The Heterodoxy of Leighton Flowers

Updated December 10, 2022

Leighton Flowers sharply departs in significant ways from the Protestant tradition. He teaches that:

1. The Fall weakened, but did not fundamentally wreck—not even in principle—man’s ability to orient his heart to faith. Our moral ability to choose to believe was unaffected by the Fall.

• “I don’t believe that the Fall… caused some kind of change of nature… We maintain the ability that God created us with even throughout the Fall, whereas the Arminian is saying we had this ability, we lost this ability, and then God gives it back to everybody.” (December 22, 2020, YouTube 1:15:25)
• “Pretend for this analogy that a person is in a room with eyes. He has the ability to see. And he has a light on.
  
  “That’s Adam in the garden… He’s right there with the light. The Father [and him are] having good communion. He has the ability to see and he has the light right there with him.
  
  “Well, he sins, and so he’s cast out of the garden where the light is. And so that person is now in a room without any light… Now he’s unable to commune with the Father because he’s out of the Father’s fellowship. And even though he holds a hand up in front of his eyes, he can’t see it because he’s in complete darkness.
  
  “So that is a form of inability. It’s an inability because of a lack of light. And so what he needs outside the garden is… light. He needs incarnation. He needs revelation. He needs scripture. He needs light… That’s all that we think he needs.
  
  “The Arminian—or the classical Arminian maybe, and maybe the full Calvinist—would say, not only when he [was] cast out of the garden did he lose light, he also lost sight…. His eyes were plucked out and the light bulb was taken away.
  
  “So there’s two conditions that need to be met now. There needs to be light brought to this person. And he needs to be given new eyes.
  
  “The Arminian says he’s given new eyes through prevenient grace to the point where he now can make a free choice with regard to what he sees.
  
  “The Calvinist says he’s given new eyes to which whenever he sees the light he effectually will believe it.
  
  “The Provisionist says he never lost his eyes. He just needed light. So that would be the distinction between our worldviews.” (December 22, 2020, YouTube 1:15:42)

2. No supernatural internal work in the heart—not even non-effectual prevenient grace—is required to restore one’s ability to orient their heart to faith.

• “From my perspective it doesn’t make sense for a person to be born able to believe the Quran and fly a plane into a building to have 72 virgins, but they can’t believe the the truth of the inspired word of God because of some condition they were born into.” (July 8, 2021, YouTube 20:40)
• Answering the question (regarding God’s use of means), “What you are saying is that… he doesn’t change anyone’s nature? So these means don’t affect anything within us so that we can respond to them? We’re just born so that we can respond to them, correct?”
  • “Right.” (July 8, 2021, YouTube 20:59)
• Complaining that some Arminians respect Calvinists but dismiss Flowers as a semi-Pelagian:
  • “So you’re going to treat the Calvinist with all this respect. You know, ‘We want to hear from them.’ And, ‘We want to listen to, we want to represent them rightly’, and all these kinds of things. And then one mention of the boogeyman, Layton Flowers, and out comes the bigger boogeyman, semi-Pelagianism. And ‘Oh, heretic. He’s not orthodox.’ ‘Orthodox.’ Because What’s orthodox? What does that mean? Orthodox by whose standard? Is is one theology more orthodox because it’s more widely known than another theology? Because it has an older name?” (January 28, 2021, YouTube 1:09:23)
• Roger Olson (Arminian) expresses concern about the position of Flowers:
  • “I argue that Arminius himself, and all faithful, classical, historical Arminians (among which I count myself) believe that prevenient grace (enabling, assisting grace that goes before conversion making it possible) is supernatural and a special work of the Holy Spirit freeing the will of the sinner which is otherwise bound to sin (unbelief)…”
    
    “It seems to me that this [Provisionist] view of prevenient grace as ‘only the gospel communicated’ is insufficient to ward off semi-Pelagianism. I’m not going to label it as semi-Pelagian, but I worry that it is too close to that for comfort. It seems to me that the Bible does teach that the sinner in incapable of responding to the offer of saving grace with repentance and faith without a supernatural work of God, the Holy Spirit, enabling him or her to do that.” (For Fellow Arminians and Quasi-Arminians (Non-Calvinists): Prevenient Grace, April 26, 2019)

3. Thus, the atonement did not purchase universal prevenient grace, selective prevenient grace, or effectual grace for anyone.

