Vanhoozer states,
“What finally makes the call effectual is its content – the story of Jesus as ministered by the Spirit.” (RT, 374)
Now, even though it is the content of “the story of Jesus” that “finally makes the call effectual,” Vanhoozer states a few sentences later that,
“We may now return to our initial query: what power or causal agency makes the call effectual?” (RT, 374)
These statements are somewhat confusing. Given Vanhoozer’s doctrine of an “effectual call” in which only certain people experience the effect of “the call” while others do not, these statements seem to create a dichotomy between the content of the call – “the story of Jesus” – and the “power or causal agency” of the Spirit. But if the “story of Jesus” is always accompanied by the Spirit as the “power or causal agency” to minister the content of that story to the minds and hearts of the hearers, we no longer have an “effectual call” in the deterministic sense that Vanhoozer and Calvinists define it. When the “story of Jesus” is told, the Spirit is always ministering the content (i.e., “good news) of that story to all who hear it. We can see therefore that according to Vanhoozer’s doctrine of an “effectual call” that the phrase “as ministered by the Spirit” must refer to a ministry to only certain people who have been predestined by God to salvation. But what then of the content of the story of Jesus? Doesn’t the content have meaning, that is, doesn’t the message of the “good news” of salvation apply to all who hear? Recall Vanhoozer states, “What finally makes the call effectual is its content – the story of Jesus…” If this is true, how can the content be spoken to all but only apply to some and not others? Does God disingenuously speak a message of salvation to those he has no intention of saving? Yes, on Calvinism he does. This is because Vanhoozer has divorced the work of the Spirit from the content of the gospel with regard to the mass of humanity whom God predestined to eternal damnation. In other words, the content of the gospel, through which God calls, invites, commands, etc. all to come to Christ and be saved, is only accompanied by the Spirit in the elect hearer. For all others the content of the gospel – the story of Jesus – has no salvific application. Vanhoozer explains.
“The Spirit, I submit, has perlocutionary power: the capacity to bring about the appropriate communicative effects. Foremost among these perlocutionary effects, as we have seen, stands persuasion. Yet just as important as persuasion is another perlocutionary effect: understanding. Understanding is a necessary though not always sufficient condition for responding to a all: one must first recognize a warning as a warning before one can heed it, or a summons as a summons before one can answer it. What the Spirit ultimately enables is the hearer’s hearing and feeling the full force of what has been said. God’s call is effectual because the Spirit ministers a word that is true, good, and beautiful: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The effectual call is the Spirit’s ministering the word in such a way that hearers freely and willingly answer God by responding with faith.” (RT, 374)
First, we have here what seems to be the contradiction to what Vanhoozer has said elsewhere about regeneration preceding faith due to “total inability.” And yet here he speaks of the hearer “responding with faith.” Secondly, we have the list of words that are incoherent with his theistic determinism – “persuasion,” “warning,” “enables,” “responding,” “freely,” and “willingly.” This use of “freely” and “willingly” is disingenuous. It is the “freely” and “willingly” of the Calvinist compatibilism that defines these as the ability to do what one desire while maintaining it is God who determines those desires. Thirdly, we have a most egregious and disingenuous abuse of “the gospel of Jesus Christ” which he rightly describes as “true, good, and beautiful.” And yet, this “true, good, and beautiful” message is nothing of the sort in the lives of the myriad of “hearers” predestined to hell. So, returning to our main point, the content of the same “true, good, and beautiful” message has no such meaning or possibility for the reprobate.
