A major theme in the gospel of John is Jesus’ dialogues, teachings, debates, and stern confrontations (i.e., God’s “speech acts” or “communicative acts”) with the Jewish leaders who refuse to believe in him. The gospel account shows Jesus dealing with God’s elect people – the Jews. The unbelief of the historic nation of Israel is most definitely intertwined with the salvation-by-faith theme in John, but these Jews, although historically called the “elect people of God,” have nothing to do with what Calvinists mean by an “elect.” I will make the case in the next chapter on election that Paul and the New Testament writers employed the election of Israel and the associated election terminology to refer to New Testament believers. By doing so, the New Testament writers understood the continuity between what God did with Israel in taking them as his own chosen people and what God did in Christ and making those who believe in him his own “chosen” people – people who believe in the Chosen One (1 Pet. 2:4). Now, in the New Testament, those who believe in Jesus, the Chosen One, stand in a similar relationship to God as the Jew did in the Old Testament (1 Pet. 2:4-10). What better terminology to use to describe that new relationship of the believer to God and Jesus but that of God’s special relationship to Old Testament Israel (1 Pet. 2:4-10). But as it was in the Old Testament, so it is in the New Testament. This special relationship is not one of predestinarian salvation. It is one in which God is the Savior, the deliverance from Egyptian bondage leading to Jesus’ death on the cross, with faith always the response God desires from every individual to God’s saving work.
Therefore, Jesus’ speech and actions do not presuppose that God has a special and limited group of people in which he “creates” a reciprocal response of love for himself. Indeed, that was hardly the reality or message of God’s dealings with unruly, stubborn, and unfaithful Israel in the Old Testament. And as God did with Israel in the Old Testament, Jesus does with those he interacts with in the New Testament. Jesus places the responsibility for belief and unbelief (i.e., lack of love for God and Jesus), squarely on the persons themselves. Jesus does not speak as if God must “create,” in a deterministic or predestinarian sense, love for himself in people. Thus, passages like John 6:37 and 44 are incorrectly interpreted when used to support the Calvinist doctrines of unconditional election and effectual calling. Rather, they are words spoken by Jesus into an historical setting in which the Jews were claiming they know God, that is, have a special relationship to God as children of Abraham and followers of Moses, and yet were rejecting the one whom their God sent as their Savior and Messiah (i.e., “the Anointed One” or “the Chosen One.” cf. Jn. 4:20-26 ). Pointing out their incoherence and how far away from God they actually were in their relationship with him as their Father, Jesus tells them that those who really know the Father, those who truly from the heart worship God, will also come to him. God the Father, due to the unity of their relationship and salvific purpose, gives these people to Jesus (Jn. 6:37, 39). And they come to Jesus. Jesus’s emphasis here, as it is throughout John’s gospel, is to point out that if the claim of the Jews to have God as their God and know God as their Father were really true, then they would come to Jesus. “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me…” (Jn. 6:45, ESV) John 6, like many other of Jesus’ interactions with the Jewish leaders and people, is about the interrelationship between the Jew, his God and Father and Jesus as sent from that same God and Father. There is nothing here that supports the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. That has to be read into passages like John 6. Jesus says,
“You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.
“I do not accept glory from people, but I know you—that you have no love for God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and yet you don’t accept me. If someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, since you accept glory from one another but don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But if you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe my words?” (Jn. 5:39-46, CSB, Italics mine.)
A genuine believing response to God’s revelation regarding Jesus – whether by Moses or especially by Jesus himself – comes from the person themselves. There is no secret will of God at work behind the scenes effecting reciprocal love in a limited number of people chosen by God for salvation.
“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, Italics mine.)
This is not merely a descriptive statement about a person’s predestination or election, as if when Jesus says, “unless you believe” he really means “unless you have been predestined to salvation, the evidence of which is believing that I am he, you will die in your sins. So perhaps you have been predestined to salvation and will therefore believe. That’s great! But unless you have this evidence of believing that I am he you will die in your sins. That’s just the way it is.” But that is what the Calvinist must take this and other verses like it to mean, for they teach that faith is granted by God only to the elect. Believing is not something the sinner can do. Faith must be given to them on the basis of their being among the elect and being regenerated by God first. This is of course a distortion of this text. The plain reading has Jesus genuinely confronting the Jews with the necessity for them to believe, which presupposes that they can and should believe. The challenge to believe is possible, personal, and forthright. “Believe that I am he or die in your sins!”
