The Westminster Confession of Faith, which is the standard of Reformed Calvinist doctrine, clearly states that,
“God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;”[1]
This of course includes every person’s eternal destiny. John Calvin gives expression to the Reformed doctrine of predestination when he states,
“We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death.” [2]
Vanhoozer writes,
“The challenge…is to respond to the criticisms that theism is unbiblical, blasphemous and unscientific. A secondary challenge is to account for the peculiar efficacy of God’s call.” (FT, 117, see also 96-98)
“If there is no God, then ultimately history has no meaning, for the course of events would no longer represent God’s communicative action but a meaningless, because impersonal, sequence of cause and effect.” (FT, 175)
Note first that the “theism” Vanhoozer is referring to is essentially classical Reformed Calvinist theology. Although any brand of theism may be attacked by unbelieving scholars, Vanhoozer seeks to defend classical Calvinism from the critique of more liberal theological quarters. But might certain points of Calvinism be “unbiblical” and even “blasphemous?” Also, can Calvinism rise much above an “impersonal sequence of cause and effect?” I must concur with the critics of Calvinism that theism in this form, with respect to certain points of Calvinist theology and soteriology, is at least unbiblical if not also “blasphemous.”
After decades of study, it is my conclusion that the logical, moral, epistemological, and theological problems that Calvinism generates are so substantial that they cannot be summarily dismissed as Calvinists are wont to do by “apparent contradiction,” “high mystery,” “incomprehensibility” or that “the Bible teaches both [theistic determinism and human freedom].” I believe that the Calvinist doctrines of God’s sovereignty, effectual call, and unconditional election are in direct contradiction to what Scripture teaches, not only about human freedom and responsibility, but the nature of God and salvation. Most importantly, the gospel is at stake in this controversy. I submit that Calvinism has insurmountable problems when rational coherence is taken as an indicator of proper interpretation. As discussed elsewhere, it certainly seems that these Calvinist doctrines fall into D. A. Carson’s category of an “immutable non-negotiable” which “is not open to correction but twists the data to cohere with the preconceived theory.” (See the essay “Vanhoozer Pt. 1.9 – “God-in-Communicative-Act” Theology” where about four paragraphs in I cite Grant Osborne quoting Carson on two types of preunderstanding.)
As best as I can discern Vanhoozer embraces this Calvinist system of theology, and as such he is concerned to defend it from criticisms that state it is unbiblical and amounts to an “impersonal, sequence of cause and effect.” (cf. FT, 97) As much as Vanhoozer rightly objects to metaphysical contemplations that impose “a system of categories on God without attending to God’s own self-communication” (RT, 8), the problem Vanhoozer has, as I see it, is that by virtue of subscribing to the doctrine of an “effectual call” he embraces the Calvinist theological presuppositions that inevitably lead to a deterministic depiction of the God/man relation that cannot be biblically sustained. Vanhoozer’s Calvinist system of theology fails to attend to God’s own self-communication in Scripture and especially in the living Word – Jesus Christ. Vanhoozer states,
“The concept of divine discourse gives rise to the central material (i.e., theological) problem of the present volume: what must we say about the being of God if God is a communicative agent? Specifically, what follows from God’s being from biblical passages that describe divine-human communicative interaction, particularly when human dialogical activity appears in some way to affect God? Must we ascribe not only action, but passion and compassion as well, to God and if so, what are the implications for the nature of God’s being? Contemporary theologians are torn on this issue: though there is a tendency to dismiss those who believe the Bible’s “literal” truth, there is also a move to salvage the language of “repenting” and “grieving” and “suffering” from the dustbin of discarded metaphors and rehabilitate them as privileged literal, even univocal, divine predicates,” (RT, 13)
Where does the Calvinist end up regarding “divine-human communicative interaction, particularly when human dialogical activity appears in some way to affect God?” What about divine passion and compassion? What of God repenting, grieving, and suffering? And we should add, what about God being a God of love? By embracing the Calvinist doctrine of an “effectual call” Vanhoozer believes that God predetermined, solely of his own will, each person’s eternal destiny. Being a particular call to certain people in contrast to a general call to all, this “effectual call” logically requires the doctrine of unconditional election which is based in an eternal divine decree that determines “whatsoever comes to pass.” Whatever occurs does so, in minutest detail, because God has willed it to be. God is accomplishing his absolute, unchangeable, predetermined, all-comprehensive will in the world, which includes his causation of everyone’s every thought, desire, action, decision, and eternal destiny. So, we can see Vanhoozer’s problem. How can this Calvinism be explained in a way that removes the monological, causal, coercive, unidirectional, and strategic nature of this theology?
