Regarding Hezekiah’s prayer as found in Isaiah 38 Vanhoozer writes,
“What God is doing in this dialogue is not informing Hezekiah of his death but working a change in his heart.” (RT, 495)
This is surely gross eisegesis. Nowhere in the text is this conclusion stated or even hinted at. Simply put, one cannot glean such a conclusion from the text itself. It must be read into the text. It is a conclusion resulting from Vanhoozer’s Calvinist deterministic theological proclivities and presuppositions. Vanhoozer states that “this dialogue is not informing Hezekiah of his death” yet the text clearly states,
“Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.” (Isa. 38:1)
Obviously, this prophetic word from Isaiah (“dialogue”) was informing Hezekiah of his death. Even Hezekiah plainly understood Isaiah’s words. The remainder of the chapter is about Hezekiah’s meditations and reflections on his situation. It tells of his feelings of regret (vv.10-11), the prerogative of God to end life (vv. 12-13), his sorrow and helplessness (vv. 14-15), his yearning for life (v. 16), the benefit of his suffering (v. 17a), God’s love, deliverance from destruction and the forgiveness of sin (v. 17b & c), hope, praise, instruction, and thanks to God happens in the land of the living (vv. 18-19), and about God’s salvation and joy restored (v. 20).
So why does Vanhoozer conclude that God was only working a change of heart in Hezekiah and the word of the Lord to him was not God’s true word. It is because Vanhoozer cannot have God respond to Hezekiah’s prayer because at the root of Vanhoozer’s theology lies the idea of an eternal decree whereby God ordained “whatsoever comes to pass.” There is no such thing as a divine response in Vanhoozer’s theology. Since Hezekiah continued to live, which was God’s predetermined plan and not God’s genuine response to Hezekiah’s prayer, therefore the pronouncement of Hezekiah’s impending death must not have meant what it said, and therefore served another purpose altogether. But this is to read the text according to Reformed Calvinist presuppositions. Vanhoozer, along with Calvin, concludes that “God’s actual communicative intent was to humble Hezekiah so that Hezekiah might turn to him in prayer…” So all along, because God predetermined it, he knew that Hezekiah would live fifteen more years, but God wanted him to pray a petitionary prayer requesting that God heal him, which to Hezekiah (and to us when we pray) appears to be a divine response to a petitionary prayer, but really is not. It was a predetermined, coercive event to get Hezekiah to pray a petitionary prayer asking God for what he has already determined to give him. And although Vanhoozer may point to other situations in which God works in a non-coercive manner for his will to be done, who can deny the coercive nature of this account. As I see it, to inform a person on their impending death is quite coercive. Hence, God irresistibly causes Hezekiah to ask for what he has already determined to give, making it appear that the giving is linked to the asking, while of course it is not. Things could be no other way than what God predetermined in this situation and Hezekiah was supposed to be changed by thinking, mistakenly, that it was in response to his prayer that God granted him fifteen more years of life. Makes you wonder what the purpose of being made to pray accomplished. Somehow this was supposed to be beneficial for Hezekiah. But only because he did not know about the universal divine causal determinism of Calvnism! If he would have known that…well we’re not sure what he would have thought or done! But now that the Calvinist “cat is now out of the bag,” we are no longer ignorant of the nature of reality. We now know that whatever happens, it is God causing it to happen!
