The essential issue that plagues theistic determinism is not whether God is “communicative” or “non-communicative” in his ordaining of “whatsoever comes to pass.” The fundamental problem is the absolute enactment of God’s will alone in all persons and in all things. That is the essential problem in theistic determinism. Vanhoozer’s solution to this problem is to stress “God-in-communicative-act” employing “speech-act” theory (i.e., locution, illocution and perlocution). He speaks about the Spirit’s “advenience” and “supervenience” on the Word along with the “analogy of divine authorship,” etc. He does claim that these ideas are not the final answers to his problem but sees them as moving the discussion forward. According to Vanhoozer, that God deals with human persons in these ways lends coherence to God also enacting his will irresistibly or effectually upon all persons with respect their eternal destiny, let alone in all things (i.e., what Vanhoozer means by sovereignty, that is, “control” (FT, 10, 11)). God’s enacting of his will in reference to salvation is what Calvinists describe as the “effectual call.” When God calls his elect ones to salvation, that call is effectual, that is, it causes what it is meant to do. How this divine call works as effectual is what Vanhoozer is trying to understand. Again, he seeks the answer in “God-in-communicative-act.” But what is the nature and definition of “communicative” here? What is required, by definition, for a relationship to be “communicative?” Can it be “determined” or take place “effectually” solely according to the will of only one party involved in the “communication?” Need “communication” be “determined” or “effectual,” that is, one way, since one of the parties involved is God? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, I take it that “communicative” (i.e., “communication”) means not merely “to impart” (as information, knowledge or as in Calvinism’s effectual call, a change of status) but to “impart to another as a partaker.” In this sense it means to “hold intercourse or converse” and “to exchange thought or information.” Moreover, “in the usual current sense,” to be “communicative” means “ready to communicate information, etc.; free in conversation, open, talkative.” Add to this the sense of “communing” and “communion” which mean “sharing,” “mutual participation” and “fellowship,” and Vanhoozer’s thesis fails because it can only amount to a monological act in which the will and mind of God is bestowed onto the will and mind of a person. My point is that Vanhoozer’s use of the “communicative” paradigm and “speech-act theory,” etc., is counter to the idea of a “call” being effectual in the sense Vanhoozer as a Calvinist must have it mean, that is, as determinative of God’s will being performed in the life of the person called. As I see it, the meanings of “communicative,” to “communicate,” or be in “communion” are all antithetical to the universal divine causal determinism of which the effectual call is just a part.
Although it is not scriptural that God predetermines all things and alters our wills by controlling our desires, we can appreciate the sentiment of having God do his absolute will in our lives even if he does so coercively or instrumentally, that is, effectually or deterministically as in Calvinism, as long as we could be assured that God has good intentions and plans for us. Would that God should alter or control my will in everything for my own good! What a blessed state of affairs that would be! But that sentiment rests upon my assurance that God is indeed good, at least in some fashion that I perceive goodness to be, and that he has good in store for me personally and individually. Yet even though God controlling people’s wills is unbiblical, it is essential to Calvinism. Therefore, given its doctrines of unconditional election and the effectual call Vanhoozer’s Reformed Calvinist theology cannot provide these assurances. The assurance that God is good in his nature and the assurance that he desires that each individual be saved, are lacking in Calvinism. For many, the irresistible and unalterable plan and purpose of God is an eternal destiny in hell. As such Vanhoozer’s theology is presumptuous and one-sided. He speaks about the absolute “effect” of God’s will from the presumptuous point of view that God is kindly disposed towards him and all others who believe that they are among the elect although their election remains an unknown. All the time these people presume their election, the frightening alternative that they may actually be among the non-elect lingers in the background. According to Vanhoozer’s theology God may not be kindly disposed towards many of us – perhaps Vanhoozer, you, or I. Again, although we can somewhat appreciate the idea of God completely commandeering our lives if he intends us good and not evil, we do not think this properly represents the nature of the divine/human relationship. Even though as divine, the relationship retains the quality of God as Sovereign over men, it is also a relationship of God as Father who does not seek to dictate the thoughts and actions of his children but seeks to mature them, which involves both the Creator God’s constraints and the Father’s commands which are only rationally and morally coherent concepts given libertarian free will, that is, within the possibility of disobedience and individually chosen eternal destiny. The nature of such Creator/creature and Father/child relationship is one of dependent freedom. Of course, imperfect perfectionist parents who control their children’s lives in every respect make a mess of them. But to say that since God is the perfect parent, therefore he can control all our lives perfectly still does not account for the biblical data nor the dark side of Vanhoozer’s Calvinist theology. There is a view that better accounts for the whole scope of the biblical data – God’s sovereignty defined as his freedom to create human creatures with genuine libertarian freedom while retaining his active, providential ruling and reigning over the world to bring all persons to their chosen ends and the rest of creation to his predetermined consummation.