I submit that this Calvinist expression of the God-world relation is unbiblical and Vanhoozer’s “communicative” “remythologizing” approach, although in some ways adds depth and dimension to a properly biblical theology, does little to free Calvinism from the shackles of its theistic determinism. The “effectual call” is not “God’s salvific relation to the world” which “takes the form of a communicative act: Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.” (FT, 123) Rather, Jesus Christ himself, “the Word of God made flesh” is “God’s salvific relation to the world.” Salvation comes through Jesus Christ. That relation is not interrupted by, nor does not depend upon, an “effectual call” to only those predestined to salvation. Rather, Jesus Christ, and him crucified, is “God’s salvific relation to the world!” Thus, the relation God has established in the “communicative act” found in “Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh” is a relationship established with the whole world, that is, each individual person. That relationship is made effectual to the sinner by the sinner’s response of faith in this “good news” of their salvation in Jesus. The “call” is the proclamation of “good news” that goes out to all that they are loved by God, that Jesus died for their sins, and therefore they can be saved. Such a “call,” as applicable to all, is therefore true and genuine. And as such, it is distinctively evangelical, which means “to bring glad tidings or good news.” It is a personal call from the personal God to believe in his Son and be saved. I. Howard Marshall writes,
“Predestinarian language safeguards the truth that in every case it is God who takes the initiative in salvation and calls men to him, and works in their hearts by his Spirit. Salvation is never the result of human merit, nor can anybody be saved without first being called by God. Men cannot in any sense save themselves. It must be declared quite emphatically that the non-Calvinist affirms this as heartily as the Calvinist and repudiates entirely the Pelagianism which is often (but wrongly) thought to be inherent in his position. When a person becomes a Christian, he cannot do anything else but own that it is all of grace – and even see that he has been affected by the prayers of other people. But whether we can go on to speak of an “effectual” calling of those who are saved is dubious. The terminology is not scriptural, and is due to an attempt to find the explanation why some respond to the call of God and others do not respond in the nature of the call itself. Rather, the effect of the call of God is to place man in a position where he can say “Yes” or “No” (which he could not do before God called him; till then he was in a continuous attitude of “No.”)”[3]
The call then is a single, univocal gospel (i.e., “good news”) call. There is no “effectual call” separate from the “general call” or gospel proclamation. The “effectual call” is fabricated to support the Calvinist’s a prori eternal deterministic decree (i.e., divine sovereignty). What also stems from this decree are the doctrines of “total inability” or “total depravity” (i.e., no one has the ability to choose to believe in Jesus), and unconditional election (i.e., salvation that depends on nothing other than God’s predestination of particular individuals to that salvation). Contrary to Calvinism, the “general call” becomes effectual, that is, has its intended effect, on the condition of a faith response by the hearer. This “good news” is the meaning and activity of God’s grace in the world and comes to all sinners for whom God has provided redemption “in Christ.” God’s grace comes to us in “Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh” and therefore the “good news” of salvation is found “in him” and is appropriated by faith. On this soteriology there is no need to counter the problem of the monological, causal, coercive, unidirectional, and strategic nature of God’s activity in salvation and an “effectual call” because there is no theistic determinism in that salvific activity. I. Howard Marshall is correct about the Calvinist doctrine of an “effectual call.” He observes that, “The terminology is not scriptural, and is due to an attempt to find the explanation why some respond to the call of God and others do not respond in the nature of the call itself. Rather, the effect of the call of God is to place man in a position where he can say “Yes” or “No…” It is that simple. The gospel is clear. It provides forgiveness, light, hope, and eternal life for all. But these are only applied to the sinner upon their response of faith in Jesus presented to them in the gospel message. It is the sinner who choses heaven or hell by their response of “Yes” or “No” to God’s offer of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Hence, there are important differences between these two theologies and soteriologies. As Christ is proclaimed in the gospel message, this “good news” is God’s “communicative act,” it is his “call,” spoken genuinely and truthfully to all sinners without distinction or exception as to its applicability. There is no separate “effectual call.” There is only the “evangelical call” (evangelical means “good news”) through which the offer of salvation remains Christ-centered and true for the hearer. Only “in Christ” does God’s “communicative act” remain a call of integrity and hope because it is applicable to all sinners. A mysterious eternal, unknowable decree of God which predestines some to salvation and others to damnation logically requires the concepts of “total inability,” an “unconditional election” and an “effectual call.” But these doctrines distort the biblical nature of faith, wresting it from its place of genuine human response and surrender. For God to first regenerate a person due to their “total inability” to believe, and then have to work faith in them renders faith redundant and void of meaning. It is an unbiblical depiction of the nature of faith which is always a response that comes from the person themselves. Furthermore, an “effectual” or “irresistible” call that is preached to the elect and non-elect alike has no ontological truth correspondence in reality for the non-elect and therefore no meaning for them. It is therefore deceptive and a mockery of them.
