With regard to defining God’s love and grace, Vanhoozer’s remythologizing approach is a needed correction for all unbiblical conceptions of these wherever they may be found. We must not define God’s love and grace via forms of ontotheology that speak of “abstract conceptions of deity” and “give pride of place to substance and relation.” Neither is mutual and reciprocal relation to be identified with love itself, as if mutuality and reciprocity are the sum total of what it is to love. (RT, 173) He writes,
“Defining God’s love in terms of mutual and reciprocal relatedness raises a final difficulty. If love is the relationship, then there could be no such thing as unrequited love. To “requite” is to make appropriate return. To define love in terms of bilateral mutual relatedness is to make “requitedness” analytic to and implicit in the concept.” (RT, 173)
The point is well taken. In other words, it appears that he is saying that a proper definition of love cannot require “mutual and reciprocal relatedness.” If this were the case, there would be no love where love is not requited. Love could not survive in a relationship where it is unrequited. So Vanhoozer is arguing that love cannot be defined merely by “mutual and reciprocal relatedness.” But such love – love with the potential for it being requited or unrequited – is not coherent with Calvinist theistic determinism. In theistic determinism one is predetermined to love God by God. So how does this talk of requited and unrequited love make sense from within Calvinism. The words “requite” and “reciprocal” imply a self-authored act that contains genuine options – to love in return or not to love in return. So, not only is this incoherent with Calvinist determinism, but we are back to Calvinists speaking in terms that make no sense from within their theology. Vanhoozer continues,
“To be sure, love aims at generating a loving response. If requitedness – the return response, a giving back – is an essential ingredient in love, however, the command to love one’s enemies (Mt. 5:44) is incoherent. How can one love those who refuse to enter into relations of mutuality if love is that mutuality?” (RT, 173)
Again, the point is well taken. Love does not require that it be requited. Requitedness is not an essential ingredient for one to love another. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10). For instance, the non-Calvinist is not requiring requitedness for love to be present, but we are defending the possibility for every person to be loved by God and love God in return. But Reformed Calvinist theology eliminates the possibility of requited love for a multitude of people. And not only that the requited love is predetermined and caused by God. Thos who love God love him because God causes them to do so. On Calvinism, mutuality is something taken out of the equation of God’s loving relation with his human creatures. There are many people that God simply does not love and has determined that they not love him in return, and those that do love him, do so because God has determined they do so. They cannot do otherwise.
So, the kenotic-perichoretic relational view is in error, but so is the theistic-deterministic, exclusivist, sub-relational view of Reformed Calvinism. On the non-Calvinist view, the “return response” is not essential for God to love men. His love towards them is preeminent and universal. Yet biblical coherence requires this “return response” be a possibility for those God loves. If it is not (as in the exclusion of the non-elect by the doctrine of unconditional election), then it cannot be said that God loves them. And on the other side of unconditional election, it cannot be said that the elect love God for they were irresistibly caused to do so by God himself. What kind of love is that?
So, on Calvinism we conclude that God hates rather than loves many of his human creatures – the non-elect or reprobate, and that the love of the elect is not “requited” in any meaningful sense. It just a response that is irresistibly caused in them by God.
Vanhoozer is correct. Love is not the relationship defined as requiring mutuality. But this point certainly cannot be used by the Calvinist to justify their “love” via theistic determinism as I pointed out above. In contrast, this discussion and understanding of love fits well within a theology of libertarian freedom. The bible tells us that God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19), and that, while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). And he still loves us, despite the fact that we may or may not return that love (Jn. 3:16-18). Love stands objectively on its own as the God of love continues to love his creatures “in Christ.” But the Calvinist definition of love is similar to the ontotheological definition of bilateral mutual relatedness, only now it is unilaterally imposed. In the Calvinist version of divine love, God unilaterally imposes mutual relatedness which also “makes “requitedness” analytic to and implicit in the concept.” God’s love must issue forth in “reciprocal relationship” (i.e., must be requited) by virtue of its predetermination by God. His love is not only decisive – “I will love you” – but effectual – “You will love me in return.” But this is of course an empty, false, meaningless “reciprocity” or “requitedness.” For reasons probably having to do with sovereignty, in Calvinist thought the unfailing establishment of “relationship” is essential for God. But then what Vanhoozer said we needed to avoid is back in play. Love is the relationship. Only it is not love in the true sense of the word, that is, love as we all know it needs to be – reciprocal, not causally determined, that is, not imposed by the will of God. So “love” according to Calvinism is inconsistent with what Vanhoozer has been arguing here about ontotheological definitions of love. Recall that he states, “If love is the relationship, then there could be no such thing as unrequited love. To “requite” is to make appropriate return.” But it seems that love is the relationship in a theistic determinism in that the relation of love is predetermined to be and therefore is to be directly equated with the relationship. The only problem is that it is not the kind of love the Bible speaks of or we experience, that is, the kind that can be requited or unrequited by the one being loved. In other words, if “requitedness” is not a necessary ingredient in love, if “to make appropriate return” is not an essential element in a love relation, then such a relationship fits the bill of Reformed deterministic “love.” Yet if these characteristics are essential to what it is to love, then they are eliminated by a theistic determinism where there is no conditionality or ability of contrary choice which is essential to the meaning of “requited” and unrequited.” In contrast to Calvinist “love,” biblically speaking, God’s love may be requited or go unrequited by the sinner themselves, but this is not what Vanhoozer’s theology allows. If God’s love is “requited” or “unrequited” it is because God determined that it be so. God has a love/hate relation with himself through human persons.
