The eminent biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall writes,
“Predestinarian language safeguards the truth that in every case it is God who takes the initiative in salvation and calls men to him, and works in their hearts by his Spirit. Salvation is never the result of human merit, nor can anybody be saved without first being called by God. Men cannot in any sense save themselves. It must be declared quite emphatically that the non-Calvinist affirms this as heartily as the Calvinist and repudiates entirely the Pelagianism which is often (but wrongly) thought to be inherent in his position. When a person becomes a Christian, he cannot do anything else but own that it is all of grace – and even see that he has been affected by the prayers of other people. But whether we can go on to speak of an “effectual” calling of those who are saved is dubious. The terminology is not scriptural, and is due to an attempt to find the explanation why some respond to the call of God and others do not respond in the nature of the call itself. Rather, the effect of the call of God is to place man in a position where he can say “Yes” or “No” (which he could not do before God called him; till then he was in a continuous attitude of “No.”)”[1]
The Calvinist maintains that due to man’s perpetual attitude of “No” (total inability or depravity) he requires an “effectual call” (i.e., an irresistible call or irresistible grace) that not only releases him from that attitude but secures a positive response to the “call.” Therefore only those “effectually called” will be saved (unconditional election). But this is to disregard or distort the biblical witness in four respects. First, the Bible speaks of person’s rejecting God and his Word when the responsibility of a positive response of acceptance is the divine expectation. Secondly, one’s rejection of God and his Word is presented as a culpable act of the will. Third, it is contrary to the biblical definition and content of the gospel as “good news.” And fourthly, it requires an unbiblical redefinition of the nature of faith as presented in Scripture.
The gospel means “good news.” It speaks of mankind’s sin problem and God’s remedy for it in the atoning love and forgiveness found in Christ. It calls for a response of repentance and faith (“Yes”) from every hearer. Therefore, I find it odd for Vanhoozer to describe the gospel as “the love of God” defined as “his active disposition to communicate the Father’s life-giving communion with the Son to others in the Spirit” (RT, 270) when this same God withholds the necessary “effectual call” from many who hear his “good news.” For the non-elect there is no “love of God” at work to “communicate” anything that is “life-giving.” To speak words that “bring light” and “knowledge of God” and describe these words as “the enabling condition of eternal life” (RT, 265), yet have that same God predestine certain hearers to damnation, withholding from them an “effectual call,” is to speak falsehoods and empty promises to the non-elect. Where has the “good news” gone?
Furthermore, it is a position that cannot coherently incorporate the full scope of the biblical data on the nature of faith. The precise content of the gospel as an invitation to believe and to receive the “free gift of righteousness” (Rom. 5:17) as spoken to all logically and morally requires us to conclude that the possibility of the response of faith is opened up to every sinner. But this is contrary to the Calvinist claim that a person’s response is predetermined and is either granted by an “effectual call” or it is not. The biblical testimony is to the responsibility of the hearer to say “Yes” to the gospel message – to believe in the “good news” of Jesus Christ. When this possibility of faith is mischaracterized either as an impossibility due to man’s sinful nature or as man’s meritorious contribution to their own salvation and therefore must be something included in God’s unconditional election of certain people to salvation, we have arrived at serious biblical distortions of the personal dynamic between God and man in salvation. The distortions are several. First, the gospel calls, that is, invites and even commands sinners to repentance and faith thereby implying that they can repent and believe. Our sin nature does not preclude the possibility of a positive response to the gospel for that is whom the gospel message is for – sinners – and faith is what the very content of the gospel demands. Secondly, the “effectual call” introduces an unbiblical “dual call” soteriology into Scripture. The content of the universal gospel call includes an invitation, summons, and exhortation to come to Christ and be saved on the basis that God loves you and that Jesus died for you. Any other message would not be “good news.” But this assurance of God’s kind disposition towards you is rendered disingenuous to the non-elect due to the fact that they cannot be saved while an “effectual call” secretly leads the elect to salvation. There is no biblical warrant for these two calls. There is only one call to salvation in the gospel message (Gal. 1) Thirdly, the “effectual call” presupposes unconditional election. If salvation is based in an unknown decision of God in eternity past and is absolutely unconditional on the part of the hearer of the gospel or anything else, then no one can be assured that they can or will be saved. Fourthly, the” effectual call” in contrast to one gospel call renders the gospel “speech-act” incoherent and meaningless for many who are not predestined for salvation. For all those not predestined to receive such an “effectual call” the gospel call simply does not and cannot apply. How then can anyone know whether they can be saved?