Vanhoozer is stating that there has to be content to the Christian message and of course that content is “the story of Jesus.” And I would say that the content of this “story of Jesus” is also a call to salvation. It’s not just nice information about a man named Jesus until the Spirit works in those God has chosen to save. It is the story of God having come in the flesh to die for our sins, and through whom, therefore, we can have eternal life. Vanhoozer wants to explain how it is that this same story has an effect in one person and not another. On Calvinism, the answer is that one is among the elect and the other is not. But the mistake he makes is in dichotomizing the message from the Spirit. He says that the message may be heard, but it can be heard without the presence or “energy” of the Spirit, and that is why one person hears and responds while another person hears and does not respond. For Vanhoozer it is the Spirit that takes the gospel message and makes it effective in the hearer based on whether the hearer is chosen or predestined by God to salvation. So the Spirit is active for some hearers (i.e., the elect), but never for all other hearers. God does not want these people saved. Now this is not only incoherent with the content of the gospel message which is the “good news” that tells all hearers of God’s love and Christ’s death on their behalf to take away their sin, but the causal agency Vanhoozer has been attempting to avoid still hounds his position. The effect of “responding” inevitably follows in those who are elect. So the Spirit is sometimes at work in the gospel and at other times he is not, again, according to one’s salvific status as elect or not.
But I submit that the Spirit is always at work in and through the content of the gospel message to whoever hears it. The content demands both the presence of the Spirit and the universal nature of the gospel offer. The message is the same for all who hear. And as an invitation, offer, or command to repent and believe, hence, the hearer can respond. Whether this response is by the Spirit’s enabling, or the responsibility of the sinner who still bears the image of God and is an intellectually, morally, and spiritually responsible free agent, who, having been given the message’s content, is responsible to respond, is to make a distinction that cannot be made. Both are at work in the proclamation of the gospel. I contend that both the presence of the Spirit and the responsibility of the sinner are involved. Therefore, we cannot say that the Spirit works effectually. The sinner must decide as to whether he will accept Christ or reject him. That is the responsibility of the sinner. Again, the point is that Spirit does not effect salvation according to a doctrine of unconditional election. Rather, the Spirit accompanies the message and works accordingly as a personal agent within personal agents (i.e., sinners) to help, assist, and challenge the sinner to believe in Christ. Note that both the message and the Spirit have universal application and intent. God loves all sinners and desires that they be saved and therefore the Spirit of that same God loves all sinners and desires that they be saved. As God has worked salvation and offers it to all, the Spirit is at work in the message to press it home in the minds and hearts of all. But, as Vanhoozer has been trying to tell us, the Spirit does not force himself upon the sinner. He works in a manner suitable to personal creatures. But by being effectual Vanhoozer’s arguments about the work of the Holy Spirit having “the capacity to bring about the appropriate communicative effects” (RT, 372) remain unconvincing. In that the Spirit is effectual, and in this effectuality the essential elements of being a person, that is, being the sole author of our choices and with the ability of contrary choice, the individuated self with free will is lost despite all Vanhoozer’s talk of “persuasion,” “warning,” “enables,” “responding,” “freely,” and “willingly.” And the reason I say the effectuality of Vanhoozer’s call remains unconvincing is because all these concepts are biblical, but they are only coherent within a position of libertarian freedom, which is, therefore, the more biblical view. These concepts are incoherent with Vanhoozer’s theistic determinism of which an effectual call is integral. It is a deterministic view of the gospel call. All these biblical truths are cancelled by the deterministic effectuality of Vanhoozer’s Calvinist soteriology.
The Spirit accompanies that message for the purpose of bearing witness to its truth to the hearer and enabling the hearer to give a positive response to it. The fact that many do not respond positively is not a matter of the content of the message or the Spirit’s ministry (which on Calvinism would be for the elect only), it is a matter of the will of the hearer. The same story has an effect in one person and not another because of the person, not the message or lack of the Spirit’s ministry.