Therefore, Vanhoozer’s Reformed theology is also incoherent with his “classical” definition of love as,
“…the giving of ourselves – in thought, word, and deed – for the good and well being of another. On this view, neither reciprocity nor suffering are constitutive elements of love…The God of the gospel loves, even when there is no immediate return.” (RT, 173)
This is true. But can Vanhoozer say “the God of the gospel loves, even when there is no return at all.” First, how can there be a return or no return when whether a person loves God or doesn’t love God is something predetermined by God himself? There will be “no return” of love from those who are not predestined to love God (i.e., the non-elect). There will be a return of love from those predestined to love God (i.e., the elect). Therefore, when Vanhoozer says, “The God of the gospel loves, even when there is no immediate return,” is he really telling us that God loves the non-elect, that is, the people God himself predetermined that they spend eternity in hell? That’s nonsense. On the other side of things, God does not love anyone but his elect who will certainly return his love as he has determined they do. It is just that they might not do so “immediately.”
But what kind of love is all this “love?” It is not love as we understand it from Scripture or experience it in life. So, I submit to you that on Calvinism it cannot be said that God loves in the manner of “the giving of [himself] – in thought, word, and deed – for the good and well being of another” because the “love” being spoken about is for only certain individuals whom God has chosen to “love” and whose response of “love” for God is caused by God who predetermined they would respond in that way towards him. This is what Vanhoozer calls “love.” I do not see how predetermined thoughts, desires, emotions, and devotion to God can be called “love,” either from God or towards God, when it is God alone who irresistibly and effectually causes these thoughts, desires, emotions, and devotion to himself.
The point is, therefore, that Vanhoozer cannot speak about God’s love, along with many other topics, in a way that is completely consistent with his Calvinism. Another way to put this is that Calvinism lacks explanatory power and explanatory scope when it comes to all that needs to be explained from the biblical text. This lack is a sign of an impoverished theology. It is a sign of the misinterpretation of the text. This incoherence, this inability to speak of the love of God coherently from within the context of his Calvinist theology, tells us that Calvinism is not a biblical theology.
In addition, if “neither reciprocity nor suffering are constitutive elements of love,” certainly the assurance of God’s love for us is a constitutive element of love. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God…because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn. 4:7-11). It is precisely this assurance of God’s love for us that Calvinism cannot provide. As such, it lacks the theological and epistemological basis of the ethical imperative to either love God or “love one another.”
According to Vanhoozer “the giving of ourselves” is a constitutive element in love and he points out that God loves in this way “for the good and well being of another.” If Vanhoozer wants to say God loves us in this manner thereby effecting reciprocity in the elect for the purpose of eternal life and non-reciprocity in the non-elect (for he intentionally predestined them to that condition) for the purpose of eternal damnation, this is empty talk about God’s love as “for the good and well being of another.” Here, again, is disingenuous, inaccurate Calvinist-speak. “Another” must refer to the elect, but Vanhoozer doesn’t make that clear. By being ambiguous he does not have to expound on the corollary that God certainly does not seek “the good and well-being” of those he predestined to hell. He therefore does not love them.