Vanhoozer simply presupposes the truth of an “effectual call” and does not attend to the substantial logical, moral, epistemological and biblical/theological problems it generates. Neither does he see these as indicators that help us determine the biblical invalidity of his interpretive conclusions. Although he attempts to use the “effectual call” as a test case for how God’s actions do not violate human freedom or personhood, an “effectual” call necessitates a deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty and as such it fails in light of several other biblical themes besides its inability to coherently retain the biblical concept of human freedom. It is also christologically deficient and improperly represents the biblical data on the nature of faith.
Suffice it to say here that this “effectual call” rests upon the traditional Reformed Calvinist understanding of a sovereign decree and unconditional election and is simply a link in the chain of Calvinist theistic determinism. As such, it is a player in the problem Vanhoozer is seeking to alleviate by his “communicative speech-act” theology. Above and beyond the mode of this “call” being “communicative,” by virtue of its being effectual lay an absolute eternal decree that divides the human race into two distinct classes of people with two unalterable destinies – the elect to eternal life and the non-elect to eternal damnation. This decree, even though it may be realized in a “communicative” fashion, is an eternal decree regarding who will and who will not be saved. Thus, the claim about God being “communicative” and desiring “communion” with persons created in his image breaks down. There is the “communicated to” (the elect) and the “not communicated to” (the non-elect) at least in the sense of the content of the “communication” being “good news.” Although the elect are positively “communicated” to by God, certainly the non-elect are treated indifferently by being passed over by God’s essential “communicative act” – the “effectual call.” And surely this fact cannot just be passed over by someone attempting to show us how God does not operate in terms of impersonal causal agency. Yet Vanhoozer himself observes that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, and claims that “the God of the Christian gospel is anything but indifferent to humanity.” (FT, 71) But again, this is inconsistent with the corollary of an “effectual call” which is the call’s “ineffectual” nature in the non-elect. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that God has not been indifferent to the non-elect he created for the very purpose of assigning to an eternity in hell. Although Vanhoozer gives lip service to God’s essential “communicative act” in Christ, yet, whether Christ is the revelation of God’s positive salvific will for you, me or anyone else in particular, we cannot be sure. Given an “effectual call” that is necessary for anyone to obtain salvation, a special call above and beyond hearing the content of the “gospel” itself, a “call” in which one plays no part towards the realization of their salvation, we can have no way of being assured that salvation has been determined for us by God. Vanhoozer finds the reason why persons respond either positively or negatively to God’s “general call” in the fact that God’s Spirit brings about salvation for some by an “effectual call.” But as I. Howard Marshall pointed out, talk of an “effectual” call “is due to an attempt to find the explanation why some respond to the call of God and others do not respond in the nature of the call itself.” So Vanhoozer presupposes an absolute salvific determinism and from there seeks an explanation for one’s response in the call itself rather than in the person.
Vanhoozer’s “effectual call” also presupposes the Calvinist doctrine of “total depravity” or “total inability.” Why does one person respond to the gospel and another does not? According to Vanhoozer’s Reformed soteriology it can have nothing to do with their ability to believe, for all persons are “dead” in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1) and as such cannot even exercise faith. All sinners are unable to believe, and therefore the phenomenon of faith must be explained in a way completely apart from the individual. Therefore, the realization of faith is an act of God upon those that are predestined to salvation. Moreover, the “effectual call” is supposed to make this predestinarian activity of God appropriate for persons with thoughts, desires, will and emotions. One wonders how a divine causal determinism can avoid being a monological, causal, impersonal action when what is taken away is precisely what makes humans beings persons – the freedom to willfully respond to God; the freedom to so otherwise. The Calvinist has to answer the question as to why God wouldn’t want it that way, especially when all of our experience confirms it is that way? I think we can confidently say on the basis of Scripture and experience that the reason people accept or reject the “good new” of their salvation ultimately rests upon the person’s will, choice, decision, etc. The sinner’s sin does not render him totally unable to believe in Jesus precisely because the gospel is a call to sinners to respond in humility to God and believe in the one he has sent – Jesus.