Now, if the Spirit ministers through the “story of Jesus,” why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit minister in the same way to all who hear this content of that story, especially if that story is telling them about how they can be saved? In other words, two sinners hear the same content, the same call to salvation, yet one is effected by the Spirit such that it will not fail to save them, but the other person is not so effected. Why is that? Well, according to Vanhoozer, it is because in back of all this is the divine predetermination as to whom the Spirit will effect and whom he will not. So, both sinners hear the same content, but the Spirit only works in one person and not the other. This is why I say that Calvinism dichotomizes the content of the gospel from the work of the Spirit. Therefore, the critical question is whether there is biblical warrant to claim that the Spirit can be disassociated from or indifferent to the content of “the story of Jesus” with respect to its hearing, that is, with respect to the hearer? Is the “story of Jesus,” that is, the “content” that “makes the call effectual,” ever without the “ministry of the Spirit” so as not to make it possible for the sinner to be saved? Is their biblical support for such an absence of the Spirit in the presentation of the gospel on the basis that only certain people are predestined to be saved? In addition, is it biblical to speak of the Spirit having to “advene” on the Word for that Word to have an effect? What meaning then does the content of the Word have for the non-elect hearer? Does the content of “the story of Jesus” mean anything at all to the non-elect? On Calvinist soteriology, it does not. But don’t people understand words – especially the message of their salvation? Of course they understand. (Rom. 10) They simply choose to ignore those words (Rom. 1:18-20; Acts 28:23-28). The phenomenon of unbelief is caused by the person, not by the workings of a universal divine causal determinism working by the Spirit in some and not others. (Jn. 3:18, 5:39-40, 8:24, 10:37-38, 12:48, 37, 20:27; Acts 7:39, 51, 13:40-41, 36; 2 Thess. 2:9-12; Heb. 3)
In addition, recall that Vanhoozer has been attempting to avoid monological causality in his explanation of a call that is surely effectual. But this effectual call is ultimately monological and causal, and I would argue impersonal. It is monological in that God makes the decision whom to save. It is causal in that the Spirit causes the effect in the elect. And it is impersonal because it disregards a myriad of persons. If the message and call were personal, it would be a message and call for all who are persons. That means it would be a message and call to all persons. And that would mean that God desires all persons to be saved contra Calvinism. Again, we are left wondering why it is that a personal God would reject persons made in his image, assigning them a place in hell for no apparent reason, while accepting other persons made in his image, assigning them a place in heaven, with there being no difference in the persons. All these persons are persons in God’s sight and all these persons are sinners in need of redemption. What is it within God’s nature or reasoning by which such distinctions with regard to the eternal destinies of these persons would be made? The Calvinist must answer that question.
So, our discussion raises some crucial questions. Can the Word of God be devoid of the Spirit? Does the Word of God, or gospel of “good news,” have meaning and the same meaning for all who hear it? And, if it has a single meaning and message, would it not speak of salvation as much for one sinner as it does for another? And if God desires the salvation of all individual persons (1 Tim. 2:3-6; Jn. 3:16), then wouldn’t the Spirit be at work in and through that gospel message? But on Calvinism, the Spirit is absent in the content of the Word for the non-elect. What Vanhoozer is maintaining is that the Word is essential for the realization of the salvation of the elect as ministered by the Spirit, but the Word in and of itself does not have the accompanying presence of the Spirit for the non-elect. Thus, the Spirit may or may not accompany the Word. Hence the Word is not a true word to the non-elect if it speaks of their salvation. The same Word of God can be spoken with the Spirit’s work or without it. Therefore, we must ask upon what basis does the Spirit attend the proclamation of the Word? Obviously, according to Calvinist soteriology, it is not on the basis of the content of the Word, but on the basis of one’s unconditional election. But this is to divest the Word of meaning and the Spirit’s presence. It is to dichotomize Word and Spirit. Behind all this, is the premundane decision of God as to who will be saved. But this is a “story of Jesus” or Christ deficient explanation that redirects one’s focus away from Christ (i.e., the content of the gospel message) to an unknown, arbitrary choice of God to save some and not others. On Calvinism the Spirit is only at work on the basis of a premundane decision of God to save certain people, not on the basis of the content of the Word that can be heard by all and thereby points every sinner to Christ for salvation while assuring us that it is God’s will for all to receive his salvation in Jesus. Such a redirection from the content of the gospel and the Spirit’s presence in its proclamation to an unconditional election, and the absence of the Spirit’s work in the non-elect, can only offer the prospect of “I hope God has predestined me to eternal life.” This is not the biblical definition of the hope of the gospel. (Col. 1:5, 23; Matt. 12:21, cf. Isa. 42:1-4)
The Spirit as present in and through the Word can be understood from a variety of texts. In the NIV translation of John 6:63 Jesus clearly states, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life.” In Jn. 3:34 we read, “For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.” In Matt. 12:22-32 to deny the Spirit’s activity through Jesus as the evidence of the kingdom of God among us, confusing Jesus’ work as something good with something evil, is to “blasphemy against the Spirit,” something which cannot be forgiven. That is, the Word, Jesus himself, is the essence of saving revelation and as such the Holy Spirit is always present in the activity and speech of that Word. To deny this is seen as a purposeful act rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and savior of the world. The point is that the Spirit is present in Jesus’ ministry. Therefore, we surmise that the Spirit is present in the gospel message about that Word. They are inseparable and work towards the same end, just as Jesus works in complete unity with the Father.
