Vanhoozer writes,
“This is where attempts to specify the mode of God’s governing human history in terms of causality part ways, with some theologians (e.g., classical theists) speaking in terms of causal determination and others (e.g., relational theists) causal influence. When articulating a doctrine of providence, the challenge is to affirm God’s authorship (i.e., God’s asymmetry vis-a-vis the human actor) without sliding into the determinism that critics decry as destructive of human freedom.
Causality, like relation, is a concept that covers a multitude of theological sins. It is not clear what causal power God has, what it would mean for causal power to be “personal,” or how primary relates to secondary causality…The salient question is whether theologians should abandon or try to redeem the notion: “The problem lies in the fact that the concept of cause has not been adequately christianized.”…Otherwise put: to christianize the concept is to remythologize it – to let the particular events of revelation and redemption (i.e., the history of Jesus Christ) govern its content rather than vice versa.” (RT, 368-369)
For all Vanhoozer’s attempts to keep from sliding into “causal determination,” we are forced to conclude that he certainly has with his doctrine of an “effectual call.” His theological veneer of “communicative agency” is very thin. We can see right through it to the absolute theistic determinism underneath. Although I can agree with Vanhoozer’s emphasis on God’s “communicative agency” as a mode of his governing human history, if it is defined as “causal determination,” as in Reformed Calvinism, this would certainly be biblically wrongheaded. The “causal influence” of the relational theists is certainly more in accord with the biblical witness as long as this includes a “causal determinism” of a non-Reformed Calvinist type, that is, one that can coherently incorporate the libertarian freedom found throughout the Bible. The Bible everywhere affirms the conditionality, contingency, and potentiality of the human response to this “God-in-communicative-act.” As such, God “causally determines” certain actions, events and the consummation of all history, but not “whatsoever comes to pass.” For instance, to be biblical when speaking of divine “causal determination,” one must be able to coherently incorporate the fact that humans are able to act contrary to God’s expressed will by doing evil, that God holds persons responsible for their evil actions as blameworthy and good actions as praiseworthy, and that individuals are not predestined to eternal life and eternal death by God due to the definition of the gospel as “good news” and the nature of faith. Vanhoozer has tried to stake out a position between a static deterministic Reformed Calvinist causality and an insufficient, divine relational “causality” that amounts to mere divine influence upon human beings that precludes God from being able to unilaterally accomplish what he desires. If Vanhoozer’s “God-in-communicative-act” is able to act sovereignly to perform his will and yet allows for libertarian freedom, a position I think is the most biblical, then his study of God as communicative is very helpful towards understanding just how God does perform his will among men. But my point throughout has been that I do not think Vanhoozer has successfully maintained a biblical theological position in this attempt to maneuver between Reformed theistic determinism and the excesses of relational theology. Vanhoozer defaults to Reformed determinism and then attempts to show how a “God-in-communicative-act” is somehow compatible with such a determinism. I have attempted to show how this is biblically insufficient and incoherent.
Vanhoozer sets up two theological extremes – “causal determination” and “causal influence.” Whereas he should have let Scripture guide his thinking to incorporate both of these as the ways of God at different times, in different circumstances and for different purposes, he cannot let go of his universal divine causal determinism and therefore has the dilemma of making his determinism less determinative. He attempts this by pointing out that God determines “communicatively.” Vanhoozer can now have God predetermining all he wishes, even each person’s eternal destiny, because now he feels he has averted the main criticisms of his theistic determinism (i.e., God is strategic, instrumental, impersonal, coercive, manipulative, etc.) and in his dealings with men by explaining that God works “communicatively.”
One of Vanhoozer’s theological concerns is legitimate. Any explanation of God’s providence need not avoid causality per se. God causes things to occur. That is biblically obvious and this is what Vanhoozer seeks to retain. Causation is an inescapable element of providence. We need not avoid completely a causality that at times is coercive or forceful. God exercises and will exercise his power to accomplish certain purposes and ends. What God is as merciful and compassionate need not be put at odds with his acts of power. Rather, all that God has said and done prior to such acts of power needs to be carefully identified and comprehended in light of the biblical situation that prompted that particular act of force or power.[1] We should not view God’s actions in isolation from all his previous communications, actions, and intentions. The basic fact that God causes things to happen is not the concern here. What is the concern is the nature and scope of Vanhoozer’s divine causal claims. We cannot see how the “classical theist” understanding of causality which amounts to a universal divine causal determinism based upon the sole will of God avoids eliminating all human relationality and as such is biblically unsustainable. The Bible testifies to a relational interaction between God and man that is incoherent with the Reformed determinism Vanhoozer feels compelled to maintain. If God has predetermined every action of every person, then no matter how “personal” we make God’s “persuasion” of us to do his will, it is hard to escape the fact that this is nothing other than a raw impersonal determinism. This is so because the biblical witness to sole authorship of human acts and contrary choice are essential to what it means to be and act as a person. In addition, it is also rationally incoherent to speak of a “communicative” determinism.
