Good day, Rescued One
Provisionism can be summarized with the acrostic PROVIDE
People sin: Which separated all from fellowship with God.
Responsible: Able-to-respond to God’s appeals for reconciliation.
Open door: For anyone to enter by faith. Whosoever will may come to His open arms.
Vicarious atonement: Provides a way for anyone to be saved by Christ’s blood.
Illuminating grace: Provides clearly revealed truth so that all can know and respond in faith.
Destroyed: For unbelief and resisting the Holy Spirit.
Eternal security: For all true believers.
I would say "anti" both but certainly falls with Pelagianism IMHO.
Dear Puritan Board I have been discussing Calvinism with a self-proclaimed anti-Calvinist. I found out that he is a Provisionist, a term with which I was unfamiliar. I searched the Puritan Board for related discussions and found very little information. What I know is that Leighton Flowers is...
www.puritanboard.com
Provisionism is not Arminianism. It is worse than Arminianism. It is closer to Semi-Pelagianism. They deny original sin (which they call "original guilt") and say that man is not charged with sin until he actually starts sinning. For some that may mean that man is not guilty of sin until he reaches the "age of accountability." Arminians don't deny the imputation of Adam's sin (they affirm a form of total depravity, although may not accept Calvinist views of imputation) but they believe that everyone is granted sufficient grace (termed prevenient grace) to be able to believe the gospel. Provisionists deny that a prior work of grace is needed. Some in Arminian churches who are less knowledgeable also do not understand their traditional teaching on prevenient grace. Sproul once said that the modern church is really more Semi Pelagian than it is Arminian, and I think it may be this kind of thing that he had in mind. (There are a lot of things that many members of many Calvinistic churches do not understand about their doctrines either, sadly.)
Provisionism was originally called "traditionalism," by which they mean the soteriology of early-mid 20th Century Southern Baptists, some of whom were not conservatives. It basically teaches that you can come to God unaided by a prior work of the Holy Spirit (they deny this, but both Calvinists and real Arminians say they are unclear at best) and then, to varying degrees, often teach a form of Eternal Security or Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) in which repentance from sin is more or less optional. Arminianism on the other hand has such an emphasis on works in the Christian life that they tend toward legalism, and teach that salvation can be lost. The worst of them teach that it can be lost if you commit some "Big" sin but that you can repent and become saved again. Usually these are Pentecostals and maybe some Holiness or Wesleyan people. Sounder Arminians teach that salvation can be lost, but that apostasy consists of a definitive rejection of the faith.
Even the more sophisticated provisionists strenuously reject the idea that they are Arminian because they believe that their embrace of eternal security is incompatible with Arminianism. But some Arminians such as Roger Olson disagree. (Some of the more ignorant Arminians will argue that even embracing eternal security makes one a Calvinist!)
I think they so strenuously reject original sin because they believe that acceptance of that doctrine means that infants dying in infancy are damned. They teach that infants dying in infancy are "safe" rather than saved. (I've seen Dr. Adam Harwood use this terminology.) The infant hasn't exercised faith but also hasn't had sin imputed to them. They will say that man inherits a propensity or inclination toward sin that will inevitably lead him to sin once he is capable of moral action.
From where I sit, Free Will Baptist soteriology (i.e. "Reformed Arminianism" as opposed to Wesleyan Arminianism--I think the distinction mainly has to do with a rejection of Wesley's model of sanctification) is actually preferable to provisionism. To some Southern Baptists, that's a radical thing to say. But it is my well considered opinion that some Southern Baptists have all but made a golden calf out of the Cooperative Program (their way of funding missions) and thus remain yoked to people who are practically Semi-Pelagian. While the Cooperative Program enabled Calvinists to go on the mission field and plant churches that wouldn't have gotten that level of funding otherwise, it also results in paying the salaries of "provisionist" seminary professors, missionaries, and church planters. Some don't think they would have "access" to solid or accredited seminaries if they left the convention....
credohouse.org