Granted, 1 Thess. 1:4, 5 is a very difficult text for the non-Calvinist. “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” Yet the context must be considered. Paul himself suggests that his labor could be “in vain” if they do not hold to their faith. There are those “who do not obey the gospel” and there are “those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” (See 1 Thess. 2:13, 16, 3:5, 8; 2 Thess. 1:8, 2:10-12) And we also must refer to Lk. 7:30 where the “Pharisees and lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him [John].” Perhaps we should understand 1 Thess. 1: 4, 5 as a statement of Paul’s recognition of God’s strategic plans or “choices” which need not be interpreted as exclusive but as his definite directing of the gospel and God’s purpose for these Thessalonians (cf. Acts 16:6). Also, faith as a condition of salvation is found throughout these letters.
Be that as it may, we still don’t know what Vanhoozer’s precise content and message of the gospel would be – what precisely is “the story of Jesus” when it is proclaimed. Will that story reflect the Calvinist’s soteriological doctrines? We need to know this because it would aid us in determining God’s intentions for any and all hearers of this “story of Jesus.” It would also aid us in determining the logical and moral consistency between Vanhoozer’s soteriological doctrines and his message as preached. Is Vanhoozer’s gospel message just his soteriological doctrines? Why? Why not? Perhaps, as I have argued above, that the content of the biblical message clearly indicates that there can be no such division in humanity into an elect and non-elect. I submit to you that the content of the message as “good news” will not allow for the Calvinist soteriological doctrines. (i.e., see the myriad of texts clearly stating the universal scope and intention of the gospel, the spread of the message to the Gentiles and all creation, etc.) This is why Vanhoozer is reticent to provide us with the actual content of his gospel message.
So, again, the knowledge of the precise content of the Word of God, “the story of Jesus,” or gospel message is so critical. What is Vanhoozer’s gospel message? What is “the story of Jesus?” If it his Calvinist soteriological doctrines, how would that be “good news?” And if it is not his Calvinist soteriological doctrines, why not? For those doctrines are the full and final explanation as to how and why a person becomes saved. How would they not be the “gospel” message for the Calvinist?
Perhaps the accumulation of these problems indicates that Vanhoozer has misunderstood the biblical doctrine of election. Perhaps election is something quite different and the reason for a person’s negative response to the Word lies not in whether the Spirit was never intended to make the Word “effective” in that person, but in the person’s rejection of the Word and resistance to the Spirit who is always at work through that Word. Perhaps it is the hearer who rejects the Word, not that he has not been “effectually called.” So we need to know the content of Vanhoozer’s gospel message to determine whether the Word spoken lays the responsibility of belief or unbelief upon the person and not upon an “effectual call.” That is, the Spirit may even be present in the speaking of the Word when there is a response of unbelief – the unbelief being the decision of the person themselves. But Vanhoozer has not revealed the content of his “good news” for us to determine if it is coherent with his tsoteriology.