The Reformed Calvinist theology cannot logical or morally support the ethical imperative to love one another. As such it is a flawed theology. For if we are to love one another, and especially our enemies, despite the fact that our love is unrequited, by the same logic God loves each of us. According to Romans 5:8 and 10, God “demonstrates” his love for us “while we were still sinners” and we were reconciled to God “while we were enemies.” God leaves the return response to us. Vanhoozer is correct but inconsistent. The presence of reciprocal relationship is not the determiner of the essence or presence of God’s love. But neither does God’s love have to determine the response of reciprocity as in unconditional election and an effectual call. But we should ask what place mutuality does have in the divine loving. We should ask why God’s love seeks to enter into relations of mutuality if mutuality is not an indispensable element in the nature of love? Mutuality may not be the essence of love but it certainly is the goal of love. If as Vanhoozer has described it, “love aims at generating a loving response,” then that response must be free, that is, not determined. But on Calvinism, such a response must, by definition, be determined.
Furthermore, in a kind of inverted kenotic-perichoretic relationality which completely eliminates the meaningful idea of reciprocity, Calvinist theology has God even determining the response of non-reciprocity! The elect will love God for God has determined it to be. The non-elect cannot love God for God has determined it to be. Such a response is not unrequited love – it is impossible love – and that due to God himself. Requited and unrequited are rendered meaningless. God does not love the non-elect. But by what definition does he “love” the limited elect predestined to love him? God’s “speech-act” in the command to “love the Lord thy God” is incoherent for the non-elect. God’s “speech-act” in the gospel as “good news” is incoherent for the non-elect. There is no “good news” for the non-elect. On this question of the nature of divine love Vanhoozer’s Reformed Calvinism certainly provides stiff competition for the incoherence Vanhoozer identified in the kenotic-perichoretic relational theologies.
Vanhoozer writes,
“God is always, everywhere, and at all times fully himself. His being love – communicative action oriented to communion – is fully realized in the immanent Trinity before the economic Trinity actualizes it in history.” (RT, 462)
Note the definition of God’s love here – “communicative action oriented to communion.” If we take God’s working in the world as revelatory of how we are to understand God’s love, then according to Vanhoozer’s theology God’s work has him unconditionally electing some to eternal life and others to eternal death. This is how we are to understand the result of God’s work. God dichotomizes the human race into two classes –the elect and non-elect. Therefore, Vanhoozer is going to have to coherently explain how it is that God’s “communicative action is oriented to communion” for some and is the opposite for others while his essential being is love and he “is always, everywhere, and at all times fully himself.” For the non-elect, God’s “love” is a “communicative action” that is not oriented to “communion.” This surely is incoherent with the character of God as a God who is love. This is no love at all. Thus, God does not love a multitude of his creatures. Indeed, as far as we can tell, by creating them for the very purpose of predestining them to eternal separation from him, he shows that he hates them.
Furthermore, in that Vanhoozer claims this bi-polar “love” is rooted in “the immanent Trinity,” his understanding of God’s love has troubling theo-ontological implications. Is this arbitrary love inherent in the triune being of God himself? How so? Can one person of the trinity choose to reject or “reprobate” another person of the trinity? It is unthinkable! What then is God really like!? The Reformed perspective is incoherent with what we humans know and understand love to be.
Of course, we should be cognizant of the influence of “human phenomenology (and projection)” upon our understanding of God’s love, but we also should consider the observation of William MacDonald when he writes,
“Both man and God have common ground of being, inasmuch as man – unlike the animals – was given a spirit that “imaged” God. To think of God as spirit is to view him as personal, that is, as a self, and in this case as one corresponding on a colossal scale to man’s personal selfhood. In saying this, we are not thereby constructing God in man’s image, but merely consenting to the biblical revelation that teaches the eternal nature of God’s Spirit and the derived character of man’s spirit, fashioned in God’s image.”[1]
If this is at all true, we should beware of any conceptions of God’s love that require us to abandon what we know and understand love to be. A serious epistemological problem inherent in the Reformed Calvinist doctrines is that they just don’t stretch our understanding of God’s love, grace and goodness to new biblical heights, but rather make null and void our human perception and experience of these attributes and ask us to accept the arbitrary, reversed understandings of Calvinism. They just don’t present a true biblical mystery which is beyond our comprehension, they call for reversal of what we do comprehend from what is revealed. Is this a sign of erroneous interpretive conclusions? C. S. Lewis, in speaking about God’s goodness, makes this point about giving ourselves license to think and talk about God in arbitrary ways by claiming that as God his ways are higher than our ways, and his thought higher than our thoughts. (Is. 55:9) What Lewis says here about God’s goodness is applicable to the Calvinist’s thinking and speaking about God’s love. He states,
“…if God’s moral judgment differs from ours so that our “black” may be His “white,” we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say “God is good,” while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say “God is we know not what.” And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying him. If He is not (in our sense) “good” we shall obey, if at all, only through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity – when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing – may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil worship.”
