The sheer amount of text jumping and quote mining is astonishing.

But suffice it to say, his first argument seems to neither (a) exegete John 6:44, nor (b) be a sound refutation of election. It sounds, upon first listening, like an attempted reductio against election. It fails because it is premised upon a simpleminded reductionistic collapse of God’s decree over creation and God’s interaction with people in creation.

Flowers is saying, if Calvinism, then (a) God’s choice is not based on human reaction / reception / belief / whatever, and (b) God’s choice is the only reason humans do not believe.

The first is ambiguous and relies on an equivocation to be persuasive.

The latter is just a straw man.

A secondary (sub?) argument made is to quote passages that appeal to the unwillingness of unbelievers and contrast that with the Calvinist doctrine of election. This is, of course, a straw man that simply assumes the falsity of compatibilism.

It seems that is going to be Flower’s one stringed banjo, and its only note plucked over and over is the presupposition of incompatibilism. My money says Flowers will not only fail to provide any evidence for this presupposition, Biblical or otherwise, but he won’t even realize this is his guiding background belief.

The simple counter is that if Calvinism is true, and so if theistic compatibilism is true, then it is both the case that unbeleivers freely reject the Gospel and God preprogramed them to do so. Those are only exclusive alternatives if incompatibilism is true, and of course, that’s for Flowers to beg the question at the outset.

(The irony should not be lost on us that Flowers opens by accusing Calvinists of an extrabiblical presupposition invented by Augustine while standing on the house of glass that is his own humpty dumpty libertarianism.)

He eisegetically assumes that the blinding of Israel (in whatever OT quotation he used) is an explicit addition to predestination. Flowers assumes not only that God’s blinding in that passage cannot be His creation of man in Adam’s image, but cannot overlap with said inheritance of sin condition. In other words, Flowers takes God’s act of blinding to be distinct from God’s electing or His providentially bringing about the inheritance of sin, but he does no work whatsoever to show that the author means to finely separate these divine acts. Since Flowers seems to be okay with just assuming whatever he wants, why can’t the Calvinist just as well assume that the author includes as causal factors of the blinding God’s election?

Put metaphorically, you don’t need to be blind to close your eyes, but you aren’t kept from covering your eyes with your hands just becuase you’re already blind.

And again, the only forthcoming explanation as to why Flowers would even suspect that God’s blinding and man’s natural blindness are in tension is if one assumes an incompatibilist rendering of the will. For on that view, being blinded and acting out of blindness always fill up the same link on the causal chain, and so are mutually exclusive.

From the compatibilist point of view, it’s perfectly reasonable to think God’s act of blinding could involve any number of causal factors from God’s creative decree itself, to specific things God spoke to Israel, or providentially brought about events unrecorded in the OT available to that audience, or a combination of these.

These are not mutually exclusive or competing explanations except on incompatibilism. Read: Flowers is begging the question.

He brutalizes John 6:37. He takes the verse to mean that Jesus is telling off fake followers, informing them that he (Jesus) knows their intentions, that the Father has not given them to follow him. That’s not what v37 says and we’re left wondering how Flowers got that interpolation.

Rather, what it says is a categorical. It’s a universal category Christ sets up. It’s no different, logically, then saying, all Republicans are part of the Republican party. Nothing about that involves the address of certain individuals in the negative to inform them they’re not part of the class.

In passing, Flowers accuses Calvinists of getting the topic of regeneration backwards. However, he quote mines a few passages, especially verses that speak to coming to Jesus to receive eternal life. In some of these cases, the “life” spoken of is not regeneration but the life promised which no one possess even now, but will receive at judgment. If that example is illustrative of how Flowers interprets the other passages, then we can dismiss them all as simultaneously misrepresenting how Calvinists construct our doctrine of regeneration and badly quote mining verses that speak of life in ways that are not at all in tension with said doctrine.

Just because the Bible happens to be using the word life does not mean it’s using the same sense of the word or the same concept or referent. Flowers would not appreciate having his own words chopped up as badly as he is brutalizing the Scripture where it teaches concepts of life.

Flowers repeats the error I’ve already mentioned when he correctly points out that Jesus doesn’t bring up total depravity in (at least, some of) the passages considered. So what? That would only be relevant if total depravity were the only factor to consider, but we would only think that if incompatibilism were true. At every turn, Flowers again and again biffs, flides, and faceplants because of his “presupposition.”

Flowers argument that the drawing of the Father (unto eternal life) is based on the choice of the creature is implosive. If the person already believed, what is he being drawn to do or experience? It’s as if Flowers has suffered a mild case of amnesia in the middle of reading the passage.

The entire point of the Father’s drawing is that it plays explanatory power in dividing those who beleive and those who do not. If it did not do that, and it would not if you already have to believe to be drawn, then the drawing doesn’t accomplish anything.

Simultaneously, it undermines the very theme of unity Flowers intended to underline. If the Father is doing the drawing unto eternal life, what is Jesus doing with Him? If Jesus is doing the work, but all that’s needed is belief in him, what did the Father’s drawing do in unity with Christ at all?

But the unity is just this: those whom the Father draws are drawn to believe in Christ, and those who believe in Christ receive from the Son eternal life. Ah, here we have two distinct actions that work in tandem toward one order of salvation. Flowers annihilates that.

Another way to say all of this is that, on Flowers’ reading, the drawing by the Father and the life-giving of the Son are not distinct acts or accomplishments, but “drawing” just means the life-giving of the Son. There is then mootness to Christ’s argument, because it’s not a categorical (All x are y), and there is no unity displayed between Father and Son because there is no plurality to the plan.

Unitarians should love Flowers reading.

📖 Series: Responding to Leighton Flowers on John 6

1. Insights from Jimmy Stephens: A Critical Examination of the White vs. Flowers Debate on John 6
   An analysis of key theological moments in the Flowers vs. White debate, featuring commentary by Jimmy Stephens.
2. Why the Father Never Fails: A Rebuttal to Leighton Flowers on John 6
   A detailed exegetical response defending effectual drawing and divine sovereignty in John 6:44–45.