If according to Vanhoozer “what finally makes the call effectual is its content,” which is to say the content is critical to the call’s effect in the hearer, why doesn’t Vanhoozer tell us what is the precise content of that call? My point is that he cannot with contradicting his own Calvinist soteriological doctrines. For he has locked himself up to a message of deterministic exclusivity that has no point of reference in time and space for the hearer so as to assure them that this message applies to them. That is not “good news.” If he is to be consistent with his doctrine of an “effectual call,” he must proclaim that God has predestined certain people to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation. Where’s the “good news” in that? Moreover, Vanhoozer cannot be assured that the content of the message will be accompanied by the efficacious work of the Spirit in any of those to whom he is speaking – even if it tells them “God loves you” and Jesus died for you” and “Believe in Jesus and be saved.” Therefore he should not speak a message that presents salvation as applicable to all who hear. He has an obligation to speak more precisely according to his Calvinist doctrines. But what happens to the gospel?
Vanhoozer goes on to write,
“The Spirit, I submit, has perlocutionary power: the capacity to bring about appropriate communicative effects. Foremost among these perlocutionary effects, as we have seen, stands persuasion. Yet just as important as persuasion is another perlocutionary effect: understanding. Understanding is a necessary though not always sufficient condition for responding to a call: one must first recognize a warning as a warning before one can heed it, or a summons as a summons before one can answer it. What the Spirit ultimately enables is the hearer’s hearing and feeling the full force of what has been said. God’s call is effectual because the Spirit ministers a word that is true, good, and beautiful: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The effectual call is the Spirit’s ministering the word in such a way that the hearers freely and willingly answer God by responding with faith.” (RT, 374-375)
Vanhoozer has dichotomized the content of the message from the intention, power and action of God in the Spirit’s activity for the individual hearer. The gospel is no longer a message for persons as sinners, it is a message for the elect as opposed to the non-elect. The Spirit effects salvation in certain individual’s because they are elect, that is, predestined by God to be saved. The content of the proclamation of the Word itself as a warning, summons, invitation, offer, etc. to which a positive response is possible for all who hear is not within Vanhoozer’s theological horizon. Despite Vanhoozer’s claims to the contrary, the Spirit does not work in and through the message itself, otherwise that message would have the same meaning, carry the same “energy” as accompanied by the same Spirit and have the same intention for all who hear. Given an “effectual call” the message simply implements in time God’s predetermination to divide humanity into two classes – elect and non-elect – a division established by an eternal decision of God that has fixed each individual’s eternal destiny. The content that is “good news” to one person is “not good news” to the other even though the words are the same. The Spirit that works in the message within one person does not work within another person. Hence it is not the message or the Spirit or the person that determines their eternal destiny but God himself. God dispatches the Word and Spirit to effectually call the elect and ultimately “consummate” their existence. But why would God’s single gospel or “good news” message intend two opposite effects? If the word is “true, good, and beautiful,” how is it these things to one person and not another? Calvinism creates gospel confusion.
Granted, the Spirit is at work in the proclamation of the gospel because it is a uniquely spiritual event. But what is the role of the Spirit? Is He to effect salvation in a limited elect or is He to testify to Jesus, enabling the sinner to respond in faith? So what can be told to the sinner about Jesus that has one effect in one person and no intended effect in another? What could possibly be the content of a message of “good news” that is consistent with an “effectual call” that makes that news “true, good and beautiful” for one sinner and not another? Ultimately “the story of Jesus” must reduce to the Calvinist soteriology behind an “effectual call.” The basis of an “effectual call” is an unconditional election and the eternal, absolute decree of God to ordain “whatsoever comes to pass.” For many Calvinists these doctrines are the essence of “the gospel.” Yet, most Calvinists do not preach the doctrines of unconditional election, limited atonement and an effectual call as the gospel message for they know that there is no assurance of salvation for the hearer consistent with a message of “good news” in those doctrines. What will ultimately have to be communicated is that God has to “effectually call” you in order for you to be saved. You have nothing to do with your eternal destiny. Whatever else the Calvinist preacher might proclaim in his gospel message about how God “loves us,” Jesus death on “our” behalf, etc., this is inconsistent with and negated by his underlying doctrine that God has predestined certain people to be saved and only those he will “effectually” call. There is nothing you can do to alter your eternal destiny or become one of those destined for an “effectual call,” otherwise as Vanhoozer put it, “Who, then, is dialogically determining whom?” (RT, 382) But this question contains a false premise. The whole deterministic premise is wrongheaded if God has given his human creatures the substantial freedom in relation to God to “dialogically determine” their actions and eternal destinies.