Vanhoozer claims,
“God dialogically determines Hezekiah, not by manipulating him, but by soliciting his free consent to participate in communicative action.” (RT, 495)
When Vanhoozer applies his Reformed Calvinist “the outcome is determined” theology to petitionary prayer we are left wondering how this can be biblically coherent. The above quote is very important to show the inconsistency of Vanhoozer’s Calvinism and the argument he presents. Think about it. What Hezekiah experienced with God through Isaiah’s words was supposedly “interpersonally genuine” because God communicatively informed him that he will surely die. This, Vanhoozer claims, was the means God used to change Hezekiah’s heart so that he would do what God willed for him to do, which seems to be for him to pray. But this is flawed reasoning on theistic determinism because it presupposes that Hezekiah had an existence prior to God’s communicative act in which Hezekiah was not being determined by God. He wasn’t praying or wasn’t going to pray or wasn’t praying enough. Who knows? Anyway, it seems that Hezekiah was acting freely, otherwise why would Hezekiah’s heart need to be changed, and that by God? But on Vanhoozer’s theistic determinism, everything about Hezekiah – his whole heart, mind, and soul, – was at every time and in every way what God predetermined. So here we have God acting to change that which God already actively predetermined for Hezekiah. But that is nonsense. In other words, if everything is predetermined by God it makes no sense to talk about God needing to change Hezekiah’s heart in the sense that Vanhoozer presents the necessity here, that is, as if Hezekiah was not doing or would not do what God wanted unless God threatened death for Hezekiah. Furthermore, if theistic determinism is true, how is it coherent to say God determines Hezekiah “by soliciting his free consent to participate in communicative action?” Again, this presupposes a situation that is incoherent with theistic determinism, that is, that Hezekiah possesses something that Vanhoozer describes as “free consent.” Does Hezekiah attain an ability that can be described as “free consent?” Either way, God seems to have had to “solicit” Hezekiah “to participate in communicative action,” but that had to come through Hezekiah’s “free consent.” This is to say that Hezekiah possessed some quality of human freedom of will and decision that needed “soliciting.” Which is to also say that Hezekiah was the sole author of his action and could have done otherwise. So actually, the language used to describe the situation here tells us that the situation is antithetical to the Calvinist worldview of universal divine causal determinism. Vanhoozer would like all this to be reduced to a theistic determinism, but even the language will not cooperate with his Calvinism.
It’s as if Vanhoozer indicates that the “response” of Hezekiah in some way came out from under the predetermined plan and causation of God. But on Calvinism this cannot be. That is the nature of theistic determinism. Therefore, on Calvinism, God, didn’t actually solicit a genuine response from Hezekiah. Hezekiah just simply performed what God predetermined for Hezekiah to perform at that point. It was the next thing Hezekiah would do according to God’s minutely predetermined plan for Hezekiah. So, it is not like God dealt with Hezekiah as if Hezekiah could do other than what God predetermined him to do. “Inner persuasive discourse” is just a euphemism for the “effectual call” of theistic determinism. Therefore, for Vanhoozer to speak about God working a change of heart is inconsistent with his theistic determinism. “Change” from what to what, rather, how so a “change?” Hezekiah never had a heart that God had to change, for that would presuppose that Hezekiah had an existence of his own, a “heart” under the control of his own will and person, that is, to some degree, apart from the will of God. So, according to Vanhoozer, Hezekiah had a heart that God had caused to be one way at a certain time and caused it to be something different at another time which God accomplished by communicating to Hezekiah of his sure impending death, a death that God never intended. So much for all this being describe as “the dialogue between God and human creatures is real – interpersonally genuine.”
Note also that according to Vanhoozer God gave Hezekiah the spirit of pride from which he had to be humbled! (RT, 495) So God causes Hezekiah’s pride and his sickness which are the “means” by which God will cause Hezekiah’s humility. And it is God, of course, who successfully causes Hezekiah’s humility. Hezekiah does not humble himself, for he can do no such thing due to his “total inability.” Once God causes Hezekiah to be himble, God causes Hezekiah to “turn his face to the wall” and pray to the Lord, “Please, Lord, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly, and have done what pleases you.” (v. 3, CSB) And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” So, we have the Lord praying to himself through Hezekiah and causing him to “weep bitterly.” Keep in mind that Hezekiah is nothing more than a character in the “Author’s” script who does only what the “Author” has written into the script. Next, we have the Lord (“Author”) causing Isaiah to “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I am going to add fifteen years to your life. And I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city.” (vv. 5-6, CSB) So the Lord is telling Hezekiah what the Lord himself caused Hezekiah to feel and do. And the Lord does this so that the Lord could perform his ultimate plan and purpose in this situation. God makes it seem like he is in genuine interaction and relationship with Hezekiah and Isaiah, but he is not. God alone has caused all these “interactions.” It is only the way that they are written that makes it seem that they are real, genuine feelings, actions, and responses. And that is the problem. Most fundamentally this is a hermeneutical problem, and it is twofold. First, a plain reading of the text conveys a reality completely contrary to Vanhoozer’s Calvinist deterministic scheme. The text reads as if contingent change and various possibilities and potentialities are in play. Petitionary prayer, by definition, necessitates this non-Calvinist worldview. Secondly, as I demonstrated above, the text becomes nonsense when read on the basis of Calvinist determinism. Therefore, we can conclude that Vanhoozer is misunderstanding the text, and this is because he is reading his determinism into the text. And this he must do because for the Calvinist God’s deterministic “sovereignty” takes precedence over all other textual considerations. The only basis for Vanhoozer’s conclusion here is to maintain theological consistency with his Calvinist presuppositions. Rather than letting the text inform his theology, his theology is shaping his interpretation of the text. Vanhoozer’s interpretive methodology amounts to doing with the text whatever is necessary to preserve his definition of God’s sovereignty defined as theistic determinism. And when necessary, creative ways like Vanhoozer’s utilizes in these books (e.g., speech-act and literary theory), are sought out to make one’s problematic theology less problematic.