Therefore, what can Vanhoozer possibly mean by “communicative” in his deterministic context? And what about the implications here for the gospel? Can Vanhoozer credibly argue that God can enact his absolute will upon all persons in all things “communicatively” and maintain the integrity of the gospel message? Isn’t the biblical witness to God’s “communication” of the “gospel” to individual “persons or unbelief inherently contradictory with an irresistible predetermination of their eternal destiny” and who can “respond” in faith? The content of the gospel as the message to the hearer of the accomplishment of their salvation in Christ, and its call to the sinner to believe, that is, respond, rules out theistic determinism. Does an “effectual call” imply an unconditional election which in turn implies an eternal decree that ordains “whatsoever comes to pass?” Does the claim that the effectual call is “communicative” solve the problems generated by the fact that the “effectual call” is effectual? Furthermore, does God’s “communication” result in good for some and evil for others? Therefore, what is the content of the “communication?”
Why is determinism biblically unsustainable? Is it unsustainable simply because it is “impersonal” rather than “personal” or is it also destructive of other biblical doctrines, principles, and propositions, especially the gospel message? Can theological determinism be “personal” in any meaningful, or perhaps complete sense of the word? How will we determine what is “meaningful” and “complete” and what is or is not in our interpretation of the texts and the theological constructs derived from those interpretations? We do this by adopting a sound hermeneutic that includes rational and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction. These are essential for determining the validity of a proposed interpretation of a biblical text.
I submit that simply to state that God is “communicative” as a remedy for the logical, moral, biblical, and epistemic problems generated by the “effectual call” is not very convincing because it does not address the various other doctrinal problems such a proposition creates. For the Calvinist, it is not only a question of how God carries out his universal causal deterministic plan that matters, but whether this “effectual call” coheres with the full scope of biblical witness to the God/man relation and its more fundamental theological truths. We can discern this only upon the basis of the logical, moral, and epistemological effects of such a proposition in relation to other biblical doctrinal truths (i.e., this is the meaning of interpreting in context). For instance, Scripture depicts God as conquering evil and all those who oppose his rule and reign, especially at the end of world affairs. It is logically incoherent to maintain that God therefore predetermined and therefore caused the very evil he sets out in the end to conquer. Furthermore, it is morally incoherent that God speaks his word of hope, forgiveness, and eternal life to sinners which he has predetermined not to save, that is, never to grant the “effectual call” that causes the person to desire to “respond” according to God’s will so that they may be saved. Is it biblically incoherent to claim that God is “love, life and light” or that God is “communicative” when it is also proposed that certain persons were created by him for the ultimate purpose of receiving his wrath and spending an eternity experiencing eternal hate, death, and darkness in hell?
It takes little reflection upon both the biblical texts and practical reality to sense that this Calvinist theological perspective is biblically, logically, morally and epistemologically problematic. Declaring God “communicative” does not necessarily provide for the logical, moral, epistemic, and biblical coherence needed for a credible theology that is fully biblically informed. In fact, a fundamental problem with Calvinist interpretation is its disregard of context, which ultimately is a disregard for the incoherence their interpretations create with the immediate and broader canonical context. The problems in Reformed Calvinist thought run deeper than simply whether God is “communicative” in bringing his elect to glory. The deeper problem is whether there is an elect as Calvinists understand “the elect.”
And again, Vanhoozer seems intent upon presenting a one-sided view of his Reformed God’s deterministic activity. The “dark side of Calvinism” needs to be left unspoken lest the glaring inconsistencies be brought to light. That is, that God is also “communicative” in realizing the damnation of the non-elect. The proposition is perplexing. A frustration experienced throughout the reading of Vanhoozer’s texts is the sense that he fails to address the full implications of his “effectual call.” He fails to address several crucial biblical questions and he speaks only about the destiny of the “faithful communicant” or the privileged elect.