4. Adam’s sin was not immediately imputed to humanity. Men are only reckoned sinners by their own personal sin. Humans only inherit from Adam “consequences” which are non-condemnatory results.

• “I do not believe we are guilty because of what Adam did… I [moved] away from the inherited guilt concepts because I don’t believe that the scriptures support that.” (YouTube 0:57, reposted April 19, 2022)

5. Open theism (which says God does not exhaustively know the certain future) is not a heresy. Open theists should be included in the SBC and should be admitted as members of a local church in good standing.

• Answering the question, “Would Leighton call for the excommunication of an open theist in his local church?”
  • “No. And I think it was a mistake for Southern Baptists to exclude open theists from the Southern Baptist Convention for the reasons I’ve already stated. I think we should be more open to those kinds of philosophical discussions… I understand where they are coming from. I would not cast them out of the kingdom nor my church.” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 1:01:32)
• Answering the question, “What is your relationship with the open theists?” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 39:29)
  • “If I threw open theists out of the kingdom I would have to throw Calvinists out of the kingdom.” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 41:29)
• Answering the question, “We’re agreeing that God has exhaustive foreknowledge, right?”
  • “Yes. But there are some dynamic [omniscience] guys who would say basically the same thing but define it differently. It’s a philosophical debate.” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 46:54)
  • “Some of them will sacrifice that attribute of omniscience in order to protect what they feel like they have to protect to understand God’s character as loving and good. I don’t have to do that. I don’t feel that’s necessary philosophically. But I understand why some dynamic open theists feel that way: in order to protect God’s character. There is not an ill-ill, that they’re just trying to cast out the Bible and throw out everything. They’re trying to use scriptures that seem to suggest that God is interacting in real-time and that he changes his mind. There is a lot of scriptures that seem to indicate those kinds of things.” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 53:04)
  • “Who cares if they can join an SBC church or not?” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 54:16)
  • Vocab Malone says it seems that Flowers is “running cover” for open theists. And that open theism has its roots in the gods of old like Zeus. Flowers responds by suggesting that determinism goes back to the gnostics and stoics.
• “I don’t believe that open theists… should be cast out of your church.” (October 25, 2022, YouTube 1:24:29)
• “Why would I want to throw [open theists] out of the convention?” (October 25, 2022, YouTube 1:26:58)
• “It’s just asinine how people will believe that open theists aren’t Christians.” (October 25, 2022, YouTube 1:27:44)
• “It’s really bad form to treat [open theists] as if they’re not brothers who are genuinely struggling with many of the same issues all of us have.” (October 25, 2022, YouTube 1:29:35)
• “I’ll throw Brian Wagner’s name out there. Brian Wagner holds to more of a dynamic perspective open—more of an open theist kind of perspective. And I’ve had him on the program several times. And I read a chat on a page that this guy probably didn’t know that I would be seeing. And I’m not going to mention his name. But he was he’s more Provisionist… He was saying something about my associating with open theists and how I am now kind of untouchable in that sense—or it came across that way. It came across as: now he’s not qualified or he’s disqualified to be in the SBC—leading in the SBC in this area or whatever else. If that’s what disqualifies me from being a voice in the SBC then I don’t want to be a part of the SBC anymore. And that kind of a statement may be provocative but it’s just true. Because if the SBC is represented by people who aren’t willing to deal with other Christians who disagree over difficult theological matters. I mean good knight—that’s what made the SBC the SBC in the first place.” (January 28, 2021, YouTube 1:04:05)
  • Note: Drew McLeod, one of the interviewers in this video, is an open theist.

