Common Ground

One trunk, five forks

Where Provisionism and Reformed theology actually part company, and how much road they walk together first.

Start here

The road we share

Comparison charts give each side a column, which quietly claims the two are the same size. They are not. Almost everything is held in common, and the disagreements come late. Here is what both sides affirm without qualification.

Held by both

Scripture is the final authority, over any system built from it.
God is sovereign over all things. Nothing occurs outside His governance.
God foreknows all things exhaustively, including every future free act.
Man is fallen and cannot save himself or begin the work.
No one comes to God unaided. Grace goes first, always.
Christ's death is the only atonement and the only ground of acceptance.
Salvation is by grace through faith, not of works.
Faith is not a work and gives no man ground to boast.
Regeneration is God's act alone. No one births himself a second time.
God is not the author of sin. Both sides say this plainly and mean it.
Men are truly guilty for what they do, and answer for it.
The gospel is preached to every creature, indiscriminately, with no hedging.
Those truly in Christ are kept. Both hold this. Classical Arminianism does not.

Where the fights actually start

Same word, different cargo

Most arguments online are not disagreements. They are two people using one word to mean two things and each hearing the other say something absurd. Open each to see both definitions.

The actual disagreements

Five forks, and only five

Everything above this line is shared. Everything below turns on these. Four of the five trace back to the first one, which is why the argument keeps circling. Before any of them, one term has to be pinned down, because all five depend on it.

Before the forks · what free means

Three senses are in play, and the rest of this page depends on which one is operating.

1. Alternative possibilities. Under identical conditions, the same world, the same nature, the same prior state, the man could have done otherwise.

2. Sourcehood. The agent is the ultimate origin of the choice, with nothing outside the agent determining it.

3. Compatibilist. The agent acts according to his own will and desires without external compulsion, even if that will is itself determined.

One and two are the libertarian options. Three is the compatibilist sense.

FORK ONE · THE ROOT

A man's free act is certain before he performs it. Where does the certainty come from?

Reformed

Sense three. The agent acts freely when he acts according to his own will and desires, without external compulsion, even though that will is itself determined by God's decree and by the agent's nature. That is the sense in which a free act can still be certain. The certainty comes from the decree.

Provisionist

Sense one. Under the same conditions and the same grace, the man could have gone the other way. Not sourcehood, since the enabling is God's and the man originates nothing on his own. The certainty comes from God's knowledge of what the man will freely do. Knowing is not causing, and certainty is not necessity.

This fork is the root. Whether regeneration precedes faith, what the effectual call does, and how election relates to faith all read differently depending on which sense of "free" is operating. A Reformed pastor pointed that out and he was right.

A historical note. Richard Muller argues that the contemporary categories of compatibilism and libertarianism fail to capture the early modern Reformed approaches, and documents a robust doctrine of creaturely contingency in that period. Reformed readers differ on how much weight that bears on the confessional trajectory, and I am not the man to settle it.

Richard A. Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

FORK TWO

Does regeneration come before faith, or follow it?

Reformed

Before. The dead man must be made alive in order to believe. New life is the cause of faith, not its result.

Provisionist

After. Heard, believed, sealed, in that order in Ephesians 1:13. The Spirit works to bring a man to faith and indwells him upon it.

FORK THREE

Is election of individuals directly, or of Christ and those found in Him?

Reformed

Of individuals. God chose particular persons and then placed them in Christ, who secures what was already decided.

Provisionist

In Him. Ephesians 1:4 says chosen in Him, and the six predestination texts name a destiny for those in Christ rather than an entrance into Him.

FORK FOUR

Was the atonement provided for all men, or only for the elect?

Reformed

For the elect, and it actually secures their salvation rather than making it possible. Though a real strand within the tradition holds universal satisfaction.

Provisionist

For all men, sufficient and offered to everyone, applied to those who believe. A ransom for all, in 1 Timothy 2:6.

FORK FIVE

Can the Spirit's saving call be refused?

Reformed

Not the inward effectual call. The outward call through preaching and inward operations of grace can be resisted, and that is what Stephen describes in Acts 7:51.

Provisionist

Yes. Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, said to men who had been taught their whole lives, using a verb found nowhere else in Scripture.

Wording supplied by a Reformed reader. Louis Le Blanc goes further, granting that those who hear and do not convert receive many internal aids of grace, and that God knocks at their heart and enlightens their mind.

Before you argue with a label

Neither camp is one thing

Both names cover a wide range, and the extremes get quoted as though they were the whole. Knowing the range is the difference between a conversation and a shouting match.

Inside Reformed theology

Three live spectrums, all of them historic, none of them fringe.

Order of the decrees

SupralapsarianInfralapsarian

Extent of the atonement

Particular redemptionHypothetical universalism

The nature of the will

Edwardsian determinismSimultaneity of potencies

Hypothetical universalism was held by the British delegation at Dort and by men like Davenant, Ussher, and Holtzfus, and Dort's canons were framed broadly enough to include them. Richard Muller has shown that the early Reformed view of the will, with real liberty of contrariety, is a long way from Edwards.

Inside Provisionism

Three things it is routinely confused with, and is not.

Not Arminianism

Holds eternal security, and does not hold prevenient grace as Arminians define it.

Not Pelagianism

Grace is prior, necessary, and enabling. No man comes on his own initiative or power.

Not open theism

God foreknows every future free act exhaustively. The future is settled in His knowledge.

Here is the thing the labels hide.

A Reformed man who holds universal satisfaction and real contingency in the will, and a Provisionist who holds exhaustive foreknowledge and corporate election, are standing closer to each other than either is to the loudest voice in his own camp.

That is not a compromise and neither has moved. It is what happens when two people state each other's position accurately before they argue with it.

You can hold your ground and still know the map.