On Vanhoozer’s rendering of Hezekiah’s sickness and recovery what God speaks is not to be taken according to what God said as we have it recorded for us in the text. This has God being duplicitous or deceptive. The words spoken were “Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover” but according to Vanhoozer they mean “Thus says the Lord: I need to threaten you with death so that you will humble yourself before me and pray.” Hence, the Lord did not mean what he said. Vanhoozer presumes that God did not intend to bring about what he actually said, but only meant to accomplish something else by saying what he said to Hezekiah through Isaiah. So, God may make it appear that one thing was to occur, that is, that petitionary prayer brought about a divine response to that petition (i.e., God healed Hezekiah), yet something very different is actually occurring “behind the scenes,” that is, that God is both causing your prayer of petition and will bring about his predetermined ends either in accord with the prayer he predetermined or in some other way not consonant with the prayer.
Again, Vanhoozer stated that “God dialogically determines Hezekiah, not by manipulating him, but by soliciting his free consent to participate in communicative action.” This is an amazingly baffling statement since Vanhoozer, via Calvin’s words, describes how God achieved this goal. It was “by harsh language and an absolute threatening of death…” (RT, 495) Yet, despite the fact that Vanhoozer maintained that death was never in play for Hezekiah he insists there was no “manipulation” by God, just the “soliciting his free consent to participate in communicative action.” God got Hezekiah to communicate with God by telling Hezekiah something that God knew would not be true about Hezekiah or his situation. He was told he was about to die when God had no intention of having him die.
Vanhoozer has sought throughout to avoid the idea of divine coercion. He has argued that it is not God’s way to “hold a gun to someone’s head” to get them to do his will. But shouldn’t we ask what the difference may be between “holding a gun to one’s head” as a threat of death and this threat of death made by God to Hezekiah? Vanhoozer has a very perplexing perspective on the divine nature and the meaning and use of words. If there is a hint of duplicity in God’s “speech-act” here, and I think there is, it is very disconcerting because it casts aspersion on the character of God. It is God speaking here. The God who cannot be “shady” or speak falsely. Surely Vanhoozer understands the important implications of divine communication and the veracity of the Word of God, yet, God speaks his word to Hezekiah “by harsh language and an absolute threatening of death” and has no intention of carrying out such a threat. God has a different objective. Seemingly it was to humble Hezekiah get him to pray. Let us ask the following interpretive questions.
First, is this the meaning one would take away from reading this text without presupposing a Reformed Calvinist theology? How so? In addition, Vanhoozer claims that this “harsh language and an absolute threatening of death” is not “manipulation” but a “soliciting” of Hezekiah to “free[ly] consent to participate in communicative action.” This is quite perplexing and unconvincing. How can a threat of death be understood as God “soliciting” Hezekiah to “freely consent” to pray? Where are these ideas found in the text? For instance, in the Keil & Delitzsch’s Commentary on the Old Testament we read,
“The announcement of his [Hezekiah’s] death is unconditional and absolute. As Vitringa observes, “the condition was not expressed, because God would draw it from him as a voluntarily act.”[1]
What “condition” is Vitringa referring to? What “condition” regarding Hezekiah’s death was given by God? Was it that he would pray? What Hezekiah did was rehearse for God how Hezekiah “walked in faithfulness” with his “whole heart,” and he did what was good in God’s sight and he asked God to “remember” that. Then Hezekiah “wept bitterly.” So what was the “condition” that God did not express but was drawn out of Hezikiah “as a voluntary act?” To rehearse the goodness of his kingship? To “weep bitterly?” How is any of this what God wanted from Hezekiah as a condition for God to reverse his word to Hezekiah?