Because of these logical, moral, epistemological, and biblical inconsistencies generated by Calvinism, we can see that a more basic interpretive concern surfaces in reading Reformed Calvinist theology than just the “communicative” nature of God’s activity. It is the matter of whether rational coherence is acknowledged as an indispensable factor for determining sound biblical interpretations. For most Calvinists this matter is simply ignored, while further attempts are made by thoughtful Calvinists to provide rationally and morally coherent explanations for their interpretive inconsistencies. Nevertheless, the full consideration of what constitutes rational thought and moral intuition and the admission that these are indispensable in determining a valid interpretation from an invalid one, is at the heart of the Calvinist/non-Calvinist debates. It is a hermeneutical matter. It is the hermeneutical divide. That is, Calvinists do not adequately consider logical inference, the need for rational and moral consistency, and strong plausibility as indicative of sound interpretations. In contrast, non-Calvinists do. In addition, Calvinists proceed to construct their theology on over-simplified interpretations of certain key texts, and as such are notorious for ignoring the immediate and broader canonical context. When they do include these contexts, they usually ignore the incoherencies, inconsistencies and contradictions their Calvinist interpretations of their keys texts cause with the rest of Scripture, or they do what Vanhoozer is attempting here, to find some kind of rapprochement between his Calvinist deterministic interpretations and the non-determinism in the scriptures they cannot avoid.
So, I contend that Calvinists do not consider the proper roles logical, moral, and epistemic coherence and theological consistency play in a sound hermeneutic, but choose to explain the problem their determinism creates with free will through syllogistic correctness, “linguistic and logical legerdemain” [1] or simply by dismissing the need for rational coherence by fleeing to “mystery” or claims of “apparent contradiction,” “human incomprehensibility” or that “the Bible teaches both.”
For instance, regarding syllogistic argument, Dr. Norman Geisler uses this format in Chosen But Free, [2] which is the title of his book on this controversy. In my paper “Chosen But Free: Norman Geisler’s Search for Coherence” I compare Geisler’s “strong Calvinist” position on God’s sovereignty clearly communicated in the first chapter with his argument in chapters two and three. There he employs the concept of foreknowledge to speak of things being “determined” but uses this “determination” of foreknowledge in a sense that does not accurately reflect or incorporate the “determinism” of God’s sovereignty he laid out in chapter one. He does this so he can maintain that there is such a thing as genuine human freedom while all things are “determined.” He recognizes that the “strong Calvinist” position on sovereignty clearly negates human free will. The problem is that he holds to this view while unsuccessfully trying to circumvent it by the “determinism” of foreknowledge that allows for human freedom. He therefore considers himself a “moderate Calvinist.” I argue that Geisler’s foreknowledge argument is unconvincing and unsuccessful in relation to his definition of God’s sovereignty which is the “strong Calvinist” view of an absolute theistic determinism. In effect he is equivocating on the word “determinism.” In the end he does not successfully show us how we can be Chosen But Free.
Throughout this website I have argued that the proposition that God irresistibly determines one’s will while claiming that a person is still acting “freely” is not only biblically unsustainable but unbiblical precisely because it is a logical contradiction. I have maintained that it is God’s prerogative to act determinately, but only after carefully discerning from the biblical context when, why, and how he does so. Scripture seems to affirm that God is free to grant libertarian free will to his human creatures, yet this human free will is not absolute. God’s sovereignty, defined not only as his providential care over this world, but also as his interventions in the world employing the full complement of his attributes, does, at times, determine people’s actions (at which point they are not free) and direct historical events. But the Calvinist’s universal divine causal determinism is incoherent with any degree or form of the libertarian human freedom testified to in Scripture. I have argued that moral responsibility, moral effort, and just judgment require us to believe that libertarian freedom is the kind of freedom God has bestowed upon man and incorporated into the divine/human relationship. As such, this biblical libertarian freedom is incompatible with an absolute theistic determinism, even if “communicative.” In fact, I would argue on the OED definitions given above that an absolute theistic determinism is unbiblical precisely because God is a “communicative agent.” Vanhoozer’s “God-in-communicative-act” theology is the argument against his Reformed Calvinist concept of God’s deterministic sovereignty and its “effectual call.” The reality of communication implies substantial libertarian freedom and is incoherent with absolute determinism. Vanhoozer struggles with this fact throughout these two books (i.e., First Theology and Remythologizing Theology). When he tries to explain his view of deterministic sovereignty and the “effectual call” he continues to run up against what he knows of the scripture’s witness to genuine human libertarian freedom. Back and forth he goes, sliding into the need for human free will with his “communicative” theology and then sliding away from it to affirm effectuality, that is, his Calvinist theistic determinism. This is the most frustrating aspect of reading Vanhoozer. Vanhoozer has not convinced me that his doctrine of an effectual call can be understood to allow for and even be supportive of the type of participatory freedom that is required to value and respect human personhood. He fails to demonstrate the truth of his Calvinism, but neither will he accept what he knows is clear from Scripture about human freedom and therefore embrace one of the more coherent evangelical theologies on offer.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] See Vernon C. Grounds, “God’s Universal Salvific Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 25. Legerdemain – 1. slight of hand, 2. trickery; deception, 3. any artful trick. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/legerdemain.
[2] Norman L. Geisler, Chosen But Free (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1999).
The Truth of the Gospel 