“Beyond all doubt, His idea of “goodness” differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards…This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent – a call which would be meaningless if God’s standard were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practice. He appeals to our existing moral judgment – ‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57)[2]
As this is applicable to the issue of God’s goodness and our moral judgment so it is with God’s love. Surely some of what we know and experience of love is appropriate for understanding God’s love, not because we are attempting to remake him in our image, but because we are created in his. We are reflecting that which he is in himself and gave to us by creating us in his likeness. Are there people that God does not love through his refusal to grant them salvation in Christ by predestinating them to eternal wrath? How do we know this cannot be the case? Because God’s love may be more than what we know of love, but it is not less. The Calvinist’s claim that God loves the non-elect is nonsense.
Vanhoozer, speaking about the patience of God, goes on to apply whatever God is ontologically to “everyone” of his “recalcitrant human creatures.” He writes,
“It is because God’s love is fully actual and in act that it is long-suffering (i.e., steadfast, able to endure)….Divine long-suffering means that God endures his relationship with recalcitrant human creatures by being fully himself everywhere and at all times to everyone.” (RT, 463)
Note, Vanhoozer says that who and what God is in his full being, he is “everywhere and at all times to everyone.” Would we not have to conclude therefore that whatever it is in God that causes him to be patient and loving to one sinner would cause him to be patient and loving to another sinner, and so on and so forth until it encompasses all sinners? Why would God love one sinner and not another? Rather, shouldn’t we conclude that ontologically God is impartial based upon the immutability of his very being? What is it in God that would cause him to be loving to one person and “anti-loving” to another? What does this mean for biblical interpretation and divine ontology when the Bible makes it perfectly clear that “God is love?” (1 Jn. 4:8)
Vanhoozer’s Reformed theology has thrown our knowledge of God as love into the depths of incoherence. Given the arbitrary action of God in predestination and unconditional election we cannot know what God is truly like, any analogy with human love has been rendered meaningless and the concept of immutability is rendered contentless. God is immutable in his arbitrariness. If the Bible makes it clear that “God is love” and he is “fully himself everywhere and at all times to everyone” and Calvinist theology maintains that God has predestined a multitude of persons to eternal damnation, having created them for that very purpose, then this is really only to say that “God is we know not what.”
In contrast, the simple children’s song we sang in our Sunday school days provides a wealth of sound theology in a single stanza. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…” This phrase provides a succinct epistemological challenge to Calvinist soteriology. It teaches that Jesus loves me personally as an individual, that I can know this with assurance, and that this knowledge and its assurance is a primary purpose of the biblical revelation. It also reflects back upon the centrality of Jesus as the object of faith and the sufficient revelation of God’s salvific will for every person.
We ask Vanhoozer this one question. How is he assured that God loves him, whereby that same assurance cannot be had for every other person? If, Vanhoozer answers that every other person can know and be assured of that same love of God for them, he negates his doctrine of an “effectual call,” burying it in insurmountable incoherence.[3]
By all means let us interpret God’s love “by the specific contours of God’s triune being as enacted in the history of Jesus Christ.” (RT, 171) But what does Jesus teach us about God’s love? We need only to point out John 3:16 where we are clearly told that Jesus is God’s expression of love to the whole world. Paul also makes it clear that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” and that God is “making his appeal – “on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God…we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” (2 Cor. 5:19-6:1)
William G. MacDonald writes about the relation between God’s love and God’s grace.
“The personal understanding of grace is exemplified preeminently in the incarnate Lord…there is no single salvific word, other than a proper name, that sums up the New Testament so well as “grace.” It is used in such a way that it is distinguishable from love. Love can be one-directional and unrequited even as agape. Grace in the New Testament means love given and getting through to its object by being received. Specifically, it means love’s giving oneself to one who welcomes the giver as “gift.” God’s grace, then, is God’s giving us himself in Jesus Christ (objectively), and (subjectively) it is the Holy Spirit received as the Spirit of Jesus Christ. This conception of grace does not set up a polarity between love and grace. On the contrary, there is a continuity between them in that grace is the fulfillment of love. “God is [as to his nature] love,” and God is, in the expression of his love to believers-receivers, “the God of all grace” (1 Pet. 5:10). As the presence of God’s love in man, the Spirit is “the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). Jesus himself incarnated the grace of God in an immeasurable pleroma (John 1:14, 16), so that in the programmatic sense it can be said that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17).