Hezekiah is distraught at God’s word and “turned his face to the wall” and “wept bitterly.” How is this “harsh language” and “threatening of death” not an example of the divine coercion Vanhoozer has painstakingly sought to avoid? What this demonstrates is the inevitable and inescapable tendency towards the impersonal, coercive, and manipulative that is inherent in all absolute, authoritative (“authorial”) determinisms. It is the result of all naturalistic, materialistic, and even theistic determinisms. These determinisms inevitably breed the impersonal, coercive, and manipulative.
And on the other hand, with respect to the non-elect, does God use harsh and threatening tactics in “consummating” their existence to an opposite end, that is, that they don’t pray, etc. so God can fulfill his purposes for them of eternal damnation? Vanhoozer never discusses this side of God’s “authorial” work. It’s as if the non-elect are not even in the script.
Furthermore, Vanhoozer’s theology of prayer does not have the support of the broader scope of Scripture. Granted, biblical prayer certainly changes us, for it requires us to pray in accord with the revealed will of God. Yet petitionary prayers are unique in that they imply not knowing the will of God and they presuppose that the will of God has not predetermined all reality and circumstances. All is not a foregone conclusion. This is the presupposition of petitionary prayer. If it is said that the purpose of “petitionary” prayer is only to change us, we would not petition God to bring something to pass that otherwise would not come to pass if we had not prayed. We would simply offer prayers of submission and acceptance for what is to occur, whether positive or negative, in all circumstances, believing all is unalterably fixed to occur as it will occur. But, if we believe that our lives can take different courses, that there are consequences for our actions and the actions of others, we may petition God to help us go the right way, do the right thing, protect our loved ones, etc. The “petition” implies God’s hearing, response and genuine activity which otherwise would not occur if we had not prayed.[2] And what of our prayerlessness? It is as Billy Graham has said, “Heaven is full of answers to prayer for which no one ever bothered to ask.”[3] But this is not to affirm a theistic determinism. We must remain biblical grounded in this matter. Jesus taught us to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:10, CSB) which implies that the theistic deterministic worldview is incorrect. The grand presupposition of petitionary prayer is that things could have been and can be different because God may act accordingly, depending upon our asking, seeking, and knocking. (Mt. 7:7-8) Petitionary prayer can cause God to respond and be involved, one way or another, where he would not have responded or been involved in the same way or even at all. If we do not limit God’s freedom by deterministic theological presuppositions, God does something that he otherwise would not do in response to our prayers. We have to incorporate this fact into any theology of prayer that claims it is biblical, for this is what we find in the Hezekiah account. Also, James states, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James, 4:2) The implication being that we would have if we asked. The phrase tells us that it is possible for something never to be realized that could have been if we had asked. The reality of petitionary prayer is that it is contingent. We may be granted our request if we ask. Granted, we should ask for that which accords with God’s will as far as we know it, but that does not mean that God’s will is single with respect to all things and therefore his will occurs in every matter. God has options. The salient point here is that of God responding to what we ask for or not responding when we fail to ask for it. We are to “ask, and it will be given to you” (Mt. 7:7) with the implication being that if we do not ask it will not be given to us. Hence, two potentialities are in play depending upon the asking. But this is not the case if God determines the asking. We find another instance of asking in Jabez’s prayer in 1 Chron. 4:10. Without getting into the details of the historical context, the text affirms the contingent nature of petitionary prayer by simply stating that “And God granted what he asked” (ESV) or “And God granted his request.” (CSB) Also,after Solomon finished dedicating the temple we read in 2 Chronicles 7:14-16,
“Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people,if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.” (ESV)
God says, “if my people…then I will…” And as far as Solomon is concerned God says,
“And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’
“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.” (1 Chron. 7:17-20, ESV)
Again, “if you will…then I will,…But if you turn aside….I will pluck you up…”
John Barton Payne writes the commentary on 1st and 2nd Chronicles in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. He observes the following regarding the theme of “Retribution” in 1st Chronicles.