But the Bible does not support the Calvinist’s comprehensive salvific determinism. The explanation of different responses lies not in the nature of the call but with the person themselves. The Scriptures do not support the idea of an “effectual call” as the cause behind a positive response to the gospel as opposed to a negative response. As a single gospel call, the content of which is God’s love and grace in providing salvation for all sinners in Christ, it is not only “communicative” but is free of the cross-purposes of God’s will that are inherent in a deterministic “dual call” theology. There is no need to present a case for the “communicative” nature of God’s activity because the biblical perspective never raises the specter of salvific determinism and the fixity of one’s eternal destiny inherent in Calvinist predestination and the “non-communicative,” “impersonal,” “instrumental” conclusions one is logically compelled to draw from that determinism. The gospel is the Word of God to all sinners as sinners. As the Word of God it is “communicative” in and of itself because the Spirit accompanies it as the truth that is applicable to all who hear it. There is nothing behind the scenes of the gospel proclamation that determines it to effect salvation in one sinner and not another. When fully and accurately presented, all God’s salvific will and intention for the hearer is laid out before them and a required response is inescapable. No response is not an option. Not to respond positively is to reject Christ and salvation. It was Soren Kierkegaard who said,
“No man shall presume to leave Christ’s life in abeyance as a curiosity. When God lets himself be born and become man, this is not an idle caprice, some fancy he hits upon just to be doing something, perhaps to put an end to the boredom that has brashly been said must be involved in being God – it is not in order to have an adventure. No, when God does this, then this fact is the earnestness of existence. And, in turn, the earnestness in this earnestness is: that everyone shall have an opinion about it.”
What God has done in Christ confronts us all with the truth about ourselves as sinners in need of the salvation that only God can provide and has provided by his grace. Our lives are interrupted, indeed seized by God’s word, so that we can be “taught by God,” learn, be invited, challenged and exhorted to believe and be saved. If we do not believe we remain in condemnation and will not be saved. We may have eternal life by putting our faith and trust in Christ. The design of a salvation by faith is precisely so that all may be saved. Faith is the only appropriate response to the salvation which is a “gift” of God’s grace. Faith, as non-meritorious, blind to social and economic status, transcending the Law and Israelite privilege, allows both Jew and Gentile to be saved by the God who is God of both Jews and Gentiles; that is, all persons. This is “good news” for everyone, everywhere. This gospel is by nature inherently “communicative” and personal precisely because it is univocal and does not require an “effectual call” that either trumps or renders meaningless the gospel message as a call in and of itself. A distinct phenomenon of the Spirit, a “call” in which the sinner is totally passive that “effects” salvation in them, makes faith redundant and reduces it to merely an evidence of one’s unconditional election. Such a scheme is in conflict with the overwhelming testimony of Scripture and erodes the claims of “communication” and the personal confrontation of a personal God with sinners as persons.
Here we have to do with the biblical portrait of human nature and freedom which I have treated in depth elsewhere. But we can see that the characterizations of Calvinistic salvific determinism as “impersonal,” “causal,” “strategic” and “indifferent” are hard to avoid. In contrast, the single gospel call as “good news” accords with human personhood as an individuated, thinking, willing being. He is also a sinner by nature, but rather than human sin requiring predestination, unconditional election and irresistible grace, universal sin is precisely the reason for a universal salvation which God designed ot be appropriated by the sinner simply by believing. Rather than the nature of the whole event being predetermined and unconditional (albeit “communicative” as Vanhoozer would have us perceive it), the Bible simply states that the Spirit “effects” salvation in those who believe, with believing presented as a possibility for all sinners. It is because salvation is for sinners that it is not made an impossibility but a possibility for sinners – which includes each of us. The moral void and incoherence that has God arbitrarily predestining one sinner to salvation and another sinner to damnation is inexplicable on the basis of God’s character, on the basis of Scripture, and on the basis of our moral intuitions. I submit that this incoherence is insurmountable for the Reformed Calvinist. If persons themselves are involved in the event simply by believing or remaining in unbelief, we do not have to struggle with the insurmountable moral difficulties and questions as to the nature of God and whether God can remain “sovereign” in light of the genuine