Whatever secrets God may have kept to himself under the administration of Moses and the law (Deut. 29:29), the new administration of grace is one of open disclosure of God’s love for mankind and of his will to relate to man on the basis of grace: “For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men” (Titus 2:11). God has revealed his whole heart; he loves man – all men, everywhere, all nations, everyone! God the Savior “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4), “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9), and he made it possible to “have mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:32). Indeed, “the mystery of his will (Eph. 1:9) concerning “the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7) “he has made know to us” (Eph. 1:9)
Jesus…expressed God’s gracious will to everyone who wanted, that is “willed” to follow God’s gracious plan (John 7:17). Moreover, he was candid as to whom God’s grace would be hidden and unavailing, viz., to the self-righteous, the stingy rich, the unforgiving, and the self-satisfied. These groups of people exclude themselves from God, not vice versa.
The will of God is this: that where sin reigns grace will reign instead. The will of God for man, therefore, is grace. His will is gracious, but grace is not another name for will, much less irresistible will. Grace, having personal dimensions of comity, flows from God’s whole personality to man’s whole personality without violating man’s right by creation to choose his destiny.”[4]
Vanhoozer does acknowledge the contribution of “openness” theology to provide what theologies of causality cannot, but says,
“What classical and open theists need to acknowledge is the means by which God is bringing about his loving purpose. God’s love is best viewed neither in terms of causality nor in terms of mutuality but rather in terms of communication and self-communication.”[5]
The main issue here is whether what Vanhoozer claims about God being “communicative,” is really coherent with or substantially changes the effects upon the divine/human “relationship” given his Calvinist theistic determinism. Does a “God-in-communicative-act” theology really alleviate the problems generated by Calvinism’s determinism? How so? As much as we may rightly disagree with elements of “openness” theology that project ideas of the “mutuality” of God and man in a reciprocal ‘sovereign cooperation,’ and rightly reject panentheism’s blurring of distinctions between Creator and his creation, the point these theologies raise is that the Calvinist teaching that God decreed “whatsoever comes to pass” is biblically and phenomenologically unsustainable.[6] As soon as one steps into theodeterminism, other effects upon how God relates to human persons are inevitable and cannot be avoided without generating logical, moral, epistemological, and biblical incoherence. The Reformed Calvinist’s eternal decree is exhaustive and therefore includes the predetermination of all the attitudes, thoughts, words, and deeds and eternal destinies of every one that has or will ever exist. Therefore, new ways of defining human freedom are required to fit this comprehensively fixed reality of the God/man “relation;” this unyielding deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty. New enquires into how God relates to man in an effectual manner should be brought to the touchstone of Scripture. Vanhoozer’s emphasis on the “communicative” manner in which God relates to his human creatures is welcome. But the point is that if theistic determinism were a legitimate interpretation of Scripture we would expect to avoid the web of incoherencies that it creates. Scripture affirms God’s sovereign determinations and we cannot completely avoid genuine mystery, but if our interpretation is to be biblically accurate we would not expect the smorgasbord of inconsistencies served up by Calvinism. We would expect a harmony within the whole theological spectrum, rational and moral coherence, and consistency with practical experience. But we find the opposite occurring. The incoherence only compounds with every attempt to fit a theistic determinism into the biblical, moral, and phenomenological spheres. A seismic paradigm shift occurs given the proposition that God’s sovereignty requires a comprehensive, eternal divine decree rather than an interactive ruling and reigning. A seismic soteriological shift occurs given the doctrines of unconditional election and a supplemental effectual call rather than the “good news” of salvation for every sinner which is appropriated by faith.