Is this the biblical message of the gospel? The person themselves, although a sinner, is hearing a message for sinners and thus as a creature with sufficient understanding recognizes a warning as a warning, a summons as a summons when they hear the content of the words of warning and summons. What the Spirit does is to impress this message upon the mind and spirit. It is a particularly spiritual happening, not that “the wind [Spirit] blows where it wishes” (Jn. 3:8) as an “effectual call” founded in predestination, but that “the wind [Spirit] blows where it wishes” apart from the demands and expectations of human religious devices, apart from works of “the flesh” which is “of no avail.” (Jn. 6:63) God’s salvation will not dictated by man or the schemes of religious men. The salvation God offers is a matter of being “born of the Spirit” as opposed to being born into the lineage of Abraham and resting in the grace given in the Law of Moses as one attempts to keep that Law as a special possession delineating who are the true “people of God.” It is the universal, eternal and spiritual nature of salvation “in Christ” that is contrasted to the Jewish limitation, exclusion, and presumption of forever being situated in this grace of God through the Law as the temporal and physical people of God. Jesus in John 3 is not teaching a different brand of exclusivity, a New Testament form of election defined as a premundane decision of God to save some and not others. The point of Jesus’ flesh/spirit contrast and the analogy of the wind is to dismantle the idea of Abrahamic salvific privilege with its exclusivity and affirm the universal applicability of salvation. What makes it “effective” is the response of faith to the message, “…that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:16) Of course there a special work of the Spirit that causes this message to have its final intended result – salvation – but it cannot be biblically maintained that this occurs apart from the response of faith as a condition the person themselves exercises. Paul makes this absolutely clear in Rom. 3-5. Faith or believing, is not the evidence of one’s predestination, but the evidence of a humble and contrite heart that is willing to receive salvation by the Spirit of God. God wants us to proclaim his saving work. We need to tell people how they can be saved from sin and God’s wrath. God’s love and grace to every sinner demonstrated “in Christ” is what makes salvation possible on the basis of a response of faith to that message. This is the content of the “good news.”
Vanhoozer’s treatment of the gospel is short on the content of the message as “good news,” it does not indicate to whom it applies and lacks the dynamic of a personal invitation or summons to come to Christ and be saved. Vanhoozer states,
“The gospel is the good news that the Author has become a human hero: Jesus Christ.” (RT, 356)
He also says,
“The gospel is the good news that the Author freely and lovingly consummates human heroes by entering into the story himself with both hands Son and Spirit.” (RT, 356-357)
This is a minimalist message that only offers a mysterious “effect” of the Spirit that occurs only in certain “heroes” causing them to sufficiently comprehend and respond to “the story of Jesus Christ.” Vanhoozer clearly states that,
“…the Spirit comes to the Word when and where God wills. The Spirit “advenes” on truth to make it efficacious.” (FT, 122)
First, can truth be non-efficacious as far as God is concerned, that is, does God speak truth without the intention, and indeed, actively determining that it not be applicable to or received by the hearer as the truth that it is? Such duplicity is inconceivable coming from God. If not, then gospel truth is applicable to all persons, which makes Calvinism false. Granted, there is a point at which God hardens hearts, but that is a hardening in the sin the person has chosen in light of the love and grace of God demonstrated in Christ. God does genuinely respond to the genuine human response of acceptance or rejection to his revelation.
The concept of an “effectual call” labors under the presupposition that those hearing the gospel cannot respond with faith upon hearing the Word. This is a deficiency in the understanding of the nature of faith based upon the doctrine of the total inability of man that I have addressed elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that when the gospel is accurately proclaimed, it is always affirmed by the Spirit’s working, who calls forth in accord with the content of the message, a response from the hearer. It is precisely because the message includes a call to respond by the Spirit’s working that the sinner can respond or refuse to respond. That is the nature of truth in speaking a message of “good news.” That is the nature of human response. The “effectual call” incorrectly presupposes that the Word does not include the call to faith as a genuine possibility for all who hear.