Again, throughout John’s gospel Jesus points out the reasons why people, especially the Jewish leadership, do not believe (cf. Jn. 3, Jesus and Nicodemus). One main reason is that they do not truly know the Father, which is to say, they have no true relationship with the God they claim as their God. The implication is that as “the elect people of God” they certainly should know the Father and his way of salvation by faith in the Messiah he was to send them, that is, Jesus. But they have gone astray, like their ancestors, due to their pride in their exclusivity as the children of Abraham and the possessors and dedicated followers of the Law of Moses and circumcision. And, as in Nicodemus’ case, this void in their relation to the Father resulted in their failing to understand spiritual realities and the Spirit’s work. Their minds were on earthly, temporal matters. Indeed, if Vanhoozer is right, the “speech-acts” and “communicative acts” of both the Father and Jesus should have elicited a genuine effectual response, presumable of love for God, on Israel, – the very people of God – the people he chose and loves above all other nations. It would be incoherent with the meaning of these texts for the Calvinist to claim “Well, they were not among the individuals chosen for salvation and that is why they remained in unbelief.” Is “if anyone loves me” a reference by Jesus to those unconditionally elected to salvation according to Calvinism? I don’t think so. This would be to read Calvinist theology into the text. But that is what that phrase must mean on Calvinism. By the phrase, “if anyone loves me,” Jesus would have to have meant “if anyone loves me, that is, as the evidence that they have been unconditionally elected to salvation.” This would be a strange way to have to understand the text. And again, that is the way the Calvinist would ultimately have to read and understand that text. Moreover, does the phrase “the one who doesn’t love me” refer to those people God has not predestined to salvation? Again, that is what it must mean on Calvinism. All reciprocal love for God has to be unilaterally “created” and be” irresistible” and “effective,” that is, “inevitable.” These Calvinist subtexts are the required explanation for all the many accounts in Scripture that the responsibility for belief or unbelief lies with the person themselves. So, hermeneutically, the problem for the Calvinist is that the text itself gives no indication that their Calvinist subtexts (i.e., Calvinist theology and soteriology), is coherent with the text. This incoherence is a crucial hermeneutical issue and indicative of the invalidity of the interpretation of the text..
Once Jesus has come, and the “good news” of salvation is proclaimed, is the response to the gospel always caused by God – even if it is accomplished via communication? Even if God reveals his will in “communicative speech acts,” how does that mode of operation remove the causality inherent in the determinism of Calvinist theology and soteriology? Vanhoozer says “communication” is a means suitable to personal creatures. He accomplishes his desired response in persons by this means. But this is a means to what end? The end is the same – the divine determination of every thought, attitude, desire, and action of every person! And that is what makes his claims about “communication” being personal and avoiding causality null and void. Does God “create” a positive response to himself in the minds and hearts of people, or do people freely respond in love to God for his love and grace to them? Similarly, does God “create” a negative response to him in the minds and hearts of people (i.e., the non-elect), or do people freely respond negatively to God in unbelief and rejection of his love and grace to them in Jesus? I think the Bible is clear that in both cases it is the latter. And this interpretive incoherence and inconsistency caused by the Calvinist’s theistic determinism is its insurmountable problem.
I think it obvious from a fair reading of Scripture that “God’s love” is not “of such a nature that it unilaterally creates relationships that inevitably elicit a genuine response on the part of the beloved.” The Bible tells us that the message of God’s love goes out to all, which is to say all are loved by God. That is why he sent Jesus to die for us. The Bible makes this perfectly clear (John 3:14-18, 36; 1 John 2:2, 4:10,14: Rom. 5:8; 2 Cor. 5;14-15 and 18 – 6:1; 1 Tim. 2:3-6; Titus 2:11, et al.). The Bible also makes it clear that the person is responsible for their continued unbelief.
Therefore, Vanhoozer’s assertion that God “unilaterally” and “inevitably elicits” a “response” is not biblical teaching but the reading of his Calvinism into the biblical text. It certainly seems that Vanhoozer’s whole linguistic enterprise is a search for some justification for his a priori deterministic theology and that his theology is in search of a text. “Inevitably elicits…[a] response” just is the “effectual call” or “irresistible grace.” And the “relationship” that is created must be a “relationship” with those who have been “unconditionally elected” to that “relationship” and salvation. They, and they only, are the “beloved.” What about those for whom God’s love does not “inevitably elicit a genuine response?” Vanhoozer must say that they were not predestined to salvation – one of the Calvinist doctrines I have refuted on this website. Vanhoozer is referring to the elect when he talks about this “unilateral” “creating” of an “inevitable” “response” from “the beloved.” So, the “response” is predetermined for those who are predestined to salvation. Is that really a “response” from the person, that is, a “personal” response? I don’t see how. Hence. the charge against Calvinism as impersonal. Furthermore, he labels this “response” as “genuine.” But this description is gratuitous. It is begging the question. For what is at issue here is whether a “unilateral,” “inevitable,” “effectual,” and “irresistible” “elicitation” of a “response” is really a genuine response. Is this really the nature of God’s love in Scripture? What do you think? As I see it from what I know of God’s relationship to man and man’s relationship to God from Scripture, Vanhoozer’s statements are merely sophisticated ways of restating Calvinist causal determinism with all its partiality and exclusivity. As such Vanhoozer’s problems remain. It is as he has admitted, “Impersonal causal relations… have nothing to do with loving relations, for the latter are interpersonal.” (FT, 85) The question is whether Vanhoozer’s God in “communicative act” has done anything to establish a loving relation and remove the causality from his Calvinist doctrines. As far as I can tell it has not.
The Truth of the Gospel 