The implications for practical ministry are profound. Unconditional election and an effectual call simply cannot be preached in the service of biblical, Christian evangelism. They are antithetical to the gospel. There is no “good news” inherent is these doctrines, and any positive use Calvinists find for them in this form, upon closer examination only contradict other clear biblical teachings. They function in an antithetical manner to the biblical gospel defined as “good news” which is in accord with the character of God as both loving and just. The “good news” of the biblical gospel cannot be sincerely communicated to those whom God never intended to save. There is no “good news” to be proclaimed in the fact that God has unalterably predestined some people to salvation and all others to damnation with us ignorant of who is in either group. Faith is impossible for myriads of the non-elect because it is given by God only to the elect. Also, an “effectual call” presents us with a confusion. The univocal “gospel” message of “good news” produces two diametrically opposite results by virtue of the call itself and not by virtue of the response of the hearer. To both the elect and non-elect the content of the message is “good news.” It has a single content. But to the elect it is “effective” as “good news” and to the non-elect who are not chosen to be “effected” positively by the message, it is meaningless. It is still a message whose content is “good news,” but it does not apply as good news to the non-elect. The fact that we do not know who is elect and who is not elect has no bearing upon the truth value of the content of the message. If we believe that the definition of what is true lies in the correspondence of words and actions to the reality they represent, then a “good news” proclamation to the non-elect is a lie. For many, God speaks “good news,” but God does not act effectually by his Spirit in accord with his Word to make salvation a reality for them. Salvation will never be a reality for them. God never intended it to be so. If that is the case, then we have no logical or moral grounds upon which to say so. We would be denying the correspondence theory of truth and having God and the evangelist speaking a lie to the non-elect.
Therefore, Vanhoozer’s concerns spring from the problematic nature of this theology. He struggles with what so many Calvinist thinkers have tried to coherently and convincingly explain given their theological determinism, that is, how it is that God can be considered a personal God in genuine relation with human’s who are also persons as made in his image, and how any “good news” can be found or sincerely communicated to those God has not predestined to salvation. Given this theological determinism, how can it be coherently demonstrated that God is in genuine personal relation with human persons? How is it that God predetermines every man’s eternal destiny before they are even created, brings about his unconditional election by irresistible grace and an effectual call and the Calvinist still claim that the biblical depiction of God in Christ and the “speech-acts” of Jesus are coherent with human’s freely loving God in return and that God desires communion with his human creatures in a relation marked by light, life, and hope as well as truth, love, and justice? What meaning could “communicative” have in such a deterministic theological context? As do all theistic determinists, Vanhoozer has a formidable task before him.
It is important to note that this problematic, which is an extremely serious matter for Christianity, is absent given a different theological paradigm which holds to a more biblical understanding of the freedom of God. God is free to create the world as he sees fit, not as theologians require of him according to religious and philosophical speculations about what God must be like in order to be God.[4] Vanhoozer critiques classical theists like Aquinas for departing from redemptive history in their thinking about what God is like, and rightly so. But it is a problem he himself falls prey to in his non-negotiable acceptance of Calvin’s unbiblical speculations about God and salvation. Both he and Calvin would of course say they get their doctrines from Scripture. But I have raised the hermeneutical challenge of the incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction generated by their interpretations which are indications of misinterpretation. Therefore, in contrast to Calvinism, the God of the Bible is a God who is free to determine that he would involve himself with his human creation by virtue of creating genuinely free beings able to make genuinely free choices while his sovereignty is not threatened in the least. To struggle with precisely how God unfailingly brings to pass salvation in a limited number of people he has predestined to save and does not violate human freedom is an unnecessary concern given a more biblically accurate theological perspective regarding the sovereignty of God, the nature of faith, and a fuller, more biblically informed definition of election. In this sense, Vanhoozer’s whole enterprise becomes necessary due to the problematic nature of his theistic determinism. But it is also futile. He is seeking to justify critical logical, moral, and epistemological problems inherent in his theological perspective without dealing with these problems interpretively.