It is therefore not hard to see that this theistic determinism is completely inadequate for explaining what is pervasive throughout the Bible – that the love of God includes a non-deterministic, ‘genuine interaction’ and ‘genuine dialogue’ with his human creatures made in his image. The Bible presents the reality of relationship between persons as contingent, conditional, potential, and possible. What makes the divine relation with man more than mutual is God’s sovereignty defined as his ability to rule and reign in wisdom, power, and love to accomplish his plans and purposes. What makes the divine relation with man more than mutual is God’s sovereign accomplishment of a loving, gracious salvation. This is different than kenotic-perichoretic relational “mutuality,” but it is not absent a biblical mutuality that should not be swallowed up in “the efficacy of God’s authorial action.” (RT, 493) That is to put Calvinism above Scripture. In his freedom God has determined to be in relationship to human persons with a freedom of their own. God rules and reigns in the service of planning and purposing to demonstrate his love for us “in Christ.” This is the expansive, eternal divine purpose. Its breadth, depth, and salvific implications Paul attempted to communicate in his Ephesian epistle. In this uniting of all things “in him, things in heaven and things on earth” God and his grace are glorified (Eph, 1:9-10). If we are to heed Vanhoozer’s admonition to gain our understanding of God’s being from his “communicative acts” in history and not make him out to be simply a larger version of ourselves, recasting him in our own image, then we take the following christological principle to be indicative of what it means for God to love us and for us to love God. I’ll let William G. MacDonald add theological clarity here. He writes,
“The doctrine of the deity of Christ will not let us think of “God” as being expressed elsewhere than in Jesus as to his corporeality. Scripture teaches that he is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). We are only, then, paraphrasing scripture when we say that man has slapped and punched God in the mortal face, that man has spit upon the deity – and that Jesus did not spit back! It is heartbreaking to hold that scene even momentarily in mental view. But it was true. God is like that. He can be hurt by his creatures, and we must conclude from biblical history as well as all history up to the present that we are not speaking of an isolated modus operandi of God in the first century. God has always been secure in himself, yet relationally vulnerable.
This relational vulnerability, this personal openness to frustration – to use the theological term – this passibility of God over against his creation is the enormous cost he is willing to bear that his grace may be freely offered and freely received. God’s grace, to use a tautology, is no more and no less resistible than God himself. To treat God’s grace as if it were irresistible will asserting itself robs grace of all its glory. The glory of “predestination” is it Christocentricity. Grace is glorious as God’s supreme expression of himself in man precisely because it is uncompelled. It is as magnificent and tender as Jesus was in his dealings with people. It is grounded in God’s love (“God so loved the world…”) and calls man to return God’s love (“My son, give me your heart”). Grounding grace in intransigent will and hidden decrees would caricature God as a monolithic monster, would make grace faceless as law (but see 2 Cor. 4:6), and would exchange the openness of the future under the living God for fatalism. What is even worse, as the most elementary logic would demand, we would have to insist that God alone was culpable for having opened the polluted watergate of sin in the world. But biblical revelation says: “…sin came into the world through one man…” (Rom. 5:12).
Culpability in God would be lethal for theology. Vulnerability in God, on the other hand, is not offensive to a true theology. God’s vulnerability is not grounded in finitude but in the personal shape and perfection of God’s being. It is his glory to reveal himself under the conditions of vulnerability. If we deny this, then we have no grounds upon which to accept the fact of the incarnation. In a sense Jesus may have suffered as much or more when the rich and legally righteous young ruler came to him as he suffered in Pilate’s hall. Jesus “loved” (agapao – Mark 10:21) that upright leader of men who retreated from him and went away despondently. I wonder if Jesus may have mused: “Alas, we put him on the enemies list by eternal decree; I must bring my emotions into line with divine will.” Never! His love was not a masked hate; that would have been out of character for Jesus. His love was real and the tragedy of that man’s momentous decision is matched in pathos by the Lord’s own vulnerability on that occasion.”[7]
As much as Vanhoozer may object to the idea of God being described as “vulnerable,” surely MacDonald’s essential point about love and grace as grounded in freedom instead of “intransigent will and hidden decrees” is biblically accurate. Vulnerability in God is offensive to Vanhoozer’s theology precisely because of his deterministic understanding of sovereignty. Such a view requires, first and foremost, a monolithic, controlling agent that predetermines all things lest he be perceived as weak and powerless, and we conclude that the world has spun out of his control. This is Vanhoozer’s theological center from which he processes all other biblical data despite its incoherent logical, moral, epistemic, and theological ramifications. It seems that Vanhoozer has not explored the full biblical import of God as a truly “communicative agent” quite thoroughly enough. His deterministic definition of sovereignty holds absolute sway. A sovereignty that includes vulnerability need not be marked by powerlessness, negotiation, mutual Creator/creature experience, absolute subjection to human creatures nor an inability to unfailingly accomplish divine plans and purposes. But it seems to me that if God is truly communicative neither can he be a God of absolute determinism. “God-in-communicative-act” simply reveals God’s choice to be engaged at a personal level with his human creation without predetermining their thoughts and actions towards each other and their response to him. Vanhoozer needs a more biblically informed concept of “communicative,” not only as “effective” but also as “affective.” God’s sovereignty includes God’s choice to demonstrate his power through vulnerability, strength through weakness, conquering through serving, the accomplishment of his purposes by incorporating the free decisions of his human creatures. A sovereignty of historical and salvific predestination certainly accomplishes divine plans and purposes, but it struggles to coherently incorporate the full biblical testimony to Jesus as the personal God incarnate in relationship with his human creatures both in his actions and teachings.