“A second interest of the author is his doctrine of retribution (see Theology). The idea of sowing and reaping is hardly new to Chronicles. It is spelled out in some detail in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where obedience results in blessing but disobedience brings about curses. While this basic doctrine is retained in Chronicles, it is modified in at least two ways. First, the burden of obedience lies primarily on the shoulder of the king of the nation. It is his response to God that seems to affect the direction of the nation as a whole. Some emphasis is placed on the obedience of the citizens, but more attention is given to the disposition of the ruler. When the sovereign is faithful, he is often rewarded with military victory, secure kingdom, wealth, and honor. When he forsakes God, he often reaps defeats and diseases. The history of the Southern Kingdom abounds with illustrations of this doctrine of retribution, and the principle may be found in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 and 28:8-9. …the principle of sowing and reaping does not work automatically or mechanically. The sovereign ruler is often warned by a prophetic word about the evils of abandoning God and is exhorted to seek him; hence the ruler can repent and, in doing so, avert a calamity or military defeat. Prophetic words are given to Asa and Jehoshaphat, just to mention two cases, and the principle is no where expressed more majestically than in God’s response to Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple. These words (2Chron 7:14) are probably the most popular and easily recognized passages in Chronicles.”[4]
We take it therefore, that God genuinely responded to Hezekiah’s prayer. We also can affirm that God would have upheld his word through Isaiah about Hezekiah’s death if Hezekiah had not prayed. iN addition, we take it that God could have upheld his word despite Hezekiah’s prayer. God could have refused Hezekiah’s request. The point is that the passage itself does not lead us to believe that God was getting Hezekiah to perform a predetermined action and that what God did subsequent to that predetermined action was God’s predetermined plan for Hezekiah. Although this is what the Calvinist means by “God uses “means”” to bring about what he has predetermined to take place in all things, that would make the account static instead of dynamic. In that case we can see how the element of genuine divine and human interaction is stripped from the text. The static predestinarian or deterministic Calvinist view is foreign to this text, let alone the broader context of the canon as exemplified in Burton’s quote above. Calvinist determinism has to be read into the text. It does not come from a coherent reading of the text. Rather, what God did, the text clearly indicates, was a result of what Hezekiah did – he prayed, and the Lord responded by adding fifteen years to his life. We ought to allow the text as it stands to inform our theology, not vice versa. Petitionary prayer affects not only us, it affects God, and so much so that he may act on the basis of a prayer sincerely prayed.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] Delitzsch Franz and Carl Friedrich Keil. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. v. 7 “Isaiah” (T. & T. Clark, 1857-1878), 373.
[2] In thinking this through, petitionary prayer is a request that God grant my request. We do know that some things God will not do because they are not proper requests (James 4:3). But are there a variety of life events that God can act to fulfilled in his way depending upon our prayers in reference to what is occurring in our life or other events? For instance, do you pray about buying a new car? If you do, is it likely that you would end up with a different car than if you had not prayed about it? That is, if God does not have a car he predetermined you will have and he will bring to pass, will he bring to pass a certain actuality of his own desiring because we prayed? But this is not petitionary prayer, is it? It was a prayer for guidance or direction. Petitionary prayer involves whether or not God will bring to pass the specific actuality we prayed for. Furthermore, isn’t petitionary prayer a request of God to do what I am asking (in all humility of course!), and not what God would otherwise do, especially when he has revealed what he is going to do! Isn’t this what Hezekiah did? Obviously, Hezekiah took God at his word. He thought he was going to die because God told him he was going to die. He prayed to make a request of God, that is, to avert his impending death. I take that if he did not pray, he would have died. Did Hezekiah have the choice to pray or not to pray? Was his prayer also predetermined by God? According to Reformed theology, the answer is, “Yes, Hezekiah’s prayer was determined by God.” So, according to the Calvinist, God got Hezekiah to do what God predetermined he would do by threatening his death which God predetermined would not occur for another 15 years. If the death threat was to move him to pray so that God could do what he predetermined all along, what is the point of it all from both God’s side or the human side or the meaning and definition of prayer as petition? See James Daane, The Freedom of God: A Study of Election and Pulpit, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973) for an excellent discussion of how Reformed decretal theology empties history of perspective, dynamic reality and meaning.
[3] Billy Graham, Till Armageddon, (Waco: Word, 1981), 153. From Franklin Graham, Billy Graham in Quotes, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 265.
[4] Payne, John Burton. “Introduction” 1, 2 Chronicles, 1988, p. 317. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: With the New International Version, Frank E. Gæbelein, general editor, vol. 4, Zondervan, 1976-92. 12 vols.
The Truth of the Gospel 