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Other teachings of his worth noting:

• Libertarian free will is a creative power comparable to creation ex nihilo.
  • “Calvinism says that men choose according to their greatest desire. The desire, in other words, makes the determination on Calvinism. We simply disagree. We say people make determinations. In the same mysterious way God chose to create ex nihilo — he created something from nothing. We can’t explain exactly how he does that. Nobody can explain how God creates something from nothing. But so too we are given by God the ability to create our own choices. God is creative and we are made in his image as creative beings. And therefore we’re given a level of creative ability. The ability to make choices. So the mystery of libertarian freedom is similar to the mystery of creation itself. God created something from nothing.” (source)
• No one was individually elected to salvation prior to creation, not even on the basis of foreseen faith. It is elected *that* people may be saved by faith. This is definite in abstract principle but indefinite with respect to which individuals participate apart from Christ himself. A person is only chosen in Christ when they believe in Christ.
• Pelagius was not really a “Pelagian” in the classic sense of the term.
  • Was Pelagius Really a Pelagian (February 1, 2022)
• God has definite foreknowledge, but the ground of it is unknown.
  • “What we say is: he knows it because he’s God. Because he’s omniscient… We don’t say he knows it because he foresees it and learns, like that maybe the foresight-Arminian would say (the classical Arminian). We don’t say he determines it because that would make God the author of sin. But we say he knows it, and it’s a mystery as to how [he knows it].” (May 9, 2022, YouTube 50:30)
  • “Scripture does not address the problem of omniscience. How does God know what you will do in the future? He doesn’t it doesn’t tell us that.” (YouTube 58:23)
• That there is a disproportionate distribution of saved people throughout time and geography is evidence of man’s natural ability unaffected by the Fall, libertarian free will, and of the relative tendency of humans to believe when given increased exposure to the word of the gospel.
  • Answering the question, “Do you think the fact that there is an uneven distribution of Christians in the world sheds doubt on unconditional election based on nothing foreseen?”
    • “I think so. It seems kind of strange that God would… elect a large majority from a certain region verses another. The explanation seems very easy for free will advocates because if you have free will, and if you more light, more revelation in a particular area, you’re going to have more converts. Whereas on the Calvinist perspective you have to have ultimately God, for whatever reason, more of this nationality than another. Which doesn’t seem to be supporting an unconditional view of election.” (October 25, 2022, YouTube 1:38:19)

Personal reflections

• I carefully used the term “heterodoxy” (not “heresy”) to describe the positions of Leighton Flowers. I assume that he is a brother. But his positions sharply depart from even the classic Arminian position. They enter the territory of semi-Pelagianism that Arminian systematic theologians like Roger Olson are more careful to avoid.
• Flowers is not providing a historic Protestant alternative to Calvinism. His position removes theological safeguards which protect one from semi-Pelagianism. He has essentially rebranded semi-Pelagianism.
• A movement that partners with open theists and scoffs at concerns over semi-Pelagianism will eventually need its own denomination or association—one known for harboring and publicly cooperating with open theist teachers. This has no place in the SBC, nor in the major stream of historic Protestantism. As Leighton said above regarding his association with open theists, “If that’s what disqualifies me from being a voice in the SBC then I don’t want to be a part of the SBC anymore.”
• The main thrust of “Soteriology 101” (Leighton’s ministry) is anti-Calvinism. To paraphrase a friend: We should avoid any ministry that aims its guns against other genuine saints as a major portion of its ministry energy.
• Moving the goalposts results in equivocation and sophistry. It does not further the dialog, nor does it does take seriously substance of the charges.
  • The “prevenient grace” in view is not merely any form of “prior grace.”
  • One does not escape the charge of semi-Pelagianism by merely affirming any form of divine initiative.
  • The “moral ability” in view is not merely access to external instrumental means. It instead concerns a fundamental moral nature and moral capacity to rightly respond in faith to such external means of grace.
• Flowers does not provide a middle ground position between Calvinism and Arminianism. He provides a substantially weaker soteriology than either.