contingency of human decision. But Vanhoozer has to provide some explanation that presents God as “communicative” and personal because he defines sovereignty as God having predetermined the salvation of every individual, let alone all things! The non-Calvinist need not fret over whether God is being properly “communicative” or personal while he works out his plans and purposes in the world for we do not maintain that by an eternal decree God has unconditionally predestined certain persons to salvation and others to eternal damnation. God’s will and work is at bottom personal and loving. We do not fret over whether or not man is contributing to his own salvation by believing apart from an “effectual call,” diminishing God’s glory in salvation or introducing an opportunity to boast in one’s own “work” of faith, for we do not include in the affects of sin a “total inability” to exercise faith. We maintain that God is free to design salvation so as to include the possibility that every fallen sinner may believe, indeed, salvation is by faith alone precisely because we are helpless sinners in need of completely trusting in another – Jesus Christ – for our salvation. In that the response of faith is called for in the gospel from everyone as a sinner, it is therefore possible for everyone as a sinner to believe. Indeed, faith is the appropriate response because we are sinners who cannot save ourselves. Believing is not to be mischaracterized as saving oneself, contributing to or meriting one’s salvation, let alone a cause for boasting. To present faith as the result of one’s unconditional election lest the sinner be able to boast in contributing to their salvation is to seriously misunderstand the biblical nature of faith. Restricting the possibility of faith to receiving an “effectual call” that can only be realized if one has been predestined to salvation is also to seriously misunderstand the biblical gospel.
The intrusion of an “effectual call” presses us to conceive the God/man relation in terms of premundane determinations of God being implemented in time upon all persons predestined to certain ends. Vanhoozer will argue that God does not act on persons but in and through them to preserve their human dignity. The manner by which God relates to human beings is an important concern for the Calvinist theologian precisely because he presupposes a divinely fixed plan and destiny for every individual. But whether this is done “communicatively” or not seems to miss the essential point – the fact of determinism itself. That fact has implications beyond simply the mode or manner by which God works out what he has determined. There are questions of scope and logical, moral and biblical coherence that are related to the essence of determinism as a theistic system. The Reformed Calvinist version of theistic determinism is simply presupposed as biblical truth by Vanhoozer. What I am saying is that there are substantial indicators that it is not the biblical truth about the God/man relation. Theistic determinism cannot be justified at the level of divine operations alone, if at all (God as “communicative” notwithstanding. At a more fundamental level Calvinist theistic determinism cannot coherently account for moral responsibility, the biblical teaching on faith, the definition and content of the gospel as “good news,” the origin of evil, and the knowledge of God’s true nature and the assurance of salvation. Arguing that God is “communicative” in how he brings about what he has predetermined does not surmount nor remedy these more fundamental problems inherent in theistic determinism – especially the implications of such determinism upon the issue of our eternal destiny. Claims of “communicative action” on God’s part that bring about the “consummation” of certain individuals yet leave others without this “communicative action” thus “consummating” them unto eternal damnation, certainly does not make all things right with Vanhoozer’s Calvinist soteriology. This “dark side of Calvinism”[2] Vanhoozer simply ignores. Other important logical, moral, epistemological, and biblical implications still apply. Vanhoozer’s theological scheme is biblically problematic on more than simply the “impersonal” and “relational” front. He writes,
“I propose thinking of the God-world relation in terms of communicative rather than causal agency. The call exerts not brute force but communicative force.” (FT, 117)
What is meant by “communicative force?” Isn’t this an oxymoron in a deterministic worldview. “Force” becomes the operative and problematic concept that in antithetical to “communicative.” “Communicative” implies persuasion, which implies contrary choice which is incompatible with theistic determinism. Besides, what would “causal agency” look like in real life? Can we tell the difference between “communicative agency” and “causal agency?” Why is it that “communicative agency” is not the same as “causal agency?” Who’s to say? Isn’t there causality in “communicative agency?” So, is there any real difference between the two, or is this just a matter of semantics? The same questions apply to “brute force” and “communicative force.” What would “brute force” look like? Perhaps “communicative force” as “force” is also “brute?”