Furthermore, in my estimation, given all the evidence to be considered, Vanhoozer has not convincingly avoided what MacDonald calls “culpability in God.” In fact, due to Vanhoozer’s doctrine of an effectual call which presupposes unconditional election and an eternal decree resulting in theistic determinism, he actually creates this “culpability in God.” We should not fail to note that MacDonald is forced to make this determination about the Reformed Calvinist position upon the grounds of rational coherence. MacDonald concludes that given the Reformed Calvinist doctrines “the most elementary logic would demand that God alone was culpable for having opened the polluted watergate of sin in the world.” This is an example of the grounds upon which the non-Calvinist objects to the validity of the Reformed Calvinist doctrines. He objects to then on the grounds of their logical and moral incoherence. This is something the Calvinist seems to be able to disregard as essential to a biblical hermeneutic and determining valid interpretations. The point is that until we concur upon the identification and presence of rational incoherence in textual interpretations or a theological position and determine whether rational coherence is essential for a proper biblical hermeneutic, there can be no real theological unity between the Calvinist and non-Calvinist and hence any consensus as to the biblical truth on these matters.
Vanhoozer continues,
“From the vantage point of my communicative theism, God is transcendent not as an impersonal cause…but rather as a properly communicative agent whose actions are efficacious in a way that is entirely appropriate to persons. To be sure, some postmoderns view language as a means for manipulating people, but this use of language goes against its divine “design plan,” which is to be the means for communicative rather than instrumental action. What God brings about in communicative action is understanding, as well as its precondition, faith.”[8]
God is a “transcendent” God “whose actions are efficacious.” Although we know Vanhoozer affirms the ‘effectual call,” to say God’s “actions are efficacious” needs more clarity. What is the depth and breadth of God’s “efficacious” actions? What “efficacious” divine actions are “entirely appropriate to persons?” What makes them “entirely appropriate to persons?” Is it their “communicative” nature? What does God communicate? Alternative? Ultimatums? Commands?
Is there ever an instance that human persons act efficaciously of their own self, producing results in the world that God has not acted efficaciously to produce? If Vanhoozer means to speak about a God “whose actions are efficacious” he must define the scope and depth of those actions lest he confirm a theistic determinism. We know at least this much from this statement, Vanhoozer holds that it is God who brings about faith. Sounds like Calvinism because it is Calvinism. So God is an agent whose actions are efficacious. And the effectual nature of God’s actions are entirely appropriate to persons because he uses language to communicate with people. This communication brings about understanding and faith which is the precondition for understanding.
Again, this sounds like Calvinism because it is Calvinism. The difference according to Vanhoozer is that actions are not instrumental with respect to people but entirely appropriate to persons because God uses language. But let’s be clear. It is God using language to get people to do what he wants them to do. This “communication” via language is efficacious. But how is language, in and of itself, efficacious? Simply because God speaks it? How are the words “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24, ESV) efficacious? Sometimes words don’t have the effect they are spoken to produce – even the words of God. But Vanhoozer tells us that God’s words are efficacious (I guess when he wants them to be?) But how then is this not instrumental action? Regardless of the use of language, behind the language is a “compelling force” or “spirit” that causes the person to think and do what God wants them to. It is still instrumental action because it completely takes over the person. The do God’s will. The use of language does nothing to lessen the determinative nature and goal of the event.
We logically conclude from this talk about faith and understanding that God has his elect in which he effects salvation. Vanhoozer is a soteriological determinist. Therefore, God is communicative in bringing about the division of his human creatures into two classes. One class he “loves” and desires to have “communion” with (i.e., the elect), while to all others he “communicates,” or refuses to communicate, depending on how you look at it, that there is no saving love or hope for them.
