Vanhoozer writes,
“Triune dialogical consummation is a matter of God’s acting not on persons but within and through them in such a way that, precisely by so acting, God brings them to their senses and makes them into the creatures they were always meant to be.” (RT, 370)
There are several problems with Vanhoozer’s statements here. First, what is the difference between acting on and acting within and through persons when the acting within and through retains the aspects of inevitability, effectuality, irresistibility, predetermination, unconditionality, etc? This is a distinction without a difference. Vanhoozer has artificially set up “acting on persons” (not being told what this constitutes), to contrast with acting within and through persons. We understand that this is supposed to relieve the problems of a God of “coercion” and “force” and justify God’s acting deterministically. We are supposed to accept that God can act in a determinate fashion with persons if he does so “communicatively.” This is the way that is appropriate for persons for God to enact his universal determinism. But is this convincing with respect to the problem of determinism itself? I don’t see it. Vanhoozer is unconvincing when he employs words such as “dialogical,” “converse” and “communicative” to describe God working his will unconditionally and irresistibly within and through persons such that the “person” is “converted” to unfailingly do what God has predetermined they will do. “Communication” may be God’s method, but a solid determinism is still in play. And the logical, moral, epistemic, and biblical incoherence this determinism generates is the fact of the matter that still needs to be addressed. Secondly, this statement is one-sided. This “divine converse” obviously does not bring about in a whole host of non-elect persons these “decisive changes in human beings” nor does it “consummate their nature as persons.” This “consummation” does not happen to all persons, even though they are persons too. Vanhoozer simply paints a rosy picture of what happens only to the elect. Vanhoozer is searching for an “apologetic” for the difficulties in his Calvinist theology without being willing to adjust his theology in light of all the evidence. He must only present one side lest he back himself into the corner of the incoherence of his theological determinism.[1] Thirdly, the claim that God brings only certain of his creatures “to their senses and makes them into what they were always meant to be” implies either that all non-elect persons were never “meant to be” that which God makes the elect to be, or God could care less that a multitude of persons never become what they were meant to be. So based upon Vanhoozer’s own statement, being left unqualified and theologically ambiguous, we would assume that God does not want the non-elect “to be the creatures they were always meant to be.” He wants them to remain something they presently are not. But aren’t the non-elect are persons too? Why then would God not determine that they too become what they were “always meant to be?” What were they “always meant to be?” Objects of God’s wrath? Why? This is quite perplexing. God also created the non-elect as persons to be something that God himself intentionally prevents them from becoming. According to Calvinism, God creates them and predetermines that they be something other than what they were meant to be. God creates them to be something they are not presently, yet he has no intention of “bringing them to their senses” so that he can make them “what they were meant to be.” Where is this dual theology found in Scripture? Where do the scriptures support the moral wherewithal to process why God would act in a way that is so contrary to what we know of God from those same scriptures along with our biblically informed moral intuitions, principles and practices? If we are created in his image, we would expect something of what we know of morality to coincide with God’s moral nature. We certainly would not expect a radical reversal and explain such by the fact we are talking about God whose ways are above and beyond our ways. This would only reduce to God is “we know not what.”[2] What difference can there be between one person and another person with respect to what “they were always meant to be”? If one human being is created in the image of God and another human being also created in the image of God, and each are fallen sinners in need of salvation, it is theologically sound reasoning to think that God’s salvific intention to all would be the same. But obviously, according to Vanhoozer some people were never “always meant to be” what others were “always meant to be.” Hence, it seems that some were “always meant” for salvation and others were “always meant” for damnation. Calvin certainly makes this clear when he writes,
“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.”[3]
The doctrine of an “effectual call” is rooted in this distinctively Reformed Calvinist theological presupposition about the meaning of predestination. If God intends good towards one person and not towards another, he realizes that intention in an “effectual call.” These doctrines introduce a distinction in the mind of God between persons and a division of humanity into two classes. But if what the non-elect “were always meant to be” by God’s good design is never granted to them because that same Creator-God does not will it, we certainly have a quite schizophrenic portrait of God’s nature. He determines some persons never to become what he himself meant them to be.
Is Vanhoozer’s “effectual call” ultimately any different than affirming The Westminster Confession of Faith, section III “Of God’s Eternal Decree” when it 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.” Or that,
“III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.
IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it can not be either increased or diminished.
V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his free grace and love alone, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.
VI. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.