I contend that the Bible testifies to a God that has not predetermined the minutest details of all of history by an eternal decree precisely because, as Vanhoozer points out, he is not only active in his world, but communicatively active, and therefore in relation with his free and responsible (i.e., “response-able”) human persons. This situation does not forfeit God’s sovereignty. Indeed, his sovereignty shows itself to be a true sovereignty in this way. But let’s not forget that God is not mere sovereignty. As essential as this attribute is to the divine being, God is a host of other attributes that are brought to the table of world affairs and human relationships. The Bible speaks of a personal God who has good and loving intentions towards all his human creatures. It tells us about our creation and how our first parents had a direct, loving, and secure relationship with God; of how Adam and Eve’s fall into sin of their own willful disobedience and rebellion against God resulted in mankind’s hopeless and helpless condition separated them from their initial relationship with God. It tells of God’s gracious pursuit of sinful mankind and the provision of their salvation in Jesus Christ. It tells us how God accomplished the reconciliation of every individual person to himself through Christ’s death on the cross which is the demonstration of God’s abounding love, mercy, and grace to every sinner. This “good news” is now given to every person so that they may, simply by believing, receive the salvation God has provided for them and have eternal life. He is a God that is free to create and free to determine the laws and boundaries of his finite creatures for their good. He is free to act and intervene in human affairs in love and judgement via his own initiative and in genuine response to his substantially free creatures who also freely act and genuinely respond to him in return. No other account does justice to the full scope of the biblical data and avoids the logical, moral, and epistemological incoherence of Calvinism.
Vanhoozer, as a Calvinist, must “account for the peculiar efficacy of God’s call.” Here Vanhoozer is simply presupposing the biblical validity of the Calvinist soteriological doctrines which necessitate an “effectual call.” The need for an “efficacious” call is part and parcel of the Calvinist’s misinterpretations and misunderstandings of Scripture regarding the sovereignty of God, the nature of the free will of man, the true nature of faith, the biblical doctrines of election and predestination, and most importantly the gospel message. The Calvinist misinterprets the nature and degree of personal freedom inherent in mankind as made in God’s image. It distorts the biblical nature of faith which is a response of personal trust in and surrender to God that is a matter of a decision of the person themselves, and the nature of human freedom, which is not an absolute autonomous freedom from God. There is no “peculiar” efficacy to the call to faith in Christ. It is, and always remains, a gospel call, that is, a “good news” call. And I submit that there is no good news in the Calvinist soteriological doctrines. In contrast to the need for an “effectual call” there is spiritual power in the Word of the gospel. There is sober instruction and an ultimatum in the gospel message that calls for a response on the part of the sinner. But it is essentially “good news” for the sinner and therefore the nature of faith and the content of the gospel will not allow us to speak of an “effectual call.” Since God’s call is univocal it is also uni-intentional, that is, it is a single message with a sincere, true, distinct, and precise content of “good news” which applies in the same manner to all who hear it. Therefore, the message of the gospel, as unique and divine, is the message the Spirit bears witness to in the hearer as the message of truth about themselves as sinners and the way of their salvation. Only in this sense is the Word “effective.” Its “effect” is to impress upon the hearer the conviction of sin and the need for a faith response. Neither the Word nor the Spirit will effect that positive response in the hearer. What the Word and the Spirit do effect is salvation, but only upon a response of faith from the hearer. Certainly the Word and Spirit work towards a positive response from the sinner, but faith remains a condition for regeneration and salvation, but again, this happens within the context of hearing of the Word and given the work of the Spirit. “So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17, NIV) The triune God is active in the dynamics of the gospel proclamation and conversion. Inherent in the precise content of that Word is the activity of the Spirit and the element of human decision. A biblical understanding of the effective work of the Word and the Spirit needs to coherently incorporate the biblical testimony to the nature and necessity of faith as a condition for salvation. The content of the gospel requires such a viewpoint, for the gospel includes the call to faith for salvation. By virtue of it being a call, and by virtue of the content of that call, the only coherent conclusion is that it involves a decision that is the person’s own decision and therefore it involves the personal, human will, which is contrary to Calvinism’s claim that a prior regeneration is necessary for faith, which is also caused by God in the elect. By reversing the order of faith and then regeneration, the Calvinist renders incoherent the purpose and meaning of faith as a human decision by making the sinner “totally passive therein.” But this deterministic scheme does not hold up under even the slightest biblical scrutiny. Rather, it is the intention of God that through the work of the Spirit sinners themselves respond to the call. There is a single call with a single intent because it is a single message. It is not a single message with duplicitous intent, that is, having an intent that is incoherent with its content for the multitude of non-elect persons. Since the content of the message is “good news” to the hearers, and God cannot be disingenuous, it applies to all hearers, which tells us that there are no such persons as the reprobate as defined by Calvinists, that is, as as term for the non-elect. In that the message of “good news” is for sinners, and all persons are sinners, therefore the message is for all persons. Any unresponsiveness to the gospel amounts to willful rejection in unbelief on the part of the sinner, and as I. Howard Marshall has pointed out, the unresponsiveness is not to be sought for in the nature of the call itself.