Vanhoozer would see the account of the raising of Lazarus, for instance, as a “communicative act” designed to unfailingly bring about “understanding, as well as its precondition, faith.” But does the passage lead us to conclude that Jesus is unfailingly bringing about faith in a chosen few? Does this fully account for what the text records regarding the dynamic between Jesus and those present and the words he speaks here? For Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (Jn. 11:25, 26) When Jesus says, “whoever believes…” and “everyone who lives and believes…” was he simply referring to a limited elect in whom he would unfailing work the “precondition of faith?” How is that coherent with the plain sense of the universality of the words “whoever” and “everyone?” Furthermore, certainly Jesus’ actions are purposeful to a certain end. He delayed his going to Bethany so that Lazarus would die and so that he could raise him from the dead, which was an example of a sovereign act of God. Certainly, he communicates to Martha a challenge to the end that she might believe, but is there anything to indicate that her belief was predetermined by God? When Jesus asks her “Do you believe this?” the plain sense is that it was Martha herself who had to believe. What Jesus was about to do was for the purpose “that you (plural, all of them) may believe (11:15), but the passage nowhere indicates that their believing would be a result predetermined by God. In fact, the passage leads us in a very different direction. Jesus again says to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (11:40) Here we have a contingency that involves the person themselves in its realization one way or another – “if you believe.” Furthermore, the passage indicates that deterministic sovereignty is not theologically required for God to be glorified, for Jesus declares in the midst of the non-determined responses of belief and unbelief that “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (11:4) Therefore, in contrast to this dynamic of God’s glory and non-determined faith response to who Jesus is, the passage is only weighed down in incoherence by the intrusion of a salvific determinism.
Vanhoozer believes faith as a precondition for understanding, is brought about by God. He does not tell us where this is found in Scripture. I do not see it at all. It too is a presupposition based upon the Reformed Calvinist doctrines of total inability and unconditional election. I believe MacDonald provides a more biblical perspective than Vanhoozer on the nature of faith and how God works salvation by his Word and the Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel. He writes,
“When God and man meet in the proclamation of the gospel on the plains of decision, both the Word and the Spirit come into focus at God’s end of the field and sin and spirit at man’s end. God’s messenger unsheathes the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. In short, by that word man is slain, and by the Spirit he is created anew. God’s call to him is a summons to repentance (Acts 17:30), but on the other hand, it is an invitation to receive grace (John 3:16; Rev. 22:17). As Creator God rightfully commands man to confess his infidelity in sin. As Savior God graciously appeals to man to look to him and be saved. The former is judgment; the latter is grace…The initiative belongs exclusively to God. God calls man by “the word of his grace” (Acts 14:3)…His repentance and faith is entirely shaped, then, by the word on which it is based. But he does his own repenting before God and believing. In response to faith – trusting commitment of God – he receives the Spirit as the guarantee of abiding grace. The whole experience may be depicted thus with man’s response surrounded by God’s Word and Spirit:
[Word (repentance, faith) Spirit]
This coming of the Spirit in regeneration is what is really new in the “new” covenant made in Christ’s blood…God cannot – and to say the same thing – will not regenerate a heart that will not admit him. God respects the sovereignty-within-limitations with which he endowed man at creation…In the Old Testament faith preceded justification. In the New Testament faith also precedes justification. Additionally, in the New Testament with justification comes regeneration – the “spirit of life” – and sanctification – “the spirit of holiness.” It does violence to the clear tenor of Scripture to reverse the order in the interest of a theological system and demand that regeneration precede faith rather than follow. That order makes faith virtually meaningless. It also would mean that justification and sanctification are separable states from regeneration. But if they all be considered simultaneous, then “faith” seems at best redundant. Does God even believe for us?
It is beautiful and true to say that salvation from sin is all of God. But it is untrue to deny the necessity for man to respond in personal faith to God, or to say that because man is “dead in trespasses and sins” that he cannot respond in faith, or in any way – absolutely. Therefore it is said:
Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. (Eph. 5:14)
One without God sleeps in the death of his sins, but when God’s call awakens him, he can respond in faith, or he can resist the Spirit and go back to sleep.
Man, even in his sins and rebellion against God, is constantly putting his faith somewhere. It is his nature to be a believer. Not the possibility of faith, but the object of his faith, then becomes the important consideration. Believing permits the Holy Spirit to work and grace to be received.”[9]
This understanding better accounts for the whole biblical witness to the God/man relationship and the nature of salvation with less incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction than the Reformed Calvinist view. Therefore, the Reformed Calvinist view is unbiblical.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 74-75.
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 37, 38.
[3] The other Reformed soteriological doctrines of unconditional election and limited atonement also suffer the same fate.
[4] William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 76-80.
[5] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 91.
[6] Interestingly enough, James Daane argues that the Reformed scholastic divine decree that is eternal and exhaustive, issuing forth from God’s very essence, causes an unbiblical Creator/creation blurring of its own. See James Daane, The Freedom of God: A Study of Election and Pulpit, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973).
[7] William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 92-93.
[8] Ibid. 91.
[9] William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 84-87.
The Truth of the Gospel 