VII. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.” [4]
All this theology is behind Vanhoozer’s “effectual call.” It is the rationale for the phenomenon of an “effectual calling.” The “effectual call” is inseparably linked to the prior doctrines of God’s eternal decree and predestination. The same problems that plague Reformed Calvinist soteriology also apply to Vanhoozer’s theology no matter how he tries to temper its harsh reality. Vanhoozer feels that the doctrine of the “effectual call” highlights how salvation can be predetermined without violating human personhood. He tries to center his discussion on the doctrine of the “effectual call,” highlighting God as a “communicative agent” so as to distance himself from the impersonal causality and the overwhelmingly despairing implications of Calvinist deterministic sovereignty and predestination. Note that God’s “grace,” “love” and the “Spirit’s working” are mentioned in the above doctrinal statements even though they present such a frightening prospect and portrayal of the God of grace and love and the arbitrary work of the Spirit. Surely these statements make it impossible to coherently and convincingly argue that God works in a way so as not to violate “human integrity,” or that “God wills to communicate and make himself known,” or that there is a genuine “dialogical interaction between God and humanity.” (RT, xvi)
Note that passages like Matt. 18:10-14, the parable of the lost sheep, present special challenges to Calvinists. The parable highlights the intensity of the concern Jesus has for every child (“little one”). They have angels who “always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” which serves to stress the superlative degree of love and care the Father has for them. And the parable states that even if one “sheep” goes astray, that one “sheep” is special enough to that “man” that he will leave all the others to find it. The final pronouncement is problematic for the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election and its corollary of predestination to eternal damnation. It clearly states that “So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (v. 14, “perish” is the same word found in Jn. 3:16) How is it then that according to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination it is the Father’s will that “some of these little ones should perish?” This Calvinist theological proposition is in clear contradiction with the text. And if the text is clear about the Father’s positive, loving will for each one of these “little ones,” the Calvinist needs to answer the question of how it is that an elect “little one” become a non-elect adult? Clearly, if God cherishes every child, he also cherishes every adult who once was one of those “little ones.” Election as understood in Calvinism is incoherent with a multitude of texts such as this. It is therefore incumbent upon us not to cavalierly dismiss this rational and moral incoherence but rather to determine its place in a proper hermeneutic. The validity of the interpretation of either this text or the predestinarian texts (as understood by Calvinist interpreters) has been called into question. Which interpretation is valid and which is not? And on what basis?
Therefore, I submit that Vanhoozer’s attempt to justify an unconditional election (i.e., predestination to salvation) and an “effectual call” by claiming that God works these in a “communicative” way does not resolve the more fundamental problem of his theology. Whatever the nature of God’s work of “communication,” we are continually pressed into the logical, moral, epistemic, and biblical problems inherent in this scheme of theology that all find their roots in and come back to its inevitable theistic determinism. No matter where we choose to “jump into” Calvinist soteriology – for Vanhoozer it is at the “effectual call” – and attempt to explain it in properly biblical relational terms, we end up inheriting the prior deterministic doctrinal presuppositions and the host of problems they present. “Effectual” implies God’s fixed predetermination of “what he willed to become of each man.”[5] Insurmountable logical, moral, epistemic, and biblical incoherence is inherent in Calvinist soteriology because it is built upon an absolute theistic determinism, and an absolute theistic determinism is not a relational theology of the type witnessed to in Scripture.
We see here the disconcerting and incoherent theological, logical, and moral effects of a theology that holds to a premundane determination by God to divide humanity into two classes – an elect and non-elect. We are left with a God that is not only unfathomable, which is to be expected given our finite human comprehension of the infinite divine nature, but logically and morally incoherent, which is by no means the same thing and not to be expected in a sound, biblical hermeneutic if it is to serve to bring us to a true knowledge of God. One is to say God is beyond what we know. The other is to say God is contrary to what we know. Vanhoozer’s proposition is incoherent, one-sided and does not provide a “thick” explanation of the issue at hand.