The Calvinist’s “effectual call” makes God out to be arbitrary as to his choice of who is to receive regeneration and unjust in holding those who haven’t been chosen responsible for their unbelief. Rather, the biblical message is that the Spirit of God is at work in the Word of grace to the end that the sinner should humble himself and with a broken and contrite heart confess his sinful nature and particular sins and receive God’s gift of eternal life that is accessible “in Christ.” He is to agree with God and place his trust in Christ for salvation. People, as sinners, are to believe what they are hearing. Therefore, every sinner, precisely because the gospel is the message of salvation for sinners, can and must choose to respond in belief or choose to continued in unbelief.
The content of the message should form our theology about the scope, intent, and possibilities of that message. The content and biblical definition of the gospel as good news should inform our theological conclusions about its effects and the dynamics of acceptance and rejection. This is not the case with Calvinist soteriology, and it is not the case with Vanhoozer’s “effectual call.” There is a lack of coherence between the content and definition of the biblical gospel and the underlying soteriology. In Calvinism the former does not sufficiently inform the latter. The nature of an “effectual call” is an act of God whereby he unfailingly causes (whether communicatively or otherwise), a limited number of people predestined to salvation to be so effected by that “call” (by him changing their will or desires to do what God has predetermined), that God, for reasons unknown to us, saves them and them alone. This is incoherent with the content of the gospel message as it is defined in Scripture as “good news.” There is no “good news” for the non-elect hearer – our ignorance of who they are notwithstanding, i.e., the epistemological problem from the point of view of the hearer. But of equal importance, to rebut the Calvinist contention of ignorance of who the elect or non-elect are, is to understand that this is also an ontological issue. Their actual status as elect or non-elect dictates whether the evangelist or teacher is lying to the person in telling them that God’s salvation applies to them. But again, this is something that the Calvinist cannot know. And as far as the Calvinist attempts to be consistent here, he cannot assure the hearer of their salvation and therefore the gospel losses its clarity, applicability, assurance, and therefore its power to save. God cannot bless a different gospel (Gal. 1). As far as the Calvinist is inconsistent here by speaking the message of truly “good news” to all sinners, he is being disingenuous, not only to the non-elect hearers, but to his own soteriological doctrines which he keeps hidden until a more “convenient” time.
In contrast to Calvinist soteriology, the Bible teaches that the reason a sinner remains under condemnation and apart from salvation is not because he is not among the elect who will be called with “peculiar efficacy,” but “because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn. 3:18; 2 Thess. 2:10-12). And this is not simply a static, informative statement about the evidence of one’s predestination to eternal damnation. The verses are not merely informing us that it is the non-elect who do not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Rather, these verses present an ultimatum. They present the necessity for the sinner to believe. As such, this belief or unbelief is a person’s decision and is not due to an “effectual call” but the hearer’s response to the gospel call. That gospel call is right there in John 3:16. Sinners forfeit the salvation that could be theirs because of their willful rejection of the Savior and the message of their salvation (Jn. 5:34, 40; 8:24; Rom. 10:1-3, 21; 11:20, 23). The biblical descriptions of persons “believing” or “not believing” cannot be reduced to raw informative descriptions of the evidence of one’s election and “effectual calling.” This a priori Calvinism makes nonsense of these texts. These statements speak of a personal dynamic that involves the human will and cannot reasonably be taken to mean “since they were not elect, they are not found to be believing,” which is the required sense given a Calvinist theistic determinism. “Believing,” according to the scriptures, is something people themselves do as the only appropriate response to the “communicative speech act” of God which tells them the way out of their otherwise hopeless and helpless condition. It is this helplessness that makes faith the appropriate response to a God who has provided the way of salvation. Faith is not “a work.” Concerns about how God’s Word is going to be effective so that God will not be embarrassed by a lack of success in accomplishing his purposes along with fears about man robbing God of glory, fears about God’s grace in salvation being compromised by the synergism of human effort, or viewing faith as somehow meritorious or an attempt to maintain human autonomy if not subsumed within an unconditional election are all unbiblical extrapolations originating from the Calvinist’s theistic determinism. The Calvinist wrongly concludes that if faith is not part and parcel of an unconditional election then it must be a meritorious act on the part of the sinner. That is a serious misunderstanding of the nature of faith.