So we still wonder what the message would be that is consistent with the exclusive, limiting Calvinist “doctrines of grace” and why the Spirit would work efficaciously in one person and not another when they both have heard the same words of God spoken to them. Vanhoozer’s theology has no answer for these essential questions. He continues.
“Finally, it must be asked: Have I relied, in my exposition of the effectual call, on “a form not taken from the thing itself but from contemporary philosophies” (Barth’s worry about seventeenth-century theology)? No, for “the thing” itself” (the effectual call, God’s salvific relation to the world) takes the form of a communicative act: Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.” (FT, 123)
Vanhoozer certainly has relied in his exposition of an “effectual call” on “a form not taken from the thing itself.” His doctrine of an “effectual call” is taken from Calvinist deterministic theological presuppositions. If it was taken from “the thing itself” he would include the contingency, possibility, human freedom, and responsibility everywhere testified to in Scripture. It would also include the biblical testimony to the dynamic of faith. This dynamic is only touched upon in Vanhoozer’s discussion, and we understand why. On Calvinism a person can have nothing whatsoever to do with their salvation. Every person’s eternal destiny is unalterably preordained by God. As such, the “effectual call” is a theological concoction required by a deterministic sovereign decree ordaining “whatsoever comes to pass.” It is not found in Scripture. “The thing itself” – “Jesus, the Word of God made flesh” – is God’s revelation of his salvific will for all men and therefore the limitation and exclusion of sinners from that Word of truth by virtue of a doctrine of an “effectual call” can in no way enter into the “good news” of God’s grace to sinners. Vanhoozer’s Calvinist determinism forces him to seek an explanation as to why some are “effected” by the gospel and others are not in something other than the freedom of human willing and choosing. He must find his explanation somewhere other than in the sinner’s free response of faith or unbelief. So he finds it in an “effectual call.” Faith becomes ancillary. Faith must be granted by God to those he has already regenerated by his “effectual call” and “irresistible grace.” To frame the discussion about salvation in terms of an “effect” is to construct the whole enterprise upon the Calvinist’s deterministic presuppositions, not the biblical testimony. If “the Spirit comes to the Word when and where God wills,” then God’s Word speaks nothingness when the Spirit does not “advene” on it to make it efficacious. Thus the non-elect hear a message that holds no truth value for them. God speaks, but his Word means nothing to them. Can God speak something that has no existential meaning or effect? Does God not accompany his truth by his Spirit based upon the content of that truth? Can God’s word, the nature of which is always truth, not be truth for the non-elect? Can there be the Word of God without the Spirit of that same God present? Does God speak the Word of truth without intention that the truth apply to the “communicant” and be received? What then of the claim of communication? What then of the claim of the desire for “communion?” Vanhoozer has the problem of explaining the lack of effect of the message and the Spirit in many hearers. Contrary to Vanhoozer’s thesis, I submit that the Spirit is at work affirming the Word to the hearer whenever and wherever it is proclaimed. I have raised the question as to how the Word of God or “the story of Jesus” communicates the content of salvation to the hearer and yet that same Word of God has no intended salvific effect for a myriad of persons? How is it that the same God who speaks the Word of salvation has determined that his own Word should not have the saving effect in the non-elect that it to certain elect hearers? Vanhoozer’s “effectual call” is a distortion of the communicative act of God in Jesus Christ because whereas God’s communicative act in Christ is the demonstration of God’s universally inclusive love, the “effectual call” is a communication of the contrary. That is, the “effectual call” communicates God’s limited love along with an arbitrary, eternal exclusion of many from that love and salvation. That is the corollary of the “effectual call.” Whereas God’s communication in Christ is the “good news” of the assurance and hope of salvation to all sinners, the “effectual call” is a counter-gospel doctrinal scheme communicating salvific exclusivity and uncertainty. It reduces to communicating the unbiblical idea of “I hope God has chosen me.” Hence, the “effectual call” dichotomizes the Word and the Spirit.
The Truth of the Gospel 