 83. See especially his comments for footnote 75.

[xvii]Ibid., 35. See his comments in footnote 28.

[xviii]Ibid., 9. See his comments in footnote 8.

[xix]John Macarthur, “The Universal Grace of God,” Grace to You, available at https://www.gty.org/library/Questions/QA194/The-Universal-Grace-of-God.

[xx]Flowers, The Potter’s Promise, 63.

[xxi]Ibid., 67.

[xxii]Ibid., 134.

[xxiii]Ibid., 130-31.

[xxiv]Ibid., 63.

[xxv]Ibid. Flowers is attempting, in part, to lay theological groundwork for the doctrine of unlimited atonement which is rejected by Calvinists. In his view, Christ died impersonally for the sins of all people should they choose, by an act of libertarian free will, to repent and believe in Him.

[xxvi]Ibid., 65, 118. This reference to Flowers’ eisegesis was inspired by Flowers own willingness to charge Calvinists with such.

[xxvii]William L. Lane, The Gospel according to Mark: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, and Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 159.