Calvinist soteriology is antithetical to the content of the gospel as “good news,” for the content of the message as practically proclaimed must include the assured love of God as centered in Christ, it must be personally and individually applicable if it is to be at all sincere, and it must require a personal, free response of faith from the hearer who is able to accept or reject this message. The biblical reason people are not saved is because of their unbelief. Salvation has been accomplished by God in Christ for every sinner. It is appropriated by the sinner through faith. This overwhelming biblical witness to the nature of faith is in direct conflict with the Calvinist soteriology that teaches that a limited number of persons who are unknown to us are predestined to salvation. Such a message can provide no assurance to the hearer of the “gospel” that God is kindly disposed towards them, loves them, and desires them to have eternal life.
An interesting result of this “gospel” failure of Calvinism is that with respect to the practical ministry of the majority Calvinists (if not all) they end up adopting and preaching a non-Calvinist gospel. They find that their fundamental theology and soteriological doctrines (i.e., TULIP doctrines) cannot be preached in the service of gospel evangelism. Their words are surely inconsistent with their underlying soteriology, that is, their “speech acts” are disingenuous, but that is because their Calvinism cannot be preached in the service of a truly evangelistic or “good news” gospel ministry. And as those who are supposed to represent God’s Word to their hearers, the incoherence between the content of their soteriological doctrines and their practical speech and ministry is unconscionable. It seems odd that Vanhoozer does not consider that there already exists a sound, biblical theological perspective that has historically viewed God in his sovereignty as a “communicative agent” whose Word is Jesus Christ, God incarnate. This sovereign work of God that accomplishes our salvation incorporates a personal, genuine human response of faith. The Bible portrays this dynamic as neither threatening God’s sovereignty nor diminishing his glory. Furthermore, the human element cannot be construed as a meritorious work on the part of man. This biblically balanced portrayal of the divine/human relationship seems to be what Vanhoozer is searching for. But he cannot find it. So far, his “speech-act” theory never brings a credible reconciliation of his deterministic sovereignty and human freedom to fruition. And I am confident it never will because his underlying theistic determinism will not allow for it. I am also confident that he will never achieve the reconciliation he is looking for in the tenets of linguistic theory, because that is not where the fundamental problem lies. Vanhoozer’s fundamental problem, like that of all Calvinists, is a logical and biblical one. It will require the need to rethink his textual interpretations within a hermeneutic that takes coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction on board as reliable determiners of valid interpretations from invalid ones. This is the hermeneutical divine between Calvinists and non-Calvinists. Until the Calvinist adopts coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction as essential hermeneutical principles, their position will remain for them a “mystery” and for all others nonsense. The canons of reason (i.e., the rules of logical thinking) and the principles of interpretation built upon them will not yield when it comes to reading and interpreting Scripture under the pious claim that “spiritual” things are not subject to them. Until the Calvinist adopts a hermeneutic of coherence the substantive criticisms of Calvinism will continue to still stand against it.
[1] G. I. Williamson, The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes (Phillipsburg: Puritan and Reformed Publishing Co., 1978.), 30.
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 926.
[3] I. Howard Marshall, “Predestination in the New Testament,” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 140.
[4] This emphasis of letting the biblical account of God’s speaking and acting inform our metaphysical and ontological thinking about God is a strong point of Vanhoozer’s remythologizing method. (RT, 181-200) Yet I do not think he has sufficiently carried it into practice by subjecting his own theology to Scripture for reformation. Rather, he subjects Scripture to his Reformed Calvinist theology.
The Truth of the Gospel 