As far as I can discern Vanhoozer’s defense of his Reformed Calvinism through “speech-act theory” does not gain much traction but only confuses the issue with explanations that are inconsistent and contradictory with his own Calvinist doctrinal beliefs. The ‘effectual call” is not the key to understanding God’s work in people and the world because it brings along with it the theistic determinism that disqualifies Calvinism as a biblically accurate theology. Vanhoozer has a problem explaining his position in a way that is consistent with his Calvinist doctrines. His explanations are often inconsistent and contradictory with total inability, unconditional election and an effectual call. The incoherencies in his position lead to duplicitous and disingenuous explanations. A problem that he, like all Calvinists, simply ignore. But these problems of inconsistency, incoherence, and contradiction are the tell-tale sign that the Calvinist has misinterpreted the scriptures. These problems are a sure indication that the Calvinist has adopted a faulty hermeneutic. It is a hermeneutic that allows for logical and moral inconsistency, incoherence, and contradictions in its interpretations and theology. Such interpretations prove themselves invalid. Vanhoozer therefore leaves a gaping hole of silence right where the true biblical position might lie. Rather than “openness” theologies or panentheism being the only options against the impersonal monological classical theism of Reformed Calvinism that Vanhoozer is trying to remedy through “speech-act theory,” why not more carefully consider that there is a non-Calvinist position that is not just “a part of a culturally informed hermeneutic” (FT, 88) or a “new development in the history of the concept of “perfect being” (89) and does not embrace the errors of the “new kenotic-perichoretic relational ontotheology”. Rather, it is a theology that is a biblical and coherent expression of how God genuinely communicates and interacts with humankind. He may find that something along the lines of traditional Arminian theology, divested of the Calvinist mischaracterizations and misconceptions associated with it, provides a more coherent reading of the biblical texts regarding both the sovereignty and love of God along with human freedom and responsibility. It is not just any reading of the Bible that will do here, but the reading that makes the most sense logically and morally with the whole scope of Scripture. It is the reading that springs from a hermeneutic that takes logical and moral coherence on board. Calvinism does not do this. In contrast, in a proper understanding of one of the non-Calvinist theologies on offer today which provide this necessary interpretive coherence, Vanhoozer would find that “correction of philosophical notions in the light of the biblical witness” (FT, 89) he is searching for.
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The Truth of the Gospel 