What is the explanation as to why one person becomes “consummated” and another person does not? We must not suggest that the answer lies in the eternal, unchanging determinate will of God. Rather, John 3:16-18 provides the reason for the differing eternal destinies of individuals; it is their belief or unbelief in “the only Son of God.” The Calvinist claim that God grants faith only to the elect is to reduce “believing” simply to an evidence of one’s election. This is a gross form of eisegesis. It is to strip the multitude of texts that reference “whosoever believes” throughout John of their plain sense, potentiality, possibility, and dynamic challenge while rendering faith redundant and logically and linguistically incoherent. What sense is there in a call to “repent and believe” when it is God who causes this repentance and belief in the elect as the evidence of their prior regeneration. They are regenerated first so that they may believe, and even this believing is not something they do[6] but is granted by God. The ‘convert” is completely passive therein. Therefore, Vanhoozer must find the reason why one person responds positively to God and another does not within the unchanging determinate salvific will of God towards the elect which is realized through an “effectual call.” The fact that the effect is determined and the person completely passive makes Vanhoozer’s distinctions about the work of the Spirit being “within” and “through,” rather than “on” a person, only semantic. If these “decisive changes” cannot be otherwise resisted, if they amount to an “irresistible grace” even though “within” and “through” a person, then this “unconditional election” as to who the Spirit works this “triune dialogical consummation” is only another version of Reformed Calvinist classical theological determinism. These words amount to a distinction without a difference. This is to substitute an impersonal determinism for a “personal” determinism. But I submit that there is no such thing as a “personal” or “communicative” determinism. They are mutually exclusive concepts. When God’s actions are described as “personal,” “dialogical,” “communicative,” “persuasive,” etc., then an appealing to the person’s will, not a determining of the persons response, is implied. When God acts in this manner, it is a free human being that God is interacting with. And as we shall see human freedom involves sole authorship of actions and the possibility of contrary choice. These are two elements of human freedom that all deterministic worldviews, even theistic determinism, eliminate. It is this comprehensive theological determinism that is the culprit in Vanhoozer’s attempts to convince us that God predetermines one’s salvation “communicatively.” To make it “communicative” is not sufficient to alleviate the inevitable and insurmountable biblical difficulties determinism itself generates.
Question: Can determinism be “personal,” thus making it a mischaracterization to label it “impersonal?” This will depend upon the arguments defining “person” and “free will.” I do not think it convincing that because God acts “communicatively” that Calvinist theology as a theological determinism is off the hook. We maintain that determinism is unbiblical because determinism, even if “communicative” is logically, morally, epistemologically, and biblically problematic by its very nature as determinism. For instance, what does Vanhoozer mean by “God brings them to their senses…?” How does he “bring them to their senses,” which I take to mean believe in God and Christ for salvation? He does do by unfailingly effecting that belief in them. He does so by taking over their faculties of thought, desire, will, decision, and action. That just what the “effectual call” means. But how is this “communicative,” “personal,” or “relational?” Just to assert that the determinism is “personal” does not do away with the ramifications of the determinism in the position. A “communicative,” “personal,” “relational,” determinism is a contradiction in terms. And if the logic of a position once again boils down to the same sort of absolute theological determinism, then all Vanhoozer’s talk about God being “personal,” “dialogical,” “communicative,” desiring “communion” and our “good,” etc. rings hollow – especially to the non-elect with whom God communicates nothing of his light, life, and hope. Vanhoozer is attempting to put a personal face on the old classical theological determinism, claiming a “dialogical communicative action” which stresses relational elements, but in the end all he has is God acting unilaterally “within” and “through” certain elect individuals to have them do what he alone has willed that they do.
All this is not to argue that God can never determine the actions of persons or events. This would be to diminish God’s deity and sovereignty working in concert with his love and grace. It would generate as much incoherence as does a comprehensive determinism. This is what Vanhoozer detects in the hyper-relational theologies he critiques. They render God impotent to act as he wills and blur the ontological Creator / creature distinction. What I am saying is that to speak of God acting in “communicative” terms precludes us from embracing the theistic determinist paradigm of Calvinism. The Bible testifies to an “openness” in the God/man relationship that the “closedness” of the Calvinist’s salvific determinism cannot coherently incorporate or express. The problems outlined here with respect to Reformed Calvinist soteriology as deterministic still obtain despite Vanhoozer’s talk of God as “communicative,” and they remain biblically problematic in light of such talk and on several other theological fronts.