Vanhoozer is attempting to address the following phenomenon. When God seeks to accomplish his will in the world, one way he does so is through human persons. And because he does so through “persons,” he does so as a “communicative agent” so as not to violate their nature as persons. If God is to work his will in and through persons, he must do so from “within,” that is, “communicatively,” “dialogically persuading” them, and not “controlling” them from “without” as “robots.” But, short of God hitting us with lightning bolts or making a physical appearance to “push us around,” we are unsure what we would experience if God did choose to accomplish his will from “without” by “brute force,” “coercion,” “manipulation,” etc. What does Vanhoozer mean by “brute force?” Is this an ambiguous foil, a kind of “straw man” set up to argue for a “communicative force” that is still “force” but somehow different than “brute force” whatever that may be? What would “controlling” us from without or acting on us entail? We assume that for Vanhoozer any internal workings of the Spirit that are not “communicative” would be considered force, coercion or manipulation on God’s part. Or can the Spirit’s work ever be one of “brute force?” As a personal God, aren’t the Spirit’s activities always “communicative?” Does “communicative” have to mean “effective?” Is the definition of “communicative” compatible with an irresistible effect? Does Vanhoozer require “communicative” to mean “effective” according to a predetermined end? Is this a proper definition of being “communicative?” Is it necessary for all “communicative acts” of God to be “authorial” in the sense that they must issue in an irresistible effect?
Vanhoozer is ambiguous regarding what God’s force, coercion, manipulation or control of persons would amount to experientially. So Vanhoozer would have us to be convinced that as long as God is acting “communicatively” he can act with irresistible effect and not be acting by force or coercion or manipulation. Any negative connotations that are not worthy of a personal God who acts in the world through human beings that are also persons are supposedly removed by a “communicative” theology. It is a kinder, gentler approach than we know not what. Therefore, does this “communicative” approach remedy the essential problems inherent in Vanhoozer’s Calvinist doctrines as a description and explanation of the nature of God’s relation to his world and human creatures? If we do not know what force, coercion, manipulation, or control on God’s part towards us would actually look like or be identified as, then we have nothing with which to compare his attempt to justify his theistic determinism by “communicative act.” Has not Vanhoozer set up a “straw man” for him to knock down with his claims of a “communicative” yet deterministic God? Are “communicative act” and “exhaustive determinative decree” ultimately compatible? Must they not eventually part ways? Does “communicative, dialogical persuasion” really present an essential difference if the end result is that God still determines our thoughts, desires, wills, actions, and eternal destinies? Is “communicative force” still force and leaving us with the essential problem, which is not so much the manner by which God irresistibly effects persons, but the fact that they are irresistibly effected? The problem is essentially one of determinism and not the manner of determining.
Aside from God working through floods, avenging angels and plagues, how did Calvinism acquire negative connotations about God’s relation to human persons? How did it come to be characterized as a theology that is instrumental, one of force, coercion, or manipulation such that Vanhoozer has found it necessary to defend Calvinism with the help of “speech-act” theory and the proposition that we have a “God-in-communicative-act?” How does God’s “dialogical relation” with human beings lessen the negative connotations of his Calvinist theological position? His problems stem from the Calvinist definitions of God’s eternal decree, sovereignty, and salvation as ultimately deterministic, unconditional, and irresistible for a limited number of elect. Does Vanhoozer’s “communicative” approach fully and coherently account for the problems created by these Reformed Calvinist doctrines? The answer lies at the intersection of the claims of Calvinist theology about God and what we discern of the reality of human freedom. The problem is not so much whether God influences people’s wills “communicatively” or not, but what the logical, moral, epistemic, and biblical implications are of a God of an eternal decree that predetermines “whatsoever comes to pass.” At the personal level this translates into the problem of a disingenuousness or duplicity on God’s part. God speaks a “general call” to all sinners that is meaningless unless accompanied by a more mysterious “effectual call.” But what the general call offers to the non-elect is simply not true for them.
Nevertheless, Vanhoozer rejects “influence” as insufficient to fully explain God’s ways with man. We would agree. I maintain that with respect to persons, God works as a personal God in various ways in various circumstances in accord with all his divine attributes at all times. But will Scripture allow for Vanhoozer’s form of determinism evidenced in an “effectual call?” The problem lies in the claim that God has predetermined every individual’s eternal destiny, not simply in the manner by which he brings about what he has predetermined.