Alternatively, if God does not determine every man’s every action it seems that only two options remain. First, God may determine some men’s actions some of the time. This is his prerogative as God and he does so with all the knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and justice that inheres in his nature. Taking all these into consideration, the divine action, in the end, may be quite forceful or coercive to a specific end, but this does mean that it originated as such, that is, as an effectual, irresistible action of God upon a person that he predetermined from the foundation of the world. It also does not mean that such actions are impersonal or not suitable to human persons. It may very well be that God has dealt communicatively with these persons or person and they rejected his communication and therefore they are the ones responsible for God actions upon them. Revelation, grace, and patience precedes judgments. Secondly, the Bible also testifies to the fact that God influences men through his Word and by his Spirit (“communicatively”), and thus his communication is marked by genuine relationality without weakness or submission or threat to his sovereignty. Such a relation, especially with respect to salvation, is established over time and ultimately on his terms but not as predetermined for some and not others. It is of a different kind than a purely earthly, physical, temporal relation in that it is a distinctly spiritual happening (the main point Jesus was making to Nicodemus in Jn. 3), but nevertheless it is a genuine relation. God communicates with man in different ways accompanied by the Spirit and man either receives that communication, thus responding appropriately to God who then responds further by his Spirit, or, man ignores God’s initial communication to his own condemnation and isolation from God’s further communication by his Spirit and to a greater knowledge of spiritual things. It is because God can genuinely determine certain things to occur yet also respond to man’s free decisions, acting in different ways, at different times that he can be understood as sovereign in a sense that incorporates the full scope of the biblical witness to that sovereignty. It is not simply a matter of causal determinism vs. causal influence. Between these two alternatives, and carefully discerning the nature, scope and application of each, we have a better representation of the biblical witness to God’s activity and relation to human persons. Vanhoozer is on a right track in emphasizing and examining more fully what it means for God to be “communicative,” but what Vanhoozer has done is embrace a casual determinism of the type that does not allow for a genuine theistic non-causality, that is, it does not allow for human decision or contrary choice which is implied in the “influence” aspect of “causal influence” or the “communicative” nature of “communicative action.” Vanhoozer seems to strive for a theology of “causal influence” which is a contradiction in terms if the “influence” or “persuasion” is also defined as predetermined, effective, and irresistible. What Vanhoozer gives with one hand he takes with the other.
It seems that Vanhoozer has discounted these biblical options on sovereignty and human freedom. He was so intent, and rightly so, on maintaining the biblical separation of Creator and creation to defend against the unbiblical notions that God becomes one with the creation or subject to it that he has missed the proper relationality of a non-deterministic sovereign over creatures made in his image. Also, he is obviously so entrenched in the Reformed mindset that in order for God to be sovereign he has had to have predetermined each person’s salvation. By embracing an “effectual call” Vanhoozer certainly has affirmed God’s “authorship” but has also slid into “the determinism that critics decry as destructive of “human freedom.”
Does Vanhoozer decry determinism as destructive of human freedom? It appears that as long as the determinism is “communicative” and as long as human freedom is reduced to acting according to one’s strongest desire determined by God then Vanhoozer feels he has averted determinism’s destruction of human freedom. But has he convincingly done so by his application of “authorial” “communicative,” “speech-act” theory to Scripture? I don’t believe he has, for according to Calvinism an “effectual call” presupposes that God has determined each person’s eternal destiny. You have nothing whatsoever to do with where you will spend eternity. This is theistic determinism pure and simple. Let us be more practical for a moment. Do you know where you will spend eternity? If so, on what basis? Do you see how when you attempt to explain upon what “basis” you believe you have salvation that your explanation is incoherent and antithetical with Reformed Calvinist soteriology? If you don’t know where you will spend eternity because of an unknown decision of God from eternity past by which he has unalterably predestined you to heaven or hell, what does all this talk about a “communicative,” “dialogical” God who “desires communion” with his “human heroes” and a gospel of “good news” in Christ Jesus amount to? Vanhoozer has misunderstood the biblical nature of both God’s freedom and human freedom, the nature of faith, and God’s sovereignty as both “communicative” and/or coercive, merciful and just. God determines the boundaries of human freedom and responds in flawless love and wisdom, mercy and justice to man’s response to him.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] Perhaps speaking in generalities is not sufficient here. What the biblical text does is force us to consider each act of God individually yet also in the context of a whole. God communicates and then acts. Does Vanhoozer require that each communication of God have an effect? This idea is rooted in his theological determinism. In a theistic determinism God does not “waste words” with man nor can he be found to be responsive or “subject” to the “free will” of man.
The Truth of the Gospel 