For instance, in contrast to the loving relationship God has made possible for sinners in and through the Word, Jesus Christ, Vanhoozer’s theology gives one the feeling of an overarching, ominous, yet unknown and inescapable fate that inevitably awaits each of us. His “communicative” theology cannot handle the personal depth of the divine/human “communication” found in Scripture to all individuals. Rather than an “effectual call” we find only the single call of love in the “good news.” There is the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind” (Deut. 6:4-5; Matt. 22:37). As a command to all it is incoherent with a divine determinism in which God himself “effects” its fulfillment in a limited number of persons. Jesus points out to his disciples that “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” (Jn. 14:15) He also applies this to “whoever” by stating, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.” (Jn. 14:21) God’s “communication” to man in Jesus’ “commandments” or “word” (v. 23) is the “relational joint” (rather than the “causal joint”) where a person’s love for Jesus is demonstrated. The “whosoever” that “keeps” those “commandments,” Jesus says, “loves me.” The point is that the universal “whoever” either loves or does not love Jesus on the basis of the revelation of who he is. This is a choice the “whoever” makes. And Jesus goes on to say, “And he who loves me will be loved by my Father.” Here is no “irresistible effect” that God works in certain ones depending upon their predestination to salvation. There is no prior “love” of the sovereign God towards a predetermined elect. Rather than an “effectual call” that is the cause of one loving Jesus and the Father in return, there is the “communicative” initiative of the Father in Jesus so that “whoever” honors that “communication” is the one who loves Jesus and “will be loved” by the Father. Jesus then says he too “will love him (“whoever” loves Jesus evidenced by keeping his “commandments”) and manifest myself to him.” The point is that there exists in the dynamic of the God/man relationship a response of love to Jesus which initiates the Father’s love in return towards those who love him. That loving response to Jesus is of the person themselves given God’s loving revelation in Jesus. This love is not limited to a predetermined elect. Indeed, the one loving Jesus leads to Jesus and the Father coming and making their “home” with them. Jesus adds in v. 23, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” This shows us that the Father loves persons who love the one he has sent. The Father loves in and through the Son whom sinners may either love or hate. For Jesus then adds, “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” (v. 24) Jesus is the Father’s demonstration of love to every individual. “Whoever” loves Jesus will be loved by the Father. The substance of God’s loving initiative and application to “whoever” and “anyone” lies in and through Jesus. That love is described as being freely reciprocated with the evidence of keeping Jesus’ “word” and “commandments.” Herman Ridderbos in his commentary on John’s gospel says the following about this section of John,
“From all this – contracted here in “my words” – no one is excluded; but one who does not keep Jesus’ words – this is the unspoken conclusion – excludes himself or herself from seeing the Risen One and from lasting fellowship with him and the Father. All this is because of the decisive significance of the word, of which Jesus finally (also, significantly, in answer to Judas) once more says: “and the word that you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.” Therefore, “the world will see me no more” does not mean that after Jesus’ departure there is no future left other than the “darkness” against which Jesus has warned but – and this is the dominant thrust throughout the Fourth Gospel – that there is no fellowship with the heavenly Jesus for those who think they can escape the decision confronting them in the word of the earthly Jesus, the one sent by the Father.”[7]
Again, it was Soren Kierkegaard who said,
“No man shall presume to leave Christ’s life in abeyance as a curiosity. When God lets himself be born and become man, this is not an idle caprice, some fancy he hits upon just to be doing something, perhaps to put an end to the boredom that has brashly been said must be involved in being God – it is not in order to have an adventure. No, when God does this, then this fact is the earnestness of existence. And, in turn, the earnestness in this earnestness is: that everyone shall have an opinion about it.”
The Father, in Jesus, shows his love to us. Jesus also shows his love for us by laying down his life for us (Jn. 15:13). Jesus’ words, as from the Father, create a crisis of decision (Jn. 15:22). We either love the Father in return through loving Jesus or we do not. The Scripture does not support the idea that this response is predetermined by God and made a reality through an “effectual call.” Rather, to love God and Jesus through the revelation given in Jesus is an open question and invitation for every person. It is the very purpose for and the nature of his “communicative act.” Jesus says to his disciples that “the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (Jn. 16:27) And later Jesus prays “for those who will believe in me through their word…that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn. 17:20-21) This is the loving nature of God as a “being-in-communicative-act,” who by showing us his love, does not determine our response, but does leave us without excuse for not loving him in return.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] He finds himself backed into this “corner of the incoherence of theological determinism” in his discussion of “dialogical determinism” and petitionary prayer in chapter 7. In Remythologizing Theology on page 384 he suppresses the resulting incoherence of his Reformed Calvinist position in footnote number 154 which is perhaps the most telling theological statement in the whole book. I will address this more fully below.
[2] See C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 37-38. His discussion is of God’s goodness, but the principle that Lewis enunciates applies to any of God’s attributes and his moral nature.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 926.
[4] G.I Williamson, The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1978), 31-37.
[5] Calvin wrote, “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.” – John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), p. 926.
[6] I will discuss the inadequacy of the Reformed compatibilist definition of human freedom as compared to that required by the biblical testimony to moral responsibility, moral effort, resisting temptation and God’s judgment in separate papers. See my “Towards a More Biblical View of Human Freedom: A Critique of Compatibilism in the Theology of Kevin Vanhoozer” and “Kevin Vanhoozer’s Compatibilism: The Struggle to Maintain Reformed Deterministic Sovereignty.”
[7] Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 509.
The Truth of the Gospel 