“…divine converse converts – brings about decisive changes in human beings in ways that do not violate but consummate their nature as persons.” (RT, 370)
If God’s ways of bringing about “decisive changes” in human beings “do not violate their nature as persons” then these changes must involve the person’s willingness to receive those changes, and this “willingness” cannot also be determined by God. To “not violate their nature as persons” is for God to allow the persons to respond freely and willingly to God’s “communication,” that is, to desire from their own selves, to communicate with God in return. I have addressed elsewhere the flaws in the Calvinist compatibilist position that states as long as a person is able to do what they desire they are considered to be acting freely, yet their desires are determined by God. Also, the central concern here is not between “violating” and “consummating their nature as persons,” but violating and respecting their nature as persons. Is it true that a person isn’t “consummated” as to their nature unless they have been changed or converted by a decisive act of God in them? What of those persons who God has not elected to save and will not experience this decisive change? Are they not persons in every sense of the word? Are their natures as human persons any less “worthy” in God’s eyes to “consummate” than the predestined, converted elect? By “consummated,” does Vanhoozer mean saved? If, so, why would this God who seeks communion with human persons, and is in divine converse with his human creatures not desirous that all of them have their natures “consummated” as persons? Why would he pass over them – except that they themselves reject Jesus? This is a serious problem that the Calvinist does not have a good answer for except to presuppose the truth of his unconditional election and just ignore this resulting corollary.
Above I said the central concern here is not between God “violating” and “consummating their nature as persons,” but God respecting their nature as persons. And by “respect” I do not imply a turning of the tables where man has the upper hand with God. To make the issue a matter of who “wins,” as if God and man were in a struggle for sovereignty in which man might prevail thus requiring of God to assure his victory by predetermining all things, would be a juvenile theology for sure. It is one misperception of the nature of the God/man relationship that drives Calvinist thought to the extreme that requires the necessity of an absolute divine control over all things via a premundane decree. By “respecting their nature as persons” I mean that God adheres to his own determination as to how he created man with the ability to make determinations for themselves within the boundaries established by God. God remains sovereign. It is folly to fret that if man is made genuinely free or “whatsoever comes to pass” is not predetermined by God, then God’s sovereignty is in jeopardy. The parameters for finite creatures, their present helpless situation as sinners and the way of salvation are set. The choices are limited, but they are real choices nonetheless, especially with respect to one’s eternal destiny. We take it that Vanhoozer means that one’s full nature as a person is only “consummated” once the person is willing to receive the “consummation” that God has provided for every person. But how is it biblically or theologically coherent to conclude that God makes a distinction between persons in his “consummating” process when what he is doing is consummating “their nature as persons?” Aren’t all sinners as to their nature, persons? Why does God leave a particular human being as a person “unconsummated,” that is, “consummating” their person to eternal punishment, separation from himself, and torment in hell? Vanhoozer has no explanation for this, and we see the lopsidedness in his claims about “the love of God” and him being a God of “divine converse,” “communicative,” desiring “communion,” and “consummating their nature as persons.” Indeed, Vanhoozer maintains that the best evidence of divine sovereignty is found in “God’s ability to bring about a willing change of human heart.” (RT, 384) What Vanhoozer means here by God’s sovereignty is his ability to bring about a change of the person’s will so that they desire, think and will according to what God has predetermined for them. In contrast, I would say that according to Scripture the best evidence of God’s sovereignty is his ability to allow the person to willingly change their heart and believe the gospel or refuse to do so in light of God’s communication to them. If they refuse his communication, God remains able to carry out his plans and purposes. It is they who suffer for their rejection of God’s grace, not God’s ability to do what he wills. Sovereignty means to rule and reign, which does not necessitate a universal divine causal determinism. Although, to rule and reign includes taking absolute control over certain events. God says in Isaiah 65:12, “I will destine you [“you who forsake the Lord,” v.11) to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter…” But this does not affirm Calvinist theistic determinism. That is made obvious by God’s reasoning as to why he will take the sovereign action he has indicated. God goes on to say, “…because, when I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in.” (Isa. 65:12, ESV) This makes no sense on Calvinism’s universal divine causal determinism. This makes no sense if all human thoughts, desires, and actions, along with all means and ends, are determined by God himself. This passage