The Glorious God’s Gospel of Grace: The Potter’s Prerogative. A Response to Leighton Flowers

“It is very difficult—well, impossible—to make the assumption that only contra-causal freedom constitutes the basis for moral responsibility and at the same time seek to maintain a biblical view of God. Of course, not only is God at stake in this assumption, but the biblical doctrines of sin, grace, salvation, the person of Christ, the certainty of heaven and/or of hell. The impeccability of Christ, the immutable foreknowledge of God, the entire system of cause and effect relationships in the world, and the connections
between intrinsic character and extrinsic action crumble under this idea. The status of Satan as a morally responsible being falls by the wayside and makes the certainty of his just assignment to hell a moral problem. Massive amounts of biblical doctrine must be turned upside down to sustain such an idea throughout the biblical corpus. But such theological amendment is precisely what is being proposed in the concept of a ‘libertarianly free will’ by the newly-coined Southern Baptist movement known as traditionalism. Theodore Zachariades, Ph D, has written this book specifically to lay bare the great difficulties one has to shoulder in order to maintain such a system. His careful labors have revealed just how radically disturbing is this attempted defense of traditionalism. Dr. Zachariades begins with the doctrine of God and shows how this view must either deny, or ignore, certain key biblical ideas in this rootthought of all biblical doctrine. He proceeds with carefully exegeted studies of grace, the cross, biblical love, and the character of divine involvement in redemption. Along the way, he gives a clear presentation of Calvin’s views of these matters (since he has come in for especially harsh treatment by Dr. Flowers), employs an impressive number of quality doctrinal and exegetical works (old and new), unfolds a pertinent knowledge of historical and systematic theology, manifests competence in use of the original languages of Scripture, and shows the advantages of a fair and rigorous orientation to logic. His method includes an investigation of the assumptions and polemical methodology of Dr. Flowers, demonstrating for everyone, hopefully, how certain mis-steps undergird this attempt to create a new paradigm for soteriology. Dr. Zachariades has done all of us a favor, both protagonists and antagonists of this theological movement, for he has given it the deep and serious examination that such a foundation-altering proposal calls for.
—Tom J. Nettles