makes the distinction between “my chosen” (vs. 9, 15) defined as “my people who have sought me” (v. 10), in contrast to “you who forsake the Lord” (v. 11). The point is that, in contrast to Calvinism’s universal divine causal determinism, we see both God’s sovereign action and human freedom present, not in logical contradiction, but in a coherent Creator / creature relationship. This is what Vanhoozer wants to affirm but cannot do so coherently due to his theistic determinism. Vanhoozer tries to convince us that God is engaged in communication. And that is what we see in this passage and throughout Scripture. But given Vanhoozer’s deterministic doctrines, especially the “effectual call,” all that he attempts to apply form speech-act theory that he believes counters Calvinist determinism fails in the end. The difference between a sovereign who rules and reigns over his subjects in contrast to a sovereign who determines the actions of his subjects is profound. For God to rule and reign, that is, not determine all things, and yet remain “in control” of his universe is only possible for the God of the Bible. The God who determines all things is not the God of the theistic worldview we read about in Scripture. Hence, it is precisely because God’s sovereignty is not a theistic determinism that we do not rule out his prerogative to use force or coercion. The Bible testifies to a God who will one day conquer his enemies. Libertarian human freedom is the grand presupposition behind the fact that God strongly engages persons with respect to his will. All willfulness of the creature against their divine, gracious Sovereign may be addressed by forceful divine action during their lifetime and will certainly be addressed by force in the end. But surely God’s modus operandi is the grace and love he shows all mankind in Christ Jesus. It’s a universal salvific modus operandi. A person’s freedom to reject God and Jesus does not diminish God’s sovereignty, nor his love and grace towards that person. Sovereignty includes the fact that those whose hearts remain hard and do not humble themselves in light of his loving, gracious communication will only reap what they sow[3] – a just condemnation. Now, by this “willing change of human heart” Vanhoozer means that God is so able to effect a person’s being such that they now willingly desire and therefore will absolutely do what God has predetermined for them to do. I have fully examined the problems with this Calvinist compatibilist view of sovereignty and human freedom elsewhere, but here we should note that for all practical purposes we are back to an inevitable determinism. You will be “consummated” both now and for eternity as God has predetermined. Nothing can change your fixed eternal destiny in heaven or hell. As such, all the accompanying insurmountable problems of Calvinist theology still obtain by virtue of this inevitable determinism. The deeper problems of determinism are not resolved by proposing determinism as “communicative.”
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[1] I. Howard Marshall, “Predestination in the New Testament,” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 140.
[2] I am alluding here to the book by George Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism: The Calvinist Caste System, (Costa Mesa: Calvary Chapel Publishing, 2004). I appreciated Bryson briefly highlighting the problem of incoherence in Calvinism at the beginning of his book. This is an area that needs more investigation and discussion so that there can be a consensus about what constitutes a sound biblical hermeneutic in relation to the logical and moral consistency and rational coherence of one’s position. Reformed Calvinists seek to suppress this concern in their theology by maintaining that the Bible teaches what only appears to be a contradiction between their definition of God’s sovereignty and free will. Bryson writes, “Are these conflicts in Calvinism really only an “apparent paradox,” or are they hopeless contradictions, with absolutely no hope of reconciliation in this life or the next? Even though some Calvinists make a valiant attempt to rescue Calvinism from its own internal contradictions and inconsistencies, they all fail, as they must. They fail because the contradictions and inconsistencies in Reformed Theology are not merely apparent, but very real.” (p. 19)
[3] This teaching of Paul in Gal. 6:7 regarding human decisions and their effects, confirms a libertarian freedom in the context of the sovereignty of God as his ruling and reigning, not as him predetermining what is sowed. The idea of sowing either to the flesh or the Spirit presupposes a non-deterministic, personal responsibility and freedom of choice. One may “sow to the flesh” or “sow to the Spirit,” yet God remains sovereign in the sense that he stands over one’s choices by having set their consequential boundaries – “corruption” or “eternal life.” Obviously, the choices were not determined by God, for then the passage would be rendered incoherent. Yet, given libertarian freedom the two concepts in the passage – human freedom and God’s sovereignty – remain coherent, for “whatever one sows, that will he also reap” and that because God remains sovereign to assure that “the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption” and “the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”(ESV) In other words God’s sovereignty in this context is expressed in the phrase “God is not mocked.” If one thinks they can reverse the divinely determined order they ought not deceive themselves!
The Truth of the Gospel 